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The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales

by Richard Garnett · English · Gutenberg #10095 · 493,925 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales

Author: Richard Garnett


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10095]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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Credits: Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, AND OTHER TALES ***

[Illustration]




THE TWILIGHT
OF THE GODS:
AND OTHER TALES

by Richard Garnett

MDCCCCIII




TO
HORACE HOWARD FURNESS
AND
GEORG BRANDES.
DABO DUOBUS TESTIBUS MEIS




CONTENTS

 The Twilight of the Gods
 The Potion of Lao-Tsze
 Abdallah the Adite
 Ananda the Miracle Worker
 The City of Philosophers
 The Demon Pope
 The Cupbearer
 The Wisdom of the Indians
 The Dumb Oracle
 Duke Virgil
 The Claw
 Alexander the Ratcatcher
 The Rewards of Industry
 Madam Lucifer
 The Talismans
 The Elixir of Life
 The Poet of Panopolis
 The Purple Head
 The Firefly
 Pan’s Wand
 A Page from the Book of Folly
 The Bell of Saint Euschemon
 Bishop Addo and Bishop Gaddo
 The Philosopher and the Butterflies
 Truth and Her Companions
 The Three Palaces
 New Readings in Biography
 The Poison Maid
 NOTES




THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS


Truth fails not, but her outward forms that bear
The longest date do melt like frosty rime.

I

The fourth Christian century was far past its meridian, when, high
above the summit of the supreme peak of Caucasus, a magnificent eagle
came sailing on broad fans into the blue, and his shadow skimmed the
glittering snow as it had done day by day for thousands of years. A
human figure—or it might be superhuman, for his mien seemed more than
mortal—lifted from the crag, to which he hung suspended by massy gyves
and rivets, eyes mournful with the presentiment of pain. The eagle’s
screech clanged on the wind, as with outstretched neck he stooped
earthward in ever narrowing circles; his huge quills already creaked in
his victim’s ears, whose flesh crept and shrank, and involuntary
convulsions agitated his hands and feet. Then happened what all these
millenniums had never witnessed. No thunderbolt had blazed forth from
that dome of cloudless blue; no marksman had approached the
inaccessible spot; yet, without vestige of hurt, the eagle dropped
lifeless, falling sheer down into the unfathomable abyss below. At the
same moment the bonds of the captive snapped asunder, and, projected by
an impetus which kept him clear of the perpendicular precipice, he
alighted at an infinite depth on a sun-flecked greensward amid young
ash and oak, where he long lay deprived of sense and motion.

The sun fell, dew gathered on the grass, moonshine glimpsed through the
leaves, stars peeped timidly at the prostrate figure, which remained
prostrate and unconscious still. But as sunlight was born anew in the
East a thrill passed over the slumberer, and he became conscious, first
of an indescribably delicious feeling of restful ease, then of a
gnawing pang, acute as the beak of the eagle for which he at first
mistook it. But his wrists, though still encumbered with bonds and
trailing fetters, were otherwise at liberty, and eagle there was none.
Marvelling at his inward and invisible foe, he struggled to his feet,
and found himself contending with a faintness and dizziness heretofore
utterly unknown to him. He dimly felt himself in the midst of things
grown wonderful by estrangement and distance. No grass, no flower, no
leaf had met his eye for thousands of years, nothing but the
impenetrable azure, the transient cloud, sun, moon, and star, the
lightning flash, the glittering peaks of ice, and the solitary eagle.
There seemed more wonder in a blade of grass than in all these things,
but all was blotted in a dizzy swoon, and it needed his utmost effort
to understand that a light sound hard by, rapidly growing more
distinct, was indeed a footfall. With a violent effort he steadied
himself by grasping a tree, and had hardly accomplished so much when a
tall dark maiden, straight as an arrow, slim as an antelope, wildly
beautiful as a Dryad, but liker a Maenad with her aspect of mingled
disdain and dismay, and step hasty as of one pursuing or pursued,
suddenly checked her speed on perceiving him.

“Who art thou?” he exclaimed.

“Gods! Thou speakest Greek!”

“What else should I speak?”

“What else? From whom save thee, since I closed my father’s eyes, have
I heard the tongue of Homer and Plato?”

“Who is Homer? Who is Plato?”

The maiden regarded him with a look of the deepest astonishment.

“Surely,” she said, “thy gift has been bestowed upon thee to little
purpose. Say not, at least, that thou usest the speech of the Gods to
blaspheme them. Thou art surely yet a votary of Zeus?”

“I a votary of Zeus!” exclaimed the stranger. “By these fetters, no!”
And, weak as he was, the forest rang with his disdainful laughter.

“Farewell,” said the maiden, as with dilating form and kindling eye she
gathered up her robes. “I parley with thee no more. Thou art tenfold
more detestable than the howling mob down yonder, intent on rapine and
destruction. They know no better, and can no other. But thou, apt in
speaking the sacred tongue yet brutally ignorant of its treasures,
knowing the father of the Gods only to revile him! Let me pass.”

The stranger, if willing to hinder her, seemed little able. His eyes
closed, his limbs relaxed, and without a cry he sank senseless on the
sward.

In an instant the maiden was kneeling by his side. Hastily undoing a
basket she carried on her arm, she drew forth a leather flask, and,
supporting the sunken head with one hand, poured a stream of wine
through the lips with the other. As the gurgling purple coursed down
his throat the sufferer opened his eyes, and thanked her silently with
a smile of exquisite sweetness. Removing the large leaves which shaded
the contents of the basket, she disclosed ripe figs and pomegranates,
honeycomb and snow-white curd, lying close to each other in tempting
array. The stranger took of each alternately, and the basket was
well-nigh emptied ere his appetite seemed assuaged.

The observant maiden, meanwhile, felt her mood strangely altered.

“So have I imaged Ulysses to myself,” she thought as she gazed on the
stranger’s goodly form, full of vigour, though not without traces of
age, the massive brow, the kindly mouth, the expression of far-seeing
wisdom. “Such a man ignorant of letters, and a contemner of Zeus!”

The stranger’s eloquent thanks roused her from a reverie. The Greek
tongue fell upon her ear like the sweetest music, and she grieved when
its flow was interrupted by a question addressed directly to herself.

“Can a God feel hunger and thirst?”

“Surely no,” she rejoined.

“I should have said the same yesterday,” returned the stranger.

“Wherefore not to-day?”

“Dear maiden,” responded he, with winning voice and manner, “we must
know each other better ere my tale can gain credence with thee. Do thou
rather unfold what thine own speech has left dark to me. Why the
language of the Gods, as should seem, is here understood by thee and me
alone; what foes Zeus has here other than myself; what is the profane
crowd of which thou didst speak; and why, alone and defenceless, thou
ascendest this mountain. Think of me, if thou wilt, as one fallen from
the clouds.”

“Strange man,” returned the maiden, “who knowest Homer’s speech and not
Homer’s self, who renouncest Zeus and resemblest him, hear my tale ere
I require thine. Yesterday I should have called myself the last
priestess of Apollo in this fallen land, to-day I have neither shrine
nor altar. Moved by I know not what madness, my countrymen have long
ago forsaken the worship of the Gods. The temples crumbled into ruin,
prayer was no longer offered or sacrifice made as of old, the priestly
revenues were plundered; the sacred vessels carried away; the voice of
oracles became dumb; the divine tongue of Greece was forgotten, its
scrolls of wisdom mouldered unread, and the deluded people turned to
human mechanics and fishermen. One faithful servant of Apollo remained,
my father; but ’tis seven days since he closed his eyes for ever. It
was time, for yesternoon the heralds proclaimed by order of the King
that Zeus and the Olympians should be named no more in Caucasia.”

“Ha!” interrupted the stranger, “I see it all. Said I not so?” he
shouted, gazing into the sky as if his eye could pierce and his voice
reach beyond the drifting clouds. “But to thy own tale,” he added,
turning with a gesture of command to the astonished Elenko.

“It is soon told,” she said. “I knew that it was death to serve the
Gods any more, yet none the less in my little temple did fire burn upon
Apollo’s altar this morning. Scarcely was it kindled ere I became aware
of a ruffianly mob thronging to sack and spoil. I was ready for death,
but not at their hands. I caught up this basket, and escaped up the
mountain. On its inaccessible summit, it is reported, hangs Prometheus,
whom Zeus (let me bow in awe before his inscrutable counsels) doomed
for his benevolence to mankind. To him, as Aeschylus sings, Io of old
found her way, and from him received monition and knowledge of what
should come to pass. I will try if courage and some favouring God will
guide me to him; if not, I will die as near Heaven as I may attain.
Tell me on thy part what thou wilt, and let me depart. If thou art
indeed Zeus’s enemy, thou wilt find enough on thy side down yonder.”

“I have been Zeus’s enemy,” returned the stranger, mildly and gravely,
“I am so no longer. Immortal hate befits not the mortal I feel myself
to have become. Nor needest thou ascend the peak further. Maiden, I am
Prometheus!”

II

It is a prerogative of the Gods that, when they do speak sooth, mortals
must needs believe them. Elenko hence felt no incredulity at the
revelation of Prometheus, or sought other confirmation than the bonds
and broken links of chain at his wrists and ankles.

“Now,” he cried, or rather shouted, “is the prophecy fulfilled with
which of old I admonished the Gods in the halls of Olympus. I told them
that Zeus should beget a child mightier than himself, who should send
him and them the way he had sent his father. I knew not that this child
was already begotten, and that his name was Man. It has taken Man ages
to assert himself, nor has he yet, as it would seem, done more than
enthrone a new idol in the place of the old. But for the old, behold
the last traces of its authority in these fetters, of which the first
smith will rid me. Expect no thunderbolt, dear maiden; none will come:
nor shall I regain the immortality of which I feel myself bereaved
since yesterday.”

“Is this no sorrow to thee?” asked Elenko.

“Has not my immortality been one of pain?” answered Prometheus. “Now I
feel no pain, and dread one only.”

“And that is?”

“The pain of missing a certain fellow-mortal,” answered Prometheus,
with a look so expressive that the hitherto unawed maiden cast her eyes
to the ground. Hastening away from the conversation to which,
nevertheless, she inly purposed to return.

“Is Man, then, the maker of Deity?” she asked.

“Can the source of his being originate in himself?” asked Prometheus.
“To assert this were self-contradiction, and pride inflated to madness.
But of the more exalted beings who have like him emanated from the
common principle of all existence, Man, since his advent on the earth,
though not the creator, is the preserver or the destroyer. He looks up
to them, and they are; he out-grows them, and they are not. For the
barbarian and Triballian gods there is no return; but the Olympians, if
dead as deities, survive as impersonations of Man’s highest conceptions
of the beautiful. Languid and spectral indeed must be their existence
in this barbarian age; but better days are in store for them.”

“And for thee, Prometheus?”

“There is now no place,” replied he, “for an impeacher of the Gods. My
cause is won, my part is played. I am rewarded for my love of man by
myself becoming human. When I shall have proved myself also mortal I
may haply traverse realms which Zeus never knew, with, I would hope,
Elenko by my side.”

Elenko’s countenance expressed her full readiness to accompany
Prometheus as far beyond the limits of the phenomenal world as he might
please to conduct her. A thought soon troubled her delicious reverie,
and she inquired:

“Peradventure, then, the creed which I have execrated may be truer and
better than that which I have professed?”

“If born in wiser brains and truer hearts, aye,” answered Prometheus,
“but of this I can have no knowledge. It seems from thy tale to have
begun but ill. Yet Saturn mutilated his father, and his reign was the
Golden Age.”

While conversing, hand locked in hand, they had been strolling
aimlessly down the mountain. Turning an abrupt bend in the path, they
suddenly found themselves in presence of an assembly of early
Christians.

These confessors were making the most of Elenko’s dilapidated temple,
whose smoking shell threw up a sable column in the background. The
effigies of Apollo and the Muses had been dragged forth, and were being
diligently broken up with mallets and hammers. Others of the
sacrilegious throng were rending scrolls, or dividing vestments, or
firing the grove of laurel that environed the shrine, or pelting the
affrighted birds as they flew forth. The sacred vessels, however, at
least those of gold and silver, appeared safe in the guardianship of an
episcopal personage of shrewd and jovial aspect, under whose inspection
they were being piled up by a troop of sturdy young ecclesiastics, the
only weapon-bearers among the rabble. Elenko stood riveted to the
ground. Prometheus, to her amazement, rushed forward to one of the
groups with a loud “By all the Gods and Goddesses!” Following his
movements, she saw that the object of his interest was an enormous dead
eagle carried by one of the mob. The multitude, startled by his cry and
his emotion, gazed eagerly at the strangers, and instantly a shout went
up:

“The heathen woman!”

“With a heathen man!”

And clubs began to be brandished, and stones to be picked up from the
ground.

Prometheus, to whom the shouts were unintelligible, looked wistfully at
Elenko. As their eyes met, Elenko’s countenance, which had hitherto
been all disdain and defiance, assumed an expression of irresolution. A
stone struck Prometheus on the temple, drawing blood; a hundred hands
went up, each weighted with a missile.

“Do as I,” cried Elenko to him, and crossed herself.

Prometheus imitated her, not unsuccessfully for a novice.

The uplifted arms were stayed, some even sank down.

By this time the Bishop had bustled to the front, and addressed a
torrent of questions to Prometheus, who merely shook his head, and
turned to inspect the eagle.

“Brethren,” said the Bishop, “I smell a miracle!” And, turning to
Elenko, he rapidly proceeded to cross-examine her.

“Thou wert the priestess of this temple?”

“I was.”

“Thou didst leave it this morning a heathen?”

“I did.”

“Thou returnest a Christian?”

Elenko blushed fire, her throat swelled, her heart beat violently. All
her soul seemed concentrated in the gaze she fastened on the pale and
bleeding Prometheus. She remained silent—but she crossed herself.

“Who then has persuaded thee to renounce Apollo?”

Elenko pointed to Prometheus.

“An enemy of Zeus, then?”

“Zeus has not such another enemy in the world.”

“I knew it, I was sure of it,” exclaimed the Bishop. “I can always tell
a Christian when I see him. Wherefore speaks he not?”

“He is ancient, for all his vigorous mien. His martyrdom began ere our
present speech was, nor could he learn this in his captivity.”

“Martyrdom! Captivity!” exclaimed the prelate gleefully, “I thought we
were coming thither. An early martyr, doubtless?”

“A very early martyr.”

“Fettered and manacled?”

“Behold his wrists and ankles.”

“Tortured, of course?”

“Incredibly.”

“Miraculously kept alive to this day?”

“In an entirely supernatural manner.”

“Now,” said the Bishop, “I would wager my mitre and ring that his life
was prolonged by the daily ministrations of yonder fowl that he
caresses with such singular affection?”

“Never,” replied Elenko, “for one day did that most punctual bird omit
to visit him.”

“Hurrah!” shouted the Bishop. “And now, its mission accomplished, the
blessed creature, as I am informed, is found dead at the foot of the
mountain. Saints and angels! this is glorious! On your knees, ye
infidels!”

And down they all went, the Bishop setting the example. As their heads
were bowed to the earth, Elenko made a sign to Prometheus, and when the
multitude looked up, it beheld him in the act of imparting the
episcopal blessing.

“Tell him that we are all his brethren,” said the Bishop, which
announcement became in Elenko’s mouth, “Do as I do, and cleave to thy
eagle.”

A procession was formed. The new saint, his convert, and the eagle,
rode in a car at the head of it. The Bishop, surrounded by his
bodyguard, followed with the sacred vessels of Apollo, to which he had
never ceased to direct a vigilant eye throughout the whole proceedings.
The multitude swarmed along singing hymns, or contending for the stray
feathers of the eagle. The representatives of seven monasteries put in
their claims for the links of Prometheus’s fetters, but the Bishop
scouted them all. He found time to whisper to Elenko:

“You seem a sensible young person. Just hint to our friend that we
don’t want to hear anything about his theology, and the less he talks
about the primitive Church the better. No doubt he is a most
intelligent man, but he cannot possibly be up to all the recent
improvements.”

Elenko promised most fervently that Prometheus’ theological sentiments
should remain a mystery to the public. She then began to reflect very
seriously on the subject of her own morals. “This day,” she said to
herself, “I have renounced all the Gods, and told lies enough to last
me my life, and for no other reason than that I am in love. If this is
a sufficient reason, lovers must have a different code of morality from
the rest of the world, and indeed it would appear that they have. Will
you die for me? Yes. Admirable. Will you lie for me? No. Then you don’t
love me. Βαλλ εισ κορακασ εισ Ταιναρον εισ Όγγ Κογγ.”

III

Elenko soon found that there was no pausing upon the path to which she
had committed herself. As the sole medium of communication between
Prometheus and the religious public, her time was half spent in
instructing Prometheus in the creed in which he was supposed to have
instructed her, and half in framing the edifying sentences which passed
for the interpretation of discourses for the most part far more
interesting to herself than if they had been what they professed to be.
The rapt and impassioned attention which she was observed to bestow on
his utterances on such occasions all but gained her the reputation of a
saint, and was accepted as a sufficient set-off against the unhallowed
affection which she could not help manifesting for the memory of her
father. The judicious reluctance of the Caucasian ecclesiastics to
inquire over-anxiously into the creeds and customs of the primitive
Church was a great help to her; and another difficulty was removed by
the Bishop, who, having no idea of encouraging a rival thaumaturgist,
took an early opportunity of signifying that it was rather in the line
of Desmotes (for by this name the new saint passed) to be the subject
than the instrument of miracles, and that, at all events, no more were
to be looked for from him at his time of life. The warmth with which
Elenko espoused this view raised her greatly in his good opinion, and
he was always ready to come to her aid when she became entangled in
chronological or historical difficulties, or seasoned her versions of
Desmotes’ speeches with reminiscences of Plato or Marcus Aurelius, or
when her invention failed altogether. On such occasions, if objectors
grew troublesome, the Bishop would thunder, “Brethren, I smell a
heresy!” and no more was said. One minor trouble both to Prometheus and
Elenko was the affection they were naturally expected to manifest
towards the carcase of the wretched eagle, which many identified with
the eagle of the Evangelist John. Prometheus was of a forgiving
disposition, but Elenko wished nothing more ardently than that the
whole aquiline race might have but one neck, and that she might wring
it. It somewhat comforted her to observe that the eagle’s plumage was
growing thin, while the eagle’s custodian was growing fat.

But she had worse troubles to endure than any that eagles could
occasion. The youth of those who resorted to her and Prometheus
attracted remark from the graver members of the community. Young ladies
found the precepts of the handsome and dignified saint indispensable to
their spiritual health; young men were charmed with their purity as
they came filtered through the lips of Elenko. Is man more conceited
than woman, or more confiding? Elenko should certainly have been at
ease; no temptress, however enterprising, could well be spreading her
nets for an Antony three hundred years old. Prometheus, on the
contrary, might have found cause for jealousy in many a noble youth’s
unconcealed admiration of Elenko. Yet he seemed magnificently
unconscious of any cause for apprehension, while Elenko’s heart swelled
till it was like to burst. She had the further satisfaction of knowing
herself the best hated woman in Caucasia, between the enmity of those
of whose admirers she had made an involuntary conquest, and of those
who found her standing between them and Prometheus. Her monopoly of
Greek, she felt sure, was her only security. Two constant attendants at
Prometheus’s receptions particularly alarmed her, the Princess Miriam,
niece of the Bishop, a handsome widow accustomed to have things as she
wished them; and a tall veiled woman who seemed unknown to all, but
whose unseen eyes, she instinctively knew, were never averted from the
unconscious Prometheus.

It was therefore with some trepidation that she received a summons to
the private apartment of the Princess Miriam.

“Dear friend,” the Princess began, “thou knowest the singular affection
which I have invariably entertained for thee.”

“Right well do I know it,” responded Elenko. (“The thirty-first lie
to-day,” she added wearily to herself.)

“It is this affection, dear friend,” continued the Princess, “which
induces me on the present occasion to transgress the limits of
conventional propriety, and make a communication distressing to thee,
but infinitely more so to myself.”

Elenko implored the Princess to make no such sacrifice in the cause of
friendship, but the great lady was resolute.

“People say,” she continued—

“What say they?”

“That thy relation to Desmotes is indiscreet. That it is equivocal.
That it is offensive. That it is sacrilegious. That, in a word, it is
improper.”

Elenko defended herself with as much energy as her candour would allow.

“Dear friend,” said the Princess, “thou dost not imagine that I have
part or lot in these odious imputations? Even could I deem them true,
should I not think charitably of thee, but yesterday a heathen, and
educated in impiety by a foul sorcerer? My poor lamb! But tongues must
be stopped, and I have now to advise thee how this may be
accomplished.”

“Say on.”

“People will always talk so long as thou art the sole medium of
communication with the holy man. Some deem him less ignorant of our
speech than he seems, but concerning this I inquire not: for, in
society, what seems, is. Enough that thy colloquies expose thee to
scandal. There is but one remedy. Thou must yield thy place to another.
It is meet that thou forthwith instruct in that barbarous dialect some
matron of unblemished repute and devout aspirations; no mere ignorant
devotee, however, but a woman of the world, whose prudence and
experience may preserve the holy man from the pitfalls set for him by
the unprincipled. Manifestly she must be a married person, else nought
were gained, yet must she not be chargeable with forsaking her duties
towards her husband and children. It follows that she must be a widow.
It were also well that she should be of kin to some influential
personage, to whose counsel she might have recourse in times of
difficulty, and whose authority might protect her against the
slanderous and evil disposed. I have not been able to meet any one
endowed with all these qualifications, excepting myself. I therefore
propose to thee that thou shouldst instruct me in the speech of
Desmotes, and when I am qualified to take thy place my uncle shall
elevate thee to the dignity of Abbess, or bestow thee upon some young
clergyman of extraordinary desert.”

