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URSUS and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a
A man, Homo a wolf. Their dispositions tallied. It
was the man who had christened the wolf: probably he
had also chosen his own name. Having found Ursus fit
for himself, he had found Homo fit for the beast. Man
and wolf turned their partnership to account at fairs, at
village fetes, at the corners of streets where passers-by
throng, and out of the need which people seem to feel
everywhere to listen to idle gossip, and to buy quack
medicine. The wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate,
diverted the crowd. It is a pleasant thing to behold the
tameness of animals. Our greatest delight is to see all the
varieties of domestication parade before us. This it is
which collects so many folks on the road of royal
processions.
Ursus and Promo went about from cross-road to
cross-road, from the High Street of Aberystwith to the High
Street of Jedburgh, from country-side to country-side,
from shire to shire, from town to town. One market
exhausted, they went on to another. Ursus lived in a small
van upon wheels, which Homo was civilised enough to draw
by day and guard by night. On bad roads, up hills, and
where there were too many ruts, or there was too much
mud, the man buckled the trace round his neck and pulled
fraternally, side by side with the wolf. They had thus
grown old together. They encamped at haphazard on a
common, m the glade of a wood, on the waste patch of
grass where roads intersect, at the outskirts of villages,
at the gates of towns, in market-places, in public walks,
on the borders of parks, before the entrances of churches.
When the cart drew up on a fair green, when the gossips
ran up open-mouthed and the curious made a circle round
the pair, Ursus harangued and Homo approved. Homo,
with a bowl in his mouth, politely made a collection among
the audience. They gained their livelihood. The wolf
was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf had been trained
by the man, or had trained himself unassisted, to divers
wolfish arts, which swelled the receipts. ``Above all things,
do not degenerate into a man,'' his friend would say to him.
Never did the wolf bite: the man did now and then.
At least, to bite was the intent of Ursus. He was a
misanthrope, and to italicise his misanthropy he had made
himself a juggler. To live, also; for the stomach has
to be consulted. Moreover, this juggler-misanthrope,
whether to add to the complexity of his being or to perfect
it, was a doctor. To be a doctor is little: Ursus was a
ventriloquist. You heard him speak without his moving
his lips. He counterfeited, so as to deceive you, any one's
accent or pronunciation. He imitated voices so exactly
that you believed you heard the people themselves. A11
alone he simulated the murmur of the crowd, and this gave
him a right to the title of Engastrimythos, which he took.
He reproduced all sorts of cries of birds, as of the thrush,
the wren, the pipit lark, otherwise called the gray cheeper,
and the ring ousel, all travelers like himself: so that at
times, when the fancy struck him, he made you aware
either of a public thoroughfare filled with the uproar of
men, or of a meadow loud with the voices of beasts-at
one time stormy as a multitude, at another fresh and
serene as the dawn. Such gifts, although rare, exist. In
the last century a man called Touzel, who imitated the
mingled utterances of men and animals, and who
counterfeited all the cries of beasts, was attached to the person
of Buffoon-to serve as a menagerie.
Ursus was sagacious, contradictory, odd, and inclined
to the singular expositions which we term fables. He
had the appearance of believing in them, and this
impudence was a part of his humour. He read people's hands,
Opened books at random and drew conclusions, told
fortunes, taught that it is perilous to meet a black mare, still
more perilous, as you start for a journey, to hear yourself
accosted by one who knows not whither you are going;
and he called himself a dealer in superstitions. He used
to say: ``There is one difference between me and the
Archbishop of Canterbury: I avow what I am.'' Hence
it was that the archbishop, justly indignant, had him one
day before him; but Ursus cleverly disarmed his grace
by reciting a sermon he had composed upon Christmas
Day, which the delighted archbishop learned by heart, and
delivered from the pulpit as his own. In consideration
thereof the archbishop pardoned Ursus.
As a doctor, Ursus wrought cures by some means or
other. He made use of aromatics; he was versed in
simples; he made the most of the immense power which
lies in a heap of neglected plants, such as the hazel, the
catkin, the white alder, the white briony, the mealy-tree,
the traveler's joy, the buckthorn. He treated phthisis
with the sundew; at opportune moments he would use
the leaves of the spurge, which plucked at the bottom are
a purgative and plucked at the top, an emetic. He cured
sore throat by means of the vegetable excrescence called
Jew's ear. He knew the rush which cures the ox and the
mint which cures the horse. He was well acquainted with
the beauties and virtues of the herb mandragora, which,
as every one knows, is of both sexes. He had many
recipes. He cured burns with the salamander wool, of
which, according to Pliny, Nero had a napkin. Ursus
possessed a retort and a flask; he effected transmutations;
he sold panaceas. It was said of him that he had once
been for a short time in Bedlam; they had done him the
honour to take him for a madman, but had set him free
on discovering that he was only a poet. This story was
probably not true; we have all to submit to some such
legend about us.
The fact is, Ursus was a bit of a savant, a man of taste,
and an old Latin poet. He was learned in two forms;
he Hippocratised and he Pindarised. He could have vied
in bombast with Rapin and Vida. He could have
composed Jesuit tragedies in a style not less triumphant than
that of Father Bouhours. It followed from his familiarity
with the venerable rhythms and metres of the ancients,
that he had peculiar figures of speech, and a whole family
of classical metaphors. He would say of a mother
followed by her two daughters, There is a dactyl; of a father
preceded by his two sons, There is an anapæst; and of a
little child walking between its grandmother and
grandfather, There is an amphimacer. So much knowledge
could only end in starvation. The school of Salerno says,
``Eat little and often.'' Ursus ate little and seldom, thus
obeying one-half the precept and disobeying the other;
but this was the fault of the public, who did not always
Hock to him, and who did not often buy.
Ursus was wont to say: ``The expectoration of a
sentence is a relief. The wolf is comforted by its howl, the
sheep by its wool, the forest by its finch, woman by her
love, and the philosopher by his epiphonema.'' Ursus at
a pinch composed comedies, which, in recital, he all but
acted; this helped to sell the drugs. Among other works,
he had composed a heroic pastoral in honour of Sir Hugh
Middleton, who in 1608 brought a river to London. The
river was lying peacefully in Hertfordshire, twenty miles
from London: the knight came and took possession of it.
He brought a brigade of six hundred men, armed with
shovels and pickaxes; set to breaking up the ground,
scooping it out in one place, raising it in another-now
thirty feet high, now twenty feet deep; made wooden
aqueducts high in air; and at different points constructed
eight hundred bridges of stone, bricks, and timber. One
fine morning the river entered London, which was short
of water. Ursus transformed all these vulgar details into
a fine Eclogue between the Thames and the New River,
in which the former invited the latter to come to him,
and offered her his bed, saying, ``I am too old to please
women, but I am rich enough to pay them''-an ingenious
and gallant conceit to indicate how Sir Hugh Middleton
had completed the work at his own expense.
Ursus was great in soliloquy. Of a disposition at once
unsociable and talkative, desiring to see no one, yet
wishing to converse with some one, he got out of the difficulty
by talking to himself. Any one who has lived a solitary
life knows how deeply seated monologue is in one's nature.
Speech imprisoned frets to find a vent. To harangue
space is an outlet. To speak out aloud when alone is as
it were to have a dialogue with the divinity which is
within. It was, as is well known, a custom of Socrates;
he declaimed to himself. Luther did the same. Ursus
took after those great men. He had the hermaphrodite
faculty of being his own audience. He questioned himself,
answered himself, praised himself, blamed himself. You
heard him in the street soliloquising in his van. The
passers-by, who have their own way of appreciating clever
people, used to say: He is an idiot. As we have just
observed, he abused himself at times; but there were times
also when he rendered himself justice. One day, in one
of these allocations addressed to himself, he was heard
to cry out, ``I have studied vegetation in all its
mysteries-in the stalk, in the bud, in the sepal, in the stamen, in the
carpet, in the mule, in the spore, in the theca, and in the
apothecium. I have thoroughly sifted chromatics, osmosy,
and chymosy; that is to say, the formation of colours, of
smell, and of taste.'' There was something fatuous,
doubtless, in this certificate which Ursus gave to Ursus; but let
those who have not thoroughly sifted chromatics osmosy,
and chymosy cast the first stone at him.
Fortunately Ursus had never gone into the Low
Countries; there they would certainly have weighed him, to
ascertain whether he was of the normal weight, above or
below which a man is a sorcerer. In Holland this weight
was sagely fixed by law. Nothing was simpler or more
ingenious. It was a clear test. They put you in a scale,
and the evidence was conclusive if you broke the
equilibrium. Too heavy, you were hanged; too light, you were
burned. To this day the scales in which sorcerers were
weighed may be seen at Oudewater, but they are now
used for weighing cheeses; how religion has degenerated!
Ursus would certainly have had a crow to pluck with those
scales. In his travels he kept away from Holland, and
he did well. Indeed, we believed that he used never to
leave the United Kingdom.
However this may have been, he was very poor and
morose, and having made the acquaintance of Homo in a
wood, a taste for a wandering life had come over him.
He had taken the wolf into partnership, and with him had
gone forth on the highways, living in the open air the
great life of chance. He had a great deal of industry and
of reserve, and great skill in everything connected with
healing operations, restoring the sick to health, and in
working wonders peculiar to himself. He was considered
a clever mountebank and a good doctor. As may be
imagined, he passed for a wizard as well-not much indeed,
only a little, for it was unwholesome in those days to be
considered a friend of the devil. To tell the truth, Ursus,
by his passion for pharmacy and his love of plants, laid
himself open to suspicion, seeing that he often went to
gather herbs in rough thickets where grew Lucifer's
salads, and where, as has been proved by the Counselor de
l'Ancre, there is a risk of meeting in the evening mist a
man who comes out of the earth, ``blind of the right eye
barefooted, without a cloak, and a sword by his side.'' But
for the matter of that, Ursus, although eccentric in manner
and disposition, was too good a fellow to invoke or disperse
hail, to make faces appear, to kill a man with the torment
of excessive dancing, to suggest dreams fair or foul and
full of terror, and to cause the birth of cocks with four
wings. He had no such mischievous tricks. He was
incapable of certain abominations, such as, for instance,
speaking German, Hebrew, or Greek without having
learned them, which is a sign of unpardonable
wickedness, or of a natural infirmity proceeding from a morbid
humour. If Ursus spoke Latin, it was because he knew
it. He would never have allowed himself to speak Syriac,
which he did not know. Besides, it is asserted that Syriac
is the language spoken in the midnight meetings at which
uncanny people worship the devil. In medicine he justly
preferred Galen to Cardan; Cardan, although a learned
man, being but an earthworm to Galen.
To sum up, Ursus was not one of those persons who
live in fear of the police. His van was long enough and
wide enough to allow of his lying down in it on a box
containing his not very sumptuous apparel. He owned
a lantern, several wigs, and some utensils suspended from
nails, among which were musical instruments. He
possessed, besides, a bearskin with which he covered himself
on his days of grand performance. He called this
putting on full-dress. He used to say, ``I have two skins
this is the real one,'' pointing to the bearskin.
The little house on wheels belonged to himself and to
the wolf. Besides this house, his retort, and his wolf,
he had a flute and a violoncello on which he played
prettily. He concocted his own elixirs. His visits yielded
him enough to sup on sometimes. In the top of his van
was a hole, through which passed the pipe of a cast-iron
stove; so close to his bed as to scorch the wood of it. The
stove had two compartments; in one of them Ursus cooked
his chemicals, and in the other his potatoes. At night
the wolf slept under the van, amicably secured by a chain.
Homo's hair was black, that of Ursus, gray; Ursus was
fifty, unless, indeed, he was sixty. He accepted his
destiny to such an extent that, as we have just seen, he ate
potatoes, the trash on which at that time they fed pigs
and convicts. He ate them indignant, but resigned. He
was not tall-he was long. He was bent and melancholy.
The bowed frame of an old man is the settlement in the
architecture of life. Nature had formed him for
sadness. He found it difficult to smile, and he had never
been able to weep, so that he was deprived of the
consolation of tears as well as of the palliative of joy. An
old man is a thinking ruin; and such a ruin was Ursus.
He had the loquacity of a charlatan, the leanness of a
prophet, the irascibility of a charged mine: such was
Ursus. In his youth he had been a philosopher in the
house of a lord.
This was 180 years ago, when men were more like
wolves than they are now.
Not so very much, though.
HOMO was no ordinary wolf. From his appetite for
medlars and potatoes he might have been taken for a
prairie wolf; from his dark hide, for a lycaon; and from
his howl, prolonged into a bark, for a dog of Chili. But
no one has as yet observed the eyeball of a dog of Chili
sufficiently to enable us to determine whether he be not a
fox; and Homo was a real wolf. He was five feet long,
which is a fine length for a wolf, even in Lithuania, he
was very strong; he looked at you askance, which was not
his fault; he had a soft tongue, with which he occasionally
licked Ursus; he had a narrow brush of short bristles on
his backbone, and he was lean with the wholesome leanness
of a forest life. Before he knew Ursus and had a
carriage to draw, he thought nothing of doing his fifty miles
a night. Ursus, meeting him in a thicket near a stream
of running water, had conceived a high opinion of him
from seeing the skill and sagacity with which he fished
out crayfish, and welcomed him as an honest and genuine
Koupara wolf, of the kind called crab-eater.
As a beast of burden, Ursus preferred Homo to a
donkey. He would have felt repugnance to having his
hut drawn by an ass; he thought too highly of the ass for
that. Moreover, he had observed that the ass, a
four-legged thinker, little understood by men, has a habit of
cocking his ears uneasily when philosophers talk nonsense.
In life the ass is a third person between our thoughts and
ourselves, and acts as a restraint. As a friend, Ursus
preferred Homo to a dog, considering that the love of a
wolf is more rare.
Hence it was that Homo sufficed for Ursus. Homo
was for Ursus more than a companion, he was an
analogue. Ursus used to pat the wolf's empty ribs, saying:
``I have found the second volume of myself!'' Again he
said, ``When I am dead, any one wishing to know me need
only study Homo. I shall leave a true copy behind me.''
The English law, not very lenient to beasts of the
forest, might have picked a quarrel with the wolf, and have
put him to trouble for his assurance in going freely about
the towns: but Homo took advantage of the immunity
granted by a statute of Edward IV to servants: ``Every
servant in attendance on his master is free to come and
go.'' Besides, a certain relaxation of the law had resulted
with regard to wolves, in consequence of its being the
fashion of the ladies of the Court, under the later Stuarts,
to have, instead of dogs, little wolves, called adives, about
the size of cats, which were brought from Asia at great
cost.
Ursus had communicated to Homo a portion of his
talents: such as to stand upright, to restrain his rage into
sulkiness, to growl instead of howling, etc.; and on his
part, the wolf had taught the man what he knew-to do
without a roof, without bread and fire, to prefer hunger
in the woods to slavery in a palace.
The van, hut, and vehicle in one, which traversed so
many different roads without, however, leaving Great
Britain, had four wheels, with shaft for the wolf and a
splinter-bar for the man. The splinter-bar came into use
when the roads were bad. The van was strong, although
it was built of light boards like a dovecot. In front there
was a glass door with a little balcony used for orations,
which had something of the character of the platform
tempered by an air of the pulpit. At the back there was
a door with a practicable panel. By lowering the three
steps which turned on a hinge below the door, access was
gained to the hut, which at night was securely fastened
with bolt and lock. Rain and snow had fallen plentifully
on it; it had been painted, but of what colour it was
difficult to say, change of season being to vans what changes
of reign are to courtiers. In front, outside, was a
board-a kind of frontispiece, on which the following
inscription might once have been deciphered; it was in black
letters on a white ground, but by degrees the characters had
become confused and blurred:
``By friction gold loses every year a fourteen-hundredth
part of its bulk. This is what is called the Wear. Hence
it follows that on fourteen hundred millions of gold in
circulation throughout the world, one million is lost
annually. This million dissolves into dust, flies away, floats
about, is reduced to atoms, charges, drugs, weighs down
consciences, amalgamates with the souls of the rich whom
it renders proud, and with those of the poor whom it
renders brutish.''
The inscription, rubbed and blotted by the rain and by
kindness of nature, was fortunately illegible, for it is
possible that its philosophy concerning the inhalation of
gold, at the same time both enigmatical and lucid, might
not have been to the taste of the sheriffs, the
provost-marshals, and other big-wigs of the law. English
legislation did not trifle in those days. It did not take much
to make a man a felon. The magistrates were ferocious
by tradition, and cruelty was a matter of routine. The
judges of assize increased and multiplied. Jefferies had
become a breed.
IN the interior of the van there were two other
inscriptions. Above the box, on a whitewashed plank, a hand
had written in ink as follows:
II II
III III
``The Baron, peer of England, wears a cap with six pearls. The coronet begins with the rank of Viscount. The Viscount wears a coronet of which the pearls are without number. The Earl a coronet with the pearls upon points, mingled with strawberry leaves placed low between. The Marquis, one with pearls and leaves on the same level. The Duke, one with strawberry leaves alone-no pearls. The Royal Duke, a circlet of crosses and fleurs-de-lis. The Prince of Wales, crown like that of the King, but unclosed.
``The Duke is a most high and most puissant prince, the Marquis and Earl most noble and puissant lord, the Viscount noble and puissant lord, the Baron a trusty lord. The Duke is his Grace; the other Peers their Lordships. Most honourable is higher than right honourable.
``Lords who are peers are lords in their own right. Lords who are not peers are lords by courtesy:-there are no real lords, excepting such as are peers.
``The House of Lords is a chamber and a court, Concilium et Curia, legislature and court of justice. The Commons, who are the people, when ordered to the bar of the Lords, humbly present themselves bareheaded before the peers, who remain covered. The Commons send up their bills by forty members, who present the bill with three low bows. The Lords send their bills to the Commons by a mere clerk. In case of disagreement, the two Houses confer in the Painted Chamber, the Peers seated and covered, the Commons standing and bareheaded.
``Peers go to Parliament in their coaches in file; the Commons do not. Some peers go to Westminster in open four-wheeled chariots. The use of these and of coaches emblazoned with coats-of-arms and coronets is allowed only to peers, and forms a portion of their dignity.
``Barons have the same rank as bishops. To be a baron peer of England, it is necessary to be in possession of a tenure from the king per Baroniam integram, by full barony. The full barony consists of thirteen knights' fees and one-third part, each knight's fee being of the value of 20£ sterling, which makes in all 400 marks. The head of a barony (Caput baroniæ) is a castle disposed by inheritance, as England herself-that is to say, descending to daughters if there be no sons, and in that case going to the eldest daughter, cæteris filiabus aliundè satisfactis.2
``Barons have the degree of lord: in Saxon, laford; dominus in high Latin; Lordus in low Latin. The eldest and younger sons of viscounts and barons are the first esquires in the kingdom. The eldest sons of peers take precedence of knights of the garter. The younger sons do not. The eldest son of a viscount comes after all barons, and precedes all baronets. Every daughter of a peer is a Lady. Other English girls are plain Mistress.
``All judges rank below peers. The sergeant wears a lambskin tippet; the judge one of patchwork, de minuto vario, made up of a variety of little white furs, always excepting ermine. Ermine is reserved for peers and the king.
``A lord never takes an oath, either to the crown or the law. His word suffices; he says, Upon my honour.
``By a law of Edward the Sixth, peers have the privilege of committing manslaughter. A peer who kills a man without premeditation is not prosecuted.
``The persons of peers are inviolable.
``A peer can not be held in durance, save in the Tower of London.
``A writ of supplicavit can not be granted against a peer.
``A peer sent for by the king has the right to kill one or two deer in the royal park.
``A peer holds in his castle a baron's court of justice.
``It is unworthy of a peer to walk the street in a cloak, followed by two footmen. He should only show himself attended by a great train of gentlemen of his household.