Elenko intimated, perhaps with more warmth than necessary, her aversion
to both propositions, and the extreme improbability of the Princess
ever acquiring any knowledge of Greek by her instrumentality.

“If this is the case,” said the Princess, with perfect calmness, “I
must have recourse to my other method, which is infallible.”

Elenko inquired what it might be.

“I shall represent to my uncle, what indeed he very well knows, that a
saint is, properly speaking, of no value till he is dead. Not until his
decease are his relics available, or pilgrimages to his shrine
feasible. It is solely in anticipation of this event that my uncle is
keeping Desmotes at all; and the sooner it comes to pass, the sooner
will my revered relative come by his own. Only think of the capital
locked up in the new church, now so nearly completed, on the spot where
they picked up the eagle! How shall it be dedicated to Desmotes in
Desmotes’ lifetime? Were it not a most blissful and appropriate
coincidence if the day of the consecration were that of the saint’s
migration to a better world? I shall submit this view of the case to my
uncle: he is accustomed to hear reason from me, of whom, between
ourselves, he is not a little afraid. Thou mayest rely upon it that
about the time of the consecration Desmotes will ascend to heaven;
while thou, it is gravely to be feared, wilt proceed in the opposite
direction. Would’st thou avert this unpleasantness, think well of my
first proposal. I give thee credit for loving Desmotes, and suppose,
therefore, that thou wilt make some sacrifice for his sake. I am a
Kettle, thou art a Pot. Take heed how thou knockest against me!”

Elenko sped back to bear tidings of the threatened collision to
Prometheus. As she approached his chamber she heard with astonishment
two voices in eager conversation, and discovered with still greater
amazement that their dialogue was carried on in Greek. The second
speaker, moreover, was evidently a female. A jealous pang shot through
Elenko’s breast; she looked cautiously in, and discerned the same
mysterious veiled woman whose demeanour had already been an enigma to
her. But the veil was thrown back, and the countenance went far to
allay Elenko’s disquiet. It bore indeed traces of past beauty, but was
altogether that of one who had known better days; worn and faded, weary
and repining. Elenko’s jealousy vanished, though her surprise
redoubled, when she heard Prometheus address the stranger as “Sister.”

“A pretty brother I have got,” rejoined the lady, in high sharp tones:
“to leave me in want! Never once to inquire after me!”

“Nay, sister, or sister-in-law,” responded Prometheus, “if it comes to
that, where were you while I was on Caucasus? The Oceanides ministered
to me, Hermes came now and then, even Hercules left a card; but I never
saw Pandora.”

“How could I compromise Epimetheus, Prometheus?” demanded Pandora.
“Besides, my attendant Hope was always telling me that all would come
right, without any meddling of mine.”

“Let her tell you so now,” retorted Prometheus.

“Tell me now! Do you pretend not to know that the hussey forsook
Olympus ten years ago, and has turned Christian?”

“I am sure I am very sorry to hear it. Somehow, she never forsook _me_.
I can’t imagine how you Gods get on without her.”

“Get on! We are getting off. Except Eros and Plutus, who seem as usual,
and the old Fates, who go on spinning as if nothing had happened, none
of us expects to last for another ten years. The sacrifices have
dwindled down to nothing. Zeus has put down his eagle. Hera has eaten
her peacocks. Apollo’s lyre is never heard—pawned, no doubt. Bacchus
drinks water, and Venus—well, you can imagine how she gets on without
him and Ceres. And here you are, sleek and comfortable, and never
troubling yourself about your family. But you had better, or I swear I
will tell Zeus; and we shall see whether these Christians will keep you
with your ante-chamber full of starving gods. Take a day to think of
what I have been saying!”

And away she flounced, not noticing Elenko. Long and earnestly did the
pair discuss the perils that menaced them, and at the end of their
deliberations Elenko sought the Bishop, and briefly imparted the
Princess Miriam’s ultimatum.

“It is painful to a spiritual man,” replied the prelate, “to be
accessory to a murder. It is also repugnant to his feelings to deny a
beloved niece anything on which she has set her heart. To avoid such
grievous dilemma, I judge it well that ye both ascend to heaven without
further ceremony.”

That night the ascent of Prometheus and Elenko was witnessed by divers
credible persons. The new church was consecrated shortly afterwards. It
was amply stored with relics from the wardrobe of Prometheus and what
remained of the eagle. The damsels of the capital regained their
admirers, and those who had become enamoured of Prometheus mostly
transferred their affections to the Bishop. Everybody was satisfied
except the Princess Miriam, who never ceased to deplore her indulgence
in giving Elenko the chance of first speech with her uncle.

“If I had been five minutes beforehand with the minx!” she said.

IV

The heaven to which Prometheus and Elenko had ascended was situated in
a sequestered valley of Laconia. A single winding path led into the
glen, which was inhabited only by a few hunters and shepherds, who
still observed the rites of the ancient faith; and sometimes, deeming
but to show kindness to a mortal, refreshed or sheltered a forlorn and
hungry Deity. Saving at the entrance the vale was walled round by steep
cliffs, for the most part waving with trees, but here and there
revealing the naked crag. It was traversed by a silvery stream, in its
windings enclosing Prometheus’s and Elenko’s cottage, almost as in an
island. The cot, buried in laurel and myrtle, had a garden where fig
and mulberry, grape and almond, ripened in their season. A few goats
browsed on the long grass, and yielded their milk to the household.
Bread and wine, and flesh when needed, were easily procured from the
neighbours. Beyond necessary furniture, the cottage contained little
but precious scrolls, obtained by Elenko from Athens and the newly
founded city of Constantine. In these, under her guidance, Prometheus
read of matters that never, while he dwelt on Olympus, entered the
imagination of any God.

It is a chief happiness of lovers that each possesses treasures wholly
their own, which they may yet make fully the possession of the other.
These treasures are of divers kinds, beauty, affection, memory, hope.
But never were such treasures of knowledge shared between lovers as
between Prometheus and Elenko. Each possessed immeasurable stores,
hitherto inaccessible to the other. How trifling seemed the mythical
lore which Elenko had gleaned as the minister of Phœbus to that now
imparted by Prometheus! The Titan had seen all, and been a part of all
that he had seen. He had bowed beneath the sceptre of Uranus, he had
witnessed his fall, and marked the ocean crimson with his blood. He
remembered hoary Saturn a brisk active Deity, pushing his way to the
throne of Heaven, and devouring in a trice the stone that now resists
his fangs for millenniums. He had heard the shields of the Corybantes
clash around the infant Zeus; he described to Elenko how one day the
sea had frothed and boiled, and undraped Aphrodite had ascended from it
in the presence of the gazing and applauding amphitheatre of
cloud-cushioned gods. He could depict the personal appearance of
Cybele, and sketch the character of Enceladus. He had instructed Zeus,
as Chiron had instructed Achilles; he remembered Poseidon afraid of the
water, and Pluto of the dark. He called to mind and expounded ancient
oracles heretofore unintelligible: he had himself been told, and had
disbelieved, that the happiest day of his own life would be that on
which he should feel himself divested of immortality. Of the younger
gods and their doings he knew but little; he inquired with interest
whether Bacchus had returned in safety from his Indian expedition, and
whether Proserpine had a family of divine imps.

Much more, nevertheless, had Elenko to teach Prometheus than she could
learn from him. How trivial seemed the history of the gods to what he
now heard of the history of men! Were these indeed the beings he had
known “like ants in the sunless recesses of caves, dwelling
deep-burrowing in the earth, ignorant of the signs of the seasons,” to
whom he had given fire and whom he had taught memory and number, for
whom he had “brought the horse under the chariot, and invented the
sea-beaten, flaxen-winged chariot of the sailor?” And now, how poorly
showed the gods beside this once wretched brood! What Deity could die
for Olympus, as Leonidas had for Greece? Which of them could, like
Iphigenia, dwell for years beside the melancholy sea, keeping a true
heart for an absent brother? Which of them could raise his fellows
nearer to the source of all Deity, as Socrates and Plato had raised
men? Who could portray himself as Phidias had portrayed Athene? Could
the Muses speak with their own voices as they had spoken by Sappho’s?
He was especially pleased to see his own moral superiority to Zeus so
eloquently enforced by Æschylus, and delighted in criticising the
sentiments which the other poets had put into the mouths of the gods.
Homer, he thought, must have been in Olympus often, and Aristophanes
not seldom. When he read in the Cyclops of Euripides, “Stranger, I
laugh to scorn Zeus’s thunderbolts,” he grew for a moment thoughtful.
“Am I,” he questioned, “ending where Polyphemus began?” But when he
read a little further on:

The wise man’s only Jupiter is this,
To eat and drink during his little day,
And give himself no care—


“No,” he said, “the Zeus that nailed me to the rock is better than this
Zeus. But well for man to be rid of both, if he does not put another in
their place; or, in dropping his idolatry, has not flung away his
religion. Heaven has not departed with Zeus.” And, taking his lyre, he
sang:

What floods of lavish splendour
    The lofty sun doth pour!
What else can Heaven render?
    What room hath she for more?

Yet shall his course be shortly done,
    And after his declining
The skies that held a single Sun
With thousands shall be shining.

V

It was not long ere the gods began to find their way to Prometheus’s
earthly paradise, and who came once came again. The first was
Epimetheus, who had probably suffered least of all from the general
upset, having in truth little to lose since his ill-starred union with
Pandora. He had indeed reason for thankfulness in his practical divorce
from his spouse, who had settled in Caucasia, and gave Greek lessons to
the Princess Miriam. Would Prometheus lend him half a talent? a
quarter? a tenth? a hundredth? Thanks, thanks. Prometheus might rely
upon it that his residence should not be divulged on any account.
Notwithstanding which assurance, the cottage was visited next day by
eleven gods and demigods, mostly Titans. Elenko found it trying, and
was really alarmed when by and by the Furies, having made over their
functions to the Devil, strolled up to take the air, and dropped in for
a chat, bringing Cerberus. But they behaved exceedingly well, and took
back a message from Elenko to Eurydice. Ere long she was on most
intimate terms with all the dethroned divinities, celestial, infernal,
and marine.

Beautiful and blessed beyond most things is youthful enthusiasm,
looking up to something it feels or deems above itself. Beautiful, too,
as autumn sunshine is maturity looking down with gentleness on the
ideal it has surpassed, and reverencing it still for old ideas and
associations. The thought of beholding a Deity would once have thrilled
Elenko with rapture, if this had not been checked by awe at her own
presumption. The idea that a Deity, other than some disgraced offender
like Prometheus, could be the object of her compassion, would never
have entered her mind. And now she pitied the whole Olympian cohort
most sincerely, not so much for having fallen as for having deserved to
fall. She could not conceal from herself how grievously they were one
and all behind the age. It was impossible to make Zeus comprehend how
an idea could be a match for a thunderbolt. Apollo spoke handsomely of
Homer, yet evidently esteemed the Iliad and Odyssey but lightly in
comparison with the blind bard’s hymn to himself. Ceres candidly
admitted that her mind was a complete blank on the subject of the
Eleusinian mysteries. Aphrodite’s dress was admirable for summer, but
in winter seemed obstinate conservatism; and why should Pallas make
herself a fright with her Gorgon helmet, now that it no longer
frightened anybody? Where Elenko would fain have adored she found
herself tolerating, excusing, condescending. How many Elenkos are even
now tenderly nursing ancient creeds, whose main virtue is the virtue of
their professors!

One autumn night all the principal gods were assembled under
Prometheus’s roof, doing justice to the figs and mulberries, and wine
cooled with Taygetan snow. The guests were more than usually
despondent. Prometheus was moody and abstracted, his breast seemed
labouring with thought. “So looked my Pythoness,” whispered Apollo to
his neighbour, “when about to deliver an oracle.”

And the oracle came—in lyric verse, not to infringe any patent of
Apollo’s—

When o’er the towers of Constantine
An Orient Moon begins to shine,
Waning nor waxing aught, and bright
In daytide as in deep of night:
Then, though the fane be brought
    To wreck, the God shall find,
Enthroned in human thought,
    A temple in the mind.


“And what becomes of us while this prodigious moonshine is concocting?”
demanded Zeus, who had become the most sceptical of any of the gods.

“Go to Elysium,” suggested Prometheus.

“There’s an idea!” cried Zeus and Pallas together.

“To Elysium! to Elysium!” exclaimed the other gods, and all rose
tumultuously, saving two.

“I go not,” said Eros, “for where Love is, there is Elysium. And yonder
rising moon tells me that my hour is come.” And he flitted forth.

“Neither go I,” said an old blind god, “for where Plutus is, Elysium is
not. Moreover, mankind would follow after me. But I too must away.
Strange that I should have abode so long under the roof of a pair of
perfect virtue.” And he tottered out.

But the other gods swept forth into the moonlight, and were seen no
more. And Prometheus picked up the forsaken sandals of Hermes, and
bound them on his own feet, and grasped Elenko, and they rose up by a
dizzy flight to empty heaven. All was silent in those immense courts,
vacant of everything save here and there some rusty thunderbolt or
mouldering crumb of ambrosia. Above, around, below, beyond sight,
beyond thought, stretched the still deeps of æther, blazing with
innumerable worlds. Eye could rove nowhither without beholding a star,
nor could star be beheld from which the Gods’ hall, with all its
vastness, would not have been utterly invisible. Elenko leaned over the
battlements, and watched the racing meteors. Prometheus stood by her,
and pointed out in the immeasurable distance the little speck of
shining dust from which they had flown.

“There? or here?” he asked.

“There!” said Elenko.




THE POTION OF LAO-TSZE


And there the body lay, age after age,
    Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,
    With gentle sleep about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
    Of death or life; while they were still arraying
In liveries ever new the rapid, blind,
And fleeting generations of mankind.


In the days of the Tang dynasty China was long happy under the sceptre
of a good Emperor, named Sin-Woo. He had overcome the enemies of the
land, confirmed the friendship of its allies, augmented the wealth of
the rich, and mitigated the wretchedness of the poor. But most
especially was he admired and beloved for his persecution of the
impious sect of Lao-tsze, which he had well-nigh exterminated.

It was but natural that such an Emperor should congratulate himself
upon his goodness and worth; yet, as no human bliss is perfect, sorrow
could not fail to enter his mind.

“It is grievous to reflect,” said he to his courtiers, “that if, as ye
all affirm, there hath not been any Emperor of equal merit with myself
before my time, neither will any such arise after me, my subjects must
inevitably be sufferers by my death.”

To which the courtiers unanimously responded, “O Emperor, live for
ever!”

“Happy thought!” exclaimed the Emperor; “but wherewithal shall it be
executed?”

The Prime Minister looked at the Chancellor, the Chancellor looked at
the Treasurer, the Treasurer looked at the Chamberlain, the Chamberlain
looked at the Principal Bonze, the Principal Bonze looked at the Second
Bonze, who, to his great surprise, looked at him in return.

“When the turn comes to me,” murmured the inferior functionary, “I
would say somewhat.”

“Speak!” commanded the Emperor.

“O Uncle of the stars,” said the Bonze, “there are those in your
Majesty’s dominions who possess the power of lengthening life, who
have, in fact, discovered the Elixir of Immortality.”

“Let them be immediately brought hither,” commanded the Emperor.

“Unhappily,” returned the Bonze, “these persons, without exception,
belong to the abominable sect of Lao-tsze, whose members your Majesty
long ago commanded to cease from existence, with which august order
they have for the most part complied. In my own diocese, where for some
years after your Majesty’s happy accession we were accustomed to impale
twenty thousand annually, it is now difficult to find twenty, with the
utmost diligence on the part of the executioners.”

“It has of late sometimes appeared to me,” said the Emperor, “that
there may be more good in that sect than I have been led to believe by
my counsellors.”

“I have always thought,” said the Prime Minister, “that they were
rather misguided than wilfully wicked.”

“They are a kind of harmless lunatics,” said the Chancellor; “they
should, I think, be made wards in Chancery.”

“Their money does not appear different from other men’s,” said the
Treasurer.

“I,” said the Chamberlain, “have known an old woman who had known
another old woman who belonged to this sect, and who assured her that
she had been very good when she was a little girl.”

“If,” said the Emperor, “it appears that his Grace the Principal Bonze
hath in any respect misled us, his property will necessarily be
confiscated to the Imperial Treasury, and the Second Bonze will succeed
to his office. It is needful, however, to ascertain before all things
whether this sect does really possess the Elixir of Immortality, for on
that the entire question of its deserts obviously depends. Our
Counsellor the Second Bonze having, next to myself, the greatest
interest in the matter, I desire him to make due inquiries and report
to us at the next council, when I shall be prepared to state what fine
will be imposed upon him, should he not have succeeded.”

That night all the members of the Lao-tsze sect inhabiting prisons
under the jurisdiction of the Principal Bonze were decapitated, and the
P.B. laid his own head upon his pillow with some approach to peace of
mind, trusting that the knowledge of the Elixir of Immortality had
perished with them.

The Second Bonze, having a different object to attain, proceeded in a
different manner. He sent for his captives, and discoursed to them
touching the evil arts of unprincipled courtiers, and the facility with
which they mislead even the best intentioned princes. For years had he,
the Second Bonze, pleaded the cause of toleration at court; and had at
length succeeded in enlightening his Majesty to such an extent that
there was every prospect of an edict of indulgence being shortly
promulgated, provided always that the Elixir of Life was previously
forthcoming.

The unfortunate heretics would have been only too thankful to prolong
the Emperor’s life indefinitely in consideration of securing peace for
their own, but they could only inform the Bonze of the general
tradition of their sect. This was that the knowledge of Lao-tsze’s
secret was confined to certain adepts, most of whom were plunged into
so deep a trance that any communication with them was impossible. For
the administration of the miraculous draught, it appeared, was attended
with this inconvenience, that it threw the partaker into a deep sleep,
lasting any time between ten years and eternity, according to the depth
of his potation. During its continuance the ordinary operations of
nature were suspended, and the patient awoke with precisely the same
bodily constitution, old or young, as he had possessed on falling into
his lethargy; and though still liable to wounds and accidents, he or
she continued to enjoy undiminished health and vigour for a period
equal to the duration of the trance, after which he sank back into the
ranks of mortality, unless he could repeat the potion. All the adepts
who had come to life under his present Majesty’s most clement reign had
immediately emigrated: the only persons, therefore, capable of giving
information were now buried in slumber, and of course would only speak
when they should awake. They were mostly concealed in the recesses of
caverns, those inhabited by wild beasts being usually preferred for the
sake of better security, as no tiger or bear would harm a follower of
Lao-tsze. The witnesses, therefore, advised the Bonze to ascertain the
residences of the most ferocious tigers in his diocese, and to wait
upon them personally, in the hope of thus discovering what he sought.

This suggestion was exceedingly unpalatable to the Bonze, who felt
almost equally unwilling to venture himself into a wild beast’s den or
to give any other person the chance of making the discovery. While he
hesitated in unspeakable perplexity he was informed that an old man,
about to expire at the age of an hundred and twenty years, desired to
have speech with him. Thinking so venerable a personage likely to have
at least a glimmering of the great secret, the Bonze hurried to his
bedside.

“Our master, Lao-tsze,” began the old man, “forbids us to leave this
world with anything undisclosed which may contribute to the advantage
of our fellow-creatures. Whether he deemed the knowledge of the cup of
immortality conducive to this end I cannot say, but the question doth
not arise, for I do not possess it. Hear my tale, nevertheless. Ninety
years ago, being a hunter, it was my hap to fall into the jaws of an
enormous tiger, who bore me off to his cavern. I there found myself in
the presence of two ladies, one youthful and of surpassing loveliness,
the other haggard and wrinkled. The younger lady expostulated with the
tiger, and he forthwith released me. My gratitude won the women’s
confidence, and I learned that they were disciples of Lao-tsze who had
repaired to the cavern to partake of the miraculous draught, which they
were just about to do. They were, it appeared, mother and daughter, and
I distinctly remember that the composition of the beverage was known to
the daughter only. This impressed me, for I should naturally have
expected the contrary. The tiger escorted me home. I forswore hunting,
and became, and have secretly continued, a disciple of Lao-tsze. I will
now indicate the position of the cavern to thee: whether the ladies
will still be found in it is beyond my power to say.”

And having pointed out the direction of the cavern, he expired.

The thing had to be done. The Bonze dressed himself up as much like a
votary of Lao-tsze as possible, provided himself with a body-guard of
_bona fide_ disciples, and, accompanied by a small army of huntsmen and
warriors as well, marched in quest of the den of the tiger. It was
discovered about nightfall, and having tethered a small boy near the
entrance, that his screams when being devoured might give notice of the
tiger’s issue from or return to his habitation, the Bonze and his
myrmidons took up a flank position and awaited the dawn. The distant
howls of roaming beasts of prey entirely deprived the holy man of his
rest, but nothing worse befell him, and when in the morning the small
boy, instead of providing the tiger with a breakfast, was heard crying
for his own, the besiegers mustered up courage to enter the cavern. The
glare of their torches revealed no tiger: but, to the Bonze’s
inexpressible delight, two females lay on the floor of the cave,
corresponding in all respects to the description of the old man. Their
costume was that of the preceding century. One was wrinkled and hoary;
the inexpressible loveliness of the other, who might have seen
seventeen or eighteen summers, extorted a universal cry of admiration,
followed by a hush of enraptured silence. Warm, flexible, fresh in
colour, breathing naturally as in slumber, the figures lay, the younger
woman’s arm underneath the elder woman’s neck, and her chin nestling on
the other’s shoulder. The countenance of each seemed to indicate happy
dreams.