``A peer can be amerced only by his peers, and never to any greater amount than five pounds, excepting in the case of a duke, who can be amerced ten.
``A peer may retain six aliens born, any other Englishman but four.
``A peer can have wine custom-free; an earl eight tons.
``A peer is alone exempt from presenting himself before the sheriff of the circuit.
``A peer can not be assessed toward the militia.
``When it pleases a peer he raises a regiment and gives it to the king; thus have done their graces the Dukes of Athol, Hamilton, and Northumberland.
``A peer can hold only of a peer.
``In a civil cause he can demand the adjournment of the case, if there be not at least one knight on the jury.
``A peer nominates his own chaplains. A baron appoints three chaplains; a viscount four; an earl and a marquis five; a duke six.
``A peer can not be put to the rack, even for high treason. A peer can not be branded on the hand. A peer is a clerk, though he knows not how to read. In law he knows.
``A duke has a right to a canopy, or cloth of state, in all places where the king is not present; a viscount may have one in his house; a baron has a cover of assay, which may be held uncler his cup while he drinks. A baroness has the right to have her train borne by a man in the presence of a viscountess.
``Eighty-six tables, with five hundred dishes, are served every day in the royal palace at each meal.3
``If a plebeian strike a lord, his hand is cut off.
``A lord is very nearly a king.
``The king is very nearly a god.
``The earth is a lordship.
``The English address God as my lord!''
Opposite this writing was written a second one, in the same fashion, which ran thus:-
SATISFACTION WHICH MUST SUFFICE THOSE WHO HAVE NOTHING
``Henry Auverquerque, Earl of Grantham, who sits in the House of Lords between the Earl of Jersey and the Earl of Greenwich, has a hundred thousand a year. To his lordship belongs the palace of Grantham Terrace, built all of marble and famous for what is called the labyrinth of passages-a curiosity which contains the scarlet corridor in marble of Sarancolin, the brown corridor in lumachel of Astracan, the white corridor in marble of Lani, the black corridor in marble of Alabanda, the gray corridor in marble of Staremma, the yellow corridor in marble of Hesse, the green corridor in marble of the Tyrol, the red corridor, half cherry spotted marble of Bohemia, half lumachel of Cordova, the blue corridor in turquin of Genoa, the violet in granite of Catalonia, the mourning-hued corridor veined black and white in slate of Murviedro, the pink corridor in cipolin of the Alps, the pearl corridor in lumachel of Nonetta, and the corridor of all colours, called the courtiers' corridor, in motley.
``Richard Lowther, Viscount Lonsdale, owns Lowther in Westmoreland, which has a magnificent approach, and a flight of entrance steps which seem to invite the ingress of kings.
``Richard, Earl of Scarborough, Viscount and Baron Lumley of Lumley Castle, Viscount Lumley of Waterford in Ireland, and Lord Lieutenant and Vice-Admiral of the county of Northumberland and of Durham, both city and country, owns the double castleward of old and new Sandbeck, where you admire a superb railing, in the form of a semicircle, surrounding the basin of a matchless fountain. He has, besides, his castle of Lumley.
``Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, has his domain of Holderness, with baronial towers, and large gardens laid out in French fashion, where he drives in his coach-and-six, preceded by two outriders, as becomes a peer of England.
``Charles Beauelerc, Duke of St. Albans, Earl of Burford, Baron Hedington, Grand Falconer of England, has an abode at Windsor, regal even by the side of the king's.
``Charles Bodville Robartes, Baron Robartes of Truro, Viscount Bodmin, and Earl of Radnor, owns Wimpole in Cambridgeshire, which is as three palaces in one, having three façades, one bowed and two triangular. The approach is by an avenue of trees four deep.
``The most noble and most puissant Lord Philip, Baron Herbert of Cardiff, Earl of Montgomery and of Pembroke, Ross of Kendall, Parr, Fitzhugh, Marmion, St. Quentin, and Herbert of Shurland, Warden of the Stannaries in the counties of Cornwall and Devon, hereditary visitor of Jesus College, possesses the wonderful gardens at Wilton, where there are two sheaf-like fountains, finer than those of his most Christian Majesty King Louis XIV at Versailles.
``Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, owns Somerset House on the Thames, which is equal to the Villa Pamphili at Rome. On the chimney-piece are seen two porcelain vases of the dynasty of the Yuens, which are worth half a million in French money.
``In Yorkshire, Arthur, Lord Ingram, Viscount Ire in, has Temple Newsam, which is entered under a triumphal arch, and which has large wide roofs resembling Moorish terraces.
``Robert, Lord Ferrers of Chartly, Bourchier and Louvaine, has Staunton Harold in Leicestershire, of which the park is geometrically planned in the shape of a temple with a façade, and in front of the piece of water is the great church with the square belfry, which belongs to his lordship.
``In the county of Northampton, Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, member of His Majesty's Privy Council, possesses Althorp, at the entrance of which is a railing with four columns surmounted by groups in marble.
``Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, has, in Surrey, New Park, rendered magnificent by its sculptured pinnacles, its circular lawn belted by trees, and its woodland, at the extremity of which is a little mountain, artistically rounded, and surmounted by a large oak, which can be seen from afar.
``Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, possesses Bretby Hall in Derbyshire, with a splendid clock tower, falconries, warrens, and very fine sheets of water, long, square, and oval, one of which is shaped like a mirror, and has two jets, which throw the water to a great height.
``Charles Cornwallis, Baron Cornwallis of Eye, owns Broome Hall, a palace of the fourteenth century.
``The most noble Algernon Capel, Viscount Maiden, Earl of Essex, has Cashiobury in Hertfordshire, a seat which has the shape of a capital H. and which rejoices sportsmen with its abundance of game.
``Charles, Lord Ossulston, owns Darnley in Middlesex, approached by Italian gardens.
``James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, has, seven leagues from London, Hatfield House, with its four lordly pavilions, its belfry in the centre, and its grand courtyard of black and white slabs, like that of St. Germain. This palace, which has a frontage 272 feet in length, was built in the reign of James I by the Lord High Treasurer of England, the great-grandfather of the present earl. To be seen there is the bed of one of the Countesses of Salisbury; it is of inestimable value and made entirely of Brazilian wood, which is a panacea against the bites of serpents, and which is called milhombres-that is to say, a thousand men. On this bed is inscribed, Honi soit qui mal y pense.
``Edward Rich, Earl of Warwick and Holland, is owner of Warwick Castle, where whole oaks are burned in the fireplaces.
``In the parish of Sevenoaks, Charles Sackville, Baron Buckhurst, Baron Cranfield, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, is owner of Knowle, which is as large as a town and is composed of three palaces standing parallel one behind the other, like ranks of infantry. There are six covered flights of steps on the principal frontage, and a gate under a keep with four towers.
``Thomas Thynne, Baron Thynne of Warminster, and Viscount Weymouth, possesses Longleat, in which there are as many chimneys, cupolas, pinnacles, pepper-boxes, pavilions, and turrets, as at Chambord, in France, which belongs to the king.
``Henry Howard, Earl of Suffolk, owns, twelve leagues from London, the palace of Audley End in Essex, which in grandeur and dignity scarcely yields the palm to the Escorial of the King of Spain.
``In Bedfordshire, Wrest House and Park, which is a whole district, inclosed by ditches, walls, woodlands, rivers, and hills, belongs to Henry, Marquis of Kent.
``Hampton Court, in Herefordshire, with its strong embattled keep, and its gardens bounded by a piece of water which divides them from the forest, belongs to Thomas, Lord Coningsby.
``Grimsthorp, in Lincolnshire, with its long façade intersected by turrets in pale, its park, its fish-ponds, its pheasantries, its sheepfolds, its lawns, its grounds planted with rows of trees, its groves, its walks, its shrubberies, its flower-beds and borders, formed in square and lozenge-shape, and resembling great carpets; its race-courses, and the majestic sweep for carnages to turn in at the entrance of the house-belongs to Robert, Earl Lindsey, hereditary lord of the forest of Waltham.
``Up Park, in Sussex, a square house, with two symmetrical belfried pavilions on each side of the great courtyard, belongs to the Right Honourable Forde, Baron Grey of Werke, Viscount Glendale and Earl of Tankerville.
``Newnham Paddox, in Warwickshire, which has two quadrangular fish-ponds and a gabled archway with a large window of four panes, belongs to the Earl of Denbigh, who is also Count von Rheinfelden, in Germany.
``Wytham Abbey, in Berkshire, with its French garden in which there are four curiously trimmed arbours, and its great embattled towers, supported by two bastions, belongs to Montague, Earl of Abingdon, who also owns Rycote, of which he is Baron, and the principal door of which bears the device Virtus ariete fortior.
``William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, has six dwelling-places, of which Chatsworth (two-storied, and of the finest order of Grecian architecture) is one.
``The Viscount of Kinalmeaky, who is Earl of Cork, in Ireland, is owner of Burlington House, Piccadilly, with its extensive gardens, reaching to the fields outside London; he is also owner of Chiswick, where there are nine magnificent lodges; he also owns Londesborough, Hellish is a new house by the side of an old palace.
``The Duke of Beaufort owns Chelsea, which contains two Gothic buildings, and a Florentine one; he has also Badminton, in Gloucestershire, a residence from which a number of avenues branch out like rays from a star. The most noble and puissant Prince Henry, Duke of Beaufort, is also Marquis and Earl of Worcester, Earl of Glamorgan, Viscount Grosmont, and Baron Herbert of Chepstow, Ragland, and Crower, Baron Beaufort of Caldecott Castle, and Baron de Bottetourt.
``John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, and Marquis of Clare, owns Bolsover, with its majestic square keeps; his also is Haughton, in Nottinghamshire, where a round pyramid, made to imitate the Tower of Babel, stands in the centre of a basin of water.
``William, Earl of Craven, Viscount Uffington, and Baron Craven of Hamstead Marshall, owns Combe Abbey in Warwickshire, where is to be seen the finest water-jet in England, and in Berkshire two baronies, Hamstead Marshall, on the façade of which are five Gothic lanterns sunk in the wall, and Ashdown Park, which is a country seat situate at the point of intersection of cross-roads in a forest.
``Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and Hunkerville, Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, derives his title from the castle of Clancharlie, built in 912 by Edward the Elder, as a defence against the Danes. Besides Hunkerville House, in London, which is a palace, he has Corleone Lodge at Windsor, which is another, and eight castlewards, one at Burton-on-Trent, with a royalty on the carriage of plaster of Paris; then Grumdaith Humble, Moricambe, Trewardraith, Hell-Kesters (where there is a miraculous well ), Phillinmore, with its turf bogs, Reculver, near the ancient city Vagniac, Vinecaunton, on the Moel-eulle Mountain; besides nineteen boroughs and villages with reeves, and the whole of Penneth chase, all of which brings his lordship 40,000£ a year.
``The 172 peers enjoying their dignities under James II possess among them altogether a revenue of 1,272,000£ sterling a year, which is the eleventh part of the revenue of England.''
In the margin, opposite the last name (that of Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie), there was a note in the handwriting of Ursus: Rebel; in exile; houses, lands, and chattels sequestrated. It is well.
URSUS admired Homo. One admires one's like. It is
a law.
To be always raging inwardly and grumbling
outwardly was the normal condition of Ursus. He was the
malcontent of creation. By nature he was a man ever in
opposition. He took the world unkindly; he gave his
satisfecit to no one and to nothing. The bee did not atone,
by its honey-making, for its sting; a full-blown rose did
not absolve the sun for yellow fever and black vomit. It
is probable that in secret Ursus criticised Providence a
good deal. ``Evidently,'' he would say, ``the devil works
by a spring, and the wrong that God does is having let go
the trigger.'' He approved of none but princes, and he
had his own peculiar way of expressing his approbation.
One day, when James II made a gift to the Virgin in a
Catholic chapel in Ireland of a massive gold lamp, Ursus,
passing that way with Homo, who was more indifferent to
such things, broke out in admiration before the crowd, and
exclaimed-Ït is certain that the blessed Virgin wants a
lamp much more than those barefooted children there
require shoes.''
Such proofs of his loyalty, and such evidences of his
respect for established powers, probably contributed in no
small degree to make the magistrates tolerate his
vagabond life and his low alliance with a wolf. Sometimes of
an evening, through the weakness of friendship, he
allowed Homo to stretch his limbs and wander at liberty
about the caravan. The wolf was incapable of an abuse
of confidence, and behaved in society, that is to say among
men, with the discretion of a poodle. All the same, if
bad-tempered officials had to be dealt with, difficulties
might have arisen; so Ursus kept the honest wolf chained
up as much as possible.
From a political point of view his writing about gold,
not very intelligible in itself, and now become
undecipherable, was but a smear, and gave no handle to the
enemy. Even after the time of James II, and under the
``respectable'' reign of William and Mary, his caravan
might have been seen peacefully going; its rounds of the
little English country towns. He traveled freely from
one end of Great Britain to the other, selling his philtres
and phials, and sustaining, with the assistance of his wolf,
his quack mummeries; and he passed with ease through
the meshes of the nets which the police at that period had
spread all over England in order to sift wandering gangs,
and especially to stop the progress of the Comprachicos.
This was right enough. Ursus belonged to no gang.
Ursus lived with tarsus, a tête-à-tète, into which the wolf
gently thrust his nose. If Ursus could have had his way,
he would have been a Caribee; that being impossible, he
preferred to be alone. The solitary man is a modified
savage, accepted by civilisation. He wanders most, is
most alone; hence his continual change of place. To
remain anywhere long suffocated him with the sense of being
tamed. He passed his life in passing on his way. The
sight of towns increased his taste for brambles, thickets,
thorns, and holes in the rock. His home was the forest.
He did not feel himself much' out of his element in the
murmur of crowded streets, which is like enough to the
bluster of trees. The crowd to some extent satisfies our
taste for the desert. What he disliked in his van was its
having a door and windows, and thus resembling a house.
He would have realised his ideal had he been able to put a
cave on four wheels and travel in a den.
He did not smile, as we have already said, but he used
to laugh; sometimes, indeed frequently, a bitter laugh.
There is consent in a smile, while a laugh is often a refusal.
His great business was to hate the human race. He was
implacable in that hate. Having made it clear that human
life is a dreadful thing; having observed the superposition
of evils, kings on the people, war on kings, the plague on
war, famine on the plague, folly on everything, having
proved a certain measure of chastisement in the mere fact
of existence, having recognised that death is a deliverance,
when they brought him a sick man he cured him; he had
cordials and beverages to prolong the lives of the old. He
put lame cripples on their legs again, and hurled this
sarcasm at them, ``There, you are on your paws once more,
may you walk along in this valley of tears!'' When he saw
a poor man dying of hunger, he gave him all the pence he
had about him, growling out, ``Live on, you wretch! eat!
last a long time! It is not I who would shorten your
penal servitude.'' After which, he would rub his hands
and say, ``I do men all the harm I can.''
Through the little window at the back, passers-by could
read on the ceiling of the van these words, written within,
but visible from without, inscribed with charcoal, in big
letters-
WHO now knows the word Comprachicos, and who
knows its meaning?
The Comprachicos or Comprapequeños were a hideous
and nondescript association of wanderers, famous in the
17th century, forgotten in the 18th, unheard of in the
19th. The Comprachicos are like the ``succession
powder,'' an ancient social characteristic detail. They are part
of old human ugliness. To the great eye of history,
which sees everything collectively, the Comprachicos
belong to the colossal fact of slavery. Joseph sold by his
brethren is a chapter in their story. The Comprachicos
have left their traces in the penal laws of Spain and
England. You find here and there in the dark confusion
of English laws the impress of this horrible truth, like
the footprint of a savage in a forest.
Comprachicos, the same as Comprapequeños, is a
compound Spanish word signifying Child-buyers.
The Comprachicos traded in children. They bought
and sold them. They did not steal them. The
kidnapping of children is another branch of industry. And
what did they make of these children?
Monsters.
Why monsters?
To laugh at.
The populace must needs laugh; and kings too. The
mountebank is wanted in the streets; the jester at the
Louvre. The one is called a Clown, the other a Fool.
The efforts of man to procure himself pleasure are at
times worthy of the attention of the philosopher.
What are we sketching in these few preliminary pages
A chapter in the most terrible of books; a book which
might be entitled-"The Farming of the Unhappy by
the Happy.
A CHILD destined to be a plaything for men-such a
thing has existed; such a thing exists even now. In
simple and savage times such a thing constituted an especial
trade. The 17th century, called the great century, was
of those times. It was a century very Byzantine in tone.
It combined corrupt simplicity with delicate ferocity; a
curious variety of civilisation. A tiger with a simper.
Madame de Sevigne minces on the subject of the fagot
and the wheel. That century traded a good deal in
children. Flattering historians have concealed the sore, but
have divulged the remedy, Vincent de Paul.
In order that a human toy should succeed, he must be
taken early. The dwarf must be fashioned when young.
We play with childhood. But a well-formed child is not
very amusing; a hunchback is better fun.
Hence grew an art. There were trainers who took a
man and made him an abortion; they took a face and
made a muzzle; they stunted growth; they kneaded the
features. The artificial production of teratological cases
had its rules. It was quite a science; what one can
imagine as the antithesis of orthopedy. Where God had
put a look, their art put a squint; where God had made
harmony, they made discord; where God had made the
perfect picture, they re-established the sketch; and, in
the eyes of connoisseurs, it was the sketch which was
perfect. They debased animals as well; they invented
piebald horses. Turenne rode a piebald horse. In our
own days do they not dye dogs blue and green? Nature
is our canvas. Man has always wished to add something
to God's work. Man retouches creation, sometimes for
better, sometimes for worse. The Court buffoon was
nothing but an attempt to lead back man to the monkey.
It was a progress the wrong way. A masterpiece in
retrogression. At the same time they tried to make a man
of the monkey. Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland and
Countess of Southampton, had a marmoset for a page.
Frances Sutton, Baroness of Dudley, eighth peeress in
the bench of barons, had tea served by a baboon clad in
gold brocade, which her ladyship called My Black.
Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, used to go and take
her seat in Parliament in a coach with armorial bearings,
behind which stood, their muzzles stuck up in the air, three
Cape monkeys in grand livery. A Duchess of
Medina-Celi, whose toilet Cardinal Pole witnessed, had her
stockings put on by an orang-outang. These monkeys raised
in the scale were a counterpoise to men brutalised and
bestialised. This promiscuousness of man and beast,
desired by the great, was especially prominent in the case
of the dwarf and the dog. The dwarf never quitted the
dog, which was always bigger than himself. The dog
was the pair of the dwarf; it was as if they were coupled
with a collar. This juxtaposition is authenticated by a
mass of domestic records; notably by the portrait of
Jeffrey Hudson, dwarf of Henrietta of France, daughter
of Henri IV, and wife of Charles I.
To degrade man tends to deform him. The
suppression of his state was completed by disfigurement.
Certain vivisectors of that period succeeded marvellously well
in effacing from the human face the divine effigy.
Doctor Conquest, member of the Amen-Street College, and
judicial visitor of the chemists' shops of London, wrote
a book in Latin on this pseudo-surgery, the processes of
which he describes. If we are to believe Justus of
Carrickfergus, the inventor of this branch of surgery was
a monk named Avonmore; an Irish word signifying Great
The dwarf of the Elector Palatine, Perkeo, whose
elegy-or ghost-springs from a magical box in the cave of
Heidelberg, was a remarkable specimen of this science,
very varied in its applications. It fashioned heinous the
law of whose existence was hideously simple: it
them to suffer, and commanded them to amuse.
permitted
THE manufacture of monsters was practiced on a large
scale, and comprised various branches.
The Sultan required them, so did the Pope; the one to
guard his women, the other to say his prayers. These were
of a peculiar kind, incapable of reproduction. Scarcely
human beings, they were useful to voluptuousness and to
religion. The seraglio and the Sistine Chapel utilised the
same species of monsters; fierce in the former case, mild
in the latter.
They knew how to produce things in those days which
are not produced now; they had talents which we lack,
and it is not without reason that some good folk cry out
that the decline has come. We no longer know how to
sculpture living human flesh; this is consequent on the
loss of the art of torture. Men were once virtuosi in that
respect, but are so no longer; the art has become so
simplified that it will soon disappear altogether. In cutting
the limbs of living men, in opening their bellies and in
dragging out their entrails, phenomena were grasped on
the moment and discoveries made. We are obliged to
renounce these experiments now, and are thus deprived
of the progress which surgery made by aid of the
executioner.
The vivisection of former days was not limited to the
manufacture of phenomena for the market-place,
of buffoons for the palace (a species of augmentative of the
courtier), and eunuchs for sultans and popes. It abounded
in varieties. One of its triumphs was the manufacture
of cocks for the King of England.
It was the custom, in the palace of the kings of
England, to have a sort of watchman, who crowed like a cock.
This watcher, awake while all others slept, ranged the
palace, and raised from hour to hour the cry of the
farmyard, repeating it as often as was necessary, and thus
supplying a clock. This man, promoted to be cock, had in
childhood undergone the operation of the pharynx, which
was part of the art described by Dr. Conquest. Under
Charles II, the salivation inseparable to the operation
having disgusted the Duchess of Portsmouth, the
appointment was indeed preserved, so that the splendour of the
crown should not be tarnished; but they got an
unmutilated man to represent the cock. A retired officer was
generally selected for this honourable employment. Under
James II the functionary was named William Sampson,
Cock, and received for his crow 91. Is. 6d. annually.4
The memoirs of Catherine II inform us that at St. Petersburg, scarcely a hundred years since, whenever the
Czar or Czarina was displeased with a Russian prince,
he was forced to squat down in the great ante-chamber
of the palace, and to remain in that posture a certain
number of days, mewing like a cat, or clucking like a
sitting hen, and pecking his food from the floor.
These fashions have passed away; but not so much,
perhaps, as one might imagine. Nowadays, courtiers slightly
modify their intonation in clucking to please their
masters. More than one picks up from the ground-we will
not say from the mud-what he eats.
It is very fortunate that kings can not err. Hence their
contradictions never perplex us. In approving always,
one is sure to be always right-which is pleasant. Louis
XIV would not have liked to see at Versailles either an
officer acting the cock, or a prince acting the turkey.
That which raised the royal and imperial dignity in
England and Russia would have seemed to Louis the Great
incompatible with the crown of St. Louis. We know
what his displeasure was when Madame Henriette forgot
herself so far as to see a hen in a dream-which was,
indeed, a grave breach of good manners in a lady of the
Court. When one is of the court, one should not dream
of the courtyard. Bossuet, it may be remembered, was
nearly as scandalised as Louis XIV
THE commerce in children in the 17th century, as we
have explained, was connected with a trade. The
Comprachicos engaged in the commerce and carried on the
trade. They bought children, worked a little on the raw
material, and resold them afterward.
The venders were of all kinds: from the wretched
father, getting rid of his family, to the master, utilising
his stud of slaves. The sale of men was a simple matter.
In our own time we have had fighting to maintain this
right. Remember that it is less than a century ago since
the Elector of Hesse sold his subjects to the King of
England, who required men to be killed in America.
Kings went to the Elector of Hesse as we go to the
butcher to buy meat. The Elector had food for powder
in stock, and hung up his subjects in his shop. Come
buy, it is for sale. In England, under Jeffreys, after
the tragical episode of Monmouth, there were many lords
and gentlemen beheaded and quartered. Those who were
executed left wives and daughters, widows and orphans,
whom James II gave to the queen, his wife. The queen
sold these ladies to William Penn. Very likely the king
had so much per cent on the transaction. The
extraordinary thing is not that James II should have sold women,
but that William Penn should have bought them. The
Penn purchase is excused, or explained, by the fact that,
having a desert to sow with men, he needed women as
farming implements.
Her Gracious Majesty made a good business out of
these ladies. The young sold dear. We may imagine,
with the uneasy feeling which a complicated scandal
arouses, that probably some old duchesses were thrown
in cheap.
The Comprachicos were also called the Cheylas, a
Hindoo word, which conveys the image of harrying a nest.
For a long time the Comprachicos only partially
concealed themselves. There is sometimes in the social order
a favouring shadow thrown over iniquitous trades, in which
they thrive. In our own day we have seen an association
of the kind in Spain, under the direction of the ruffian
Ramon Selles, last from 1834 to 1866, and hold three
provinces under terror for thirty years-Valencia,
Alicante, and Murcia.
Under the Stuarts, the Comprachicos were by no means
in bad odour at court. On occasions they were used for
reasons of state. For James II they were almost an
instrumentum regni. It was a time when families which
were refractory or in the way were dismembered; when
a descent was cut short; when heirs were suddenly
suppressed. At times one branch was defrauded to the profit
of another. The Comprachicos had a genius for
disfiguration which recommended them to state policy. To
disfigure is better than to kill. There was, indeed, the Iron
Mask, but that was a mighty measure. Europe could
not be peopled with iron masks, while deformed tumblers
ran about the streets without creating any surprise.
Besides, the iron mask is removable; not so the mask of flesh.
You are masked forever by your own flesh-what can be
more ingenious? The Comprachicos worked on man as
the Chinese work on trees. They had their secrets, as we
have said; they had tricks which are now lost arts. A
sort of fantastic stunted thing left their hands; it was
ridiculous and wonderful. They would touch up a little
being with such skill that its father could not have known
it. Et que méconnaîtrait l' æil même de son père, as
Racine says in bad French. Sometimes they left the spine
straight and remade the face. They unmarked a child
as one might unmark a pocket-handkerchief. Products,
destined for tumblers, had their joints dislocated in a
masterly manner-you would have said they had been
boned. Thus gymnasts were made.
Not only did the Comprachicos take away his face from
the child, they also took away his memory. At least they
took away all they could of it; the child had no
consciousness of the mutilation to which he had been subjected.
This frightful surgery left its traces on his countenance,
but not on his mind. The most he could recall was that
one day he had been seized by men, that next he had fallen
asleep, and then that he had been cured. Cured of what?
he did not know. Of burnings by sulphur and incisions
by the iron he remembered nothing. The Comprachicos
deadened the little patient by means of a stupefying
powder which was thought to be magical, and suppressed
all pain. This powder has been known from time
immemorial in China, and is still employed there in the present
day. The Chinese have been beforehand with us in all
our inventions-printing, artillery, aerostation,
chloroform. Only the discovery which in Europe at once tales
life and birth, and becomes a prodigy and a wonder,
remains a chrysalis in China, and is preserved in a
death-like state. China is a museum of embryos.
Since we are in China, let us remain there a moment
to note a peculiarity. In China, from time immemorial,
they have possessed a certain refinement of industry and
art. It is the art of molding a living man. They take
a child two or three years old, put him in a porcelain vase,
more or less grotesque, which is made without top or
bottom, to allow egress for the head and feet. During the
day the vase is set upright, and at night is laid down to
allow the child to sleep. Thus the child thickens without
growing taller, filling up with his compressed flesh and
distorted bones the reliefs in the vase. This
development in a bottle continues many years. After a certain
time it becomes irreparable. When they consider that
this is accomplished, and the monster made, they break
the vase. The child comes out-and, behold, there is a
man in the shape of a mug!
This is convenient; by ordering your dwarf betimes you
are able to have it of any shape you wish.
JAMES II tolerated the Comprachicos for the good
reason that he made use of them; at least it happened that
he did so more than once. We do not always disdain to
use what we despise. This low trade, an excellent
expedient sometimes for the higher one which is called state
policy, was willingly left in a miserable state, but was not
persecuted. There was no surveillance, but a certain
amount of attention. Thus much might be useful-the
law closed one eye, the king opened the other.
Sometimes the king went so far as to avow his
complicity. These are audacities of monarchical terrorism.
The disfigured one was marked with the fleur-de-lis; they
took from him the mark of God, they put on him the
mark of the king. Jacob Astley, knight and baronet,
lord of Melton Constable, in the county of Norfolk, had
in his family a child who had been sold, and upon whose
forehead the dealer had imprinted a fleur-de-lis with a
hot iron. In certain cases, in which it was held desirable
to register for some reason the royal origin of the new
position made for the child, they used such means.
England has always done us the honour to utilise, for her
personal service, the fleur-de-lis.
The Comprachicos, allowing for the shade which
divides a trade from a fanaticism, were analogous to the
Stranglers of India. They lived among themselves in
gangs, and to facilitate their progress, affected somewhat
of the Merry-Andrew. They encamped here and there,
but they were grave and religious, bearing no affinity to
other nomads, and incapable of theft. The people for
a long time wrongly confounded them with the Moors
of Spain and the Moors of China. The Moors of Spain
were coiners, the Moors of China were thieves. There
was nothing of the sort about the Comprachicos; they
were honest folk. Whatever you may think of them,
they were sometimes sincerely scrupulous. They pushed
open a door, entered, bargained for a child, paid, and
departed. All was done with propriety.
They were of all countries. Under the name of
Comprachicos fraternised English, French, Castilians,
Germans, Italians. A unity of idea, a unity of superstition,
the pursuit of the same calling, matte such fusions. In
this fraternity of vagabonds, those of the Mediterranean
seaboard represented the East, those of the Atlantic
seaboard the West. Many Basques conversed with many
Irishmen. The Basque and the Irishman understand
each other, they speak the old Punic jargon; add to this
the intimate relations of Catholic Ireland with Catholic
Spain-relations such that they terminated by bringing
to the gallows in London one almost King of Ireland, the
Celtic Lord de Brany; from which resulted the conquest
of the county of Leitrim.
The Comprachicos were rather a fellowship than a tribe
rather a residuum than a fellowship. It was all the
riff-raff of the universe, having for their trade a crime. It
was a sort of harlequin people, all composed of rags.
To recruit a man was to sew on a tatter.
To wander was the Comprachicos' law of existence-to
appear and disappear. What is barely tolerated can not
take root. Even in the kingdoms where their business
supplied the courts, and, on occasions, served as an
auxiliary to the royal power, they were now and then
suddenly ill-treated. Kings made use of their art, and sent
the artists to the galleys. These inconsistencies belong
to the ebb and flow of royal caprice. ``For such is our
pleasure.''
A rolling stone and a roving trade gather no moss. The
Comprachicos were poor. They might have said what
the lean and ragged witch observed, when she saw them
setting fire to the stake, ``Lejell n'en vaut pas la
chandelle.'' It is possible, nay probable (their chiefs
remaining unknown), that the wholesale contractors in the trade
were rich. After the lapse of two centuries, it would be
difficult to throw any light on this point.
It was, as we have said, a fellowship. It had its laws,
its oaths, its formulæ-it had almost its cabala. Any
one nowadays wishing to know all about the
Comprachicos need only go into Biscaya or Galicia; there were many
Basques among them; and it is in those mountains that
one hears their history. To this day the Comprachicos
are spoken of at Oyarzun, at Urbistondo, at Leso, at
Astigarraga. Aguardate niño, que voy llamar al
Comprachicos-Take care, child, or I'll call the
Comprachicos-is the cry with which mothers frighten their children
in that country.
The Comprachicos, like the Zigeuner and the Gypsies,
had appointed places for periodical meetings. From tinge
to time their leaders conferred together. In the
seventeenth century they had four principal points of
rendezvous. One in Spain, the pass of Pancorbo; one in
Germany, the glade called the Wicked Woman, near
Diekirsch, where there are two enigmatic bas-reliefs,
representing a woman with a head and a man without one;
one in France, the hill where was the colossal statue of
Massue-la-Promesse in the old sacred wood of Borvo
Tomona, near Bourbonne les Bains; one in England,
behind the garden wall of William Challoner, Squire of
Gisborough in Cleveland, Yorkshire, behind the square
tower and the great wing which is entered by an arched
door.
THE laws against vagabonds have always been very
rigorous in England. England, in her Gothic
legislation, seemed to be inspired with this principle, Homo
errans fera errante pejor. One of the special statutes
classifies the man without a home as ``more dangerous than
the asp, dragon, lynx, or basilisk'' (atrocior aspide,
dracone, lynce, et basilico) . For a long time England
troubled herself as much concerning the gypsies, of whom
she wished to be rid, as about the wolves of which she
had been cleared. In that the Englishman differed from
the Irishman, who prayed to the saints for the health of
the wolf, and called him my godfather.
English law, nevertheless, in the same way as (we have
just seen) it tolerated the wolf, tamed, domesticated, and
become in some sort a dog, tolerated the regular
vagabond, become In some sort a subject. It did not trouble
itself about either the mountebank or the traveling barber,
or the quack doctor, or the pedler, or the open-air scholar,
as long as they had a trade to live by. Further than this
and with these exceptions, the description of freedom
which exists in the wanderer terrified the law. A tramp
was a possible public enemy. That modern thing, the
lounger, was then unknown; that ancient thing, the
vagrant, was alone understood. A suspicious appearance,
that indescribable something which all understand and
none can define, was sufficient reason that society should
take a man by the collar. ``Where do you live? How
do you get your living?'' And if he could not answer,
harsh penalties awaited him. Iron and fire were in the
noble: the law practiced the cauterisation of vagrancy.
Hence, throughout English territory, a veritable ``loi
des suspects'' was applicable to vagrants (who, it must be
owned, readily became malefactors), and particularly to
gypsies whose expulsion has erroneously been compared
to the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors from Spain,
and the Protestants from France. As for us, we do
not confound a battue with a persecution.
The Comprachicos, we insist, had nothing in common
with the gypsies. The gypsies were a nation; the
Comprachicos were a compound of all nations-the lees of a
horrible vessel full of filthy waters. The Comprachicos
had not, like the gypsies, an idiom of their own; their
jargon was a promiscuous collection of idioms: all
languages were mixed together in their language; they spoke
a medley. Like the gypsies, they had come to be a
people winding through the peoples; but their common tie
was association, not race. At all epochs in history one
finds in the vast liquid mass which constitutes humanity
some of these streams of venomous men exuding poison
around them. The gypsies were a tribe; the
Comprachicos a freemasonry-a masonry having not a noble aim,
but a hideous handicraft. Finally, their religions
differ-the gypsies were Pagans, the Comprachicos were
Christians, and, more than that, good Christians, as became
an association which, although a mixture of all nations,
owed its birth to Spain, a devout land.
They were more than Christians, they were Catholics;
they were more than Catholics, they were Romans, and
so touchy in their faith, and so pure, that they refused
to associate with the Hungarian nomads of the comitate
of Pesth, commanded and led by an old man, having for
sceptre a wand with a silver ball, surmounted by the
double-headed Austrian eagle. It is true that these
Hugarians were schismatics to the extent of celebrating the
Assumption on the 29th August, which is an
abomination.
In England, so long as the Stuarts reigned, the
confederation of the Comprachicos was (for motives of which
we have already given you a glimpse), to a certain extent,
protected. James II, a devout man, who persecuted the
Jews and trampled out the gypsies, was a good prince
to the Comprachicos. We have seen why. The
Comprachicos were buyers of the human wares in which he
was dealer. They excelled in disappearances.
Disappearances are occasionally necessary for the good of the
State. An inconvenient heir of tender age whom they
took and handled lost his shape. This facilitated
confiscation; the transfer of titles to favourites was simplified.
The Comprachicos were, moreover, very discreet, and very
taciturn. They bound themselves to silence and kept
their word, which is necessary in affairs of state. There
was scarcely an example of their having betrayed the
secrets of the king. This was, it is true, for their
interest; and, if the king had lost confidence in them, they
would have been in great danger. They were thus of
use in a political point of view. Moreover, these artists
furnished singers for the Holy Father. The
Comprachicos were useful for the Miserere of Allegri. They were
particularly devoted to Mary. All this pleased the
papistry of the Stuarts. James II could not be hostile to
holy men who pushed their devotion to the Virgin to the
extent of manufacturing eunuchs. In 1688 there was a
change of dynasty in England. Orange supplanted
Stuart. William III replaced James II.
James II went away to die in exile, miracles were
performed on his tomb, and his relics cured the Bishop of
Autun of fistula-a worthy recompense of the Christian
virtues of the prince.
William, having neither the same ideas nor the same
practices as James, was severe to the Comprachicos. He
did his best to crush out the vermin.
A statute of the early part of William and Mary's
reign hit the association of child-buyers hard. It was
as the blow of a club to the Comprachicos, who were
from that time pulverised. By the terms of this statute,
those of the fellowship taken and duly convicted were to
be branded with a red-hot iron, imprinting R on the
shoulder, signifying rogue; on the left hand T. signifying
thief; and on the right hand M, signifying manslayer.
The chiefs, ``supposed to be rich, although beggars in
appearance,'' were to be punished in the
collistrigium-that is, the pillory, and branded on the forehead with a
P. besides having their goods confiscated, and the trees in
their woods rooted up. Those who did not inform against
the Comprachicos were to be punished by confiscation and
imprisonment for life, as for the crime of misprision.
As for the women found among these men, they were to
suffer the cucking-stool-this is a tumbrel, the name of
which is composed of the French word coquine, and the
German Stahl. English law being endowed with a strange
longevity, this punishment still exists in English
legislation for quarrelsome women. The cucking-stool is
suspended over a river or a pond, the woman seated on it.
The chair is allowed to drop into the water, and then
pulled out. This dipping of the woman is repeated three
times, ``to cool her anger,'' says the commentator,
Chamberlayne.
AN obstinate north wind blew without ceasing over
the mainland of Europe, and yet more roughly over
England, during all the month of December, 1689, and
all the month of January, 1690. Hence the disastrous
cold weather, which caused that winter to be noted as
``memorable to the poor,'' on the margin of the old Bible
in the Presbyterian chapel of the Non-jurors in London.
Thanks to the lasting qualities of the old monarchical
parchment employed in official registers, long lists of
poor persons, found dead of famine and cold, are still
legible in many local repositories, particularly in the
archives of the Liberty of the Clink, in the borough of
Southwark, of Pie Powder Court (which signifies Dusty
Feet Court), and in those of Whitechapel Court, held in
the village of Stepney by the bailiff of the Lord of the
Manor. The Thames was frozen over-a thing which
does not happen once in a century, as the ice forms on
it with difficulty owing to the action of the sea. Coaches
rolled over the frozen river, and a fair was held with booths,
bear-baiting, and bull-baiting. An ox was roasted whole
on the ice. This thick ice lasted two months. The hard
year 1690 surpassed in severity even the famous winters
at the beginning of the seventeenth century, so minutely
observed by Dr. Gideon Delane, the same who was, in
his quality of apothecary to King James, honoured by the
city of London with a bust and a pedestal.
One evening, toward the close of one of the most bitter
days of the month of January, 1690, something unusual
was going on in one of the numerous inhospitable bights
of the bay of Portland, which caused the sea-gulls and wild
geese to scream and circle round its mouth, not daring
to re-enter.
In this creek, the most dangerous of all which line the
bay during the continuance of certain winds, and
consequently the most lonely-convenient by reason of its
very danger for ships in hiding-a little vessel, almost
touching the cliff, so deep was the water, was moored to
a point of rock. We are wrong in saying, The night
falls; we should say the night rises, for it is from the
earth that obscurity comes. It was already night at the
bottom of the cliff; it was still day at top. Any one
approaching the vessel's moorings would have recognised a
Biscayan hooker.
The sun, concealed all day by the mist, had just set.
There was beginning to be felt that deep and sombrous
melancholy which might be called anxiety for the absent
sun. With no wind from the sea, the water of the creek
was calm.
This was, especially in winter, a lucky exception.