“Can this indeed be but a trance?” simultaneously questioned several of
the Bonze’s followers.

“_Fiat experimentum in corpore vili!_” exclaimed the Bonze; and he
thrust his long hunting spear into the elder woman’s bosom. Blood
poured forth freely, but there was no change in the expression of the
countenance. No struggle announced dissolution; not until the body grew
chill and the limbs stiff could they be sure the old woman was indeed
dead.

“Carry the young woman like porcelain,” ordered the priest, and like
the most fragile porcelain the exquisite young beauty was borne from
the cavern smiling in her trance and utterly unconscious, while the
corpse of her aged companion was abandoned to the hyænas. So often did
the bearers pause to look on her beauty that it was found necessary to
drape the countenance entirely, until reaching the closed sedan in
which, vigilantly watched by the Bonze, she was transported to the
Imperial palace.

And so she was brought to the Emperor, and he worshipped her. She was
laid on a couch of cloth of gold in the Imperial apartments. Wonderful
was the contrast between her youthful beauty, so still in its repose,
and the old haggard Emperor, fevered with the lust of beauty and love
of life.

“O Majesty,” said his wisest counsellor, “is there any sect in thy
dominions that possesses the secret of perpetual youth?”

And the Emperor made proclamation, but no such sect could be found. And
he mourned exceedingly, and caused strong perfumes to be burned around
the sleeper, and conches to be blown and gongs beaten in her ears,
hoping that she would awake ere he was dead or wholly decrepit. But she
stirred not. And he shut himself up with her and passed his time
praying to Fo for her awakening.

But one day the door of the chamber was beaten down, and his old wife
came in passionately upbraiding him.

“Sin-Woo,” she cried, “thou hast not the heart of a man! Thou wouldest
be deathless, leaving me to die! I shall be laid in the grave, and thou
wilt reign with another! Wherefore have I been true to thee, if not
that our ashes might mingle at the last? Thou hoary sensualist!”

“Su-Ti,” said the Emperor, with feeling, “thou dost grievously misjudge
me. I am no heartless sensualist, no butterfly sipper at the lips of
beauty. Is not my soul entirely possessed by this divine creature, whom
I love with an affection infinitely exceeding that which I have
entertained for thee at any period? And how knowest thou,” added he,
striving to soothe her, “that I will not give thee to drink of the
miraculous potion?”

“And keep my grey hairs and wrinkles through all time! Nay, Sin-Woo, I
am no fool like thee, and were I so, I am not in love with any youth.
And know I not that even if I would accept the boon, thou would’st
never give it?”

And she rushed away in fury and hanged herself by her Imperial girdle.
Whereupon all the other wives and concubines of the Emperor did
likewise, as custom and reason prescribe. All the palace was filled
with lamentation and funerals. But the Emperor lamented not, nor turned
his gaze from the sleeper, nor did the sleeper awaken.

And his son came to him angry with exceeding wrath.

“Thou hast murdered my mother. Thou would’st rob me of the crown that
is rightfully mine. I, born to be an Emperor, shall die a subject! Nay,
but I will save thee from thyself. I will pierce thy leman with the
sword, or burn her with fire.”

And the Emperor, fearing he would do as he threatened, commanded him to
be slain, as also his brothers and sisters. And he paid no heed to the
affairs of State, but gave all into the hand of the Second, now the
Principal Bonze. And the laws ceased to be observed, and rebellions
broke out in the provinces, and enemies invaded the country, and there
was famine in the land.

And now the Emperor was well-nigh ten years nearer to the gates of
death than when the Sleeping Beauty had been brought to his court. The
love of beauty was nearly quenched in him, but the longing for life
grew more intense. He became angry with the sleeper, that she awakened
not, and with his little remaining strength smote her fiercely on the
cheeks, but she gave no sign of reviving. Remembering that if he gained
the potion of immortality he would himself be plunged into a trance, he
made all preparations for the interregnum. He decreed that he was to be
seated erect on his throne, with all his imperial insignia, and it was
to be death to any one who should presume to remove any of them. His
slumbering figure was to preside at all councils, and to be consulted
in every act of state, and all ministers and officers were to do homage
daily. The revived Sleeping Beauty was to partake of the draught anew,
at the same time and in the same manner as himself, that she might
awake with him, and that he might find her charms unimpaired. All the
ministers swore solemnly to observe these regulations; firmly purposing
to burn the sleeper, if sleep he ever did, at the very first
opportunity, and scatter his ashes to the winds. Then they would fight
for the Empire among themselves; each, meanwhile, was mainly occupied
in striving to gain the rebels over to his interest, insomuch that the
people grew more miserable day by day.

And as the aged Emperor waxed more and more feeble, he began to see
visions. Legions of little black imps surrounded him crying, “We are
thy sins, and would be punished—would’st thou by living for ever
deprive us of our due?” And fair female forms came veiled with drooping
heads, and murmured, “We are thy virtues, and would be
rewarded—would’st thou cheat us?” And other figures came, dark but
lovely, and whispered, “We are thy dead friends who have long waited
for thee—would’st thou take to thyself new friends, and forget us?” And
others said, “We are thy memories—wilt thou live on till we are all
withered in thy heart?” And others said, “We are thy strength and thy
beauty, thy memory and thy wit—canst thou live, knowing thou wilt never
see us more?” And at last came two warders, officers of the King of
Death, and one of them was laughing. And the other asked why he
laughed, and he replied:

“I laugh at the Emperor, who thinks to escape our master, not knowing
that the moment of his decease was engraved with a pen of iron upon a
rock of adamant a million million years or ever this world was.”

“And when comes it?” asked the other.

“In ten minutes,” said the first.

When the Emperor heard this he was wild with terror, and tottered to
the couch on which the Sleeping Beauty lay. “Oh, awake!” he cried,
“awake and save me ere it is too late!” And, oh wonder! the sleeper
stirred, and opened her eyes.

If she had been so beautiful while sleeping, what was she when awake!
But the love of life had overcome the love of beauty in the Emperor’s
bosom, and he saw not the eyes like stars, and the bloom as of peaches
and lilies, or the aspect grand and smiling as daybreak. He could only
cry, “Give me the potion, lest I die, give me the potion!”

“That cannot I,” she said. “The secret was known only to my daughter.”

“Who is thy daughter?”

“The hoary woman, she who slept with me in the cavern.”

“That aged crone thy daughter, daughter to thee so youthful and so
fresh?

“Even so,” she said, “I bore her at sixteen, and slumbered for seventy
years. When I awoke she was withered and decrepit: I youthful as when I
closed my eyes. But she had learned the secret, which I never knew.”

“The Bonze shall be crucified!” yelled the Emperor.

“It is too late,” said she; “he is torn in pieces already.”

“By whom?”

“By the multitude that are now coming to do the like unto thee.”

And as she spoke the doors were burst open, and in rushed the people,
headed by the most pious Bonze in the Empire (after the late Principal
Bonze), who plunged a sword into the Emperor’s breast, exclaiming:

“He who despises this life in comparison with another deserves to lose
the life which he has.” Words, saith the historian Li, which have been
thought worthy to be inscribed in letters of gold in the Hall of
Confucius.

And the people were crying, “Kill the sorceress!” But she looked upon
them, and they cried, “Be our Empress!”

“Remember,” said she, “that ye will have to bear with me for a hundred
years!”

“Would,” said they, “that it might be a hundred thousand!”

So she took the sceptre, and reigned gloriously. Among her good acts is
enumerated her toleration of the followers of Lao-tsze. Since, however,
they have ceased to be persecuted by man, it is observed that wild
beasts have lost their ancient respect for them, and devour them with
no less appetite than the members of other sects and denominations.




ABDALLAH THE ADITE


An aged hermit named Sergius dwelt in the wilds of Arabia, addicting
himself to the pursuit of religion and alchemy. Of his creed it could
only be said that it was so much better than that of his neighbours as
to cause him to be commonly esteemed a Yezidi, or devil worshipper. But
the better informed deemed him a Nestorian monk, who had retired into
the wilderness on account of differences with his brethren, who sought
to poison him.

The imputation of Yezidism against Sergius was the cause that a certain
inquisitive young man resorted to him, trusting to obtain light
concerning the nature of demons. But he found that Sergius could give
him no information on that subject, but, on the contrary, discoursed so
wisely and beautifully on holy things, that his pupil’s intellect was
enlightened, and his enthusiasm was inflamed, and he longed to go forth
and instruct the ignorant people around him; the Saracens, and the
Sabaeans, and the Zoroastrians, and the Carmathians, and the
Baphometites, and the Paulicians, who are a remnant of the ancient
Manichees.

“Nay, good youth,” said Sergius, “I have renounced the sending forth of
missionaries, having made ample trial with my spiritual son, the
Prophet Abdallah.”

“What!” exclaimed the youth, “was Abdallah the Adite thy disciple?”

“Even so,” said Sergius. “Hearken to his history.

“Never have I instructed so promising a pupil as Abdallah, nor when he
was first my disciple do I deem that he was other than the most
simple-minded and well-intentioned of youths. I always called him son,
a title I have never bestowed on another. Like thee, he had compassion
on the darkness around him, and craved my leave to go forth and dispel
it.

“‘My son,’ said I, ‘I will not restrain thee: thou art no longer a
child. Thou hast heard me discourse on the subject of persecution, and
knowest that poison was administered to me personally on account of my
inability to perceive the supernatural light emanating from the navel
of Brother Gregory. Thou art aware that thou wilt be beaten with rods
and pricked with goads, chained and starved in a dungeon, very probably
blinded, very possibly burned with fire?’

“‘All these things I am prepared to undergo,’ said Abdallah; and he
embraced me and bid me farewell.

“After certain moons he returned covered with weals and scars, and his
bones protruded through his skin.

“‘Whence are these weals and scars?’ asked I, ‘and what signifies this
protrusion of thy bones?’

“‘The weals and the scars,’ answered he, ‘proceed from the floggings
inflicted upon me by command of the Caliph; and my bones protrude by
reason of the omission of his officers to furnish me with either food
or drink in the dungeon wherein I was imprisoned by his orders.’

“‘O my son,’ exclaimed I, ‘in the eyes of faith and right reason these
scars are lovelier than the moles of beauty, and the sight of thy bones
is like the beholding of hidden treasure!’

“And Abdallah strove to look as though he believed me; nor did he
entirely fail therein. And I took him, and fed him, and healed him, and
sent him forth a second time into the world.

“And after a space he returned, covered as before with wounds and
bruises, but comely and somewhat fat.

“‘Whence this sleekness of body, my son?’ I asked.

“‘Through the charity of the Caliph’s wives,’ he answered, ‘who have
fed me secretly, I having assured them that in remembrance of this good
work each of them in the world to come would have seven husbands.’

“‘How knewest thou this, my son?’ I inquired.

“‘In truth, father,’ he said, ‘I did not know it; but I thought it
probable.’

“‘O my son! my son!’ exclaimed I, ‘thou art on a dangerous road. To win
over weak ignorant people by promises of what they shall receive in a
future life, whereof thou knowest no more than they do! Knowest thou
not that the inestimable blessings of religion are of an inward and
spiritual nature? Did I ever promise any disciple any recompense for
his enlightenment and good deeds, save flogging, starvation, and
burning?’

“‘Never, father,” said he, ‘and therefore thou hast had no follower of
thy law save one, and he hath broken it.’

“He left me after a shorter stay than before, and again went forth to
preach. After a long time he returned in good condition of body, yet
manifestly having something upon his mind.

“‘Father,’ he said, ‘thy son hath preached with faithfulness and
acceptance, and turned thousands unto righteousness. But a sorcerer
hath arisen, saying, “Why follow ye Abdallah, seeing that he breathes
not fire out of his mouth and nostrils?” And the people give ear unto
the words that come from this man’s lips, when they behold the flame
that cometh from his nose. And unless thou teachest me to do as he doth
I shall assuredly perish.’

“And I told Abdallah that it was better to perish for the truth’s sake
than to prolong life by lies and deceit. But he wept and lamented
exceeding sore, and in the end he prevailed with me; and I taught him
to breathe flame and smoke out of a hollow nut filled with combustible
powder. And I took a certain substance called soap, but little known in
this country, and anointed his feet therewith. And when he and the
sorcerer met, both breathing flame, the people knew not which to
follow; but when Abdallah walked over nine hot ploughshares, and the
sorcerer could not touch one of them, they beat his brains out, and
became Abdallah’s disciples.

“A long time afterward Abdallah came to me again, this time with a
joyful, and yet with somewhat of a troubled look, carrying a camel-hair
blanket, which he undid, and lo! it was full of bones.

“‘O father,’ he said, ‘I bring thee happy tidings. We have found the
bones of the camel of the prophet Ad, upon which his revelation was
engraved by him.’

“‘If this be so,’ said I, ‘thou art acquainted with the precepts of the
prophet, and hast no need of mine.’

“‘Nay, but father,’ said he, ‘although the revelation was without
question originally engraved by the prophet on these very bones, it
hath come to pass by the injury of time that not one letter of his
writing can be distinguished. I have therefore come to ask thee to
write it over again.’

“‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘I forge a revelation in the name of the prophet
Ad! Get thee behind me!’

“‘Thou knowest, father,’ he rejoined, ‘that if we had the original
words of the prophet Ad here they would profit us nought, as by reason
of their antiquity none would understand them. Seeing therefore that I
myself cannot write, it is meet that thou shouldst set down in his name
those things which he would have desired to deliver had he been now
among us; but if thou wilt not, I shall ask Brother Gregory.’

“And when I heard him speak of having recourse to that cheat and
impostor my spirit was grieved within me, and I wrote the Book of Ad
myself. And I was heedful to put in none but wholesome and profitable
precepts, and more especially did I forbid polygamy, having perceived a
certain inclination thereunto in my disciple.

“After many days he came again, and this time he was in violent terror
and agitation, and hair was wanting to the lower part of his
countenance.

“‘O Abdallah,’ I inquired, ‘where is thy beard?’

“‘In the hands of my ninth wife,’ said he.

“‘Apostate!’ I exclaimed, ‘hast thou dared to espouse more wives than
one? Rememberest thou not what is written in the Book of the prophet
Ad?’

“‘O father,’ he said, ‘the revelation of Ad being, as thou knowest, so
exceedingly ancient, doth of necessity require a commentary. This hath
been supplied by one of my disciples, a young Syrian and natural son of
Gregory, as I opine. This young man can not only write, but write to my
dictation, an accomplishment in which thou hast been found lacking, O
Sergius. In this gloss it is set forth how, since woman hath the ninth
part of the soul of man, the prophet, in enjoining us Adites (as we now
call ourselves) to take but one wife, doth instruct us to take nine; to
espouse a tenth would, I grant, be damnable. It ensues, therefore, that
having become enamoured of a most charming young virgin, I am
constrained to repudiate one of the wives whom I have taken already. To
this, each thinking that it may be her turn speedily, if not now, they
will in no wise consent, and have maltreated me as thou seest, and the
dens of wild beasts are at this moment abodes of peace, compared to my
seraglio. What is even worse, they threaten to disclose to the people
the fact, of which they have unhappily become aware, that the
revelation of the blessed Ad is not written upon the bones of a camel
at all, but of a cow, and will therefore be accounted spurious,
inasmuch as the prophet is not recorded to have ridden upon this
quadruped. And seeing that thou didst inscribe the characters, O
father, I cannot but fear that the fury of the people will extend unto
thee, and that thou wilt be even in danger of thy life from them.’

“This argument of Abdallah’s had much weight with me, and I the more
readily consented to his request as he did not on this occasion require
any imposture at my hands, but merely the restitution of his domestic
peace. And I went with him to his wives, and discoursed with them, and
they agreed to abide by my sentence. And, willing to please him, I
directed that he should marry the beautiful virgin, and put away one of
his wives who was old and ugly, and endowed with the dispositions of
Sheitan.

“‘O father,’ said Abdallah, ‘thou hast brought me from death unto life!
And thou, Zarah,’ he continued, ‘wilt lose nought, but gain
exceedingly, in becoming the spouse of the wise and virtuous Sergius.’

“‘I marry Zarah!’ I exclaimed, ‘I! a monk!’

“‘Surely,’ said he, ‘thou would’st not take away her husband without
giving her another in his stead?’

“‘If he does I will throttle him,’ cried Zarah.

“And I wept sore, and made great intercession. And it was agreed that
there should be a delay of forty days, in which space if any one else
would marry Zarah, I should be free of her. And I promised all my
substance to any one who would do this, and no one was found. And she
was offered to thirteen criminals doomed to suffer death, and they all
chose death. And at the last I was constrained to marry her. And truly
I have now the comfort of thinking that if I have offended by
encouraging Abdallah’s deceits, or otherwise, the debt is paid, and
Eternal Justice hath now nothing against me; for verily I was an inmate
of Gehenna until it came to pass that she was herself translated
thither. And respecting the manner of her translation, inquire not thou
too curiously. It was doubtless a token of the displeasure of Heaven at
her enormities that the water of the well of Kefayat, which had been
known as the Diamond of the Desert, became about this time undrinkable,
and pernicious to man and beast.

“As I sat in my dwelling administering to the estate of my deceased
wife, which consisted principally of wines and strong liquors, Abdallah
again appeared before me.

“‘Hast thou come,’ said I, ‘to solicit me to abet thee in any new
imposture? Know, once for all, that I will not.’

“‘On the contrary,’ said he, ‘I am come to set thee at ease by proving
to thee that I shall not again require thy assistance. Follow me.’

“And I followed him to a great plain, where was a host of armed
horsemen and footmen, more than I could number. And they bore banners
on which the name of Abdallah was embroidered in letters of gold. And
in the midst was an ark of gold, with the bones of Ad’s camel, or cow.
And by this was a great pile of the heads of men, and warriors were
continually casting more and more upon the heap.

“‘How many?’ asked Abdallah.

“‘Twelve thousand, O Apostle of God,’ answered they, ‘but there are
more to come.’

“‘Thou monster!’ said I to Abdallah.

“‘Nay, father,’ said he, ‘there will not be more than sixteen thousand
in all, and these men were unbelievers. Moreover we have spared such of
their women as were young and handsome, and have taken them for our
concubines, as is ordained in the eleventh supplement to the Book of
Ad, just promulgated by my authority. But come, I have other things to
manifest unto thee.’

“And he led me where a stake was driven into the earth, and a man was
chained unto it, and fuel was heaped all around him, and many stood by
with lighted torches in their hands.

“‘O Abdallah,’ I exclaimed, ‘wherefore this atrocity?’

“‘This man,’ he replied, ‘is a blasphemer, who hath said that the Book
of Ad is written on the bones of a cow.’

“‘But it is written on the bones of a cow! ‘I cried.

“‘Even so,’ said he, ‘and therefore is his heresy the more damnable,
and his punishment the more exemplary. Had it been indeed written on
the bones of a camel, he might have affirmed what pleased him.’

“And I shook off the dust from my feet, and hastened to my dwelling.
The rest of Abdallah’s acts thou knowest, and how he fell warring with
the Carmathians. And now I ask thee, art thou yet minded to go forth as
a missionary of the truth?”

“O Sergius,” said the young man, “I perceive that the temptations are
greater, and the difficulties far surpassing what I had thought. Yet
will I go, and I trust by Heaven’s grace not to fail utterly.”

“Then go,” said Sergius, “and Heaven’s blessing go with thee! Come back
in ten years, should I be living, and if thou canst declare that thou
hast forged no scriptures, and worked no miracles, and persecuted no
unbelievers, and flattered no potentate, and bribed no one with the
promise of aught in heaven or earth, I will give thee the philosopher’s
stone.”




ANANDA THE MIRACLE WORKER


The holy Buddha, Sakhya Muni, on dispatching his apostles to proclaim
his religion throughout the peninsula of India, failed not to provide
them with salutary precepts for their guidance. He exhorted them to
meekness, to compassion, to abstemiousness, to zeal in the promulgation
of his doctrine, and added an injunction never before or since
prescribed by the founder of any religion—namely, on no account to
perform any miracle.

It is further related, that whereas the apostles experienced
considerable difficulty in complying with the other instructions of
their master, and sometimes actually failed therein, the prohibition to
work miracles was never once transgressed by any of them, save only the
pious Ananda, the history of whose first year’s apostolate is recorded
as follows.

Ananda repaired to the kingdom of Magadha, and instructed the
inhabitants diligently in the law of Buddha. His doctrine being
acceptable, and his speech persuasive, the people hearkened to him
willingly, and began to forsake the Brahmins whom they had previously
revered as spiritual guides. Perceiving this, Ananda became elated in
spirit, and one day he exclaimed:

“How blessed is the apostle who propagates truth by the efficacy of
reason and virtuous example, combined with eloquence, rather than error
by imposture and devil-mongering, like those miserable Brahmins!”

As he uttered this vainglorious speech, the mountain of his merits was
diminished by sixteen yojanas, and virtue and efficacy departed from
him, insomuch that when he next addressed the multitude they first
mocked, then hooted, and finally pelted him.

When matters had reached this pass, Ananda lifted his eyes and
discerned a number of Brahmins of the lower sort, busy about a boy who
lay in a fit upon the ground. They had long been applying exorcisms and
other approved methods with scant success, when the most sagacious
among them suggested:

“Let us render the body of this patient an uncomfortable residence for
the demon; peradventure he will then cease to abide therein.”