Almost all the Portland creeks have sand-bars; and in heavy
weather the sea becomes very rough, and, to pass in safety,
much skill and practice are necessary. These little ports
(ports more in appearance than fact) are of small
advantage. They are hazardous to enter, fearful to leave.
On this evening, for a wonder, there was no danger.
The Biscay hooker is of an ancient model, now fallen
into disuse. This kind of hooker, which has done service
even in the navy, was stoutly built in its hull; a boat in
size, a ship in strength. It figured in the Armada.
Sometimes the war-hooker attained to a high tonnage; thus the
``Great Griffin,'' bearing a captain's flag, and commanded
by Lopez de Medina, measured six hundred and fifty
good tons, and carried forty guns. But the merchant
and contraband hookers were very feeble specimens.
Sea-folk held them at their true value, and esteemed the model
a very sorry one. The rigging of the hooker was made
of hemp, sometimes with wire inside, which was probably
intended as a means, however unscientific, of obtaining
indications, in the case of magnetic tension. The
lightness of this rigging did not exclude the use of heavy
tackle, the cabrias of the Spanish galleon, and the cameli
of the Roman triremes. The helm was very long, which
gives the advantage of a long arm of leverage, but the
disadvantage of a small arc of effort. Two wheels in
two pulleys at the end of the rudder corrected this defect
and compensated, to some extent, for the loss of strength.
The compass was well housed in a case perfectly square,
and well-balanced by its two copper frames placed
horizontally, one in the other, on little bolts, as in Cardan's lamps.
There was science and cunning in the construction of the
hooker, but it was ignorant science and barbarous
cunning. The hooker was primitive, just like the praam and
the canoe; was kindred to the praam in stability and to
the canoe in swiftness, and, like all vessels born of the
instinct of the pirate and fisherman, it had remarkable
sea qualities; it was equally well suited to land-locked and
to open waters. Its system of sails, complicated in stays,
and very peculiar, allowed of its navigating trimly in the
close bays of Asturias ( which are little more than
inclosed basins, as Pasages, for instance), and also freely
out at sea. It could sail round a lake, and sail round the
world-a strange craft with two objects, good for a pond
and good for a storm. The hooker is among vessels what
the wagtail is among birds, one of the smallest and one
of the boldest. The wagtail, perching on a reed, scarcely
bends it, and, flying away, crosses the ocean.
These Biscay hookers, even to the poorest, were gilt
and painted. Tattooing is part of the genius of those
charming people, savages to some degree. The sublime
colouring of their mountains, variegated by snows and
meadows, reveals to them the rugged shell which
ornament possesses in itself. They are poverty-stricken and
magnificent; they put coats-of-arms on their cottages:
they have huge asses, which they bedizen with bells, and
huge oxen, on which they put head-dresses of feathers.
Their coaches, which you can hear grinding the wheels
two leagues off., are illuminated, carved, and hung with
ribbons. A cobbler has a bas-relief on his door; it is only
St. Crispin, and an old shoe; but it is in stone. They
trim their leathern jackets with lace. They do not mend
their rags, hut they embroider them. Vivacity profound
and superb! The Basques are like the Greeks, children
of the sun; while the Valencian drapes himself, bare and
sad, in his russet woolen rug, with a hole to pass his head
through, the natives of Galicia and Biscay have the
delight of fine linen shirts, bleached in the dew. Their
thresholds and their windows teem with faces fair and
fresh, laughing under garlands of maize; a joyous and
proud serenity shines out in their ingenious arts, in their
trades, in their customs, in the dress of their maidens, in
their songs. The mountain, that colossal ruin, is all aglow
in Biscay: the sun's rays go in and out of every break.
The wild Jaïzquivel is full of Idylls. Biscay is Pyrenean
grace as Savoy is Alpine grace. The dangerous
bays-the neighbours of St. Sebastian Leso, and
Fontarabia-with storms, with clouds, with spray flying over the capes,
with the rages of the waves and the winds, with terror,
with uproar, mingle boat-women crowned with roses. He
who has seen the Basque country wishes to see it again.
It is the blessed land. Two harvests a year; villages
resonant and gay; a stately poverty; all Sunday the sound
of guitars, dancing, castanets, love-making; houses clean
and bright; storks in the belfries.
Let us return to Portland-that rugged mountain in
the sea.
The peninsula of Portland, looked at geometrically,
presents the appearance of a bird's head, of which the
bill is turned toward the ocean, the back of the head
toward Weymouth; the isthmus is its neck.
Portland, greatly to the sacrifice of its wildness, exists
now but for trade. The coasts of Portland were
discovered by quarrymen and plasterers toward the middle
of the seventeenth century. Since that period what is
called Roman cement has been made of the Portland
stone-a useful industry, enriching the district, and
disfiguring the bay. Two hundred years ago these coasts were
eaten away as a cliff, to-day, as a quarry. The pick bites
meanly, the wave grandly; hence a diminution of beauty.
To the magnificent ravages of the ocean have succeeded
the measured strokes of men. These measured strokes
have worked away the creek where the Biscay hooker was
moored. To find any vestige of the little anchorage, now
destroyed, the eastern side of the peninsula should be
searched, toward the point beyond Folly Pier and Dirdle
Pier, beyond Wakeham even, between the place called
Church Hope and the place called Southwell.
The creek, walled in on all sides by precipices higher
than its width, was minute by minute becoming more
overshadowed by evening. The misty gloom, usual at
twilight, became thicker; it was like a growth of darkness
at the bottom of a well. The opening of the creek
seaward, a narrow passage, traced on the almost night-black
interior a pallid rift where the waves were moving. You
must have been quite close to perceive the hooker moored
to the rocks, and, as it were, hidden by the great cloaks
of shadow. A plank, thrown from on board on to a low
and level projection of the cliff, the only point on which
a landing could be made, placed the vessel in
communication with the land. Dark figures were crossing and
recrossing each other on this tottering gangway, and in the
shadow some people were embarking.
It was less cold in the creek than out at sea, thanks to
the screen of rock rising over the north of the basin, which
did not, however, prevent the people from shivering. They
were hurrying. The effect of the twilight defined the
forms as though they had been punched out with a tool.
Certain indentations in their clothes were visible, and
showed that they belonged to the class called in England
The Ragged.
The twisting of the pathway could be distinguished
vaguely in the relief of the cliff. A girl who lets her
stay-lace hang down trailing over the back of an
armchair describes, without being conscious of it, most of
the paths of cliffs and mountains. The pathway of this
creek, full of knots and angles, almost perpendicular, and
better adapted for goats than men, terminated on the
platform where the plank was placed. The pathways of
cliffs ordinarily imply a not very inviting declivity; they
offer themselves less as a road than as a fall; they sink
rather than incline. This one-probably some
ramification of a road on the plain above-was disagreeable to
look at, so vertical was it. From underneath you saw it
gain by zigzag the higher layer of the cliff, where it
passed out through deep passages on to the high plateau
by a cutting in the rock; and the passengers for whom
the vessel was waiting in the creek must have come by
this path.
Excepting the movement of embarkation which was
being made in the creek, a movement visibly scared and
uneasy, all around was solitude; no step, no noise, no
breath was heard. At the other side of the roads, at the
entrance of Ringstead Bay, you could just perceive a
flotilla of shark-fishing boats, which were evidently out of
their reckoning. These polar boats had been driven from
Danish into English waters by the whims of the sea.
Northerly winds play these tricks on fishermen. They
had just taken refuge in the anchorage of Portland-a
sign of bad weather expected and danger out at sea.
They were engaged in casting anchor. The chief boat,
placed in front after the old manner of Norwegian
flotillas, all her rigging standing out in black, above the
white level of the sea; and in front might be perceived
the hook-iron, loaded with all kinds of hooks and
harpoons, destined for the Greenland shark, the dogfish, and
the spinous shark, as well as the nets to pick up the
sunfish.
Except a few other craft, all swept into the same
corner, the eye met nothing living on the vast horizon of
Portland. Not a house, not a ship. The coast in those
days was not inhabited, and the roads, at that season, were
not safe.
Whatever may have been the appearance of the weather,
the beings who were going to sail away in the Biscayan
urea, pressed on the hour of departure all the same. They
formed a busy and confused group in rapid movement
on the shore. To distinguish one from another was
difficult; impossible to tell whether they were old or young.
The indistinctness of evening intermixed and blurred
them; the mask of shadow was over their faces. They
were sketches in the night. There were eight of them,
and there were seemingly among them one or two women,
hard to recognise under the rags and tatters in which the
group was attired-clothes which were no longer man's
or woman's. Rags have no sex
A smaller shadow, flitting to and fro among the larger
ones, indicated either a dwarf or a child.
It was a child.
THIS is what an observer close at hand might have
noted.
All wore long cloaks, torn and patched, but covering
them, and at need concealing them up to the eyes; useful
alike against the north wind and curiosity. They moved
with ease under these cloaks. The greater number wore
a handkerchief rolled round the head, a sort of rudiment
which marks the commencement of the turban in Spain.
This headdress was nothing unusual in England. At
that time the South was in fashion in the North; per.
haps this was connected with the fact that the North was
beating the South. It conquered and admired. After
the defeat of the Armada, Castilian was considered in the
halls of Elizabeth to be elegant court talk. To speak
English in the palace of the Queen of England was held
almost an impropriety. Partially to adopt the manners
of those upon whom we impose our laws is the habit of
the conquering barbarian toward conquered civilisation.
The Tartar contemplates and imitates the Chinese. It
was thus Castilian fashions penetrated into England; in
return, English interests crept into Spain.
One of the men in the group embarking appeared to be
a chief. He had sandals on his feet, and was bedizened
with gold lace tatters and a tinsel waistcoat shining
under his cloak like the belly of a fish. Another pulled down
over his face a huge piece of felt, cut like a sombrero;
this felt had no hole for a pipe, thus indicating the wearer
to be a man of letters.
On the principle that a man's vest is a child's cloak, the
child was wrapped over his rags in a sailor's jacket, which
descended to his knees.
By his height you would have guessed him to be a boy
of ten or eleven; his feet were bare.
The crew of the hooker was composed of a captain and
two sailors.
The hooker had apparently come from Spain, and was
about to return thither. She was beyond a doubt
engaged in a stealthy service from one coast to the
other.
The persons embarking in her whispered among
themselves.
The whispering interchanged by these creatures was of
composite sound-now a word of Spanish, then of
German, then of French, then of Gaelic, at times of Basque.
It was either a patois or a slang. They appeared to be
of all nations, and yet of the same band.
The motley group appeared to be a company of
comrades, perhaps a gang of accomplices.
The crew was probably of their brotherhood.
Community of object was visible in the embarkation.
Had there been a little more light, and if you could
have looked at them attentively, you might have perceived
on these people rosaries and scapulars half-hidden under
their rags; one of the semi-women mingling in the group
had a rosary almost equal for the size of its beads to that
of a dervish, and easy to recognise for an Irish one made
at Llanymthefry, which is also called Llanandriffy.
You might also have observed, had it not been so dark,
a figure of Our Lady and Child carved and gilt on the
bow of the hooker. It was probably that of the Basque
Notre Dame, a sort of Panagia of the old Cantabri.
Under this image, which occupied the position of a
figurehead, was a lantern, which at this moment was not
lighted-an excess of caution which implied an extreme desire
of concealment. This lantern was evidently for two
purposes. When alight, it burned before the Virgin, and
at the same time illumined the sea, a beacon doing duty
as a taper.
Under the bowsprit the cut-water, long, curved, and
sharp, came out in front like the horn of a crescent. At
the top of the cut-water, and at the feet of the Virgin,
a kneeling angel, with folded wings, leaned her back
against the stem, and looked through a spyglass at the
horizon. The angel was gilded like Our Lady. In the
cut-water were holes and openings to let the waves pass
through, which afforded an opportunity for gilding and
arabesques.
Under the figure of the Virgin was written in gilt
capitals, the word ``Matutina''-the name of the vessel, not to
be read just now on account of the darkness.
Amid the confusion of departure there were thrown
down in disorder, at the foot of the cliff, the goods which
the voyagers were to take with them, and which, by means
of a plank serving as a bridge across, were being passed
rapidly from the shore to the boat. Bags of biscuit, a
cask of stock-fish, a case of portable soup, three
barrels-one of fresh water, one of malt, one of tar-four or
five bottles of ale, an old portmanteau buckled up by
straps, trunks, boxes, a ball of tow for torches and
signals. Such was the lading. These ragged people had
valises, which seemed to indicate a roving life.
Wandering rascals are obliged to own something; at times they
would prefer to fly away like birds, but they can not do
so without abandoning the means of earning a livelihood.
They of necessity possess boxes of tools and instruments
of labour, whatever their errant trade may be. Those of
whom we speak were dragging their baggage with them,
often an encumbrance.
It could not have been easy to bring these movables to
the bottom of the cliff. This, however, revealed the
intention of a definite departure.
No time was lost; there was one continued passing to
and fro from the shore to the vessel, and from the vessel
to the shore; each one took his share of the work; one
carried a bag, another a chest. Those amid the promiscuous
company, who were possibly or probably women, worked
like the rest. They overloaded the child.
It was doubtful if the child's father or mother were in
the group; no sign of life was vouchsafed him. They
made him work, nothing more. He appeared not a child
in a family, but a slave in a tribe. He waited on every
one, and no one spoke to him.
However, he made haste, and, like the others of this
mysterious troop, he seemed to have but one
thought-to embark as quickly as possible. Did he know why?
probably not, he hurried mechanically because he saw the
others hurry.
The hooker was decked. The stowing of the lading in
the hold was quickly finished, and the moment to pill ok
arrived. The last case had been carried over the
gang-way, and nothing was left to embark but the men. The
two objects among the group who seemed women were
already on board; six, the child among them, were still on
the low platform of the cliff. A movement of departure
was made in the vessel, the captain seized the helm, a sailor
took up an axe to cut the hawser; to cut is an evidence of
haste; when there is time it is unknotted.
``Andamos,'' said, in a low voice, he who appeared chief
of the six, and who had the spangles on his tatters. The
child rushed toward the plank in order to be the first to
pass. As he placed his foot on it, two of the men
hurried by, at the risk of throwing him into the water, got
in before him, and passed on; the fourth drove him back
with his fist and followed the third; the fifth, who was the
chief, bounded into rather than entered the vessel, and,
as he jumped in, kicked back the plank, which fell into the
sea, a stroke of the hatchet cut the moorings, the helm was
put up, the vessel left the shore, and the child remained
on land.
THE child remained motionless on the rock, with his
eyes fixed; no calling out; no appeal. Though this
was unexpected by him, he spoke not a word. The same
silence reigned in the vessel. No cry from the child to
the men-no farewell from the men to the child. There
was on both sides a mute acceptance of the widening
distance between them. It was like a separation of ghosts
on the banks of the Styx. The child, as if nailed to the
rock, which the high tide was beginning to bathe, watched
the departing bark. It seemed as if he realised his position.
What did he realise?-Darkness.
A moment later, the hooker gained the neck of the
creek and entered it. Against the clear sky the
mast-head was visible, rising above the split blocks between
which the strait wound as between two walls. The truck
wandered to the summit of the rocks and appeared to run
into them. Then it was seen no more-all was over-the
bark had gained the sea.
The child watched its disappearance-he was astounded
but dreamy. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense
of the dark reality of existence. It seemed as if there
were experience in this dawning being. Did he,
perchance, already exercise judgment? Experience coming
too early constructs, sometimes, in the obscure depths
of a child's mind, some dangerous balance-we know not
what-in which the poor little soul weighs God.
Feeling himself innocent, he yielded. There was no
complaint-the irreproachable does not reproach.
His rough expulsion drew from him no sign-he
suffered a sort of internal stiffening. The child did not
bow under this sudden blow of fate, which seemed to put
an end to his existence ere it had well begun; he received
the thunderstroke standing.
It would have been evident to any one who could have
seen his astonishment unmixed with dejection, that, in
the group which abandoned him, there was nothing which
loved him, nothing which he loved.
Brooding, he forgot the cold. Suddenly the wave
wetted his feet-the tide was flowing; a gust passed
through his hair-the north wind was rising. He
shivered. There came over him, from head to foot, the
shudder of awakening.
He cast his eyes about him.
He was alone.
Up to this day there had never existed for him any
other men than those who were now in the hooker. Those
men had just stolen away.
Let us add what seems a strange thing to state. Those
men, the only ones he knew, were unknown to him.
He could not have said who they were. His childhood
had been passed among them, without his having the
consciousness of being of them. He was in juxtaposition
to them, nothing more.
He had just been-forgotten-by them.
He had no money about him, no shoes to his feet, scarcely
a garment to his body, not even a piece of bread in his
pocket.
It was winter-it was night. It would be necessary
to walk several leagues before a human habitation could
be reached.
He did not know where he was.
He knew nothing, unless it was that those who had
come with him to the brink of the sea had gone away
without him.
He felt himself put outside the pale of life.
He felt that man failed him.
He was ten years old.
The child was in a desert, between depths where he saw
the night rising and depths were he heard the waves
murmur.
He stretched his little thin arms and yawned.
Then, suddenly, as one who makes up his mind, bold,
and throwing off his numbness-with the agility of a
squirrel-or perhaps of an acrobat-he turned his back
on the creek, and set himself to climb up the cliff. He
escaladed the path, left it, returned to it, quick and
venturous. He was hurrying landward, just as though he
had a destination marked out; nevertheless he was going
nowhere.
He hastened without an object-a fugitive before Fate.
To climb is the function of a man; to clamber is that
of an animal-he did both. As the slopes of Portland
face southward, there was scarcely any snow on the path
the intensity of cold had, however, frozen that snow into
dust very troublesome to the walker. The child freed
himself of it. His man's jacket, which was too big for him,
complicated matters, and got in his way. Now and then
on an overhanging crag or in a declivity he came upon a
little ice, which caused him to slip down. Then, after
hanging some moments over the precipice, he would catch
hold of a dry branch or projecting stone. Once he came
on a vein of slate, which suddenly gave way under him,
letting him down with it. Crumbling slate is
treacherous. For some seconds the child slid like a tile on a roof;
he rolled to the extreme edge of the decline; a tuft of
grass which he clutched at the right moment saved him.
He was as mute in sight of the abyss as he had been in
sight of the men; he gathered himself up and reascended
silently. The slope was steep; so he had to tack in
ascending. The precipice grew in the darkness; the vertical
rock had no ending. It receded before the child in the
distance of its height. As the child ascended, so seemed
the summit to ascend. While he clambered he looked up
at the dark entablature, placed like a barrier, between
heaven and him. At last he reached the top.
He jumped on the level ground, or rather landed, for
he rose from the precipice.
Scarcely was he on the cliff when he began to shiver.
He felt in his face that bite of the night, the north wind.
The bitter northwester was blowing; he tightened his rough
sailor's jacket about his chest.
It was a good coat, called in ship language a sou'wester,
because that sort of stuff allows little of the southwesterly
rain to penetrate.
The child, having gained the tableland, stopped, placed
his feet firmly on the frozen ground and looked about him.
Behind him was the sea; in front the land; above, the
sky-but a sky without stars; an opaque mist masked the
zenith.
On reaching the summit of the rocky wall he found
himself turned toward the land, and looked at it
attentively. It lay before him as far as the sky-line, flat,
frozen, and covered with snow. Some tufts of heather
shivered in the wind. No roads were visible. Nothing,
not even a shepherd's cot. Here and there, pale, spiral
vortices might be seen, which were whirls of fine snow,
snatched from the ground by the wind and blown away.
Successive undulations of ground become suddenly misty
rolled themselves into the horizon. The great dull plains
were lost under the white fog. Deep silence. It spread
like infinity, and was hush as the tomb.
The child turned again toward the sea.
The sea, like the land, was white, the one with snow,
the other with foam. There is nothing so melancholy as
the light produced by this double whiteness.
Certain lights of night are very clearly cut in their
hardness; the sea was like steel, the cliff like ebony. From
the height where the child was, the bay of Portland
appeared almost like a geographical map, pale, in a
semi-circle of hills. There was something dreamlike in that
nocturnal landscape-a wan disk belted by a dark crescent.
The moon sometimes has a similar appearance. From
cape to cape, along the whole coast, not a single spark
indicating a hearth with a fire, not a lighted window, not
an inhabited house, was to be seen. As in heaven so on
earth, no light. Not a lamp below, not a star above. Here
and there came sudden risings in the great expanse of
waters in the gulf as the wind disarranged and wrinkled
the vast sheet. The hooker was still visible in the bay
as she fled.
It was a black triangle gliding over the livid waters.
Far away the waste of waters stirred confusedly in the
ominous clare-obscure of immensity. The ``Matutina'' was
making quick way. She seemed to grow smaller every
minute. Nothing appears so rapid as the flight of a
vessel melting into the distance of ocean.
Suddenly she lit the lantern at her prow. Probably
the darkness falling round her made those on board Unix
easy, and the pilot thought it necessary to throw light on
the waves. This luminous point, a spark seen from afar,
clung like a corpse light to the high and long black form.
You would have said it was a shroud raised up and
moving in the middle of the sea, under which some one
wandered with a star in his hand.
A storm threatened in the air: the child took no account
of it, but a sailor would have trembled. It was that
moment of preliminary anxiety when it seems as though the
elements are changing into persons, and one is about to
witness the mysterious transfiguration of the wind into
the wind-god. The sea becomes Ocean: its power reveals
itself as Will: that which one takes for a thing, is a soul.
It will become visible. Hence the terror. The soul
of man fears to be thus confronted with the soul of
nature.
Chaos was about to appear. The wind rolling back
the fog, and making a stage of the clouds behind, set the
scene for that fearful drama of wave and winter, which is
called a Snowstorm. Vessels putting back hove in sight.
For some minutes past the roads had no longer been
deserted. Every instant troubled barks hastening toward
an anchorage appeared from behind the capes; some were
doubling Portland Pill, the others St. Albans head. From
afar ships were running in. It was a race for refuge.
Southward the darkness thickened, and clouds, full of
night, bordered on the sea. The weight of the tempest
hanging overhead made a dreary lull on the waves. It
certainly was no time to sail. Yet the hooker had sailed.
She had made the south of the cape. She was already
out of the gulf and in the open sea. Suddenly there came
a gust of wind. The ``Matutina,'' which was still clearly in
sight, made all sail, as if resolved to profit by the
hurricane. It was the nor'wester, a wind sullen and angry.
Its weight was felt instantly. The hooker, caught
broadside on, staggered, but recovering held her course to sea.
This indicated a flight rather than a voyage, less fear of
sea than of land, and greater heed of pursuit from man
than from wind.
The hooker, passing through every degree of
diminution, sank into the horizon. The little star which she
carried into shadow paled. More and more the hooker
became amalgamated with the night, then disappeared.
This time for good and all.
At least the child seemed to understand it so; he ceased
to look at the sea. His eyes turned hack upon the plains,
the wastes, the hills, toward the space where it might not
be impossible to meet something living.
Into this unknown he set out.
WHAT kind of band was it which had left the child
behind in its flight?
Were those fugitives Comprachicos?
We have already seen the account of the measures taken
by William III, and passed by Parliament against the
malefactors, male and female, called Comprachicos,
otherwise Comprapequeños, otherwise Cheylas.
There are laws which disperse. The law acting against
the Comprachicos determined, not only the Comprachicos,
but vagabonds of all sorts, on a general flight.
It was the devil take the hindmost. The greater
number of the Comprachicos returned to Spain; many of
them, as we have said, being Basques.
The law for the protection of children had at first this
strange result: it caused many children to be abandoned.
The immediate effect of the penal statute was to
produce a crowd of children, found, or rather lost. Nothing
is easier to understand. Every wandering gang
containing a child was liable to suspicion. The mere fact of the
child's presence was in itself a denunciation.
``They are very likely Comprachicos.'' Such was the
first idea of the sheriff, of the bailiff, of the constable,
hence arrest and inquiry. People simply unfortunate,
reduced to wander and to beg, were seized with a terror
of being taken for Comprachicos, although they were
nothing of the kind. But the weak have grave
misgivings of possible errors in Justice. Besides, these
vagabond families are very easily scared. The accusation
against the Comprachicos was that they traded in other
people's children. But the promiscuousness caused by
poverty and indigence is such that at times it might have
been difficult for a father and mother to prove a child
their own.
How came you by this child? how were they to prove
that they held it from God? The child became a
peril-they got rid of it. To fly unencumbered was easier; the
parents resolved to lose it-now in a wood, now on a
strand, now down a well.
Children were found drowned in cisterns.
Let us add that, in imitation of England, all Europe
henceforth hunted down the Comprachicos. The impulse
of pursuit was given. There is nothing like belling the
cat. From this time forward the desire to seize them
made rivalry and emulation among the police of all
countries, and the alguazil was not less keenly watchful than
the constable.
One could still read, twenty-three years ago, on a stone
of the gate of Otero, an untranslatable inscription-the
words of the code, outraging property. In it, however,
the shade of difference which existed between the buyers
and the stealers of children is very strongly marked. Here
is part of the inscription in somewhat rough Castilian:
Aqui quedan las orejas de los Comprachicos, y las bolsas
de los robaniños, mientras que se van ellos al trabajo de
mar. You see the confiscation of ears, etc., did not
prevent the owners going to the galleys. Whence followed
a general rout among all vagabonds. They started
frightened; they arrived trembling. On every shore in Europe
their furtive advent was watched. Impossible for such
a band to embark with a child, since to embark with one
was dangerous.
To lose the child was much simpler of accomplishment.
And this child, of whom we have caught a glimpse in
the shadow of the solitudes of Portland, by whom had he
been cast away?
To all appearance by Comprachicos.
IT might be about seven o'clock in the evening. The
wind was now diminishing, a sign, however, of a
violent recurrence impending. The child was on the
table-land at the extreme south point of Portland.
Portland is a peninsula; but the child did not know
what a peninsula was, and was ignorant even of the name
of Portland. He knew but one thing, which is, that one
can walk until one drops down. An idea is a guide; he
had no idea. They had brought him there, and left him
there. They and there. These two enigmas represented
his doom. They were humankind. There was the
universe. For him in all creation there was absolutely no
other basis to rest on but the little piece of ground where
he placed his heel, ground hard and cold to his naked feet.
In the great twilight world, open on all sides, what was
there for the child? Nothing.
He walked toward this Nothing. Around him was the
vastness of human desertion.
He crossed the first plateau diagonally, then a second,
then a third. At the extremity of each plateau the child
came upon a break in the ground. The slope was
sometimes steep, but always short; the high, bare plains of
Portland resemble great flagstones overlapping each other.
The south side seems to enter under the protruding slab.
the north side rises over the next one; these made ascents,
which the child stepped over nimbly. From time to time
he stopped, and seemed to hold counsel with himself.
The night was becoming very dark. His radius of sight
was contracting. He now only saw a few steps before
him.
All of a sudden he stopped, listened for an instant, and,
with an almost imperceptible nod of satisfaction, turned
quickly and directed his steps toward an eminence of
moderate height, which he dimly perceived on his right,
at the point of the plain nearest the cliff. There was on
the eminence a shape which in the mist looked like a tree.
The child had just heard a noise in this direction, which
was the noise neither of the wind nor of the sea, nor was
it the cry of animals. He thought that some one was
there, and in a few strides he was at the foot of the hillock.
In truth, some one was there.
That which had been indistinct on the top of the
eminence was now visible. It was something like a great
arm thrust straight out of the ground; at the upper
extremity of the arm a sort of forefinger, supported from
beneath by the thumb, pointed out horizontally; the arm,
the thumb, and the forefinger drew a square against the
sky. At the point of juncture of this peculiar finger and
this peculiar thumb there was a line, from which hung
something black and shapeless. The line moving in the
wind sounded like a chain. This was the noise the child
had heard. Seen closely, the line was that which the noise
indicated, a chain-a single chain cable.
By that mysterious law of amalgamation which
throughout nature causes appearances to exaggerate realities, the
place, the hour, the mist, the mournful sea, the cloudy
turmoils on the distant horizon, added to the effect of
this figure, and made it seem enormous.
The mass linked to the chain presented the appearance
of a scabbard. It was swaddled like a child, and long
like a man. There was a round thing at its summit, about
which the end of the chain was rolled. The scabbard was
riven asunder at the lower end, and shreds of flesh hung
out between the rents.
A feeble breeze stirred the chain, and that which hung
to it swayed gently. The passive mass obeyed the vague
motions of space. It was an object to inspire
indescribable dread. Horror, which disproportions everything,
blurred its dimensions while retaining its shape. It was
a condensation of darkness, which had a defined form.
Night was above and within the spectre; it was a prey of
ghastly exaggeration. Twilight and moonrise, stars
setting behind the cliff, floating things in space, the clouds,
winds from all quarters, had ended by penetrating into
the composition of this visible nothing. The species of
log hanging in the wind partook of the impersonality
diffused far over sea and sky, and the darkness completed
this phase of the thing which had once been a man.
It was that which is no longer.
To be nought, yet a remainder! Such a thing is
beyond the power of language to express. To exist no more,
yet to persist; to be in the abyss, yet out of it; to
reappear above death as if indissoluble. There is a certain
amount of impossibility mixed with such reality. Thence
comes the inexpressible. This being-was it a being? This
black witness was a remainder, and an awful
remainder-a remainder of what? Of nature first, and then of
society. Nought, and yet total.
The lawless inclemency of the weather held it at its
will; the deep oblivion of solitude environed it; it was
given up to unknown chances; it was without defence
against the darkness, which did with it what it willed.
It was forever the patient; it submitted; the hurricane
(that ghastly conflict of winds) was upon it.
The spectre was given over to pillage. It underwent
the horrible outrage of rotting in the open air; it was an
outlaw of the tomb. There was no peace for it even in
annihilation: in the summer it fell away into dust, in the
winter into mud. Death should be veiled, the grave should
have its reserve. :Here was neither veil nor reserve: but
cynically avowed putrefaction. It is effrontery in death
to display its work, it offends all the calmness of shadow
when it does its task outside its laboratory, the grave.
This dead being had been stripped. To strip one
already stripped-relentless act! His marrow was no longer
in his bones; his entrails were no longer in his body; his
voice was no longer in his throat. A corpse is a pocket
which death turns inside out and empties. If he ever had
a Me, where was the Me? There still, perchance, and this
was fearful to think of. Something wandering about
something in chains-can one imagine a more mournful
lineament in the darkness?
Realities exist here below which serve as issues to the
unknown, which seem to facilitate the egress of
speculation, and at which hypothesis snatches. Conjecture has
its compelle intrare. In passing by certain places and
before certain objects one can not help stopping-a prey to
dreams into the realms of which the mind enters. In the
invisible there are dark portals ajar. No one could have
met this dead man without meditating.
In the vastness of dispersion he was wearing silently
away. He had had blood which had been drunk, skin
which had been eaten, flesh which had been stolen.
Nothing had passed him by without taking somewhat from him.
December had borrowed cold of him; midnight, horror;
the iron, rust; the plague, miasma; the flowers, perfume.
His slow disintegration was a toll paid to all-a toll of
the corpse to the storm, to the rain, to the dews to the
reptiles, to the birds. All the dark hands of night had rifled
the dead.
He was, indeed, an inexpressibly strange tenant, a
tenant of the darkness. He was on a plain and on a hill,
and he was not. He was palpable, yet vanished. He was
a shadow accruing to the night. After the disappearance
of day into the vast of silent obscurity, he became in
lugubrious accord with all around him. By his mere
presence he increased the gloom of the tempest and the calm
of stars. The unutterable which is in the desert was
condensed in him. Waif of an unknown fate, he
commingled with all the wild secrets of the night. There was in
his mystery a vague reverberation of all enigmas.
About him life seemed sinking to its lowest depths.
Certainty and confidence appeared to diminish in his
environs. The shiver of the brushwood and the grass, a
desolate melancholy, an anxiety in which a conscience
seemed to lurk, appropriated with tragic force the whole
landscape to that black figure suspended by the chain.
The presence of a spectre in the horizon is an aggravation
of solitude.
He was a Sign. Having unappeasable winds around
him, he was implacable. Perpetual shuddering made him
terrible. Fearful to say, he seemed to be a centre in
space, with something immense leaning on him. Who
can tell? Perhaps that equity, half seen and set at
defiance, which transcends human justice. There was in
his unburied continuance the vengeance of men and his
own vengeance. He was a testimony in the twilight and
the waste. He was in himself a disquieting substance,
since we tremble before the substance which is the ruined
habitation of the soul. For dead matter to trouble us,
it must once have been tenanted by spirit. He denounced
the law of earth to the law of heaven. Placed there by
man, he there awaited God. Above him floated, blended
with all the vague distortions of the cloud and the wave,
boundless dreams of shadow.
Who could tell what sinister mysteries lurked behind
this phantom? The illimitable circumscribed by naught,
nor tree, nor roof, nor passer-by, was around the dead
man. When the unchangeable broods over us, when
heaven, the abyss, the life, grave, and eternity appear
patent, then it is we feel that all is inaccessible, all is
forbidden, all is sealed. When infinity opens to us, terrible
indeed is the closing of the gate behind.
THE child was before this thing, dumb, wondering,
and with eyes fixed.
To a man it would have been a gibbet; to the child it
was an apparition.
Where a man would have seen a corpse the child saw a
spectre.
Besides, he did not understand.
The attractions of the obscure are manifold. There
was one on the summit of that hill. The child took a
step, then another; he ascended, wishing all the while to
descend; and approached, wishing all the while to retreat.
Bold, yet trembling, he went close up to survey the
spectre.
When he got close under the gibbet, he looked up and
examined it.
The spectre was tarred; here and there it shone. The
child distinguished the face. It was coated over with
pitch; and this mask, which appeared viscous and sticky,
varied its aspect with the night shadows. The child saw
the mouth, which was a hole; the nose, which was a hole;
the eyes, which were holes. The body was wrapped, and
apparently corded up, in coarse canvas, soaked in naphtha.
The canvas was mouldy and torn. A knee protruded
through it. A rent disclosed the ribs; partly corpse, partly
skeleton. The face was the colour of earth; slugs,
wandering over it, had traced across it vague ribbons of silver. The
canvas, glued to the bones, showed in relief like the robe
of a statue. The skull, cracked and fractured, gaped like
a rotten fruit. The teeth were still human, for they
retained a laugh. The remains of a cry seemed to murmur
in the open mouth. There were a few hairs of beard on
the cheek. The inclined head had an air of attention.
Some repairs had recently been done; the face had been
tarred afresh, as well as the ribs and the knee which
protruded from the canvas. The feet hung out below.
Just underneath, in the grass, were two shoes, which
snow and rain had rendered shapeless. These shoes had
fallen from the dead man.
The barefooted child looked at the shoes.
The wind, which had become more and more restless,
was now and then interrupted by those pauses which
foretell the approach of a storm. For the last few minutes
it had altogether ceased to blow. The corpse no longer
stirred; the chain was as motionless as a plumb line.
Like all newcomers into life, and, taking into account
the peculiar influences of his fate, the child no doubt felt
within him that awakening of ideas characteristic of early
years, which endeavours to open the brain and which
resembles the pecking of the young bird in the egg. But
all there was in his little consciousness just then was
resolved into stupor. Excess of sensation has the effect of
too much oil, and ends by putting out thought. A man
would have put himself questions; the child put himself
none; he only looked.
The tar gave the face a wet appearance; drops of pitch,
congealed in what had once been the eyes, produced the
effect of tears. However, thanks to the pitch, the ravage
of death, if not annulled, was visibly slackened and
reduced to the least possible decay. That which was before
the child was a thing of which care was taken; the man
was evidently precious. They had not cared to keep him
alive, but they cared to keep him dead.
The gibbet was old, worm-eaten, although strong, and
had been in use many years.
It was an immemorial custom in England to tar
smugglers. They were hanged on the seaboard, coated over
with pitch and left swinging. Examples must be made
in public, and tarred examples last longest. The tar was
mercy; by renewing it they were spared making too many
fresh examples. They placed gibbets from point to point
along the coast, as nowadays they do beacons. The hanged
man did duty as a lantern. After his fashion, he guided
Lois comrades, the smugglers. The smugglers from far
out at sea perceived the gibbets. There is one, first
warning; another, second warning. It did not stop smuggling;
but public order is made up of such things. The fashion
lasted in England up to the beginning of this century.
In 1822 three men were still to be seen hanging in front
of Dover Castle. But, for that matter, the preserving
process was employed not only with smugglers.
England turned robbers, incendiaries, and murderers to the
same account. Jack Painter, who set fire to the
government storehouses at Portsmouth, was hanged and tarred
in 1776. L'Abbe Coyer, who describes him as Jean le
Peintre, saw him again in 1777; Jack Painter was
hanging above the ruin he had made, and was re-tarred from
time to time. His corpse lasted-I had almost said
lived-nearly fourteen years. It was still doing good service
in 1788; in 1790, however, they were obliged to replace
it by another. The Egyptians used to value the mummy
of the king; a plebeian mummy can also, it appears, be
of service.
The wind, having great power on the hill, had swept it
of all its snow. Herbage reappeared on it, interspersed
here and there with a few thistles; the hill was covered by
that close short grass which grows by the sea, and causes
the tops of cliffs to resemble green cloth. Under the
gibbet, on the very spot over which hung the feet of the
executed criminal, was a long and thick tuft, uncommon
on such poor soil. Corpses, crumbling there for centuries
past, accounted for the beauty of the grass. Earth feeds
on man.
A dreary fascination held the child; he remained there
open-mouthed. He only dropped his head a moment
when a nettle, which felt like an insect, stung his leg; then
he looked up again-he looked above him at the face
which looked down on him. It appeared to regard him
the more steadfastly because it had no eyes. It was a
comprehensive glance, having an indescribable fixedness
in which there was both light and darkness, and which
emanated from the skull and teeth, as well as the empty
arches of the brow. The whole head of a dead man seems
to have vision, and this is awful. No eyeball, yet we feel
that we are looked at. A horror of worms.
Little by little the child himself was becoming an
object of terror. He no longer moved. Torpor was
coming over him. He did not perceive that he was losing
consciousness-he was becoming benumbed and lifeless.
Winter was silently delivering him over to night. There
is something of the traitor in winter. The child was all
but a statue. The coldness of stone was penetrating his
bones, darkness, that reptile, was crawling over him. The
drowsiness resulting from snow creeps over man like a
dim tide. The child was being slowly invaded by a
stagnation resembling that of the corpse. He was falling
asleep.
On the hand of sleep is the finger of death. The child
felt himself seized by that hand. He was on the point of
falling under the gibbet. He no longer knew whether he
was standing upright.
The end always impending, no transition between to be
and not to be, the return into the crucible, the slip
possible every minute. Such is the precipice which is
Creation.
Another instant, the child and the dead, life in sketch
and life in ruin, would be confounded in the same
obliteration.
The spectre appeared to understand, and not to wish
it. Of a sudden it stirred. One would have said it was
warning the child. It was the wind beginning to blow
again. Nothing stranger than this dead man in
movement.
The corpse at the end of the chain, pushed by the
invisible gust, took an oblique attitude; rose to the left,
then fell back, reascended to the right, and fell and rose
with slow and mournful precision. A weird game of see
saw. It seemed as though one saw in the darkness the
pendulum of the clock of Eternity.
This continued for some time. The child felt himself
waking up at the sight of the dead; through his
increasing numbness he experienced a distinct sense of fear.