They were accordingly engaged in branding the sufferer with hot irons,
filling his nostrils with smoke, and otherwise to the best of their
ability disquieting the intrusive devil. Ananda’s first thought was,
“The lad is in a fit;” the second, “It were a pious deed to deliver him
from his tormentors;” the third, “By good management this may extricate
me from my present uncomfortable predicament, and redound to the glory
of the most holy Buddha.”

Yielding to this temptation, he strode forward, chased away the
Brahmins with an air of authority, and, uplifting his countenance to
heaven, recited the appellations of seven devils. No effect ensuing, he
repeated seven more, and so continued until, the fit having passed off
in the course of nature, the patient’s paroxysms ceased, he opened his
eyes, and Ananda restored him to his relatives. But the people cried
loudly, “A miracle! a miracle!” and when Ananda resumed his
instructions, they gave heed to him, and numbers embraced the religion
of Buddha. Whereupon Ananda exulted, and applauded himself for his
dexterity and presence of mind, and said to himself:

“Surely the end sanctifies the means,”

As he propounded this heresy, the eminence of his merits was reduced to
the dimensions of a mole-hill, and he ceased to be of account in the
eyes of any of the saints, save only of Buddha, whose compassion is
inexhaustible.

The fame of his achievement, nevertheless, was bruited about the whole
country, and soon reached the ears of the king, who sent for him, and
inquired if he had actually expelled the demon.

Ananda replied in the affirmative.

“I am indeed rejoiced,” returned the king, “as thou now wilt without
doubt proceed to heal _my_ son, who has lain in a trance for
twenty-nine days.”

“Alas! dread sovereign,” modestly returned Ananda, “how should the
merits which barely suffice to effect the cure of a miserable Pariah
avail to restore the offspring of an Elephant among Kings?”

“By what process are these merits acquired?” demanded the monarch.

“By the exercise of penance,” responded Ananda, “in virtue of which the
austere devotee quells the winds, allays the waters, expostulates
convincingly with tigers, carries the moon in his sleeve, and otherwise
performs all acts and deeds appropriate to the character of a
peripatetic thaumaturgist.”

“This being so,” answered the king, “thy inability to heal my son
manifestly arises from defect of merit, and defect of merit from defect
of penance. I will therefore consign thee to the charge of my Brahmins,
that they may aid thee to fill up the measure of that which is
lacking.”

Ananda vainly strove to explain that the austerities to which he had
referred were entirely of a spiritual and contemplative character. The
Brahmins, enchanted to get a heretic into their clutches, immediately
seized upon him, and conveyed him to one of their temples. They
stripped him, and perceived with astonishment that not one single weal
or scar was visible anywhere on his person. “Horror!” they exclaimed;
“here is a man who expects to go to heaven in a whole skin!” To obviate
this breach of etiquette, they laid him upon his face, and flagellated
him until the obnoxious soundness of cuticle was entirely removed. They
then departed, promising to return next day and operate in a
corresponding manner upon the anterior part of his person, after which,
they jeeringly assured him, his merits would be in no respect less than
those of the saintly Bhagiratha, or of the regal Viswamitra himself.

Ananda lay half dead upon the floor of the temple, when the sanctuary
was illuminated by the apparition of a resplendent Glendoveer, who thus
addressed him:

“Well, backsliding disciple, art thou yet convinced of thy folly?”

Ananda relished neither the imputation on his orthodoxy nor that on his
wisdom. He replied, notwithstanding, with all meekness:

“Heaven forbid that I should repine at any variety of martyrdom that
tends to the propagation of my master’s faith.”

“Wilt thou then first be healed, and moreover become the instrument of
converting the entire realm of Magadha?”

“How shall this be accomplished?” demanded Ananda.

“By perseverance in the path of deceit and disobedience,” returned the
Glendoveer.

Ananda winced, but maintained silence in the expectation of more
explicit directions.

“Know,” pursued the spirit, “that the king’s son will revive from his
trance at the expiration of the thirtieth day, which takes place at
noon to-morrow. Thou hast but to proceed at the fitting period to the
couch whereon he is deposited, and, placing thy hand upon his heart, to
command him to rise forthwith. His recovery will be ascribed to thy
supernatural powers, and the establishment of Buddha’s religion will
result. Before this it will be needful that I should perform an actual
cure upon thy back, which is within the compass of my capacity. I only
request thee to take notice, that thou wilt on this occasion be
transgressing the precepts of thy master with thine eyes open. It is
also meet to apprise thee that thy temporary extrication from thy
present difficulties will only involve thee in others still more
formidable.”

“An incorporeal Glendoveer is no judge of the feelings of a flayed
apostle,” thought Ananda. “Heal me,” he replied, “if thou canst, and
reserve thy admonitions for a more convenient opportunity.”

“So be it,” returned the Glendoveer; and as he extended his hand over
Ananda, the latter’s back was clothed anew with skin, and his previous
smart simultaneously allayed. The Glendoveer vanished at the same
moment, saying, “When thou hast need of me, pronounce but the
incantation, _Gnooh Imdap Inam Mua_, [*] and I will immediately be by
thy side.”

*) The mystic formula of the Buddhists, read backwards.


The anger and amazement of the Brahmins may be conceived when, on
returning equipped with fresh implements of flagellation, they
discovered the salubrious condition of their victim. Their scourges
would probably have undergone conversion into halters, had they not
been accompanied by a royal officer, who took the really triumphant
martyr under his protection, and carried him off to the palace. He was
speedily conducted to the young prince’s couch, whither a vast crowd
attended him. The hour of noon not having yet arrived, Ananda
discreetly protracted the time by a seasonable discourse on the
impossibility of miracles, those only excepted which should be wrought
by the professors of the faith of Buddha. He then descended from his
pulpit, and precisely as the sun attained the zenith laid his hand upon
the bosom of the young prince, who instantly revived, and completed a
sentence touching the game of dice which had been interrupted by his
catalepsy.

The people shouted, the courtiers went into ecstasies, the countenances
of the Brahmins assumed an exceedingly sheepish expression. Even the
king seemed impressed, and craved to be more particularly instructed in
the law of Buddha. In complying with this request, Ananda, who had made
marvellous progress in worldly wisdom during the last twenty-four
hours, deemed it needless to dilate on the cardinal doctrines of his
master, the misery of existence, the need of redemption, the path to
felicity, the prohibition to shed blood. He simply stated that the
priests of Buddha were bound to perpetual poverty, and that under the
new dispensation all ecclesiastical property would accrue to the
temporal authorities.

“By the holy cow!” exclaimed the monarch, “this is something like a
religion!”

The words were scarcely out of the royal lips ere the courtiers
professed themselves converts. The multitude followed their example.
The Brahminical church was promptly disestablished and disendowed, and
more injustice was committed in the name of the new and purified
religion in one day than the old corrupt one had occasioned in a
hundred years.

Ananda had the satisfaction of feeling able to forgive his adversaries,
and of valuing himself accordingly; and to complete his felicity, he
was received in the palace, and entrusted with the education of the
king’s son, which he strove to conduct agreeably to the precepts of
Buddha. This was a task of some delicacy, as it involved interference
with the princely youth’s favourite amusement, which had previously
consisted in torturing small reptiles.

After a short interval Ananda was again summoned to the monarch’s
presence. He found his majesty in the company of two most ferocious
ruffians, one of whom bore a huge axe, and the other an enormous pair
of pincers.

“My chief executioner and my chief tormentor,” said the king.

Ananda expressed his gratification at becoming acquainted with such
exalted functionaries.

“Thou must know, most holy man,” resumed the king, “that need has again
arisen for the exercise of fortitude and self-denial on thy part. A
powerful enemy has invaded my dominions, and has impiously presumed to
discomfit my troops. Well might I feel dismayed, were it not for the
consolations of religion; but my trust is in thee, O spiritual father!
It is urgent that thou shouldst accumulate the largest amount of merit
with the least delay possible. I am unable to invoke the ministrations
of thy old friends the Brahmins to this end, they being, as thou
knowest, in disgrace, but I have summoned these trusty and experienced
counsellors in their room. I find them not wholly in accord. My chief
tormentor, being a man of mild temper and humane disposition, considers
that it might at first suffice to employ gentle measures, such, for
example, as suspending thee head downwards in the smoke of a wood fire,
and filling thy nostrils with red pepper. My chief executioner, taking,
peradventure, a too professional view of the subject, deems it best to
resort at once to crucifixion or impalement. I would gladly know thy
thoughts on the matter.”

Ananda expressed, as well as his terror would suffer him, his entire
disapproval of both the courses recommended by the royal advisers.

“Well,” said the king, with an air of resignation, “if we cannot agree
upon either, it follows that we must try both. We will meet for that
purpose to-morrow morning at the second hour. Go in peace!”

Ananda went, but not in peace. His alarm would have well-nigh deprived
him of his faculties if he had not remembered the promise made him by
his former deliverer. On reaching a secluded spot he pronounced the
mystic formula, and immediately became aware of the presence, not of a
radiant Glendoveer, but of a holy man, whose head was strewn with
ashes, and his body anointed with cow-dung.

“Thy occasion,” said the Fakir, “brooks no delay. Thou must immediately
accompany me, and assume the garb of a Jogi.”

Ananda rebelled excessively in his heart, for he had imbibed from the
mild and sage Buddha a befitting contempt for these grotesque and
cadaverous fanatics. The emergency, however, left him no resource, and
he followed his guide to a charnel house, which the latter had selected
as his domicile. There, with many lamentations over the smoothness of
his hair and the brevity of his nails, the Jogi besprinkled and
besmeared Ananda agreeably to his own pattern, and scored him with
chalk and ochre until the peaceful apostle of the gentlest of creeds
resembled a Bengal tiger. He then hung a chaplet of infants’ skulls
about his neck, placed the skull of a malefactor in one of his hands
and the thigh-bone of a necromancer in the other, and at nightfall
conducted him into the adjacent cemetery, where, seating him on the
ashes of a recent funeral pile, he bade him drum upon the skull with
the thigh-bone, and repeat after himself the incantations which he
began to scream out towards the western part of the firmament. These
charms were apparently possessed of singular efficacy, for scarcely
were they commenced ere a hideous tempest arose, rain descended in
torrents, phosphoric flashes darted across the sky, wolves and hyænas
thronged howling from their dens, and gigantic goblins, arising from
the earth, extended their fleshless arms towards Ananda, and strove to
drag him from his seat. Urged by frantic terror, and the example and
exhortations of his companion, he battered, banged, and vociferated,
until on the very verge of exhaustion; when, as if by enchantment, the
tempest ceased, the spectres disappeared, and joyous shouts and a burst
of music announced the occurrence of something auspicious in the
adjoining city.

“The hostile king is dead,” said the Jogi; “and his army has dispersed.
This will be attributed to thy incantations. They are coming in quest
of thee even now. Farewell until thou again hast need of me.”

The Jogi disappeared, the tramp of a procession became audible, and
soon torches glared feebly through the damp, cheerless dawn. The
monarch descended from his state elephant, and, prostrating himself
before Ananda, exclaimed:

“Inestimable man! why didst thou not disclose that thou wert a Jogi?
Never more shall I feel the least apprehension of any of my enemies, so
long as thou continuest an inmate of this cemetery.”

A family of jackals were unceremoniously dislodged from a disused
sepulchre, which was allotted to Ananda for his future residence. The
king permitted no alteration in his costume, and took care that the
food doled out to him should have no tendency to impair his sanctity,
which speedily gave promise of attaining a very high pitch. His hair
had already become as matted and his nails as long as the Jogi could
have desired, when he received a visit from another royal messenger.
The Rajah, so ran the regal missive, had been suddenly and mysteriously
attacked by a dangerous malady, but confidently anticipated relief from
Ananda’s merits and incantations.

Ananda resumed his thigh-bone and his skull, and ruefully began to
thump the latter with the former, in dismal expectation of the things
that were to come. But the spell seemed to have lost its potency.
Nothing more unearthly than a bat presented itself, and Ananda was
beginning to think that he might as well desist when his reflections
were diverted by the apparition of a tall and grave personage, wearing
a sad-coloured robe, and carrying a long wand, who stood by his side as
suddenly as though just risen from the earth.

“The caldron is ready,” said the stranger.

“What caldron?” demanded Ananda.

“That wherein thou art about to be immersed.”

“I immersed in a caldron! wherefore?”

“Thy spells,” returned his interlocutor, “having hitherto failed to
afford his majesty the slightest relief, and his experience of their
efficacy on a former occasion forbidding him to suppose that they can
be inoperative, he is naturally led to ascribe to their pernicious
influence that aggravation of pain of which he has for some time past
unfortunately been sensible. I have confirmed him in this conjecture,
esteeming it for the interest of science that his anger should fall
upon an impudent impostor like thee rather than on a discreet and
learned physician like myself. He has consequently directed the
principal caldron to be kept boiling all night, intending to immerse
thee therein at daybreak, unless he should in the meantime derive some
benefit from thy conjurations.”

“Heavens!” exclaimed Ananda, “whither shall I fly?”

“Nowhere beyond this cemetery,” returned the physician, “inasmuch as it
is entirely surrounded by the royal forces.”

“Wherein, then,” demanded the agonized apostle, “doth the path of
safety lie?”

“In this phial,” answered the physician. “It contains a subtle poison.
Demand to be led before the king. Affirm that thou hast received a
sovereign medicine from the hands of benignant spirits. He will drink
it and perish, and thou wilt be richly rewarded by his successor.”

“Ayaunt, tempter!” cried Ananda, hurling the phial indignantly away. “I
defy thee! and will have recourse to my old deliverer—_Gnooh Imdap Inam
Mua!”_

But the charm appeared to fail of its effect. No figure was visible to
his gaze, save that of the physician, who seemed to regard him with an
expression of pity as he gathered up his robes and melted rather than
glided into the encompassing darkness.

Ananda remained, contending with himself. Countless times was he on the
point of calling after the physician and imploring him to return with a
potion of like properties to the one rejected, but something seemed
always to rise in his throat and impede his utterance, until, worn out
by agitation, he fell asleep and dreamed this dream.

He thought he stood at the vast and gloomy entrance of Patala. [*] The
lugubrious spot wore a holiday appearance; everything seemed to denote
a diabolical gala. Swarms of demons of all shapes and sizes beset the
portal, contemplating what appeared to be preparations for an
illumination. Strings of coloured lamps were in course of disposition
in wreaths and festoons by legions of frolicsome imps, chattering,
laughing, and swinging by their tails like so many monkeys. The
operation was directed from below by superior fiends of great apparent
gravity and respectability. These bore wands of office, tipped with
yellow flames, wherewith they singed the tails of the imps when such
discipline appeared to them to be requisite. Ananda could not refrain
from asking the reason of these festive preparations.

*) The Hindoo Pandemonium.


“They are in honour,” responded the demon interrogated, “of the pious
Ananda, one of the apostles of the Lord Buddha, whose advent is hourly
expected among us with much eagerness and satisfaction.”

The horrified Ananda with much difficulty mustered resolution to
inquire on what account the apostle in question was necessitated to
take up his abode in the infernal regions.

“On account of poisoning,” returned the fiend laconically.

Ananda was about to seek further explanations, when his attention was
arrested by a violent altercation between two of the supervising
demons.

“Kammuragha, evidently,” croaked one.

“Damburanana, of course,” snarled the other.

“May I,” inquired Ananda of the fiend he had before addressed, “presume
to ask the signification of Kammuragha and Damburanana?”

“They are two hells,” replied the demon. “In Kammuragha the occupant is
plunged into melted pitch and fed with melted lead. In Damburanana he
is plunged into melted lead and fed with melted pitch. My colleagues
are debating which is the more appropriate to the demerits of our guest
Ananda.”

Ere Ananda had had time to digest this announcement a youthful imp
descended from above with agility, and, making a profound reverence,
presented himself before the disputants.

“Venerable demons,” interposed he, “might my insignificance venture to
suggest that we cannot well testify too much honour for our visitor
Ananda, seeing that he is the only apostle of Buddha with whose company
we are likely ever to be indulged? Wherefore I would propose that
neither Kammuragha nor Damburanana be assigned for his residence, but
that the amenities of all the two hundred and forty-four thousand hells
be combined in a new one, constructed especially for his reception.”

The imp having thus spoken, the senior demons were amazed at his
precocity, and performed a _pradakshina_, exclaiming, “Truly thou art a
highly superior young devil!” They then departed to prepare the new
infernal chamber, agreeably to his recipe.

Ananda awoke, shuddering with terror.

“Why,” he exclaimed, “why was I ever an apostle? O Buddha! Buddha! how
hard are the paths of saintliness! How prone to error are the
well-meaning! How huge is the absurdity of spiritual pride!”

“Thou hast discovered that, my son?” said a gentle voice in his
vicinity.

He turned and beheld the divine Buddha, radiant with a mild and
benignant light. A cloud seemed rolled away from his vision, and he
recognised in his master the Glendoveer, the Jogi, and the Physician.

“O holy teacher!” exclaimed he in extreme perturbation, “whither shall
I turn? My sin forbids me to approach thee.”

“Not on account of thy sin art thou forbidden, my son,” returned
Buddha, “but on account of the ridiculous and unsavoury plight to which
thy knavery and disobedience have reduced thee. I have now appeared to
remind thee that this day all my apostles meet on Mount Vindhya to
render an account of their mission, and to inquire whether I am to
deliver thine in thy stead, or whether thou art minded to proclaim it
thyself.”

“I will render it with my own lips,” resolutely exclaimed Ananda. “It
is meet that I should bear the humiliation of acknowledging my folly.”

“Thou hast said well, my son,” replied Buddha, “and in return I will
permit thee to discard the attire, if such it may be termed, of a Jogi,
and to appear in our assembly wearing the yellow robe as beseems my
disciple. Nay, I will even infringe my own rule on thy behalf, and
perform a not inconsiderable miracle by immediately transporting thee
to the summit of Vindhya, where the faithful are already beginning to
assemble. Thou wouldst otherwise incur much risk of being torn to
pieces by the multitude, who, as the shouts now approaching may
instruct thee, are beginning to extirpate my religion at the
instigation of the new king, thy hopeful pupil. The old king is dead,
poisoned by the Brahmins.”

“O master! master!” exclaimed Ananda, weeping bitterly, “and is all the
work undone, and all by my fault and folly?”

“That which is built on fraud and imposture can by no means endure,”
returned Buddha, “be it the very truth of Heaven. Be comforted; thou
shalt proclaim my doctrine to better purpose in other lands. Thou hast
this time but a sorry account to render of thy stewardship; yet thou
mayest truly declare that thou hast obeyed my precept in the letter, if
not in the spirit, since none can assert that thou hast ever wrought
any miracle.”




THE CITY OF PHILOSOPHERS

I

Nature is manifold, not infinite, though the extent of the resources of
which she can dispose almost enables her to pass for such. Her cards
are so multitudinous that the pairs are easily shuffled into ages so
far asunder that their resemblance escapes remark. But sometimes her
mischievous daughter Fortune manages to thrust these duplicates into
such conspicuous places that their similarity cannot pass unobserved,
and Nature is caught plagiarising from herself. She is thus detected
dealing a king—or knave—a second time in the person of a king who has
already fallen from her pack as an emperor. Brilliant, careless,
selfish, yet good-natured _vauriens_, the Roman Emperor Gallienus and
our Charles the Second excelled in every art save the art of reigning,
and might have excelled in that also if they would have taken the
trouble. The circumstances of their reigns were in many respects as
similar as their characters. Both were the sons of grave and strict
fathers, each of whom had met with terrible misfortunes: one deprived
of his liberty by his enemies, the other of his head by his own
subjects. Each of the sons had been grievously vexed by rebels, but
Charles’s troubles from this quarter had mostly ended where those of
Gallienus began. Each saw his dominions ravaged by pestilence in a
manner beyond all former experience. The Goths destroyed the temple of
the Ephesian Diana, and the Dutch burned the English fleet at Chatham.
Charles shut up the Exchequer, and Gallienus debased the coinage.
Charles accepted a pension from Louis XIV., and Gallienus devolved the
burden of his Eastern provinces on a Syrian Emir. Their tastes and
pursuits were as similar as their histories. Charles excelled as a wit
and a critic; Gallienus as a poet and a gastronomer. Charles was
curious about chemistry, and founded the Royal Society. In the third
century the conception of the systematic investigation of nature did
not exist. Gallienus, therefore, could not patronise exact science; and
the great literary light of the age, Longinus, irradiated the court of
Palmyra. But the Emperor bestowed his favour in ample measure on the
chief contemporary philosopher, Plotinus, who strove to unite the
characters of Plato and Pythagoras, of sage and seer. Like Schelling in
time to come, he maintained the necessity of a special organ for the
apprehension of philosophy, without perceiving that he thereby
proclaimed philosophy bankrupt, and placed himself on the level of the
Oriental hierophants, with whose sublime quackeries the modest sage
could not hope to contend. So extreme was his humility, that he would
not claim to have been consciously united to the Divinity more than
four times in his life; without condemning magic and thaumaturgy, he
left their practice to more adventurous spirits, and contented himself
with the occasional visits of a familiar demon in the shape of a
serpent. He experienced, however, frequent visitations of trance or
ecstasy, sometimes lasting for a long period; and it may have been in
one of these that he was inspired by the idea of asking the Emperor for
a decayed city in Campania, there to establish a philosophic
commonwealth as nearly upon the model of Plato’s Republic as the
degeneracy of the times would allow.

“I cannot,” said Gallienus, when the project had been explained to him,
“object in principle to aught so festive and jocose. The age is turned
upside down; its comedians are lamentable, and its sages ludicrous. It
must moreover, I apprehend, be sated with the earthquakes, famines,
pestilences, and barbarian invasions with which it hath been
exclusively regaled for so long, and must crave something enlivening,
of the nature of thy proposition. But whether, when we arrive at the
consideration of ways and means, I shall find my interview with my
treasurer enlivening, is gravely to be questioned. I have heard
homilies enough on my prodigality, which merely means that I prefer
spending my treasures on myself to saving them for my successor, whose
title will probably have been acquired by cutting my throat.”

“I know,” said Plotinus, “that the expenses of administering an empire
must necessarily be prodigious. I am aware that the principal generals
are only kept to their allegiance by enormous bribes. I well understand
that the Empress must have pearls, and that the Roman populace must
have panthers; and that, since Egypt has revolted, the hippopotamus is
worth his weight in gold. I am further aware that the proposed colossal
statue of your Majesty in the same metal, including a staircase, with
room in the head for a child, like another Pallas in the brain of Zeus,
must alone involve very considerable outlay. But I am encouraged by
your Majesty’s wise and statesmanlike measure of debasing the currency;
since, money having become devoid of value, there can be no difficulty
in devoting any amount of it to any purpose required.”

“Plotinus,” said Gallienus, “in this age the devil is taking the
hindmost, and we are the hindmost. There are tidings to-day of a new
earthquake in Bithynia, and three days’ darkness, also of outbreaks of
pestilence, and incursions of the barbarians, too numerous as well as
too disagreeable to mention. At this moment some revolted legion is
probably forcing the purple upon some reluctant general; and the
Persian king, a great equestrian, is doubtless mounting his horse by
the aid of my father’s back. If I had been an old Roman, I should by
this time have avenged my father, but I am a man of my age. Take the
money for thy city, and see that it yields me some amusement at any
rate. I assume, of course, that thou wilt exercise severe economy, and
that cresses and spring water will be the diet of thy philosophers.
Farewell, I go to Gaul to encounter Postumus. Willingly would I leave
him in peace in Gaul if he would leave me in peace in Italy; but I
foresee that if I do not attack him there he will attack me here. As if
the Empire were not large enough for us all! What an ass the fellow
must be!”

And so Gallienus changed his silk for steel, and departed for his
Gallic campaign, where he bore himself more stoutly than his light talk
would have led those who judged him by it to expect. Plotinus, provided
with an Imperial rescript, undertook the regulation of his
philosophical commonwealth in Campania, where a brief experience of
architects and sophists threw him into an ecstasy, not of joy, which
endured an unusually long time.

II

On awakening from his long trance, Plotinus’s first sensation was one
of bodily hunger, the second of an even keener appetite for news of his
philosophical Republic. In both respects it promised well to perceive
that his chamber was occupied by his most eminent scholar, Porphyry,
though he was less gratified to observe his disciple busied, instead of
with the scrolls of the sages, with an enormous roll of accounts, which
appeared to be occasioning him much perplexity.

“Porphyry!” cried the master, and the faithful disciple was by his
couch in a moment.

We pass over the mutual joy, the greetings, the administration of
restoratives and creature comforts, the eager interrogations of
Porphyry respecting the things his master had heard and seen in his
trance, which proved to be unspeakable.

“And now,” said Plotinus, who with all his mysticism was so good a man
of business that, as his biographers acquaint us, he was in special
request as a trustee, “and now, concerning this roll of thine. Is it
possible that the accounts connected with the installation of a few
abstemious lovers of wisdom can have swollen to such a prodigous bulk?
But indeed, why few? Peradventure all the philosophers of the earth
have flocked to my city.”

“It has, indeed,” said Porphyry evasively, “been found necessary to
incur certain expenses not originally foreseen.”

“For a library, perhaps?” inquired Plotinus. “I remember thinking, just
before my ecstasy, that the scrolls of the divine Plato, many of them
autographic, might require some special housing.”

“I rejoice to state,” rejoined Porphyry, “that it is not these volumes
that have involved us in our present difficulties with the
superintendent of the Imperial treasury, nor can they indeed, seeing
that they are now impignorated with him.”

“Plato’s manuscripts pawned!” exclaimed Plotinus, aghast. “Wherefore?”

“As part collateral security for expenses incurred on behalf of objects
deemed of more importance by the majority of the philosophers.”

“For example?”

“Repairing bath and completing amphitheatre.”

“Bath! Amphitheatre!” gasped Plotinus.

“O dear master,” remonstrated Porphyry, “thou didst not deem that
philosophers could be induced to settle in a spot devoid of these
necessaries? Not a single one would have stayed if I had not yielded to
their demands, which, as regarded the bath, involved the addition of
exedrae and of a sphaeristerium.”

“And what can they want with an amphitheatre?” groaned Plotinus.

“They _say_ it is for lectures,” replied Porphyry;

“I trust there is no truth in the rumour that the head of the Stoics is
three parts owner of a lion of singular ferocity.”

“I must see to this as soon as I can get about,” said Plotinus, turning
to the accounts. “What’s this? To couch and litter for head of
Peripatetic school!”

“Who is so enormously fat,” explained Porphyry, “that these
conveniences are really indispensable to him. The Peripatetic school is
positively at a standstill.”

“And no great matter,” said Plotinus; “its master Aristotle was at best
a rationalist, without perception of the supersensual. What’s this? To
Maximus, for the invocation of demons.”

“That,” said Porphyry, “is our own Platonic dirty linen, and I heartily
wish we were washing it elsewhere. Thou must know, dear master, that
during thy trance the theurgic movement has attained a singular
development, and that thou art regarded with disdain by thy younger
disciples as one wholly behind the age, unacquainted with the higher
magic, and who can produce no other outward and visible token of the
Divine favour than the occasional companionship of a serpent.”

“I would not assert that theurgy may not be lawfully undertaken,”
replied Plotinus, “provided that the adept shall have purified himself
by a fast of forty months.”

“It may be from neglect of this precaution,” said Porphyry, “that our
Maximus finds it so much easier to evoke the shades of Commodus and
Caracalla than those of Socrates and Marcus Aurelius; and that these
good spirits, when they do come, have no more recondite information to
convey than that virtue differs from vice, and that one’s grandmother
is a fitting object of reverence.”

“I fear this must expose Platonic truth to the derision of Epicurean
scoffers,” remarked Plotinus.

“O master, speak not of Epicureans, still less of Stoics! Wait till
thou hast regained thy full strength, and then take counsel of some
oracle.”

“What meanest thou?” exclaimed Plotinus, “I insist upon knowing.”

Porphyry was saved from replying by the hasty entrance of a bustling
portly personage of loud voice and imperious manner, in whom Plotinus
recognised Theocles, the chief of the Stoics.

“I rejoice, Plotinus,” he began, “that thou hast at length emerged from
that condition of torpor, so unworthy of a philosopher, which I might
well designate as charlatanism were I not so firmly determined to speak
no word which can offend any man. Thou wilt now be able to reprehend
the malice or obtuseness of thy deputy, and to do me right in my
contention with these impure dogs.”

“Which be they?” asked Plotinus.

“Do I not sufficiently indicate the followers of Epicurus?” demanded
the Stoic.

“O master,” explained Porphyry, “in allotting and fitting up apartments
designed for the respective sects of philosophers I naturally gave heed
to what I understood to be the principles of each. To the Epicureans,
as lovers of pleasure and luxury, I assigned the most commodious
quarters, furnished the same with soft cushions and costly hangings,
and provided a liberal table. I should have deemed it insulting to have
offered any of these things to the frugal followers of Zeno, and
nothing can surpass my astonishment at the manner in which the austere
Theocles has incessantly persecuted me for choice food and wine,
stately rooms and soft couches.”

“O Plotinus,” replied Theocles, “let me make the grounds of my conduct
clear to thee. In the first place, the honour of my school is in my
keeping. What will the vulgar think when they see the sty of Epicurus
sumptuously adorned, and the porch of Zeno shabby and bare? Will they
not deem that the Epicureans are highly respected and the Stoics made
of little account? Furthermore, how can I and my disciples manifest our
contempt for gold, dainties, wine, fine linen, and all the other
instruments of luxury, unless we have them to despise? Shall we not
appear like foxes, vilipending the grapes that we cannot reach? Not so;
offer me delicacies that I may reject them, wine that I may pour it
into the kennel, Tyrian purple that I may trample upon it, gold that I
may fling it away; if it break an Epicurean’s head, so much the
better.”

“Plotinus,” said Hermon, the chief of the Epicureans, who had meanwhile
entered the apartment, “let this hypocrite have what he wants, and send
him away. I and my followers are perfectly willing to remove at once
into the inferior apartments, and leave ours for his occupation with
all their furniture, and the reversion of our bill of fare. Thou
should’st know that the imputations of the vulgar against our sect are
the grossest calumnies. The Epicurean places happiness in tranquil
enjoyment, not in luxury or sensual pleasures. There is not a thing I
possess which I am not perfectly willing to resign, except the society
of my female disciple.”

“Thy female disciple!” exclaimed the horrified Plotinus. “Thou art
worse than the Stoic!”

“Plotinus,” said the Epicurean, “consider well ere, as is the manner of
Platonists, thou committest thyself to a proposition of a transparently
foolish nature. Thou desirest to gather all sorts of philosophers
around thee, but to what end, if they are restrained from manifesting
their characteristic tenets? Thou mightest as well seek to illustrate
the habits of animals by establishing a menagerie in which panthers
should eat grass, and antelopes be dieted on rabbits. An Epicurean
without his female companion, unless by his own choice, is no more an
Epicurean than a Cynic is a Cynic without his rags and his impudence.
Wilt thou take from me my Pannychis, an object pleasing to the eye, and
leave yonder fellow his tatters and his vermin?”

The apartment had gradually filled with philosophers, and Hermon was
pointing to a follower of Diogenes whose robe so fully bespoke his
obedience to his master’s precepts that his skin seemed almost clean in
comparison.

“Consider also,” continued the Epicurean, “that thou art thyself by no
means exempt from scandal.”

“What does the man mean?” demanded Plotinus, turning to Porphyry.

“Get them away,” whispered the disciple, “and I will tell thee.”

Plotinus hastily conceded the point raised with reference to the
interesting Pannychis, and the philosophers went off to effect their
exchange of quarters. As soon as the room was clear, he repeated:

“What _does_ the man mean?”

“I suppose he is thinking of Leaena,” said Porphyry.

“The most notorious character in Rome, who, finding her charms on the
wane, has lately betaken herself to philosophy?”

“The same.”

“What of her?”

“She has followed thee here. She affects the greatest devotion to thee.
She vows that nothing shall make her budge until thou hast recovered
from thy ecstasy, and admitted her as thy disciple. She has rejected
numerous overtures from the philosopher Theocles; entirely for thy
sake, she affirms. She comes three times a day to inquire respecting
thy condition, and I fear it must be acknowledged that she has once or
twice managed to get into thy chamber.”

“O ye immortal Gods!” groaned Plotinus.

“Here she is!” exclaimed Porphyry, as a woman of masculine stature and
bearing, with the remains of beauty not unskilfully patched, forced an
entrance into the room.

“Plotinus,” she exclaimed, “behold the most impassioned of thy
disciples. Let us celebrate the mystic nuptials of Wisdom and Beauty.
Let the claims of my sex to philosophic distinction be vindicated in my
person.”

“The question of the admission of women to share the studies and
society of men,” rejoined Plotinus, “is one by no means exempt from
difficulty.”

“How so? I deemed it had been determined long ago in favour of
Aspasia?”

“Aspasia,” said Plotinus, “was a very exceptional woman.”

“And am not I?”

“I hope, that is, I conceive so,” said Plotinus. “But one may be an
exceptional woman without being an Aspasia.”

“How so? Am I inferior to Aspasia in beauty?”

“I should hope not,” said Plotinus ambiguously.

“Or in the irregularity of my deportment?”

“I should think not,” said Plotinus, with more confidence.

“Then why does the Plato of our age hesitate to welcome his Diotima?”

“Because,” said Plotinus, “you are not Diotima, and I am not Plato.”

“I am sure I am as much like Diotima as you are like Plato,” retorted
the lady. “But let us come to our own time. Do I not hear that that
creature Pannychis has obtained the freedom of the philosophers’ city,
and the right to study therein?”

“She takes private lessons from Hermon, who is responsible for her.”

“The very thing!” exclaimed Leaena triumphantly. “I take private
lessons from thee, and thou art responsible for me. Venus! what’s
that?”

The exclamation was prompted by the sudden appearance of an enormous
serpent, which, emerging from a chink in the wall, glided swiftly
towards the couch of Plotinus. He reached forward to greet it, uttering
a cry of pleasure.

“My guardian, my tutelary dæmon,” he exclaimed, “visible manifestation
of Æsculapius! Then I am not forsaken by the immortal gods.”

“Take away the monster,” cried Leaena, in violent agitation, “the nasty
thing! Plotinus, how can you? Oh, I shall faint! I shall die! Take it
away, I say. You must choose between it and me.”

“Then, Madam,” said Plotinus, civilly but firmly, “I choose _it_.”

“Thank Æsculapius we are rid of her,” he added, as Leaena vanished from
the apartment.

“I wish I knew that,” said Porphyry.

And indeed after no long time a note came up from Theocles, who was
sure that Plotinus would not refuse him that privilege of instructing a
female disciple which had been already, with such manifest advantage to
philosophical research, accorded to his colleague Hermon. No objection
could well be made, especially as Plotinus did not foresee how many
chambermaids, and pages, and cooks, and perfumers, and tiring women and
bath attendants would be required, ere Leaena could feel herself
moderately comfortable. How unlike the modest Pannychis! who wanted but
half a bed, which need not be stuffed with the down of hares or the
feathers of partridges, without which sleep refused to visit Leaena’s
eyelids.

It was natural that Plotinus should appeal to Gallienus, now returned
from the Gallic expedition, but he could extract nothing save
mysterious intimations that the Emperor had his eye upon the
philosophers, and that they might find him among them when they least
expected it. Plotinus’s spirits drooped, and Porphyry was almost glad
when he again relapsed into an ecstasy.

III

When Plotinus’s eyes were at length opened, they fell not this time
upon the faithful Porphyry, but upon two youthful followers of Plato
who were beguiling the tedium of their vigil at his bedside by a game
of dice, which prevented their observing his resuscitation. After a
moment’s hesitation Plotinus resolved to lie quiet in the hopes of
hearing something that might indicate what influences were in the
ascendant in the philosophical republic. He had not long to wait.

“Dice is dull work for long,” said one of the young men, indolently
throwing himself back, and letting his caster fall upon the floor. “To
think how much better one might be employed, but for having to watch
this old fool here! I’ve a great mind to call up a slave.”

“All the slaves are sure to have gone to the show, unless any of them
should be Christians. Besides, Porphyry would hear you, he’s only in a
cat’s sleep,” returned his companion.

“Well, I mean to say it’s a shame. All the town will be in the theatre
by this time.”

“How many gladiators, said you?”

“Forty pairs, the best show Campania has seen time out of mind.”

“How has it all come about?”

“Oh, news comes of the death of Postumus, killed by his own soldiers,
and this passes as a great victory for want of a better, ‘We must have
a day of thanksgiving,’ says Theocles. ‘Right,’ says Leaena, ‘I am
dying to see an exhibition of gladiators.’ Theocles demurs at first,
expecting to have to find the money—but Leaena tugs at his beard, and
he gives in. Just at the nick of time the right sort of fellow pops up
nobody knows whence, a lanista with hair like curling helichryse, as
Theocritus has it, and a small army of gladiators, whom, out of
devotion to the Emperor, he offers to exhibit for nothing. Who so
pleased as Theocles now? He takes the chair as archon with Leaena by
his side, and off goes every soul in the place, except Pannychis, who
cannot bear the sight of blood, and Porphyry, who is an outrageous
humanitarian, and us poor devils left in charge of this old dreamer.”

“Couldn’t we leave him to mind himself? He isn’t likely to awake yet.”

“Try him with your cloak-pin.” The student detached the implement in
question, which was about the size of a small stiletto. Feeling
uncertain what part of his person was to be the subject of experiment,
Plotinus judged it advisable to manifest his recovery in an
unmistakable fashion.

“O dear Master, what joy!” cried both the students in a breath.
“Porphyry! Porphyry!”

The trusty scholar appeared immediately, and under pretence of fetching
food, the two neophytes eloped to the amphitheatre.

“What means all this, Porphyry?” demanded Plotinus sternly. “The City
of Philosophers polluted by human blood! The lovers of wisdom mingling
with the dregs of the rabble!”

Porphyry’s account, which Plotinus could only extract by consenting to
eat while his disciple talked, corresponded in all essential
particulars with that of the two young men.

“And I see not,” added he, “what we can do in the matter. This
abomination is supposed to be in honour of the Emperor’s victories. If
we interfere with it we shall be executed as rebels, supposing that we
are not first torn to pieces as rioters.”

“Porphyry,” replied Plotinus, “I should esteem this disgrace to
philosophy a disgrace to myself if I did not my utmost to avert it.
Remain thou here, and perform my funeral rites if it be necessary.”

But to this Porphyry would by no means consent, and the two
philosophers proceeded to the amphitheatre together. It was so crowded
that there was no room on the seats for another person. Theocles was
enthroned in the chair of honour, his beard manifesting evident traces
of the depilatories administered by Leaena, who nevertheless sat by his
side, her voluptuous face gloating over the anticipated banquet of
agony. The philosophic part of the spectators were ranged all around,
the remaining seats were occupied by a miscellaneous public. The master
of the gladiators, a man of distinguished appearance, whose yellow
locks gave him the aspect of a barbarian prince, stood in the arena
surrounded by his myrmidons. The entry of Plotinus and Porphyry
attracted his attention: he motioned to his followers, and in an
instant the philosophers were seized, bound, and gagged without the
excited assembly being in the least conscious of their presence.

Two men stepped out into the arena, both fine and attractive figures.
The athletic limbs, the fair complexion, the curling yellow hair of one
proclaimed the Goth; he lightly swung his huge sword in his right hand,
and looked as if his sole arm would easily put to flight the crowd of
effeminate spectators. The other’s beauty was of another sort; young,
slender, pensive, spiritual, he looked like anything rather than a
gladiator, and held his downward pointed sword with a negligent grasp.

“Guard thyself!” cried the Goth, placing himself in an attitude of
offence.

“I spill not the blood of a fellow-creature,” answered the other,
casting his sword away from him.

“Coward!” yelled well-nigh every voice in the amphitheatre.

“No,” answered the youth with a grave smile, “Christian.”

His shield and helmet followed his sword, he stood entirely defenceless
before his adversary.

“Throw him to my lion,” cried Theocles.

“Or thy lioness,” suggested Hermon.

This allusion to Leaena provoked a burst of laughter. Suddenly the Goth
aimed a mighty blow at the head of the unresisting man. A shorn curl
fell to the ground, the consummate skill of the swordsman averted all
further contact between his blade and the Christian, who remained erect
and smiling, without having moved a muscle or an eyelash.

“Master,” said the Goth, addressing the lanista, “I had rather fight
ten armed men than this unarmed one.”

“Good,” returned his lord, with a gesture of approval. “Retire both of
you.”

A roar of disapprobation broke out from the spectators, which seemed
not to produce the slightest effect on the lanista.

“Turn out the next pair,” they cried.

“I shall not,” said he.

“Wherefore?”

“Because I do not choose.”

“Rogue! Cheat! Swindler! Cast him into prison! Throw him to the lion!”
Such epithets and recommendations rained from the spectators’ seats,
accompanied by a pelting of more substantial missiles. In an instant
the yellow hair and common dress lay on the ground, and those who knew
him not by the features could by the Imperial ornaments recognise the
Emperor Gallienus. With no less celerity his followers, the Goth and
the Christian excepted, disencumbered themselves of their exterior
vesture, and stood forward in the character of Roman soldiers.

“Friends,” cried Gallienus, turning to the plebeian multitude, “I am
not about to balk you of your sport.”

At a sign from him the legionaries ascended to the seats allotted to
the philosophic portion of the audience, and a torrent of wisdom in
their persons, including that of Leaena, flung forth with the energy of
a catapult, descended abruptly and violently to the earth. They were
instantly seized and dragged into an erect attitude by the remainder of
the soldiery, who, amid the most tempestuous peals of laughter and
applause from the delighted public, thrust swords into their hands,
ranged them in opposite ranks, and summoned them to begin the fight and
quit themselves like men. It was equally ludicrous and pitiable to see
the bald, mostly grey-bearded men, their garments torn in their
expulsion and their persons bruised by the fall, confronting each other
with quaking limbs, helplessly brandishing their weapons or feebly
calling their adversaries to come on, while the soldiers prodded them
from behind with spears, and urged them into the close quarters they so
anxiously desired to avoid. Plotinus, helpless with his bonds and gag,
looked on in impotent horror. Gallienus was often cruel, but could he
intend such a revolting massacre? There must be something behind.