The chain at every oscillation made a grinding sound,
with hideous regularity. It appeared to take breath, and
then to resume. This grinding was like the cry of a
grasshopper.
An approaching squall is heralded by sudden gusts of
wind. All at once the breeze increased into a gale. The
corpse emphasised its dismal oscillations. It no longer
swung, it tossed; the chain, which had been grinding, now
shrieked. It appeared that its shriek was heard. If it
was an appeal, it was obeyed. From the depths of the
horizon came the sound of a rushing noise.
It was the noise of wings.
An incident occurred, a stormy incident, peculiar to
graveyards and solitudes. It was the arrival of a flight
of ravens. Black flying specks pricked the clouds, pierced
through the mist, increased in size, came near,
amalgamated, thickened, hastening toward the hill, uttering cries.
It was like the approach of a Legion. The winged
vermin of the darkness alighted on the gibbet; the child,
scared, drew back.
Swarms obey words of command; the birds crowded
on the gibbet, not one was on the corpse. They were
talking among themselves. The croaking was frightful. The
howl, the whistle, and the roar are signs of life; the croak
is a satisfied acceptance of putrefaction. In it you can
fancy you hear the tomb breaking silence. The croak is
night-like in itself.
The child was frozen even more by terror than by cold.
Then the ravens held silence. One of them perched on
the skeleton. This was a signal: they all precipitated
themselves upon it. There was a cloud of wings, then
all their feathers closed up, and the hanged man
disappeared under a swarm of black blisters struggling in the
obscurity. Just then the corpse moved. Was it the
corpse? Was it the wind? It made a frightful bound.
The hurricane, which was increasing, came to its aid. The
phantom fell into convulsions. The squall, already blow
ing with full lungs, laid hold of it, and moved it about
in all directions.
It became horrible; it began to struggle. An awful
puppet, with a gibbet chain for a string. Some humourist
of night must have seized the string, and been playing
with the mummy. It turned and leaped as if it would
fain dislocate itself; the birds, frightened, flew off. It
was like an explosion of all those unclean creatures. Then
they returned; and a struggle began.
The dead man seemed possessed with hideous vitality.
The winds raised him as though they meant to carry him
away. He seemed struggling and making efforts to
escape, but his iron collar held him back. The birds
adapted themselves to all his movements, retreating, then
striking again, scared but desperate. On one side a
strange flight was attempted, on the other the pursuit of
a chained man. The corpse, impelled by every spasm of
the wind, had shocks, starts, fits of rage it went, it came,
it rose, it fell, driving back the scattered swarm. The
dead man was a club, the swarms were dust. The fierce,
assailing flock would not leave their hold, and grew
stubborn; the man, as if maddened by the cluster of beaks,
redoubled his blind chastisement of space. It was like
the blows of a stone held in a sling. At times the corpse
was covered by talons and wings; then it was free. There
were disappearances of the horde; then sudden furious
returns. A frightful torment continuing after life was
past. The birds seemed frenzied. The airholes of hell
must surely give passage to such swarms. Thrusting of
claws, thrusting of beaks, creakings, rendings of shreds
no longer flesh, creakings of the gibbet, shudderings of
the skeleton, jingling of the chain, the voices of the storm
and tumult. What conflict more fearful? A hotgoblin
warring with devils! A combat with a spectre!
At times the storm redoubling its violence, the hanged
man revolved on his own pivot, turning every way at
once toward the swarm, as if he wished to run after the
birds; his teeth seemed to try and bite them. The wind
was for him, the chain against him. It was as if black
deities were mixing themselves up in the fray. The
hurricane was in the battle. As the dead man turned himself
about, the flock of birds wound round him spirally. It
was a whirl in a whirlwind. A great roar was heard from
below. It was the sea.
The child saw this nightmare. Suddenly he trembled
in all his limbs, a shiver thrilled his frame; he staggered,
tottered, nearly fell, recovered himself, pressed both hands
to his forehead, as if he felt his forehead a support; then,
haggard, his hair streaming in the wind, descending the
hill with long strides, his eyes closed, himself almost
phantom, he took flight, leaving behind that torment in
the night.
HE ran until he was breathless, at random, desperate,
over the plain into the snow, into space. His flight
warmed him. He needed it. Without the run and the
fright he had died.
When his breath failed him, he stopped, but he dared
not look back. He fancied that the birds would pursue
him, that the dead man had undone his chain and was
perhaps hurrying behind him, and no doubt the gibbet
itself was descending the hill, running after the dead
man; he feared to see these things if he turned his
head.
When he had somewhat recovered his breath he resumed
his flight.
To account for facts does not belong to childhood.
He received impressions which were magnified by terror,
but he did not link them together in his mind, nor form
any conclusion on them. He was going on, no matter
how or where; he ran in agony and difficulty as one in a
dream. During the three hours or so since he had been
deserted, his onward progress, still vague, had changed
its purpose. At first it was a search, now it was a flight.
He no longer felt hungry or cold-he felt fear. One
instinct had given place to another. To escape was now
his whole thought-to escape from what? From
everything. On all sides life seemed to inclose him like a
horrible wall. If he could have fled from all things, he would
have done so. But children know nothing of that
breaking from prison which is called suicide. He was running.
He ran on for an indefinite time; but fear dies with lack
of breath.
All at once, as if seized by a sudden accession of energy
and intelligence, he stopped. One would have said he
was ashamed of running away. He drew himself up,
stamped his foot, and, with head erect, looked round.
There was no longer hill, nor gibbet, nor flights of crows.
The fog had resumed possession of the horizon. The
child pursued his way: he now no longer ran but walked.
To say that meeting with a corpse had made a man of him
would be to limit the manifold and confused impression
which possessed him. There was in his impression much
more and much less. The gibbet, a mighty trouble in the
rudiment of comprehension, nascent in his mind, still
seemed to him an apparition; but a trouble overcome is
strength gained, and he felt himself stronger. Had he
been of an age to probe self, he would have detected within
him a thousand other germs of meditation; but the
reflection of children is shapeless, and the utmost they feel
is the bitter aftertaste of that which, obscure to them, the
man later on calls indignation. Let us add that a child
has the faculty of quickly accepting the conclusion of a
sensation; the distant fading boundaries which amplify
painful subjects escape him. A child is protected by the
limit of feebleness against emotions which are too
complex. He sees the fact, and little else besides. The
difficulty of being satisfied by half-ideas does not exist for
him. It is not until later that experience comes, with its
brief, to conduct the lawsuit of life. Then he confronts
groups of facts which have crossed his path-the
understanding cultivated and enlarged, draws
comparisons-the memories of youth reappear under the passions, like
the traces of a palimpsest under the erasure; these
memories form the bases of logic, and that which was a vision
in the child's brain becomes a syllogism in the man's.
Experience is, however, various, and turns to good or evil
according to natural disposition. With the good it ripens,
faith the bad it rots.
The child had run quite a quarter of a league, and
walked another quarter, when suddenly he felt the
craving of hunger A thought which altogether eclipsed the
hideous apparition on the hill occurred to him forcibly,
that he must eat. Happily there is in man a brute which
serves to lead him back to reality.
But what to eat, where to eat, how to eat?
He felt his pockets mechanically, well knowing that
they were empty. Then he quickened his steps, without
knowing whither he was going. He hastened toward a
possible shelter. This faith in an inn is one of the
convictions enrooted by God in man. To believe in a shelter
is to believe in God.
However, in that plain of snow there was nothing like
a roof. The child went on, and the waste continued bare
as far as eye could see. There had never been a human
habitation on the tableland. It was at the foot of the
cliff, in holes in the rocks, that, lacking wood to build
themselves huts, had dwelt long ago the aboriginal in''
habitants, who had slings for arms, dried cow-dung for
firing, for a god the idol Hell standing in a glade at
Dorchester, and for trade the fishing of that false gray coral
which the Gauls called plin and the Greeks isidis plocamos.
The child found his way as best he could. Destiny is
made up of cross-roads. An option of path is dangerous.
This little being had an early choice of doubtful chances.
He continued to advance, but, although the muscles of
his thighs seemed to be of steel, he began to tire. There
were no tracks in the plain, or if there were any, the snow
had obliterated them. Instinctively he inclined eastward.
Sharp stones had wounded his heels. Had it been
daylight, pink stains, made by his blood, might have been seen
in the footprints he left in the snow.
He recognised nothing. He was crossing the plain of
Portland from south to north, and it is probable that the
band with which he had come, to avoid meeting any one,
had crossed it from east to west; they had most likely
sailed in some fisherman's or smuggler's boat from a point
on the coast of Uggescombe, such as St. Catherine's Cape,
or Swancry, to Portland to find the hooker which awaited
them, and they must have landed in one of the creeks of
Weston, and re-embarked in one of those of Easton.
That direction was intersected by the one the child was
now following. It was impossible for him to recognise
the road.
On the plain of Portland there are, here and there, raised
strips of land, abruptly ended by the shore and cut
perpendicular to the sea. The wandering child reached one
of these culminating points and stopped on it, hoping
that a larger space might reveal further indications. He
tried to see around him. Before him, in place of a
horizon, was a vast livid opacity. He looked at this
attentively, and under the fixedness of his glance it became less
indistinct. At the base of a distant fold of land toward
the east, in the depths of that opaque lividity (a moving
and a wan sort of precipice, which resembled a cliff of
the night), crept and floated some vague black rents, some
dim shreds of vapour. The pale opacity was fog, the black
shreds were smoke. Where there is smoke there are men.
The child turned his steps in that direction.
He saw some distance off a descent, and at the foot of
the descent, among shapeless conformation of rock, blurred
by the mist, what seemed to be either a sandbank or a
tongue of land, joining probably to the plains of the
horizon the tableland he had just crossed. It was evident
he must pass that way.
He had, in fact, arrived at the Isthmus of Portland, a
diluvian alluvium which is called Chess Hill.
He began to descend the side of the plateau.
The descent was difficult and rough. It was (with less
of ruggedness, however), the reverse of the ascent he had
made on leaving the creek. Every ascent is balanced by
a decline. After having clambered up, he crawled down.
He leaped from one rock to another at the risk of a
sprain, at the risk of falling into the vague depths below.
To save himself when he slipped on the rock or on the ice
he caught hold of handfuls of weeds and fume, thick with
thorns, and their points ran into his fingers. At times
he came on an easier declivity, taking breath as he
descended; then came on the precipice again, and each step
necessitated an expedient. In descending precipices.
every movement solves a problem. One must be skilful
under pain of death. These problems the child solved
with an instinct which would have made him the
admiration of apes and mountebanks. The descent was steep
and long. Nevertheless he was coming to the end of it.
Little by little it was drawing nearer the moment when
he should land on the Isthmus, of which from time to time
he caught a glimpse. At intervals, while he bounded or
dropped from rock to rock, he pricked up his ears, his
head erect, like a listening deer. He was hearkening to
a diffused and faint uproar, far away to the left, like the
deep note of a clarion. It was a commotion of winds
preceding that fearful north blast which is heard rushing
from the pole, like an inroad of trumpets. At the same
time, the child felt now and then on his brow, on his eyes
on his cheeks, something which was like the palms of cold
hands being placed on his face. These were large frozen
flakes, sown at first softly in space, then eddying, and
heralding a snowstorm. The child was covered with them.
The snowstorm, which for the last hour had been on the
sea, was beginning to gain the land. It was slowly
invading the plains. It was entering obliquely, by the
north-west, the tableland of Portland.
THE snowstorm is one of the mysteries of the ocean.
It is the most obscure of things meteorological; obscure
in every sense of the word. It is a mixture of fog and
storm; and even in our days we can not well account for
the phenomenon. Hence many disasters.
We try to explain all things by the action of wind and
wave; yet in the air there is a force which is not the wind,
and in the waters a force which is not the wave. That
force, both in the air and in the water, is effluvium. Air
and water are two nearly identical liquid masses,
entering into the composition of each other by condensation
and dilatation, so that to breathe is to drink. Effluvium
alone is fluid. The wind and the wave are only impulses;
effluvium is a current. The wind is visible in clouds, the
wave is visible in foam; effluvium is invisible. From time
to time, however, it says, ``I am here.'' Its ``I am here'' is
a clap of thunder.
The snowstorm offers a problem analogous to the dry
fog. If the solution of the calling of the Spaniards, and
the quobar of the Ethiopians be possible, assuredly that
solution will be achieved by the attentive observation of
magnetic effluvium.
Without effluvium a crowd of circumstances would
remain enigmatic. Strictly speaking, the changes in the
velocity of the wind, varying from 3 feet per second to
220 feet, would supply a reason for the variations of the
waves rising from 3 inches in a calm sea to 36 feet in a
raging one. Strictly speaking, the horizontal direction
of the winds, even in a squall, enables us to understand
how it is that a wave 30 feet high can be 1,500 feet long.
But why are the waves of the Pacific four times higher
near America than near Asia; that is to say, higher in the
East than in the West? Why is the contrary true of the
Atlantic? Why, under the Equator, are they highest in
the middle of the sea? Wherefore these deviations in
the swell of the ocean? This is what magnetic effluvium,
combined with terrestial rotation and sidereal attraction,
can alone explain.
Is not this mysterious complication needed to explain
an oscillation of the wind veering, for instance, by the
west from S. E. to N. E., then suddenly returning in the
same great curve from N. E. to S. E., so as to make in
thirty-six hours a prodigious circuit of 560 degrees?
Such was the preface to the snowstorm of March 17, 1867.
The storm-waves of Australia reach a height of 80 feet;
this fact is connected with the vicinity of the Pole.
Storms in those latitudes result less from disorder of the
winds than from submarine electrical discharges. In the
year 1866 the transatlantic cable was disturbed at regular
intervals in its working for two hours in the twenty-four,
from noon to two o'clock, by a sort of intermittent fever.
Certain compositions and decompositions of forces
produce phenomena, and impose themselves on the
calculations of the seaman under pain of shipwreck. The day
that navigation, now a routine, shall become a
mathematic, the day we shall, for instance, seek to know why
it is that in our regions hot winds come sometimes from
the north, and cold winds from the south; the day we
shall understand that diminutions of temperature are
proportionate to oceanic depths; the day we realise that
the globe is a vast loadstone polarised in immensity, with
two axes-an axis of rotation, and an axis of
effluvium-intersecting each other at the centre of the earth, and
that the magnetic poles turn round the geographical poles;
when those who risk life will choose to risk it
scientifically; when men shall navigate assured from studied
uncertainty; when the captain shall be meteorologist;
when the pilot shall be a chemist; then will many
catastrophes be avoided. The sea is magnetic as much as
aquatic: an ocean of unknown forces floats in the ocean of
the waves, or, one might say, on the surface. Only to
hold in the sea a mass of water is not to see it at all: the
sea is an ebb and flow of fluid, as much as a flux and
reflux of liquid. It is, perhaps, complicated by attractions
even more than by hurricanes; molecular adhesion,
manifested among other phenomena by capillary attraction,
although microscopic, takes in ocean its place in the
grandeur of immensity; and the wave of effluvium
sometimes aids, sometimes counteracts, the wave of the air
and the wave of the waters. He who is ignorant of
electric law is ignorant of hydraulic law; for the one
intermixes with the other. It is true there is no study more
difficult or more obscure; it verges on empiricism, just
as astronomy verges on astrology; and yet without this
study there is no navigation. Saying this, we pass on.
One of the most dangerous components of the sea is
the snowstorm. The snowstorm is above all things
magnetic. The pole produces it as it produces the aurora
borealis. It is in the fog of the one as in the light of the
other; and in the flake of snow, as in the streak of flame,
effluvium is visible.
Storms are the nervous attacks and delirious frenzies
of the sea. The sea has its ailments. Tempests may be
compared to maladies. Some are mortal, others not;
some may be escaped, others not. The snowstorm is
supposed to be generally mortal. Jarabija, one of the pilots
of Magellan, termed it5 ``a cloud issuing from the devil's sore side.
The old Spanish navigators called this kind of squall
la nevada, when it came with snow; la helada when it
came with hail. According to them, bats fell from the
sky with the snow.
Snowstorms are characteristic of polar latitudes;
nevertheless, at times they glide-one might almost say
tumble into our climates; so much ruin is mingled with the
chances of the air.
The ``Matutina,'' as we have seen, plunged resolutely
into the great hazard of the night, a hazard increased by
the impending storm. She had encountered its menace
with a sort of tragic audacity; nevertheless, it must be
remembered that she had received due warning.
WHILE the hooker was in the gulf of Portland, there
was but little sea on; the ocean, if gloomy, was almost
still, and the sky was yet clear. The wind took little
effect on the vessel; the hooker hugged the cliff as closely
as possible; it served as a screen to her.
There were ten on board the little Biscayan felucca,
three men in crew, and seven passengers, of whom two
were women. In the light of the open sea (which
broadens twilight into day) all the figures on board were
clearly visible. Besides, they were not hiding now; they were
all at ease, each one reassumed his freedom of manner,
spoke in his own note, showing his face: departure was to
them a deliverance.
The motley nature of the group shone out. The women
were of no age. A wandering life produces premature
old age, and indigence is made up of wrinkles. One of
them was a Basque of the Dry-ports. The other, with a
large rosary, was an Irishwoman. They wore that air of
indifference common to the wretched. They had squatted
down close to each other when they got on board, on
chests at the foot of the mast. They talked to each
other. Irish and Basque are, as we have said, kindred
languages. The Basque woman's hair was scented with
onions and basil. The skipper of the hooker was a
Basque of Guipuzcoa. One sailor was a Basque of the
northern slope of the Pyrenees, the other was of the
southern slope,-that is to say, they were of the same
nation, although the first was French and the latter
Spanish. The Basques recognise no official country. Mi
madre se llama Montaña, my mother is called the
mountain, as Zalareus, the muleteer, used to say. Of the five
men who were with the two women, one was a
Frenchman of Languedoc, one a Frenchman of Provence, one a
Genoese; one an old man, he who wore the sombrero
without a hole for a pipe; he appeared to be a German. The
fifth, the chief, was a Basque of the Landes from
Biscarrosse. It was he who, just as the child was going on
board the hooker, had, with a kick of his heel, cast the
plank into the sea. This man, robust, agile, sudden in
movement, covered, as may be remembered, with
trimmings, slashings, and glistening tinsel, could not keep in
his place; he stooped down, rose up, and continually
passed to and fro from one end of the vessel to the other,
as if debating uneasily on what had been done and what
was going to happen.
This chief of the band, the captain and the Hugo men of
the crew, all four Basques, spoke sometimes Basque,
sometimes Spanish, sometimes French-these three
languages being common on both slopes of the Pyrenees.
But generally speaking, excepting the women, all talked
something like French, which was the foundation of their
slang. The French language about this period began to
be chosen by the peoples as something intermediate
between the excess of consonants in the north, and the
excess of vowels in the south. In Europe, French was
the language of commerce, and also of felony. It will
be remembered that (Libby, a London thief, understood
Cartouche.
The hooker, a fine sailer, was making quick way; still,
ten persons, besides their baggage, were a heavy cargo for
one of such light draught.
The fact of the vessel's aiding the escape of a band did
not necessarily imply that the crew were accomplices. It
was sufficient that the captain of the vessel was a
Vascongado, and that the chief of the band was another.
Among that race mutual assistance is a duty which
admits of no exception. A Basque, as we have said, is
neither Spanish nor French; he is Basque, and always
and everywhere he must succour a Basque. Such is
Pyrenean fraternity.
All the time the hooker was in the gulf, the sky,
although threatening, did not frown enough to cause the
fugitives any uneasiness. They were flying, they were
escaping, they were brutally gay. One laughed, another
sang; the laugh was dry but free, the song was low but
careless.
The Languedocian cried, ``Caoucagno!'' ``Cocagne''
expresses the highest pitch of satisfaction in Narbonne.