The honour of developing the Emperor’s purpose was reserved for
Theocles, who, with admirable presence of mind, had ever since he found
he must fight been engaged in trying to select the weakest antagonist.
After hesitating between the unwieldy chief of the Peripatetics and the
feminine Leaena he fixed on the latter, partly moved, perhaps, by the
hope of avenging his beard. With a martial cry he sprang towards her,
and upraised his weapon for a swashing blow. But he had sadly
miscalculated. Leaena was hardly less versed in the combats of Mars
than in those of Venus, having, in fact, commenced her distinguished
career as a camp-follower of the Emperor Gordian. A tremendous stroke
caught him on the hand; his blade dropped to the earth; why did not the
fingers follow? Leaena elucidated the problem by a still more violent
blow on his face; torrents of blood gushed forth indeed, but only from
the nose. The sword doubled up; it had neither point nor edge.
Encouraged by this opportune discovery the philosophers attacked each
other with infinite spirit and valour. Infuriated by the blows given
and received, by the pokings and proddings of the military, and the
hilarious derision of the public, they cast away the shivered blades
and resorted to the weapons of Nature. They kicked, they cuffed, they
scratched, they tore the garments from each other’s shoulders, they
foamed and rolled gasping in the yellow sand of the arena. At a signal
from the Emperor the portal of the amphitheatre was thrown open, and
the whole mass of clawing and cuffing philosophy was bundled
ignominiously into the street.

By this time Gallienus was seated on his tribunal, and Plotinus,
released from his bonds, was standing by his side.

“O Emperor,” he murmured, deeply abashed, “what can I urge? Thou wilt
surely demolish my city!”

“No, Plotinus,” replied Gallienus, pointing to the Goth and the
Christian, “there are the men who will destroy the City of
Philosophers. Would that were all they will destroy!”




THE DEMON POPE


“So you won’t sell me your soul?” said the devil.

“Thank you,” replied the student, “I had rather keep it myself, if it’s
all the same to you.”

“But it’s not all the same to me. I want it very particularly. Come,
I’ll be liberal. I said twenty years. You can have thirty.”

The student shook his head.

“Forty!”

Another shake.

“Fifty!”

As before.

“Now,” said the devil, “I know I’m going to do a foolish thing, but I
cannot bear to see a clever, spirited young man throw himself away.
I’ll make you another kind of offer. We won’t have any bargain at
present, but I will push you on in the world for the next forty years.
This day forty years I come back and ask you for a boon; not your soul,
mind, or anything not perfectly in your power to grant. If you give it,
we are quits; if not, I fly away with you. What say you to this?”

The student reflected for some minutes. “Agreed,” he said at last.

Scarcely had the devil disappeared, which he did instantaneously, ere a
messenger reined in his smoking steed at the gate of the University of
Cordova (the judicious reader will already have remarked that Lucifer
could never have been allowed inside a Christian seat of learning),
and, inquiring for the student Gerbert, presented him with the Emperor
Otho’s nomination to the Abbacy of Bobbio, in consideration, said the
document, of his virtue and learning, well-nigh miraculous in one so
young. Such messengers were frequent visitors during Gerbert’s
prosperous career. Abbot, bishop, archbishop, cardinal, he was
ultimately enthroned Pope on April 2, 999, and assumed the appellation
of Silvester the Second. It was then a general belief that the world
would come to an end in the following year, a catastrophe which to many
seemed the more imminent from the election of a chief pastor whose
celebrity as a theologian, though not inconsiderable, by no means
equalled his reputation as a necromancer.

The world, notwithstanding, revolved scatheless through the dreaded
twelvemonth, and early in the first year of the eleventh century
Gerbert was sitting peacefully in his study, perusing a book of magic.
Volumes of algebra, astrology, alchemy, Aristotelian philosophy, and
other such light reading filled his bookcase; and on a table stood an
improved clock of his invention, next to his introduction of the Arabic
numerals his chief legacy to posterity. Suddenly a sound of wings was
heard, and Lucifer stood by his side.

“It is a long time,” said the fiend, “since I have had the pleasure of
seeing you. I have now called to remind you of our little contract,
concluded this day forty years.”

“You remember,” said Silvester, “that you are not to ask anything
exceeding my power to perform.”

“I have no such intention,” said Lucifer. “On the contrary, I am about
to solicit a favour which can be bestowed by you alone. You are Pope, I
desire that you would make me a Cardinal.

“In the expectation, I presume,” returned Gerbert, “of becoming Pope on
the next vacancy.”

“An expectation,” replied Lucifer, “which I may most reasonably
entertain, considering my enormous wealth, my proficiency in intrigue,
and the present condition of the Sacred College.”

“You would doubtless,” said Gerbert, “endeavour to subvert the
foundations of the Faith, and, by a course of profligacy and
licentiousness, render the Holy See odious and contemptible.”

“On the contrary,” said the fiend, “I would extirpate heresy, and all
learning and knowledge as inevitably tending thereunto. I would suffer
no man to read but the priest, and confine his reading to his breviary.
I would burn your books together with your bones on the first
convenient opportunity. I would observe an austere propriety of
conduct, and be especially careful not to loosen one rivet in the
tremendous yoke I was forging for the minds and consciences of
mankind.”

“If it be so,” said Gerbert, “let’s be off!”

“What!” exclaimed Lucifer, “you are willing to accompany me to the
infernal regions!”

“Assuredly, rather than be accessory to the burning of Plato and
Aristotle, and give place to the darkness against which I have been
contending all my life.”

“Gerbert,” replied the demon, “this is arrant trifling. Know you not
that no good man can enter my dominions? that, were such a thing
possible, my empire would become intolerable to me, and I should be
compelled to abdicate?”

“I do know it,” said Gerbert, “and hence I have been able to receive
your visit with composure.”

“Gerbert,” said the devil, with tears in his eyes, “I put it to you—is
this fair, is this honest? I undertake to promote your interests in the
world; I fulfil my promise abundantly. You obtain through my
instrumentality a position to which you could never otherwise have
aspired. Often have I had a hand in the election of a Pope, but never
before have I contributed to confer the tiara on one eminent for virtue
and learning. You profit by my assistance to the full, and now take
advantage of an adventitious circumstance to deprive me of my
reasonable guerdon. It is my constant experience that the good people
are much more slippery than the sinners, and drive much harder
bargains.”

“Lucifer,” answered Gerbert, “I have always sought to treat you as a
gentleman, hoping that you would approve yourself such in return. I
will not inquire whether it was entirely in harmony with this character
to seek to intimidate me into compliance with your demand by
threatening me with a penalty which you well knew could not be
enforced. I will overlook this little irregularity, and concede even
more than you have requested. You have asked to be a Cardinal. I will
make you Pope—”

“Ha!” exclaimed Lucifer, and an internal glow suffused his sooty hide,
as the light of a fading ember is revived by breathing upon it.

“For twelve hours,” continued Gerbert. “At the expiration of that time
we will consider the matter further; and if, as I anticipate, you are
more anxious to divest yourself of the Papal dignity than you were to
assume it, I promise to bestow upon you any boon you may ask within my
power to grant, and not plainly inconsistent with religion or morals.”

“Done!” cried the demon. Gerbert uttered some cabalistic words, and in
a moment the apartment held two Pope Silvesters, entirely
indistinguishable save by their attire, and the fact that one limped
slightly with the left foot.

“You will find the Pontifical apparel in this cupboard,” said Gerbert,
and, taking his book of magic with him, he retreated through a masked
door to a secret chamber. As the door closed behind him he chuckled,
and muttered to himself, “Poor old Lucifer! Sold again!”

If Lucifer was sold he did not seem to know it. He approached a large
slab of silver which did duty as a mirror, and contemplated his
personal appearance with some dissatisfaction.

“I certainly don’t look half so well without my horns,” he
soliloquised, “and I am sure I shall miss my tail most grievously.”

A tiara and a train, however, made fair amends for the deficient
appendages, and Lucifer now looked every inch a Pope. He was about to
call the master of the ceremonies, and summon a consistory, when the
door was burst open, and seven cardinals, brandishing poniards, rushed
into the room.

“Down with the sorcerer!” they cried, as they seized and gagged him.

“Death to the Saracen!”

“Practises algebra, and other devilish arts!”

“Knows Greek!”

“Talks Arabic!”

“Reads Hebrew!”

“Burn him!”

“Smother him!”

“Let him be deposed by a general council,” said a young and
inexperienced Cardinal.

“Heaven forbid!” said an old and wary one, _sotto voce_.

Lucifer struggled frantically, but the feeble frame he was doomed to
inhabit for the next eleven hours was speedily exhausted. Bound and
helpless, he swooned away.

“Brethren,” said one of the senior cardinals, “it hath been delivered
by the exorcists that a sorcerer or other individual in league with the
demon doth usually bear upon his person some visible token of his
infernal compact. I propose that we forthwith institute a search for
this stigma, the discovery of which may contribute to justify our
proceedings in the eyes of the world.”

“I heartily approve of our brother Anno’s proposition,” said another,
“the rather as we cannot possibly fail to discover such a mark, if,
indeed, we desire to find it.”

The search was accordingly instituted, and had not proceeded far ere a
simultaneous yell from all the seven cardinals indicated that their
investigation had brought more to light than they had ventured to
expect.

The Holy Father had a cloven foot!

For the next five minutes the Cardinals remained utterly stunned,
silent, and stupefied with amazement. As they gradually recovered their
faculties it would have become manifest to a nice observer that the
Pope had risen very considerably in their good opinion.

“This is an affair requiring very mature deliberation,” said one.

“I always feared that we might be proceeding too precipitately,” said
another.

“It is written, ‘the devils believe,’” said a third: “the Holy Father,
therefore, is not a heretic at any rate.”

“Brethren,” said Anno, “this affair, as our brother Benno well remarks,
doth indeed call for mature deliberation. I therefore propose that,
instead of smothering his Holiness with cushions, as originally
contemplated, we immure him for the present in the dungeon adjoining
hereunto, and, after spending the night in meditation and prayer,
resume the consideration of the business tomorrow morning.”

“Informing the officials of the palace,” said Benno, “that his Holiness
has retired for his devotions, and desires on no account to be
disturbed.”

“A pious fraud,” said Anno, “which not one of the Fathers would for a
moment have scrupled to commit.”

The Cardinals accordingly lifted the still insensible Lucifer, and bore
him carefully, almost tenderly, to the apartment appointed for his
detention. Each would fain have lingered in hopes of his recovery, but
each felt that the eyes of his six brethren were upon him: and all,
therefore, retired simultaneously, each taking a key of the cell.

Lucifer regained consciousness almost immediately afterwards. He had
the most confused idea of the circumstances which had involved him in
his present scrape, and could only say to himself that if they were the
usual concomitants of the Papal dignity, these were by no means to his
taste, and he wished he had been made acquainted with them sooner. The
dungeon was not only perfectly dark, but horribly cold, and the poor
devil in his present form had no latent store of infernal heat to draw
upon. His teeth chattered, he shivered in every limb, and felt devoured
with hunger and thirst. There is much probability in the assertion of
some of his biographers that it was on this occasion that he invented
ardent spirits; but, even if he did, the mere conception of a glass of
brandy could only increase his sufferings. So the long January night
wore wearily on, and Lucifer seemed likely to expire from inanition,
when a key turned in the lock, and Cardinal Anno cautiously glided in,
bearing a lamp, a loaf, half a cold roast kid, and a bottle of wine.

“I trust,” he said, bowing courteously, “that I may be excused any
slight breach of etiquette of which I may render myself culpable from
the difficulty under which I labour of determining whether, under
present circumstances, ‘Your Holiness,’ or ‘Your Infernal Majesty’ be
the form of address most befitting me to employ.”

“Bub-ub-bub-boo,” went Lucifer, who still had the gag in his mouth.

“Heavens!” exclaimed the Cardinal, “I crave your Infernal Holiness’s
forgiveness. What a lamentable oversight!”

And, relieving Lucifer from his gag and bonds, he set out the
refection, upon which the demon fell voraciously.

“Why the devil, if I may so express myself,” pursued Anno, “did not
your Holiness inform us that you _were_ the devil? Not a hand would
then have been raised against you. I have myself been seeking all my
life for the audience now happily vouchsafed me. Whence this mistrust
of your faithful Anno, who has served you so loyally and zealously
these many years?”

Lucifer pointed significantly to the gag and fetters.

“I shall never forgive myself,” protested the Cardinal, “for the part I
have borne in this unfortunate transaction. Next to ministering to your
Majesty’s bodily necessities, there is nothing I have so much at heart
as to express my penitence. But I entreat your Majesty to remember that
I believed myself to be acting in your Majesty’s interest by
overthrowing a magician who was accustomed to send your Majesty upon
errands, and who might at any time enclose you in a box, and cast you
into the sea. It is deplorable that your Majesty’s most devoted
servants should have been thus misled.”

“Reasons of State,” suggested Lucifer.

“I trust that they no longer operate,” said the Cardinal. “However, the
Sacred College is now fully possessed of the whole matter: it is
therefore unnecessary to pursue this department of the subject further.
I would now humbly crave leave to confer with your Majesty, or rather,
perhaps, your Holiness, since I am about to speak of spiritual things,
on the important and delicate point of your Holiness’s successor. I am
ignorant how long your Holiness proposes to occupy the Apostolic chair;
but of course you are aware that public opinion will not suffer you to
hold it for a term exceeding that of the pontificate of Peter. A
vacancy, therefore, must one day occur; and I am humbly to represent
that the office could not be filled by one more congenial than myself
to the present incumbent, or on whom he could more fully rely to carry
out in every respect his views and intentions.”

And the Cardinal proceeded to detail various circumstances of his past
life, which certainly seemed to corroborate his assertion. He had not,
however, proceeded far ere he was disturbed by the grating of another
key in the lock, and had just time to whisper impressively, “Beware of
Benno,” ere he dived under a table.

Benno was also provided with a lamp, wine, and cold viands. Warned by
the other lamp and the remains of Lucifer’s repast that some colleague
had been beforehand with him, and not knowing how many more might be in
the field, he came briefly to the point as regarded the Papacy, and
preferred his claim in much the same manner as Anno. While he was
earnestly cautioning Lucifer against this Cardinal as one who could and
would cheat the very Devil himself, another key turned in the lock, and
Benno escaped under the table, where Anno immediately inserted his
finger into his right eye. The little squeal consequent upon this
occurrence Lucifer successfully smothered by a fit of coughing.

Cardinal No. 3, a Frenchman, bore a Bayonne ham, and exhibited the same
disgust as Benno on seeing himself forestalled. So far as his requests
transpired they were moderate, but no one knows where he would have
stopped if he had not been scared by the advent of Cardinal No. 4. Up
to this time he had only asked for an inexhaustible purse, power to
call up the Devil _ad libitum_, and a ring of invisibility to allow him
free access to his mistress, who was unfortunately a married woman.

Cardinal No. 4 chiefly wanted to be put into the way of poisoning
Cardinal No. 5; and Cardinal No. 5 preferred the same petition as
respected Cardinal No. 4.

Cardinal No. 6, an Englishman, demanded the reversion of the
Archbishoprics of Canterbury and York, with the faculty of holding them
together, and of unlimited non-residence. In the course of his harangue
he made use of the phrase _non obstantibus_, of which Lucifer
immediately took a note.

What the seventh Cardinal would have solicited is not known, for he had
hardly opened his mouth when the twelfth hour expired, and Lucifer,
regaining his vigour with his shape, sent the Prince of the Church
spinning to the other end of the room, and split the marble table with
a single stroke of his tail. The six crouched and huddling Cardinals
cowered revealed to one another, and at the same time enjoyed the
spectacle of his Holiness darting through the stone ceiling, which
yielded like a film to his passage, and closed up afterwards as if
nothing had happened. After the first shock of dismay they unanimously
rushed to the door, but found it bolted on the outside. There was no
other exit, and no means of giving an alarm. In this emergency the
demeanour of the Italian Cardinals set a bright example to their
ultramontane colleagues. “_Bisogna pazienzia_,” they said, as they
shrugged their shoulders. Nothing could exceed the mutual politeness of
Cardinals Anno and Benno, unless that of the two who had sought to
poison each other. The Frenchman was held to have gravely derogated
from good manners by alluding to this circumstance, which had reached
his ears while he was under the table: and the Englishman swore so
outrageously at the plight in which he found himself that the Italians
then and there silently registered a vow that none of his nation should
ever be Pope, a maxim which, with one exception, has been observed to
this day.

Lucifer, meanwhile, had repaired to Silvester, whom he found arrayed in
all the insignia of his dignity; of which, as he remarked, he thought
his visitor had probably had enough.

“I should think so indeed,” replied Lucifer. “But at the same time I
feel myself fully repaid for all I have undergone by the assurance of
the loyalty of my friends and admirers, and the conviction that it is
needless for me to devote any considerable amount of personal attention
to ecclesiastical affairs. I now claim the promised boon, which it will
be in no way inconsistent with thy functions to grant, seeing that it
is a work of mercy. I demand that the Cardinals be released, and that
their conspiracy against thee, by which I alone suffered, be buried in
oblivion.”

“I hoped you would carry them all off,” said Gerbert, with an
expression of disappointment.

“Thank you,” said the Devil. “It is more to my interest to leave them
where they are.”

So the dungeon-door was unbolted, and the Cardinals came forth,
sheepish and crestfallen. If, after all, they did less mischief than
Lucifer had expected from them, the cause was their entire bewilderment
by what had passed, and their utter inability to penetrate the policy
of Gerbert, who henceforth devoted himself even with ostentation to
good works. They could never quite satisfy themselves whether they were
speaking to the Pope or to the Devil, and when under the latter
impression habitually emitted propositions which Gerbert justly
stigmatised as rash, temerarious, and scandalous. They plagued him with
allusions to certain matters mentioned in their interviews with
Lucifer, with which they naturally but erroneously supposed him to be
conversant, and worried him by continual nods and titterings as they
glanced at his nether extremities. To abolish this nuisance, and at the
same time silence sundry unpleasant rumours which had somehow got
abroad, Gerbert devised the ceremony of kissing the Pope’s feet, which,
in a grievously mutilated form, endures to this day. The stupefaction
of the Cardinals on discovering that the Holy Father had lost his hoof
surpasses all description, and they went to their graves without having
obtained the least insight into the mystery.




THE CUPBEARER


The minister Photinius had fallen, to the joy of Constantinople. He had
taken sanctuary in the immense monastery adjoining the Golden Gate in
the twelfth region of the city, founded for a thousand monks by the
patrician Studius, in the year 463. There he occupied himself with the
concoction of poisons, the resource of fallen statesmen. When a
defeated minister of our own day is indisposed to accept his
discomfiture, he applies himself to poison the public mind, inciting
the lower orders against the higher, and blowing up every smouldering
ember of sedition he can discover, trusting that the conflagration thus
kindled, though it consume the edifice of the State, will not fail to
roast his own egg. Photinius’s conceptions of mischief were less
refined; he perfected his toxicological knowledge in the medical
laboratory of the monastery, and sought eagerly for an opportunity of
employing it; whether in an experiment upon the Emperor, or on his own
successor, or on some other personage, circumstances must determine.

The sanctity of Studius’s convent, and the strength of its monastic
garrison, rendered it a safe refuge for disgraced courtiers, and in
this thirtieth year of the Emperor Basil the Second (reckoning from his
nominal accession) it harboured a legion of ex-prime ministers,
patriarchs, archbishops, chief secretaries, hypati, anthypati,
silentiarii, protospatharii, and even spatharo-candidati. And this
small army was nothing to the host that, maimed or blinded or tonsured
or all three, dragged out their lives in monasteries or in dungeons or
on rocky islets; and these again were few in comparison with the
spirits of the traitors or the betrayed who wailed nightly amid the
planes and cypresses of the Aretae, or stalked through the palatial
apartments of verdantique and porphyry. But of those comparatively at
liberty, but whose liberty was circumscribed by the hallowed precincts
of Studius, every soul was plotting. And never, perhaps, in the corrupt
Byzantine Court, where true friendship had been unknown since Theodora
quarrelled with Antonia, had so near an approach to it existed as in
this asylum of villains. A sort of freemasonry came to prevail in the
sanctuary: every one longed to know how his neighbour’s plot throve,
and grudged not to buy the knowledge by disclosing a little corner of
his own. Thus rendered communicative, their colloquies would travel
back into the past, and as the veterans of intrigue fought their
battles over again, the most experienced would learn things that made
them open their eyes with amazement. “Ah!” they would hear, “that is
just where you were mistaken. You had bought Eromenus, but so had I,
and old Nicephorus had outbid us both.” “You deemed the dancer Anthusa
a sure card, and knew not of her secret infirmity, of which I had been
apprised by her waiting woman.” “Did you really know nothing of that
sliding panel? And were you ignorant that whatever one says in the blue
chamber is heard in the green?” “Yes, I thought so too, and I spent a
mint of money before finding out that the dog whose slaver that brazen
impostor Panurgiades pretended to sell me was no more mad than he was.”
After such rehearsals of future dialogues by the banks of Styx, the
fallen statesmen were observed to appear exceedingly dejected, but the
stimulus had become necessary to their existence. None gossiped so
freely or disclosed so much as Photinius and his predecessor
Eustathius, whom he had himself displaced—probably because Eustathius,
believing in nothing in heaven or earth but gold, and labouring under
an absolute privation of that metal, was regarded even by himself as an
extinct volcano.

“Well,” observed he one day, when discoursing with Photinius is an
unusually confidential mood, “I am free to say that for my own part I
don’t think over much of poison. It has its advantages, to be sure, but
to my mind the disadvantages are even more conspicuous.”

“For example?” inquired Photinius, who had the best reason for
confiding in the efficacy of a drug administered with dexterity and
discretion.

“Two people must be in the secret at least, if not three,” replied
Eustathius, “and cooks, as a rule, are a class of persons entirely
unfit to be employed in affairs of State.”

“The Court physician,” suggested Photinius.

“Is only available,” answered Eustathius, “in case his Majesty should
send for him, which is most improbable. If he ever did, poison, praised
be the Lord! would be totally unnecessary and entirely superfluous.”

“My dear friend,” said Photinius, venturing at this favourable moment
on a question he had been dying to ask ever since he had been an inmate
of the convent, “would you mind telling me in confidence, did you ever
administer any potion of a deleterious nature to his Sacred Majesty?”

“Never!” protested Eustathius, with fervour. “I tried once, to be sure,
but it was no use.”

“What was the impediment?”

“The perverse opposition of the cupbearer. It is idle attempting
anything of the kind as long as she is about the Emperor.”

“_She_!” exclaimed Photinius.

“Don’t you know _that_?” responded Eustathius, with an air and manner
that plainly said, “You don’t know much.”

Humbled and ashamed, Photinius nevertheless wisely stooped to avow his
nescience, and flattering his rival on his superior penetration, led
him to divulge the State secret that the handsome cupbearer Helladius
was but the disguise of the lovely Helladia, the object of Basil’s
tenderest affection, and whose romantic attachment to his person had
already frustrated more conspiracies than the aged plotter could reckon
up.

This intelligence made Photinius for a season exceedingly thoughtful.
He had not deemed Basil of an amorous complexion. At length he sent for
his daughter, the beautiful and virtuous Euprepia, who from time to
time visited him in the monastery.

“Daughter,” he said, “it appears to me that the time has now arrived
when thou mayest with propriety present a petition to the Emperor on
behalf of thy unfortunate father. Here is the document. It is, I
flatter myself, composed with no ordinary address; nevertheless I will
not conceal from thee that I place my hopes rather on thy beauty of
person than on my beauty of style. Shake down thy hair and dishevel it,
so!—that is excellent. Remember to tear thy robe some little in the
poignancy of thy woe, and to lose a sandal. Tears and sobs of course
thou hast always at command, but let not the frenzy of thy grief render
thee wholly inarticulate. Here is a slight memorandum of what is most
fitting for thee to say: thy old nurse’s instructions will do the rest.
Light a candle for St. Sergius, and watch for a favourable
opportunity.”

Euprepia was upright, candid, and loyal; but the best of women has
something of the actress in her nature; and her histrionic talent was
stimulated by her filial affection. Basil was for a moment fairly
carried away by the consummate fact of her performance and the genuine
feeling to her appeal; but he was himself again by the time he had
finished perusing his late minister’s long-winded and mendacious
memorial.

“What manner of woman was thy mother?” he inquired kindly

Euprepia was eloquent in praise of her deceased parent’s perfections of
mind and person.

“Then I can believe thee Photinius’s daughter, which I might otherwise
have doubted,” returned Basil. “As concerns him, I can only say, if he
feels himself innocent, let him come out of sanctuary, and stand his
trial. But I will give thee a place at Court.”

This was about all that Photinius hoped to obtain, and he joyfully
consented to his daughter’s entering the Imperial court, exulting at
having got in the thin end of the wedge. She was attached to the person
of the Emperor’s sister-in-law, the “Slayer of the Bulgarians” himself
being a most determined bachelor.

Time wore on. Euprepia’s opportunities of visiting her father were less
frequent than formerly. At last she came, looking thoroughly miserable,
distracted, and forlorn.

“What ails thee, child?” he inquired anxiously.

“Oh, father, in what a frightful position do I find myself!”

“Speak,” he said, “and rely on my counsel.”

“When I entered the Court,” she proceeded, “I found at first but one
human creature I could love or trust, and he—let me so call him—seemed
to make up for the deficiencies of all the rest. It was the cupbearer
Helladius.”

“I hope he is still thy friend,” interrupted Photinius. “The good
graces of an Imperial cupbearer are always important, and I would have
bought those of Helladius with a myriad of bezants.”

“They were not to be thus obtained, father,” said she. “The purest
disinterestedness, the noblest integrity, the most unselfish devotion,
were the distinction of my friend. And such beauty! I cannot, I must
not conceal that my heart was soon entirely his. But—most strange it
seemed to me then—it was long impossible for me to tell whether
Helladius loved me or loved me not. The most perfect sympathy existed
between us: we seemed one heart and one soul: and yet, and yet,
Helladius never gave the slightest indication of the sentiments which a
young man might be supposed to entertain for a young girl. Vainly did I
try every innocent wile that a modest maiden may permit herself: he was
ever the friend, never the lover. At length, after long pining between
despairing fondness and wounded pride, I myself turned away, and
listened to one who left me in no doubt of the sincerity of his
passion.”

“Who?”

“The Emperor! And, to shorten the story of my shame, I became his
mistress.”

“The saints be praised!” shouted Photinius. “O my incomparable
daughter!”

“Father!” cried Euprepia, blushing and indignant. “But let me hurry on
with my wretched tale. In proportion as the Emperor’s affection became
more marked, Helladius, hitherto so buoyant and serene, became a
visible prey to despondency. Some scornful beauty, I deemed, was
inflicting on him the tortures he had previously inflicted upon me,
and, cured of my unhappy attachment, and entirely devoted to my
Imperial lover, I did all in my power to encourage him. He received my
comfort with gratitude, nor did it, as I had feared might happen, seem
to excite the least lover-like feeling towards me on his own part.”

“Euprepia,” he said only two days ago, “never in this Court have I met
one like thee. Thou art the soul of honour and generosity. I can safely
trust thee with a secret which my bursting heart can no longer retain,
but which I dread to breathe even to myself. Know first I am not what I
seem, I am a woman!” And opening his vest—”

“We know all about that already,” interrupted Photinius. “Get on!”

“If thou knowest this already, father,” said the astonished Euprepia,
“thou wilt spare me the pain of entering further into Helladia’s
affection for Basil. Suffice that it was impassioned beyond
description, and vied with whatever history or romance records. In her
male costume she had accompanied the conqueror of the Bulgarians in his
campaigns, she had fought in his battles; a gigantic foe, in act to
strike him from behind, had fallen by her arrow; she had warded the
poison-cup from his lips, and the assassin’s dagger from his heart; she
had rejected enormous wealth offered as a bribe for treachery, and
lived only for the Emperor. ‘And now,’ she cried, ‘his love for me is
cold, and he deserts me for another. Who she is I cannot find, else on
her it were, not on him, that my vengeance should alight. Oh, Euprepia,
I would tear her eyes from her head, were they beautiful as thine! But
vengeance I must have. Basil must die. On the third day he expires by
my hand, poisoned by the cup which I alone am trusted to offer him at
the Imperial banquet where thou wilt be present. Thou shalt see his
agonies and my triumph, and rejoice that thy friend has known how to
avenge herself.’

“Thou seest now, father, in how frightful a difficulty I am placed. All
my entreaties and remonstrances have been in vain: at my threats
Helladia merely laughs. I love Basil with my whole heart. Shall I look
on and see him murdered? Shall I, having first unwittingly done my
friend the most grievous injury, proceed further to betray her, and
doom her to a cruel death? I might anticipate her fell purpose by
slaying her, but for that I have neither strength nor courage. Many a
time have I felt on the point of revealing everything to her, and
offering myself as her victim, but for this also I lack fortitude. I
might convey a warning to Basil, but Helladia’s vengeance is
unsleeping, and nothing but her death or mine will screen him. Oh,
father, father! what am I to do?”

“Nothing romantic or sentimental, I trust, dear child,” replied
Photinius.

“Torture me not, father. I came to thee for counsel.”

“And counsel shalt thou have, but it must be the issue of mature
deliberation. Thou mayest observe,” continued he with the air of a good
man contending with adversity, “how weak and miserable is man’s estate
even in the day of good fortune, how hard it is for purblind mortals to
discern the right path, especially when two alluring routes are
simultaneously presented for their decision! The most obvious and
natural course, the one I should have adopted without hesitation
half-an-hour ago, would be simply to let Helladia alone. Should she
succeed—and Heaven forbid else!—the knot is loosed in the simplest
manner. Basil dies—”

“Father!”

“I am a favourite with his sister-in-law,” continued Photinius,
entirely unconscious of his daughter’s horror and agitation, “who will
govern in the name of her weak husband, and is moreover thy mistress.
She recalls me to Court, and all is peace and joy. But then, Helladia
may fail. In that case, when she has been executed—”

“Father, father!”

“We are exactly where we were, save for the hold thou hast established
over the Emperor, which is of course invaluable. I cannot but feel that
Heaven is good when I reflect how easily thou mightest have thrown
thyself away upon a courtier. Now there is a much bolder game to play,
which, relying on the protection of Providence, I feel half disposed to
attempt. Thou mightest betray Helladia.”

“Deliver my friend to the tormentors!”

“Then,” pursued Photinius, without hearing her, “thy claim on the
Emperor’s gratitude is boundless, and if he has any sense of what is
seemly—and he is what they call chivalrous—he will make thee his lawful
consort. I father-in-law of an Emperor! My brain reels to think of it.
I must be cool. I must not suffer myself to be dazzled or hurried away.
Let me consider. Thus acting, thou puttest all to the hazard of the
die. For if Helladia should deny everything, as of course she would,
and the Emperor should foolishly scruple to put her to the rack, she
might probably persuade him of her innocence, and where wouldst thou be
then? It might almost be better to be beforehand, and poison Helladia
herself, but I fear there is no time now. Thou hast no evidence but her
threats, I suppose? Thou hast not caught her tampering with poisons?
There can of course be nothing in writing. I daresay I could find
something, if I had but time. Canst thou counterfeit her signature?”

But long ere this Euprepia, dissolved in tears, her bosom torn by
convulsive sobs, had become as inattentive to her parent’s discourse as
he had been to her interjections. Photinius at last remarked her
distress: he was by no means a bad father.

“Poor child,” he said, “thy nerves are unstrung, and no wonder. It is a
terrible risk to run. Even if thou saidest nothing, and Helladia under
the torture accused thee of having been privy to her design, it might
have a bad effect on the Emperor’s mind. If he put thee to the torture
too—but no! that’s impossible. I feel faint and giddy, dear child, and
unable to decide a point of such importance. Come to me at daybreak
to-morrow.”

But Euprepia did not reappear, and Photinius spent the day in an agony
of expectation, fearing that she had compromised herself by some
imprudence. He gazed on the setting sun with uncontrollable impatience,
knowing that it would shine on the Imperial banquet, where so much was
to happen. Basil was in fact at that very moment seating himself among
a brilliant assemblage. By his side stood a choir of musicians, among
them Euprepia. Soon the cup was called for, and Helladia, in her
masculine dress, stepped forward, darting a glance of sinister triumph
at her friend. Silently, almost imperceptibly to the bulk of the
company, Euprepia glided forward, and hissed rather than whispered in
Helladia’s ear, ere she could retire from the Emperor’s side.

“Didst thou not say that if thou couldst discover her who had wronged
thee, thou wouldst wreak thy vengeance on her, and molest Basil no
further?”

“I did, and I meant it.”

“See that thou keepest thy word. I am she!” And snatching the cup from
the table, she quaffed it to the last drop, and instantly expired in
convulsions.

We pass over the dismay of the banqueters, the arrest and confession of
Helladia, the general amazement at the revelation of her sex, the
frantic grief of the Emperor.

Basil’s sorrow was sincere and durable. On an early occasion he thus
addressed his courtiers:

“I cannot determine which of these two women loved me best: she who
gave her life for me, or she who would have taken mine. The first made
the greater sacrifice; the second did most violence to her feelings.
What say ye?”

The courtiers hesitated, feeling themselves incompetent judges in
problems of this nature. At length the youngest exclaimed:

“O Emperor, how can we tell thee, unless we know what thou thinkest
thyself?”

“What!” exclaimed Basil, “an honest man in the Court of Byzantium! Let
his mouth be filled with gold immediately!”

This operation having been performed, and the precious metal
distributed in fees among the proper officers, Basil thus addressed the
object of his favour:

“Manuel, thy name shall henceforth be Chrysostomus, in memory of what
has just taken place. In further token of my approbation of thy
honesty, I will confer upon thee the hand of the only other respectable
person about the Court, namely, of Helladia. Take her, my son, and
raise up a race of heroes! She shall be amply dowered out of what
remains of the property of Photinius.”

“Gennadius,” whispered a cynical courtier to his neighbour, “I hope
thou admirest the magnanimity of our sovereign, who deems he is
performing a most generous action in presenting Manuel with his
cast-off mistress, who has tried to poison him, and with whom he has
been at his wits’ end what to do, and in dowering her at the expense of
another.”

The snarl was just; but it is just also to acknowledge that Basil, as a
prince born in the purple, had not the least idea that he was laying
himself open to any such criticism. He actually did feel the manly glow
of self-approbation which accompanies the performance of a good action:
an emotion which no one else present, except Chrysostomus, was so much
as able to conceive. It is further to be remarked that the old courtier
who sneered at Chrysostomus was devoured by envy of his good fortune,
and would have given his right eye to have been in his place.

“Chrysostomus,” pursued Basil, “we must now think of the hapless
Photinius. That unfortunate father is doubtless in an agony of grief
which renders the forfeiture of the remains of his possessions
indifferent to him. Thou, his successor therein, mayest be regarded as
in some sort his son-in-law. Go, therefore, and comfort him, and report
to me upon his condition.”

Chrysostomus accordingly proceeded to the monastery, where he was
informed that Photinius had retired with his spiritual adviser, and
could on no account be disturbed.

“It is on my head to see the Emperor’s orders obeyed,” returned
Chrysostomus, and forced the door. The bereaved parent was busily
engaged in sticking pins into a wax effigy of Basil, under the
direction of Panurgiades, already honourably mentioned in this history.

“Wretched old man!” exclaimed Chrysostomus, “is this thy grief for thy
daughter?”

“My grief is great,” answered Photinius, “but my time is small. If I
turn not every moment to account, I shall never be prime minister
again. But all is over now. Thou wilt denounce me, of course. I will
give thee a counsel. Say that thou didst arrive just as we were about
to place the effigy of Basil before a slow fire, and melt it into a
caldron of bubbling poison.”

“I shall report what I have seen,” replied Chrysostomus, “neither more
nor less. But I think I can assure thee that none will suffer for this
mummery except Panurgiades, and that he will at most be whipped.”

“Chrysostomus,” said Basil, on receiving the report, “lust of power, a
fever in youth, is a leprosy in age. The hoary statesman out of place
would sell his daughter, his country, his soul, to regain it: yea, he
would part with his skin and his senses, were it possible to hold
office without them. I commiserate Photinius, whose faculties are
clearly on the decline; the day has been when he would not have wasted
his time sticking pins into a waxen figure. I will give him some shadow
of authority to amuse his old days and keep him out of mischief. The
Abbot of Catangion is just dead. Photinius shall succeed him.”

So Photinius received the tonsure and the dignity, and made a very
tolerable Abbot. It is even recorded to his honour that he bestowed a
handsome funeral on his old enemy Eustathius.

Helladia made Chrysostomus an excellent wife, a little over-prudish,
some thought. When, nearly two centuries afterwards, the Courts of Love
came to be established in Provence, the question at issue between her
and Euprepia was referred to those tribunals, which, finding the
decision difficult, adjourned it for seven hundred years. That period
having now expired, it is submitted to the British public.




THE WISDOM OF THE INDIANS


Everybody knows that in the reign of the Emperor Elagabalus Rome was
visited by an embassy from India; whose members, on their way from the
East, had held that memorable interview with the illustrious (though
heretical) Christian philosopher Bardesanes which enabled him to
formulate his doctrine of Fate, borrowed from the Indian theory of
Karma, and therefore, until lately, grievously misunderstood by his
commentators.

It may not, however, be equally notorious that the ambassadors returned
by sea as far as Berytus, and upon landing there were hospitably
entertained by the sage Euphronius, the head of the philosophical
faculty of that University.

Euphronius naturally inquired what circumstance in Rome had appeared to
his visitors most worthy of remark.

“The extreme evil of the Emperor’s Karma,” said they.

Euphronius requested further explanation.

“Karma,” explained their interpreter, “is that congeries of
circumstances which has necessitated the birth of each individual, and
of whose good or evil he is the incarnation. Every act must needs be
attended by consequences, and as these are usually of too far-reaching
a character to be exhausted in the life of the doer of the action, they
cannot but engender another person by whom they are to be borne. This
truth is popularly expressed by the doctrine of transmigration,
according to which individuals, as the character of their deeds may
determine, are re-born as pigs or peacocks, beggars or princes. But
this is a loose and unscientific way of speaking, for in fact it is not
the individual that is re-born, but the character; which, even as the
silkworm clothes itself with silk and the caddis-worm with mud and
small shingle, creates for itself a new personality, congruous with its
own nature. We are therefore led to reflect what a prodigious multitude
of sins some one must have committed ere the Roman world could be
afflicted with such an Emperor as Elagabalus.”

“What have ye found so exceedingly reprehensible in the Emperor’s
conduct?” demanded Euphronius.

“To speak only,” said the Indians, “of such of his doings as may fitly
be recited to modest ears, we find him declaring war against Nature,
and delighting in nothing that is not the contrary of what Heaven meant
it to be. We see him bathing in perfumes, sailing ships in wine,
feeding horses on grapes and lions on parrots, peppering fish with
pearls, wearing gems on the soles of his feet, strewing his floor with
gold-dust, paving the public streets with precious marbles, driving
teams of stags, scorning to eat fish by the seaside, deploring his lot
that he has never yet been able to dine on a phoenix. Enormous must
have been the folly and wickedness which has incarnated itself in such
a sovereign, and should his reign be prolonged, discouraging is the
prospect for the morals of the next generation.

“According to you, then,” said Euphronius, “the fates of men are not
spun for them by Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, but by their
predecessors?”

“So it is,” said they, “always remembering that man can rid himself of
his Karma by philosophic meditation, combined with religious
austerities, and that if all walked in this path, existence with all
its evils would come to an end. Insomuch that the most bloodthirsty
conqueror that ever devastated the earth hath not destroyed one
thousandth part as many existences as the Lord Buddha.”

“These are abstruse matters,” said Euphronius, “and I lament that your
stay in Berytus will not be long enough to instruct me adequately
therein.”

“Accompany us to India,” said they, “and thou shalt receive instruction
at the fountain head.”

“I am old and feeble,” apologised Euphronius, “and adjusted by long
habit to my present environment. Nevertheless I will propound the
enterprise to my pupils, only somewhat repressing their ardour, lest
the volunteers should be inconveniently numerous.”

When, however, the proposition was made not a soul responded; though
Euphronius reproached his disciples severely, and desired them to
compare their want of spirit with his own thirst for knowledge, which,
when he was a young man, had taken him as far as Alexandria to hear a
celebrated rhetorician. In the evening, however, two disciples came to
him together, and professed their readiness to undertake the
expedition, if promised a reward commensurate with its danger and
difficulty.

“Ye would learn the secret of my celebrated dilemma,” said he, “which
no sophist can elude? ’Tis much; ’tis immoderate; ’tis enormous;
nevertheless, bring the wisdom of India to Berytus, and the knowledge
of the stratagem shall be yours.”

“No, Master,” they said, “it is not thy dilemma of which we are
enamoured. It is thy daughter.”

A vehement altercation ensued, but at length the old philosopher, who
at the bottom of his heart was much readier to part with his daughter
than his dilemma, was induced to promise her to whichever of the pupils
should bring home the most satisfactory exposition of Indian
metaphysics: provided always that during their absence he should not
have been compelled to bestow her hand as the price of a quibble even
more subtle than his own: but this he believed to be impossible.

Mnesitheus and Rufus accordingly travelled with the embassy to India,
and arrived in safety at the metropolis of Palimbothra. They had wisely
devoted themselves meanwhile to learning the language, and were now
able to converse with some fluency.

On reaching their destination they were placed under the
superintendence of competent instructors, who were commissioned to
initiate them into the canon of Buddhist scriptures, comprising, to
mention only a few of the principal, the Lalitavistara, the Dhammapada,
the Kuddhapatha, the Palinokkha, the Uragavagga, the Kulavagga, the
Mahavagga, the Atthakavagga, and the Upasampadakammavaca. These works,
composed in dead languages, and written in strange and unknown
characters, were further provided with commentaries more voluminous and
inexplicable than the text.

“Heavens,” exclaimed Mnesitheus and Rufus, “can the life of a man
suffice to study all this?”

“Assuredly not,” replied the Indians. “The diligent student will resume
his investigations in a subsequent stage of existence, and, if endowed
with eminent faculties, may hope to attain the end he proposes to
himself at the fifteenth transmigration.”

“The end we propose to ourselves,” said the Greeks, “is to marry our
master’s daughter. Will the fair Euphronia also have undergone fifteen
transmigrations, and will her charms have continued unimpaired?”

“It is difficult to pronounce,” said they, “for should the maiden,
through the exercise of virtue, have merited to be born as a white
elephant, her transmigrations must in the order of nature be but few;
whereas should she have unfortunately become and remained a rat, a
frog, or other shortlived animal, they cannot but be exceedingly
numerous.”

“The prospect of wedding a frog at the end of fifteen transmigrations,”
said the youths, “doth not in any respect commend itself to us. Are
there no means by which the course of study may be accelerated?”

“Undoubtedly,” said the Indians, “by the practice of religious
austerities.”

“Of what nature are these?” inquired the young men.