He was a longshore sailor, a native of the waterside
village of Gruissan, on the southern side of the Clappe, a
bargeman rather than a mariner, but accustomed to work
the reaches of the inlet of Pages, and to draw the
dragnet full of fish over the salt sands of St. Lucie. He was
of the race who wear a red cap, make complicated signs
of the cross after the Spanish fashion, drink wine out of
goat-skins, eat scraped ham, kneel down to blaspheme,
and implore their patron saint with threats:-``Great
saint, grant me what I ask, or I'll throw a stone at thy
head, ou té feg um pic.'' He might be, at need, a useful
addition to the crew.
The Provençal in the caboose was blowing up a turf
fire under an iron pot, and making broth. The broth
was a kind of puchero, in which fish took the place of
meat, and into which the Provençal threw chick peas,
little bits of bacon cut in squares, the pods of red pimento;
concessions made by the eaters of bouillabaisse to the
eaters of olla podrida. One of the bags of provisions
was beside him unpacked. He had lighted over his
head an iron lantern, glazed with talc, which swung
on a hook from the ceiling. By its side, on another
hook, swung the weather-cock halcyon. There was a
popular belief in those days that a dead halcyon, hung by
the beak, always turned its breast to the quarter whence
the wind was blowing. While he made the broth, the
Provençal put the neck of a gourd into his mouth, and
now and then swallowed a draught of aguardiente. It
was one of those gourds covered with wicker, broad and
gal, with handles, which used to be hung to the side by a
strap, and which were then called hip-gourds. Between
each gulp he mumbled one of those country songs of
which the subject is nothing at all: a hollow road, a
hedge; you see in the meadow, through a gap in the
bushes, the shadow of a horse and cart, elongated in the
sunset, and from time to time, above the hedge, the end
of a fork loaded with hay appears and disappears-you
want no more to make a song.
A departure, according to the bent of one's mind, is a
relief or a depression. All seemed lighter in spirits
excepting the old man of the band, the man with the hat
that had no pipe.
This old man, who looked more German than anything
else, although he had one of those unfathomable faces in
which nationality is lost, was bald, and so grave that his
baldness might have been a tonsure. Every time he
passed before the Virgin on the prow, he raised his felt
hat, so that you could see the swollen and senile veins of
his skull. A sort of full gown, torn and threadbare, of
brown Dorchester serge, but half hid his closely fitting
coat, tight, compact, and hooked up to the neck like a
cassock. His hands inclined to cross each other, and had
the mechanical junction of habitual prayer. He had what
might be called a wan countenance; for the countenance
is above all things a reflection, and it is an error to believe
that idea is colourless. That countenance was evidently
the surface of a strange inner state, the result of a
composition of contradictions, some tending to drift away in
good, others in evil, and to an observer it was the
revelation of one who was less and more than human-capable
of falling below the scale of the tiger, or of rising above
that of man. Such chaotic souls exist. There was
something inscrutable in that face. Its secret reached the
abstract. You felt that the man had known the foretaste
of evil which is the calculation, and the aftertaste which
is the zero. In his impassibility, which was perhaps only
on the surface, were imprinted two petrifactions: the
petrification of the heart proper to the hangman, and the
petrification of the mind proper to the mandarin. One
might have said (for the monstrous has its mode of being
complete), that all things were possible to him, even
emotion. In every savant there is something of the corpse,
and this man was a savant. Only to see him you caught
science imprinted in the gestures of his body and in the
folds of his dress. His was a fossil face, the serious cast
of which was counteracted by that wrinkled mobility of
the polyglot which verges on grimace. But a severe man
withal; nothing of the hypocrite, nothing of the cynic. A
tragic dreamer. He was one of those whom crime leaves
pensive; he had the brow of an incendiary tempered by
the eyes of an archbishop. His sparse gray locks turned
to white over his temples. The Christian was evident in
him, complicated with the fatalism of the Turk.
Chalkstones deformed his fingers, dissected by leanness. The
stiffness of his tall frame was grotesque. He had his
sealegs, he walked slowly about the deck, not looking at any
one, with an air decided and sinister. His eyeballs were
vaguely filled with the fixed light of a soul studious of
the darkness and afflicted by reapparitions of conscience.
From time to time the chief of the band, abrupt and
alert, and making sudden turns about the vessel, came to
him and whispered in his ear. The old man answered by
a nod. It might have been the lightning consulting the
night.
TWO men on board the craft were absorbed in
thought-the old man and the skipper of the hooker, who must
not be mistaken for the chief of the band. The captain was
occupied by the sea, the old man by the sky. The former
did not lift his eyes from the waters; the latter kept
watch on the firmament. The skipper's anxiety was the
state of the sea; the old man seemed to suspect the
heavens. He scanned the stars through every break in
the clouds.
It was the time when day still lingers, but some few
stars begin faintly to pierce the twilight. The horizon
was singular. The mist upon it varied. Haze
predominated on land, clouds at sea.
The skipper, noting the rising billows, hauled all taut
before he got outside Portland Bay. He would not delay
so doing until he should pass the headland. He
examined the rigging closely, and satisfied himself that the
lower shrouds were well set up, and supported firmly the
futtock-shrouds; precautions of a man who means to
carry on with a press of sail, at all risks.
The hooker was not trimmed, being two foot by the head.
This was her weak point.
The captain passed every minute from the binnacle to
the standard compass, taking the bearings of objects on
shore. The ``Matutina'' had at first a soldier's wind which
was not unfavourable, though she could not lie within five
points of her course. The captain took the helm as often
as possible, trusting no one but himself to prevent her
from dropping to leeward, the effect of the rudder being
influenced by the steerage-way.
The difference between the true and apparent course,
being relative to the way on the vessel, the hooker seemed
to lie closer to the wind than she did in reality. The
breeze was not a-beam, nor was the hooker close-hauled;
but one can not ascertain the true course made, except
when the wind is abaft. When you perceive long streaks
of clouds meeting in a point on the horizon, you may be
sure that the wind is in that quarter; but this evening
the wind was variable; the needle fluctuated; the captain
distrusted the erratic movements of the vessel. He steered
carefully but resolutely, luffed her up, watched her
coming to, prevented her from yawing, and from running into
the wind's eye: noted the leeway, the little jerks of the
helm: was observant of every roll and pitch of the vessel,
of the difference in her speed, and of the variable gusts
of wind. For fear of accidents he was constantly on the
lookout for squalls from off the land he was hugging,
and above all he was cautious to keep her full; the
direction of the breeze indicated by the compass being
uncertain from the small size of the instrument. The
captain's eyes, frequently lowered, remarked every change in
the waves.
Once, nevertheless, he raised them toward the sky, and
tried to make out the three stars of Orion's belt. These
stars are called the three magi, and an old proverb of the
ancient Spanish pilots declares that, ``He who sees the
three magi is not far from the Saviour.''
This glance of the captain's tallied with an aside growled
out, at the other end of the vessel, by the old man. ``We
don't even see the pointers, nor the star Antares, red as
he is. Not one is distinct.''
No care troubled the other fugitives.
Still, when the first hilarity they felt in their escape
had passed away, they could not help remembering that
they were at sea in the month of January, and that the
wind was frozen. It was impossible to establish
themselves in the cabin. It was much too narrow and too
much incumbered by bales and baggage. The baggage
belonged to the passengers, the bales to the crews for the
hooker was no pleasure boat, and was engaged in
smuggling. The passengers were obliged to settle themselves on
deck, a condition to which these wanderers easily resigned
themselves. Open-air habits make it simple for vagabonds
to arrange themselves for the night. The open air (la
belle étoile) is their friend, and the cold helps them to
sleep-sometimes to die.
This night, as we have seen, there was no belle étoile.
The Languedocian and the Genoese, while waiting for
supper, rolled themselves up near the women, at the foot
of the mast, in some tarpaulin which the sailors had
thrown them.
The old man remained at the bow motionless, and
apparently insensible to the cold.
The captain of the hooker, from the helm where he was
standing, uttered a sort of guttural call somewhat like
the cry of the American bird called the exclaimer; at his
call the chief of the band drew near, and the captain
addressed him thus:
``Etcheco Jaüna.'' These two words, which mean
``tiller of the mountain,'' form with the old Cantabri a
solemn preface to any subject which should command
attention.
Then the captain pointed the old man out to the chief,
and the dialogue continued in Spanish; it was not, indeed,
a very correct dialect, being that of the mountains. Here
are the questions and answers:
``Etcheco jaüna, que es este hombre?''
``Un hombre.''
``Que lenguas habla?''
``Todas.''
``Que cosas sabe?''
``Todas.''
``Qual païs?,'
``Ningun, y todos.''
``Qual dios?''
``Dios.''
``Como le llamas?''
``El tonto.''
``Como dices que le llamas?''
``El sabio.''
``En vuestre tropa que esta?''
``Esta lo que esta.''
``El gefe?''
``No.''
``Pues que esta?''
``La alma.''6
The chief and the captain parted, each reverting to his
own meditation, and a little while afterward the
``Matutina'' left the gulf.
Now came the great rolling of the open sea. The ocean
in the spaces between the foam was slimy in appearance.
The waves seen through the twilight in indistinct outline,
somewhat resembled plashes of gall. Here and there a
wave floating flat showed cracks and stars, like a pane of
glass broken by stones; in the centre of these stars, in a
revolving orifice, trembled a phosphorescence, like that
feline reflection of vanished light which shines in the
eye-balls of owls.
Proudly, like a bold swimmer, the ``Matutina'' crossed
the dangerous Shambles shoal. This bank, a hidden
obstruction at the entrance of Portland roads, is not a
barrier, it is an amphitheatre-a circus of sand under the
sea, its benches cut out by the circling of the waves-an
arena, round and symmetrical, as high as a
Jungfrau-only drowned-a coliseum of the ocean, seen by the diver
in the vision-like transparency which engulfs him, such
is the Shambles shoal. There hydras fight, leviathans
meet. There, says the legend, at the bottom of the
gigantic shaft, are the wrecks of ships, seized and sunk
by the huge spider Kraken, also called the fish-mountain.
Such things lie in the fearful shadow of the sea.
These spectral realities, unknown to man, are
manifested at the surface by a slight shiver.
In this nineteenth century, the Shambles bank is in
ruins; the breakwater recently constructed has
overthrown and mutilated, by the force of its surf, that high
submarine architecture, just as the jetty, built at the
Croisic in 1760, changed, by a quarter of an hour, the
courses of the tides. And yet the tide is eternal. But
eternity obeys man more than man imagines.
THE old man whom the chief of the band had named
first the Madman, then the Sage, now never left the
forecastle. Since they crossed the Shambles shoal, his
attention had been divided between the heavens and the
waters. He looked down, he looked upward, and above
all watched the northeast.
The skipper gave the helm to a sailor, stopped over the
after hatchway, crossed the gangway, and went on to the
forecastle. He approached the old man, but not in front.
He stood a little behind, with elbows resting on his hips,
with outstretched hands, the head on one side, with open
eyes and arched eyebrows, and a smile in the corners of
his mouth, an attitude of curiosity hesitating between
mockery and respect.
The old man, either that it was his habit to talk to
himself, or that hearing some one behind incited him to
speech, began to soliloquise while he looked into space:
``The Meridian, from which the right ascension is
calculated, is marked in this century by four stars-the Polar
Cassiopeia's Chair, Andromeda's Head, and the star
Al-genib, which is in Pegasus. But there is not one visible.''
These words followed each other mechanically,
confused, and scarcely articulated, as if he did not care to
pronounce them. They floated out of his mouth and
dispersed. Soliloquy is the smoke exhaled by the inmost
fires of the soul.
The skipper broke in, ``My lord!''
The old man, perhaps rather deaf as well as very
thoughtful, went on:
``Too few stars and too much wind. The breeze
continually changes its direction and blows inshore; thence
it rises perpendicularly. This results from the land
being warmer than the water. Its atmosphere is lighter.
The cold and dense wind of the sea rushes in to replace
it. From this cause, in the upper regions the wind blows
toward the land from every quarter. It would be
advisable to make long tacks between the true and apparent
parallel. When the latitude by observation differs from
the latitude by dead reckoning, by not more than three
minutes in thirty miles, or by four minutes in sixty miles,
you are in the true course.''
The skipper bowed, but the old man saw him not. The
latter, who wore what resembled an Oxford or Gottingen
University gown, did not relax his haughty and rigid
attitude. He observed the waters as a critic of waves and
of men. He studied the billows, but almost as if he was
about to demand his turn to speak amid their turmoil,
and teach them something. There was in him both
pedagogue and soothsayer. He seemed an oracle of the deep.
He continued his soliloquy, which was perhaps intended
to be heard.
``We might strive if we had a wheel instead of a helm.
With a speed of twelve miles an hour, a force of twenty
pounds exerted on the wheel produces three hundred
thousand pounds' effect on the course. And more, too. For,
in some cases, with a double block and runner, they can
get two more revolutions.''
The skipper bowed a second time, and said, ``My lord,''
The old man's eye rested on him, he had turned his head
without moving his body.
``Call me Doctor.''
``Master Doctor, I am the skipper.''
``Just so,'' said the doctor.
The doctor, as henceforward we shall call him, appeared
willing to converse.
``Skipper, have you an English sextant?''
``No.''
``Without an English sextant you can not take an
altitude at all.''
``The Basques,'' replied the captain, ``took altitudes
before there were any English.''
``Be careful you are not taken aback.''
``I keep her away when necessary.''
``Have you tried how many knots she is running?''
``Yes.''
``When?''
Just now.
``How?''
``By the log.''
``Did you take the trouble to look at the triangle?''
``Yes.''
``Did the sand run through the glass in exactly thirty
seconds?''
``Yes.''
``Are you sure that the sand has not worn the hole
between the globes?''
``Yes.''
``Have you proved the sand-glass by the oscillations
of a bullet?''-
``Suspended by a rope yarn drawn out from the top of
a coil of soaked hemp? Undoubtedly.''
``Have you waxed the yarn lest it should stretch?''
``Yes.''
``Have you tested the log?''
``I tested the sand-glass by the bullet, and checked the
log by a round shot.''
``Of what size was the shot?''
``One foot in diameter.''
``Heavy enough?''
``It is an old round shot of our war hooker, `La Casse
de Par-Grand.' ''
``Which was in the Armada?''
``Yes.''
``And which carried six hundred soldiers, fifty sailors,
and twenty-five guns?''
``Shipwreck knows it.''
``How did you compute the resistance of the water to
the shot?''
``By means of a German scale.''
``Have you taken into account the resistance of the
rope supporting the shot to the waves?''
``Yes.''
``What was the result?''
``The resistance of the water was 170 pounds.''
``That's to say she is running four French leagues an
hour.''
``And three Dutch leagues.
``But that is the difference merely of the vessel's way
and the rate at which the sea is running?''
``Undoubtedly.''
``Whither are you steering?''
``For a creek I know, between Loyola and St. Sebastian.''
``Make the latitude of the harbour's mouth as soon as
possible.''
``Yes, as near as I can.''
``Beware of gusts and currents. The first cause the
second.''
``Traidores.''7
``No abuse. The sea understands. Insult nothing. Rest
satisfied with watching.''
``I have watched, and I do watch. Just now the tide
is running against the wind, by and by, when it turns,
we shall be all right.''
``Have you a chart?''
``No; not for this channel.''
``Then you sail by rule of thumb?''
``Not at all. I have a compass.''
``The compass is one eye, the chart the other.''
``A man with one eye can see.''
``How do you compute the difference between the true
and apparent course?''
``Well, I've got my standard compass, and I make a
guess.''
``To guess is all very well. To know for certain is
better.''
``Christopher guessed.''
``When there is a fog and the needle revolves
treacherously, you can never tell on which side you should look
out for squalls, and the end of it is that you know neither
the true nor apparent day's work. An ass with his chart
is better off than a wizard with his oracle.''
``There is no fog in the breeze yet, and I see no cause
for alarm.''
``Ships are like flies in the spider's web of the sea.''
``Just now both winds and waves are tolerably favourable.''
``Black specks quivering on the billows, such are men
on the ocean.''
``I dare say there will be nothing wrong to-night.''
``You may get into such a mess that you will find it
hard to get out of it.''
``All goes well at present.''
The doctor's eyes were hoed on the northeast. The
skipper continued:
``Let us once reach the Gulf of Gascony, and I answer
for our safety. Ah! I should say I am at home there.
I know it well, my Gulf of Gascony. It is a little basin,
often very boisterous; but there, I know every sounding
in it and the nature of the bottom; mud opposite San
Cipriano, shells opposite Cizarque, and off Cape Penas,
little pebbles off Boncaut de Mimizan; and I know the
colour of every pebble.''
The skipper broke off, the doctor was no longer
listening.
The doctor gazed at the northeast. Over that icy face
passed an extraordinary expression. All the agony of
terror possible to a mask of stone was depicted there.
From his mouth escaped this word, ``Good!''
His eyeballs, which had all at once become quite round
like an owl's, were dilated with stupor on discovering a
speck on the horizon. He added.
``It is well. As for me, I am resigned.''
The skipper looked at him. The doctor went on
talking to himself, or to some one in the deep:
``I say, Yes.''
Then he was silent, opened his eyes wider and wider
with renewed attention on that which he was watching,
and said:
``It is coming from afar, but not the less surely will it
come.''
The arc of the horizon which occupied the visual rays
and thoughts of the doctor, being opposite to the west,
was illuminated by the transcendent reflection of twilight,
as if it were day. This arc, limited in extent, and
surrounded by streaks of grayish vapour, was uniformly blue,
but of a leaden rather than cerulean blue. The doctor,
having completely returned to the contemplation of the
sea, pointed to this atmospheric arc, and said:
``Skipper, do you see?''
``What?''
``That.''
``What?''
``Out there.''
``A blue spot? Yes.''
``What is it?,'
``A niche in heaven.''
``For those who go to heaven; for those who go
elsewhere it is another affair.'' And he emphasised these
enigmatical words with an appalling expression which was
unseen in the darkness.
A silence ensued. The skipper, remembering the two
names given by the chief to this man, asked himself the
question:
``Is he a madman, or is he a sage?''
The stiff. and bony finger of the doctor remained
immovably pointing, like a sign-post, to the misty blue spot
in the sky.
The skipper looked at this spot.
``In truth,'' he growled out, ``it is not sky but clouds.''
``A blue cloud is worse than a black cloud,'' said the
doctor; ``and,'' he added, ``it's a snow-cloud.''
``La nube de la nieve,'' said the skipper, as if trying to
understand the word better by translating it.
``Do you know what a snow-cloud is?'' asked the doctor.
``No.''
``You'll know by and by.''
The skipper again turned his attention to the horizon.
Continuing to observe the cloud, he muttered between
his teeth:
``One month of squalls, another of wet; January with
its gales, February with its rains, that's all the winter we
Asturians get. Our rain even is warm. We've no snow
but on the mountains. Ay, ay, look out for the avalanche.
The avalanche is no respectre of persons. The avalanche
is a brute.''
``And the waterspout is a monster,'' said the doctor,
adding, after a pause, ``Here it comes.'' He continued,
``Several winds are getting up together. A strong wind
from the west, and a gentle wind from the east.''
``That last is a deceitful one,'' said the skipper.
The blue cloud was growing larger.
``If the snow,'' said the doctor, ``is appalling when it
slips down the mountain, think what it is when it falls
from the Pole!''
His eye was glassy. The cloud seemed to spread over
his face and simultaneously over the horizon. He
continued, in musing tones:
``Every minute the fatal hour draws nearer. The will
of Heaven is about to be manifested.''
The skipper asked himself again this question: ``Is he
a madman?
``Skipper,'' began the doctor, without taking his eyes
off the cloud, ``have you often crossed the Channel?''
``This is the first time.''