“The intrepid disciple,” said the sages, “may chain himself to a tree,
and gaze upon the sun until he is deprived of the faculty of vision. He
may drive an iron bar through his cheeks and tongue, thus preventing
all misuse of the gift of speech. It is open to him to bury himself in
the earth up to his waist, relying for his maintenance on the alms of
pious donors. He may recline upon a couch studded with spikes, until
from the induration of his skin he shall have merited the title of a
rhinoceros among sages. As, however, these latter practices interfere
with locomotion, and thus prevent his close attendance on his spiritual
guide, it is rather recommended to him to elevate his arms above his
head, and retain them in that position until, by the withering of the
sinews, it is impossible for him to bring them down again.”

“In that case,” cried Rufus, “farewell philosophy! farewell Euphronia!”

There is reason to believe that Mnesitheus would have made exactly the
same observation if Rufus had not been beforehand with him. The spirit
of contradiction and the affectation of superiority, however, led him
to reproach his rival with pusillanimity, and he went so far that at
length he found himself committed to undergo the ordeal: merely
stipulating that, in consideration of his being a foreigner, he should
be permitted to elevate the right arm only.

The king of the country most graciously came to his assistance by
causing him to be fastened to a tree, with his uplifted arm secured by
iron bands above his head, a fan being put in his other hand to protect
him against the molestations of gnats and mosquitoes. By this means,
and with the assistance of the monks who continually recited and
expounded the Buddhist scriptures in his ears, some time even before
his arm had stiffened for ever, the doctrine of the misery of existence
had become perfectly clear to him.

Released from his captivity, he hastened back to Europe to claim the
guerdon of his sufferings. History is silent respecting his adventures
until his arrival at Berytus, where the strange wild-looking man with
the uplifted arm found himself the centre of a turbulent and
mischievous rabble. As he seemed about to suffer severe ill-usage, a
personage of dignified and portly appearance hastened up, and with his
staff showered blows to right and left upon the rioters.

“Scoundrels,” he exclaimed, “finely have ye profited by my precepts,
thus to misuse an innocent stranger! But I will no longer dwell among
such barbarians. I will remove my school to Tarsus!”

The mob dispersed. The victim and his deliverer stood face to face.

“Mnesitheus!”

“Rufus!”

“Call me Rufinianus,” corrected the latter; “for such is the
appellation which I have felt it due to myself to assume, since the
enhancement of my dignity by becoming Euphronius’s successor and
son-in-law.”

“Son-in-law! Am I to lose the reward of my incredible sufferings?”

“Thou forgettest,” said Rufinianus, “that Euphronia’s hand was not
promised as the reward of any austerities, but as the meed of the most
intelligent, that is, the most acceptable, account of the Indian
philosophy, which in the opinion of the late eminent Euphronius, has
been delivered by me. But come to my chamber, and let me minister to
thy necessities.”

These having been duly attended to, Rufinianus demanded Mnesitheus’s
history, and then proceeded to narrate his own.

“On my journey homeward,” said he, “I reflected seriously on the
probable purpose of our master in sending us forth, and saw reason to
suspect that I had hitherto misapprehended it. For I could not remember
that he had ever admitted that he could have anything to learn from
other philosophers, or that he had ever exhibited the least interest in
philosophic dogmas, excepting his own. The system of the Indians, I
thought, must be either inferior to that of Euphronius, or superior. If
the former, he will not want it: if the latter, he will want it much
less. I therefore concluded that our mission was partly a concession to
public opinion, partly to enable him to say that his name was known,
and his teaching proclaimed on the very banks of the Ganges. I formed
my plan accordingly, and disregarding certain indications that I was
neither expected nor wanted, presented myself before Euphronius with a
gladsome countenance, slightly overcast by sorrow on account of thee,
whom I affirmed to have been devoured by a tiger.

“‘Well,’ said Euphronius in a disdainful tone, ‘and what about this
vaunted wisdom of the Indians?’

“‘The wisdom of the Indians,’ I replied, ‘is entirely borrowed from
Pythagoras.’

“‘Did I not tell you so? ‘Euphronius appealed to his disciples.

“‘Invariably,’ they replied.

“‘As if a barbarian could teach a Greek!’ said he.

“‘It is much if he is able to learn from one,’ said they.

“‘Pythagoras, then,’ said Euphronius addressing me,’ did not resort to
India to be instructed by the Gymnosophists?’

“‘On the contrary,’ I answered, ‘he went there to teach them, and the
little knowledge of divine matters they possess is entirely derived
from him. His mission is recorded in a barbarous poem called the
Ramayana, wherein he is figuratively represented as allying himself
with monkeys. He is worshipped all over the country under the
appellations of Siva, Kamadeva, Kali, Gautama Buddha, and others too
numerous to mention.’

“When I further proceeded to explain that a temple had been erected to
Euphronius himself on the banks of the Ganges, and that a festival,
called Durga Popja, or the Feast of Reason, had been instituted in his
honour, his good humour knew no bounds, and he granted me his
daughter’s hand without difficulty. He died a few years ago,
bequeathing me his celebrated dilemma, and I am now head of his school
and founder of the Rufinianian philosophy. I am also the author of some
admired works, especially a life of Pythagoras, and a manual of Indian
philosophy and religion. I hope for thy own sake thou wilt forbear to
contradict me: for no one will believe thee. I trust also that thou
wilt speedily overcome thy disappointment with respect to Euphronia. I
do most honestly and truthfully assure thee that for a one-armed man
like thee to marry her would be most inexpedient, inasmuch as the
defence of one’s beard from her, when she is in a state of excitement,
requires the full use of both hands, and of the feet also. But come
with me to her chamber, and I will present thee to her. She is always
taunting me with my inferiority to thee in personal attractions, and I
promise myself much innocent amusement from her discomfiture when she
finds thee as gaunt as a wolf and as black as a cinder. Only, as I have
represented thee to have been devoured by a tiger, thou wilt kindly say
that I saved thy life, but concealed the circumstance out of modesty.”

“I have learned in the Indian schools,” said Mnesitheus, “not to lie
for the benefit of others. I will not see Euphronia; I would not
disturb her ideal of me, nor mine of her. Farewell. May the Rufinianian
sect flourish! and may thy works on Pythagoras and India instruct
posterity to the tenth generation! I return to Palimbothra, where I am
held in honour on the self-same account that here renders me
ridiculous. It shall be my study to enlighten the natives respecting
their obligations to Pythagoras, whose name I did not happen to hear
while I abode among them.”




THE DUMB ORACLE


Many the Bacchi that brandish the rod:
Few that be filled with the fire of the God.

I

In the days of King Attalus, before oracles had lost their credit, one
of peculiar reputation, inspired, as was believed, by Apollo, existed
in the city of Dorylseum, in Phrygia. Contrary to usage, its
revelations were imparted through the medium of a male priest. It was
rarely left unthronged by devout questioners, whose inquiries were
resolved in writing, agreeably to the method delivered by the pious
Lucian, in his work “Concerning False Prophecy.” [*] Sometimes, on
extraordinary occasions, a voice, evidently that of the deity, was
heard declaring the response from the innermost recesses of the shrine.
The treasure house of the sanctuary was stored with tripods and
goblets, in general wrought from the precious metals; its coffers were
loaded with coins and ingots; the sacrifices of wealthy suppliants and
the copious offerings in kind of the country people provided
superabundantly for the daily maintenance of the temple servitors;
while a rich endowment in land maintained the dignity of its guardians,
and of the officiating priest. The latter reverend personage was no
less eminent for prudence than for piety; on which account the Gods had
rewarded him with extreme obesity. At length he died, whether of excess
in meat or in drink is not agreed among historians.

*) _Pseudomantis_, cap. 19-21.


The guardians of the temple met to choose a successor, and, naturally
desirous that the sanctity of the oracle should suffer no abatement,
elected a young priest of goodly presence and ascetic life; the
humblest, purest, most fervent, and most ingenuous of the sons of men.
So rare a choice might well be expected to be accompanied by some
extraordinary manifestation, and, in fact, a prodigy took place which
filled the sacred authorities with dismay. The responses of the oracle
ceased suddenly and altogether. No revelation was vouchsafed to the
pontiff in his slumbers; no access of prophetic fury constrained him to
disclose the secrets of the future; no voice rang from the shrine; and
the unanswered epistles of the suppliants lay a hopeless encumbrance on
the great altar. As a natural consequence they speedily ceased to
arrive; the influx of offerings into the treasury terminated along with
them; the temple-courts were bare of worshippers; and the only victims
whose blood smoked within them were those slain by the priest himself,
in the hope of appeasing the displeasure of Apollo. The modest
hierophant took all the blame upon his own shoulders; he did not doubt
that he had excited the Deity’s wrath by some mysterious but heinous
pollution; and was confirmed in this opinion by the unanimous verdict
of all whom he approached.

One day as he sat sadly in the temple, absorbed in painful meditation,
and pondering how he might best relieve himself of his sacred
functions, he was startled by the now unwonted sound of a footstep,
and, looking up, espied an ancient woman. Her appearance was rather
venerable than prepossessing. He recognised her as one of the inferior
ministers of the temple.

“Reverend mother,” he addressed her, “doubtless thou comest to mingle
with mine thy supplications to the Deity, that it may please him to
indicate the cause, and the remedy of his wrath.”

“No, son,” returned the venerable personage, “I propose to occasion no
such needless trouble to Apollo, or any other Divinity. I hold within
mine own hand the power of reviving the splendour of this forsaken
sanctuary, and for such consideration as thou wilt thyself pronounce
equitable, I am minded to impart the same unto thee.” And as the
astonished priest made no answer, she continued:

“My price is one hundred pieces of gold.”

“Wretch!” exclaimed the priest indignantly, “thy mercenary demand alone
proves the vanity of thy pretence of being initiated into the secrets
of the Gods. Depart my presence this moment!”

The old woman retired without a syllable of remonstrance, and the
incident soon passed from the mind of the afflicted priest. But on the
following day, at the same hour, the aged woman again stood before him,
and said:

“My price is _two_ hundred pieces of gold.”

Again she was commanded to depart, and again obeyed without a murmur.
But the adventure now occasioned the priest much serious reflection. To
his excited fancy, the patient persistency of the crone began to assume
something of a supernatural character. He considered that the ways of
the Gods are not as our ways, and that it is rather the rule than the
exception with them to accomplish their designs in the most circuitous
manner, and by the most unlikely instruments. He also reflected upon
the history of the Sibyl and her books, and shuddered to think that
unseasonable obstinacy might in the end cost the temple the whole of
its revenues. The result of his cogitations was a resolution, if the
old woman should present herself on the following day, to receive her
in a different manner.

Punctual to the hour she made her appearance, and croaked out, “My
price is _three_ hundred pieces of gold.”

“Venerable ambassadress of Heaven,” said the priest, “thy boon is
granted thee. Relieve the anguish of my bosom as speedily as thou
mayest.”

The old woman’s reply was brief and expressive. It consisted in
extending her open and hollow palm, into which the priest counted the
three hundred pieces of gold with as much expedition as was compatible
with the frequent interruptions necessitated by the crone’s depositing
each successive handful in a leather pouch; and the scrutiny, divided
between jealousy and affection, which she bestowed on each individual
coin.

“And now,” said the priest, when the operation was at length completed,
“fulfil thy share of the compact.”

“The cause of the oracle’s silence,” returned the old woman, “is the
unworthiness of the minister.”

“Alas! ’tis even as I feared,” sighed the priest. “Declare now, wherein
consists my sin?”

“It consists in this,” replied the old woman, “that the beard of thy
understanding is not yet grown; and that the egg-shell of thy
inexperience is still sticking to the head of thy simplicity; and that
thy brains bear no adequate proportion to the skull enveloping them;
and in fine, lest I seem to speak overmuch in parables, or to employ a
superfluity of epithets, that thou art an egregious nincompoop.”

And as the amazed priest preserved silence, she pursued:

“Can aught be more shameful in a religious man than ignorance of the
very nature of religion? Not to know that the term, being rendered into
the language of truth, doth therein signify deception practised by the
few wise upon the many foolish, for the benefit of both, but more
particularly the former? O silly as the crowds who hitherto have
brought their folly here, but now carry it elsewhere to the profit of
wiser men than thou! O fool! to deem that oracles were rendered by
Apollo! How should this be, seeing that there is no such person? Needs
there, peradventure, any greater miracle for the decipherment of these
epistles than a hot needle? [*] As for the supernatural voice, it doth
in truth proceed from a respectable, and in some sense a sacred
personage, being mine own when I am concealed within a certain recess
prepared for me by thy lamented predecessor, whose mistress I was in
youth, and whose coadjutor I have been in age. I am now ready to
minister to thee in the latter capacity. Be ruled by me; exchange thy
abject superstition for common sense; thy childish simplicity for
discreet policy; thy unbecoming spareness for a majestic portliness;
thy present ridiculous and uncomfortable situation for the repute of
sanctity, and the veneration of men. Thou wilt own that this is cheap
at three hundred pieces.”

*) Lucian.


The young priest had hearkened to the crone’s discourse with an
expression of the most exquisite distress. When she had finished, he
arose, and disregarding his repulsive companion’s efforts to detain
him, departed hastily from the temple.

II

It was the young priest’s purpose, as soon as he became capable of
forming one, to place the greatest possible distance between himself
and the city of Dorylæum. The love of roaming insensibly grew upon him,
and ere long his active limbs had borne him over a considerable portion
of Asia. His simple wants were easily supplied by the wild productions
of the country, supplemented when needful by the proceeds of light
manual labour. By degrees the self-contempt which had originally stung
him to desperation took the form of an ironical compassion for the
folly of mankind, and the restlessness which had at first impelled him
to seek relief in a change of scene gave place to a spirit of curiosity
and observation. He learned to mix freely with all orders of men, save
one, and rejoiced to find the narrow mysticism which he had imbibed
from his previous education gradually yielding to contact with the
great world. From one class of men, indeed, he learned nothing—the
priests, whose society he eschewed with scrupulous vigilance, nor did
he ever enter the temples of the Gods. Diviners, augurs, all that made
any pretension whatever to a supernatural character, he held in utter
abhorrence, and his ultimate return in the direction of his native
country is attributed to his inability to persevere further in the path
he was following without danger of encountering Chaldean soothsayers,
or Persian magi, or Indian gymnosophists.

He cherished, however, no intention of returning to Phrygia, and was
still at a considerable distance from that region, when one night, as
he was sitting in the inn of a small country town, his ear caught a
phrase which arrested his attention.

“As true as the oracle of Dorylæum.” The speaker was a countryman, who
appeared to have been asseverating something regarded by the rest of
the company as greatly in need of confirmation. The sudden start and
stifled cry of the ex-priest drew all eyes to him, and he felt
constrained to ask, with the most indifferent air he could assume:

“Is the oracle of Dorylæum, then, so exceedingly renowned for
veracity?”

“Whence comest thou to be ignorant of that?” demanded the countryman,
with some disdain. “Hast thou never heard of the priest Eubulides?”

“Eubulides!” exclaimed the young traveller, “that is my own name!”

“Thou mayest well rejoice, then,” observed another of the guests, “to
bear the name of one so holy and pure, and so eminently favoured by the
happy Gods. So handsome and dignified, moreover, as I may well assert
who have often beheld him discharging his sacred functions. And truly,
now that I scan thee more closely, the resemblance is marvellous. Only
that thy namesake bears with him a certain air of divinity, not equally
conspicuous in thee.”

“Divinity!” exclaimed another. “Aye, if Phœbus himself ministered at
his own shrine, he could wear no more majestic semblance than
Eubulides.”

“Or predict the future more accurately,” added a priest.

“Or deliver his oracles in more exquisite verse,” subjoined a poet.

“Yet is it not marvellous,” remarked another speaker, “that for some
considerable time after his installation the good Eubulides was unable
to deliver a single oracle?”

“Aye, and that the first he rendered should have foretold the death of
an aged woman, one of the ministers of the temple.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Eubulides, “how was that?”

“He prognosticated her decease on the following day, which accordingly
came to pass, from her being choked with a piece of gold, not lawfully
appertaining to herself, which she was endeavouring to conceal under
the root of her tongue.”

“The Gods be praised for that!” ejaculated Eubulides, under his breath.
“Pshaw! as if there were Gods! If they existed, would they tolerate
this vile mockery? To keep up the juggle—well, I know it must be so;
but to purloin my name! to counterfeit my person! By all the Gods that
are not, I will expose the cheat, or perish in the endeavour.”

He arose early on the following morning and took his way towards the
city of Dorylæum. The further he progressed in this direction, the
louder became the bruit of the oracle of Apollo, and the more emphatic
the testimonies to the piety, prophetic endowments, and personal
attractions of the priest Eubulides; his own resemblance to whom was
the theme of continual remark. On approaching the city, he found the
roads swarming with throngs hastening to the temple, about to take part
in a great religious ceremony to be held therein. The seriousness of
worship blended delightfully with the glee of the festival, and
Eubulides, who at first regarded the gathering with bitter scorn, found
his moroseness insensibly yielding to the poetic charm of the scene. He
could not but acknowledge that the imposture he panted to expose was at
least the source of much innocent happiness, and almost wished that the
importance of religion, considered as an engine of policy, had been
offered to his contemplation from this point of view, instead of the
sordid and revolting aspect in which it had been exhibited by the old
woman.

In this ambiguous frame of mind he entered the temple. Before the high
altar stood the officiating priest, a young man, the image, yet not the
image, of himself. Lineament for lineament, the resemblance was exact,
but over the stranger’s whole figure was diffused an air of majesty, of
absolute serenity and infinite superiority, which excluded every idea
of deceit, and so awed the young priest that his purpose of rushing
forward to denounce the impostor and drag him from the shrine was
immediately and involuntarily relinquished. As he stood confounded and
irresolute, the melodious voice of the hierophant rang through the
temple:

“Let the priest Eubulides stand forth.”

This summons naturally caused the greatest astonishment in every one
but Eubulides, who emerged as swiftly as he could from the swaying and
murmuring crowd, and confronted his namesake at the altar. A cry of
amazement broke from the multitude as they beheld the pair, whose main
distinction in the eyes of most was their garb. But, as they gazed, the
form of the officiating priest assumed colossal proportions; a circle
of beams, dimming sunlight, broke forth around his head; hyacinthine
locks clustered on his shoulders, his eyes sparkled with supernatural
radiance; a quiver depended at his back; an unstrung bow occupied his
hand; the majesty and benignity of his presence alike seemed augmented
tenfold. Eubulides and the crowd sank simultaneously on their knees,
for all recognised Apollo.

All was silence for a space. It was at length broken by Phœbus.

“Well, Eubulides,” inquired he, with the bland raillery of an Immortal,
“has it at length occurred to thee that I may have been long enough
away from Parnassus, filling thy place here while thou hast been
disporting thyself amid heretics and barbarians?”

The abashed Eubulides made no response. The Deity continued:

“Deem not that thou hast in aught excited the displeasure of the Gods.
In deserting their altars for Truth’s sake, thou didst render them the
most acceptable of sacrifices, the only one, it may be, by which they
set much store. But, Eubulides, take heed how thou again sufferest the
unworthiness of men to overcome the instincts of thine own nature. Thy
holiest sentiments should not have been at the mercy of a knave. If the
oracle of Dorylæum was an imposture, hadst thou no oracle in thine own
bosom? If the voice of Religion was no longer breathed from the tripod,
were the winds and waters silent, or had aught quenched the everlasting
stars? If there was no power to impose its mandates from without,
couldst thou be unconscious of a power within? If thou hadst nothing to
reveal unto men, mightest thou not have found somewhat to propound unto
them? Know this, that thou hast never experienced a more truly
religious emotion than that which led thee to form the design of
overthrowing this my temple, the abode, as thou didst deem it, of fraud
and superstition.”

“But now, Phœbus,” Eubulides ventured to reply, “shall I not return to
the shrine purified by thy presence, and again officiate as thy
unworthy minister?”

“No, Eubulides,” returned Phœbus, with a smile; “silver is good, but
not for ploughshares. Thy strange experience, thy long wanderings, thy
lonely meditations, and varied intercourse with men, have spoiled thee
for a priest, while, as I would fain hope, qualifying thee for a sage.
Some worthy person may easily be found to preside over this temple; and
by the aid of such inspiration as I may from time to time see meet to
vouchsafe him, administer its affairs indifferently well. Do thou,
Eubulides, consecrate thy powers to a more august service than
Apollo’s, to one that shall endure when Delphi and Delos know _his_ no
more.”

“To whose service, Phœbus?” inquired Eubulides.

“To the service of Humanity, my son,” responded Apollo.




DUKE VIRGIL

I

The citizens of Mantua were weary of revolutions. They had acknowledged
the suzerainty of the Emperor Frederick and shaken it off. They had had
a Podestà of their own and had shaken him off. They had expelled a
Papal Legate, incurring excommunication thereby. They had tried
dictators, consuls, prætors, councils of ten, and other numbers odd and
even, and ere the middle of the thirteenth century were luxuriating in
the enjoyment of perfect anarchy.

An assembly met daily in quest of a remedy, but its members were
forbidden to propose anything old, and were unable to invent anything
new.

“Why not consult Manto, the alchemist’s daughter, our prophetess, our
Sibyl?” the young Benedetto asked at last.

“Why not?” repeated Eustachio, an elderly man.

“Why not, indeed?” interrogated Leonardo, a man of mature years.

All the speakers were noble. Benedetto was Manto’s lover; Eustachio her
father’s friend; Leonardo his creditor. Their advice prevailed, and the
three were chosen as a deputation to wait on the prophetess. Before
proceeding formally on their embassy the three envoys managed to obtain
private interviews, the two elder with Manto’s father, the youth with
Manto herself. The creditor promised that if he became Duke by the
alchemist’s influence with his daughter he would forgive the debt; the

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