The doctor, who was absorbed by the blue cloud, and
who, as a sponge can take up but a definite quantity of
water, had but a definite measure of anxiety, displayed
no more emotion at this answer of the skipper than was
expressed by a slight shrug of his shoulders.
``How is that?''
``Master Doctor, my usual cruise is to Ireland. I sail
from Fontarabia to Black Harbour, or to the Achille
Islands. I go sometimes to Braich-y-Pwll, a point on the
Welsh coast. But I always steer outside the Scilly
Islands. I do not know this sea at all.''
``That's serious. Woe to him who is inexperienced on
the ocean! One ought to be familiar with the Channel:
the Channel is the Sphinx. Look out for shoals.''
``We are in twenty-five fathoms here.''
``We ought to get into fifty-five fathoms to the west,
and avoid even twenty fathoms to the east.''
``We'll sound as we get on.''
``The Channel is not all ordinary sea. The water rises
fifty feet with the spring tides and twenty-five with neap
tides. Here we are in slack water. I thought you looked
scared.''
``We'll sound to-night.''
``To sound you must heave-to, and that you can not do.99
``Why not?''
``On account of the wind.''
``We'll try.''
``The squall is close on us.''
``We'll sound, Master Doctor.''
``You could not even bring-to.''
``Trust in God.''
``Take care what you say. Pronounce not lightly the awful name.''
``I will sound, I tell you.''
``Be sensible; you will have a gale of wind presently.''
``I say that I will try for soundings.''
``The resistance of the water will prevent the lead from
sinking, and the line will break. Ah! so this is your first
time in these waters?''
``The first time.''
``Very well; in that case listen, skipper.''
The tone of the word Listen was so commanding, that
the skipper made an obeisance.
``Master Doctor, I am all attention.''
``Port your helm, and haul up on the starboard tack.''
``What do you mean?''
``Steer your course to the west.''
``Caramba!''
``Steer your course to the west.''
``Impossible.''
``As you will. What I tell you is for the others' sake.
As for myself, I am indifferent.''
``But, Master Doctor, steer west?''
``Yes, skipper.''
``The wind will be dead ahead.''
``Yes, skipper.''
``She'll pitch like the devil.''
``Moderate your language. Yes, skipper.''
``The vessel would be in irons.''
``Yes, skipper.''
``That means very likely the mast will go.''
``Possibly.''
``Do you wish me to steer west?''
``Yes.''
``I can not.''
``In that case settle your reckoning with the sea.''
``The wind ought to change.''
``It will not change all night.''
``Why not?''
``Because it is a wind 1,200 leagues in length.''
``Make headway against such a wind. Impossible.''
``To the west, I tell you.''
``I'll try, but in spite of everything she will fall off.''
``That's the danger.''
``The wind sets us to the east.''
``Don't go to the east.''
``Why not?''
``Skipper, do you know what is for us the word of death?''
``No.''
``Death is the east.''
``I'll steer west.''
This time the doctor, having turned right round, looked
the skipper full in the face, and with his eyes resting on
him, as though to implant the idea in his head, pronounced
slowly, syllable by syllable, these words:
``If to-night out at sea we hear the sound of a bell, the
ship is lost.''
The skipper pondered in amaze.
``What do you mean?''
The doctor did not answer. His countenance,
expressive for a moment, was now reserved. His eyes became
vacuous. He did not appear to hear the skipper's
wondering question. He was now attending to his own
monologue. His lips let fall, as if mechanically, in a low
murmuring tone, these words:
``The time has come for sullied souls to purify themselves.''
The skipper made that expressive grimace, which raises
the chin toward the nose.
``He is more madman than sage,'' he growled, and moved off.
Nevertheless he steered west.
But the wind and the sea were rising.
THE mist was deformed by all sorts of inequalities,
bulging out at once on every point of the horizon,
as if invisible mouths were busy puffing out the bags of
wind. The formation of the clouds was becoming
ominous. In the west, as in the east, the sky's depths were
now invaded by the blue cloud: it advanced in the teeth
of the wind. These contradictions are part of the wind's
vagaries.
The sea, which a moment before wore scales, now wore
a skin-such is the nature of that dragon. It was no
longer a crocodile, it was a boa. The skin, lead-coloured
and dirty, looked thick, and was crossed by heavy wrinkles.
Here and there, on its surface, bubbles of surge, like
pustules, gathered and then burst. The foam was like a
leprosy. It was at this moment that the hooker, still seen
from afar by the child, lighted her signal.
A quarter of an hour elapsed.
The skipper looked for the doctor: he was no longer
on deck. Directly the skipper had left him, the doctor
had stooped his somewhat ungainly form under the hood,
and had entered the cabin: there he had sat down near the
stove, on a block. He had taken a shagreen ink-bottle
and a cordwain pocketbook from his pocket; he had
extracted from his pocketbook a parchment folded four
times, old, stained, and yellow; he had opened the sheet,
taken a pen out of his ink-case, placed the pocketbook flat
on his knee, and the parchment on the pocketbook; and,
by the rays of the lantern, which was lighting the cook,
he set to writing on the back of the parchment. The roll
of the waves inconvenienced him. He wrote thus for
some time.
As he wrote, the doctor remarked the gourd of
aguardiente, which the Provençal tasted every time he added a
grain of pimento to the puchero, as if he were consulting
it in reference to the seasoning. The doctor noticed the
gourd, not because it was a bottle of brandy, but because
of the name which was plaited in the wicker-work with
red rushes on a background of white. There was light
enough in the cabin to permit of his reading the name.
The doctor paused, and spelled it in a low voice:
``Hardquanonne.''
Then he addressed the cook.
``I had not observed that gourd before, did it belong
to Hardquanonne?''
``Yes,'' the cook answered; ``to our poor comrade, Hardquanonne.''
The doctor went on:
``To Hardquanonne, the Fleming of Flanders?''
``Yes ''
``Who is in prison?''
``Yes.''
``In the dungeon at Chatham?''
``It is his gourd,'' replied the cook, ``and he was my
friend. I keep it in remembrance of him. When shall
we see him again? It is the bottle he used to wear slung
over his hip.''
The doctor took up his pen again, and continued
laboriously tracing somewhat straggling lines on the
parchment. He was evidently anxious that his handwriting
should be very legible; and, at length, notwithstanding
the tremulousness of the vessel and the tremulousness of
age, he finished what he wanted to write.
It was time, for, suddenly, a sea struck the craft, a
mighty rush of waters besieged the hooker, and they felt
her break into that fearful dance in which ships lead off
with the tempest.
The doctor arose and approached the stove, meeting
the ship's motion with his knees dexterously bent, dried
as best he could, at the stove where the pot was boiling,
the lines he had written, refolded the parchment in the
pocketbook, and replaced the pocketbook and the
inkhorn in his pocket.
The stove was not the least ingenious piece of interior
economy in the hooker. It was judiciously isolated.
Meanwhile, the pot heaved-the Provençal was watching it.
``Fish broth,'' said he.
``For the fishes,'' replied the doctor. Then he went on
deck again.
THROUGH his growing preoccupation, the doctor in
some sort reviewed the situation; and any one near
to him might have heard these words drop from his lips:
``Too much rolling, and not enough pitching.''
Then, recalled to himself by the dark workings of his
mind, he sank again into thought, as a miner into his
shaft. His meditation in nowise interfered with his
watch on the sea. The contemplation of the sea is in
itself a reverie.
The dark punishment of the waters, eternally tortured,
was commencing. A lamentation arose from the whole
main. Preparations, confused and melancholy, were
forming in space. The doctor observed all before him, and
lost no detail. There was, however, no sign of scrutiny
in his face. One does not scrutinise hell.
A vast commotion, yet half latent, but visible through
the turmoils in space, increased and irritated, more and
more, the winds, the vapours, the waves. Nothing is so
logical and nothing appears so absurd as the ocean.
Self-dispersion is the essence of its sovereignty, and is one of
the elements of its redundance. The sea is ever for and
against. It knots, that it may unravel, itself; one of its
slopes attacks, the other relieves. No apparition is so
wonderful as the waves. Who can paint the alternating
hollows and promontories, the valleys, the melting bosoms,
the sketches? How render the thickets of foam,
blendings of mountains and dreams? The indescribable is
everywhere there, in the rending, in the frowning, in the
anxiety, in the perpetual contradiction, in the chiaroscuro,
in the pendants of the cloud, in the keys of the ever-open
vault, in the disaggregation without rupture, in the
funereal tumult caused by all that madness!
The wind had just set due north. Its violence was so
favourable and so useful in driving them away from
England that the captain of the ``Matutina'' had made up his
mind to set all sail. The hooker slipped through the foam
as at a gallop, the wind right aft, bounding from wave to
wave in a gay frenzy. The fugitives were delighted, and
laughed; they clapped their hands, applauded the surf,
the sea, the wind, the sails, the swift progress, the flight,
all unmindful of the future. The doctor appeared not to
see them, and dreamed on.
Every vestige of day had faded away. This was the
moment when the child, watching from the distant cliff,
lost sight of the hooker. Up to then, his glance had
remained fixed, and, as it were, leaning on the vessel. What
part had that look in fate? When the hooker was lost to
sight in the distance, and when the child could no longer
see aught, the child went north and the ship went south.
All were plunged in darkness.
ON their part it was with wild jubilee arid delight that
those on board the hooker saw the hostile land recede
and lessen behind them. By degrees the dark ring of
ocean rose higher, dwarfing in twilight Portland,
Purbeck, Tineham, Kimmeridge, the Matravers, the long
streaks of dim cliffs, and the coast dotted with
light-houses.
England disappeared. The fugitives had now nothing
round them but the sea.
All at once night grew awful.
There was no longer extent or space; the sky became
blackness, and closed in round the vessel. The snow
began to fall slowly; a few flakes appeared. They might
have been ghosts. Nothing else was visible in the course
of the wind. They felt as if yielded up. A snare lurked
in every possibility.
It is in this cavernous darkness that in our climate the
Polar waterspout makes its appearance.
A great muddy cloud, like to the belly of a hydra, hung
over the ocean, and in places its lividity adhered to the
waves. Some of these adherences resembled pouches
with holes, pumping the sea, disgorging vapour, and
refilling themselves with water. Here and there these suctions
drew up cones of foam on the sea.
The boreal storm hurled itself on the hooker. The
hooker rushed to meet it. The squall and the vessel met
as though to insult each other.
In the first mad shock not a sail was clewed up, not a
jib lowered, not a reef taken in, so much is flight a
delirium. The mast creaked and bent back as if in fear.
Cyclones, in our northern hemisphere, circle from left
to right, in the same direction as the hands of a watch
with a velocity which is sometimes as much as sixty miles
an hour. Although she was entirely at the mercy of that
whirling power, the hooker behaved as if she were out in
moderate weather, without any further precaution than
keeping her head on to the rollers, with the wind broad
on the bow so as to avoid being pooped or caught
broadside on. This semi-prudence would have availed her
nothing in case of the wind's shifting and taking her aback.
A deep rumbling was brewing up in the distance. The
roar of the abyss, nothing can be compared to it. It is
the great brutish howl of the universe. What we call
matter, that unsearchable organism, that amalgamation
of incommensurable energies, in which can occasionally
be detected an almost imperceptible degree of intention
which makes us shudder, that blind, benighted cosmos,
that enigmatical Pan, has a cry, a strange cry, prolonged,
obstinate, and continuous, which is less than speech and
more than thunder. That cry is the hurricane. Other
voices, songs, melodies, clamours, tones, proceed from
nests, from broods, from pairings, from nuptials, from
homes. This one, a trumpet, comes out of the Naught,
which is All. Other voices express the soul of the
universe, this one expresses the monster. It is the howl of
the formless. It is the inarticulate finding utterance in
the indefinite. A thing it is full of pathos and terror.
Those clamours converse above and beyond man. They
rise, fall, undulate, determine waves of sound, form all
sorts of wild surprises for the mind, now burst close to
the ear with the importunity of a peal of trumpets, now
assail us with the rumbling hoarseness of distance. (biddy
uproar, which resembles a language, and which, in fact,
is a language. It is the effort which the world makes to
speak. It is the lisping of the wonderful. In this wail
is manifested vaguely all that the vast dark palpitation
endures, suffers, accepts, rejects. For the most part it
talks nonsense; it is like an access of chronic sickness, and
rather an epilepsy diffused than a force employed; we
fancy that we are witnessing the descent of supreme evil
into the infinite. At momenta we seem to discern a
reclamation of the elements, scone vain effort of chaos to
reassert itself over creation. At times it is a complaint.
The void bewails and justifies itself. It is as the pleading
of the world's cause. We can fancy that the universe is
engaged in a lawsuit; we listen, we try to grasp the
reasons given, the redoubtable for and against. Such a
moaning of the shadows has the tenacity of a syllogism.
Here is a vast trouble for thought. Here is the raison
d'etre of mythologies and polytheisms. To the terror of
those great murmurs are added superhuman outlines
melting away as they appear-Eumenides which are almost
distinct, throats of furies shaped in the clouds, Plutonian
chimeras almost defined. No horrors equal those sobs,
those laughs, those tricks of tumult, those inscrutable
questions and answers, those appeals to unknown aid.
Sian knows not what to become in the presence of that
awful incantation. He bows under the enigma of those
Draconian intonations. What latent meaning have they?
What do they signify? What do they threaten? What
do they implore? It would seem as though all bonds were
loosened. Vociferations from precipice to precipice, from
air to water, from the wind to the wave, from the rain to
the rock, from the zenith to the nadir, from the stars
to the foam-the abyss unmuzzled-such is that tumult,
complicated by some mysterious strife with the evil
consciences.
The loquacity of night is not less lugubrious than its
silence. One feels in it the anger of the unknown.
Night is a presence. Presence of what?
For that matter we must distinguish between night and
the shadows. In the night there is the absolute; in the
darkness the multiple. Grammar, logic as it is, admits
of no singular for the shadows. The night is one, the
shadows are many.8
Page 96
This mist of nocturnal mystery is the scattered, the
fugitive, the crumbling, the fatal; one feels earth no
longer, one feels the other reality.
In the shadow, infinite and indefinite, lives something
or some one; but that which lives there forms part of our
death. After our earthly passage, when that shadow
shall be light for us, the life which is beyond our life
shall seize us. Meanwhile it appears to touch and try us.
Obscurity is a pressure. Night is, as it were, a hand
placed on our soul. At certain hideous and solemn hours
we feel that which is beyond the wall of the tomb
encroaching on us.
Never does this proximity of the unknown seem more
imminent than in storms at sea. The horrible combines
with the fantastic. The possible interrupter of human
actions, the old cloud-compeller, has it in his power to
mold, in whatsoever shape he chooses, the inconsistent
element, the limitless incoherence, the force diffused and
undecided of aim. That mystery, the tempest, every instant
accepts and executes some unknown changes of will,
apparent or real.
Poets have, in all ages, called this the caprice of the
waves. But there is no such thing as caprice. The
disconcerting enigmas which in nature we call caprice, and
in human life chance, are splinters of a law revealed to
us in glimpses.
THE characteristic of the snowstorm is its blackness.
Nature's habitual aspect during a storm, the earth
or sea black and the sky pale, is reversed; the sky is black,
the ocean white, foam below, darkness above; a horizon
walled in with smoke; a zenith roofed with crape. The
tempest resembles a cathedral hung with mourning, but
no light in that cathedral: no phantom lights on the crests
of the waves, no spark, no phosphoresence, naught but
a huge shadow. The Polar cyclone differs from the
Tropical cyclone, inasmuch as the one sets fire to every
light, and the other extinguishes them all. The world is
suddenly converted into the arched vault of a cave. Out
of the night falls a dust of pale spots, which hesitate
between sky and sea. These spots, which are flakes of
snow, slip, wander, and float. It is like the tears of a
winding sheet putting themselves into lifelike motion. A
mad wind mingles with this dissemination. Blackness
crumbling into whiteness, the furious into the obscure, all
the tumult of which the sepulchre is capable, a whirlwind
under a catafalque-such is the snowstorm. Underneath
trembles the ocean, forming and re-forming over
portentous unknown depths.
In the Polar wind, which is electrical, the flakes turn
suddenly into hailstones, and the air becomes filled with
projectiles; the water crackles, shot with grape.
No thunderstrokes: the lightning of boreal storms is
silent. What is sometimes said of the cat, ``it swears,''
may be applied to this lightning. It is a menace
proceeding from a mouth half-open, and strangely inexorable.
The snowstorm is a storm blind and dumb; when it has
passed, the ships also are often blind and the sailors dumb.
To escape from such an abyss is difficult.
It would be wrong, however, to believe shipwreck to
be absolutely inevitable. The Danish fishermen of Disco
and the Balesin; the seekers of black whales; Hearn
steering toward Bering Strait to discover the mouth of
Coppermine River; Hudson, Mackenzie, Vancouver, Ross,
Dumont D'Urville all underwent at the Pole itself the
wildest hurricanes, and escaped out of them.
It was into this description of tempest that the hooker
had entered, triumphant and in full sail. Frenzy against
frenzy. Ashen Montgomery, escaping from Rouen, threw
his galley, with all the force of its oars, against the chain
barring the Seine at La Bouille, he showed similar
effrontery.
The ``Matutina'' sailed on fast; she bent so much under
her sails, that at moments she made a fearful angle with
the sea of fifteen degrees; but her good bellied keel
adhered to the water as if glued to it. The keel resisted
the grasp of the hurricane. The lantern at the prow cast
its light ahead.
The cloud, full of winds, dragging its tumour over the
deep, cramped and eat more and more into the sea round
the hooker. Not a gull, not a seamew, nothing but snow.
The expanse of the field of waves was becoming
contracted and terrible; only three or four gigantic ones were
visible.
Now and then.a tremendous flash of lightning of a red
copper colour broke out behind the obscure superposition
of the horizon and the zenith; that sudden release of
vermilion flame revealed the horror of the clouds; that abrupt
conflagration of the depths, to which for an instant the
first tiers of clouds and the distant boundaries of the
celestial chaos seemed to adhere, placed the abyss in
perspective. On this ground of fire the snowflakes showed
black; they might have been compared to dark butterflies
flying about in a red-hot furnace-then all was
extinguished.
The first explosion over, the squall, still pursuing the
hooker, began to roar in thoroughbass. This phase of
grumbling is a perilous diminution of uproar. Nothing
is so terrifying as this monologue of the storm. This
gloomy recitative appears to serve as a moment of rest
to the mysterious combating forces, and indicates a species
of patrol kept in the unknown.
The hooker held wildly on her course. Her two
mainsails especially were doing fearful work. The sky and
sea were as of ink with jets of foam running higher than
the mast. Every instant masses of water swept the deck
like a deluge, and at each roll of the vessel the
hawse-holes, now to starboard, now to larboard, became as so
many open mouths vomiting back the foam into the sea.
The women had taken refuge in the cabin, but the men
remained on deck; the blinding snow eddied round, the
spitting surge mingled with it. All was fury.
At that moment the chief of the band, standing abaft
on the stern-frames, holding on with one hand to the
shrouds, and with the other taking off the kerchief he
wore round his head and waving it in the light of the
lantern, gay and arrogant, with pride in his face, and his
hair in wild disorder, intoxicated by all the darkness, cried
out:
``We are free!''
``Free, free, free,'' echoed the fugitives; and the band,
seizing hold of the rigging, rose up on deck.
``Hurrah!'' shouted the chief.
And the band shouted in the storm:
``Hurrah!''
Just as this clamour was dying away in the tempest, a
loud solemn voice rose from the other end of the vessel,
saying:
``Silence!''
All turned their heads. The darkness was thick, and
the doctor was leaning against the mast so that he seemed
part of it, and they could not see him.
The voice spoke again:
``Listen!''
All were silent.
Then did they distinctly hear through the darkness the
toll of a bell.
THE skipper, at the helm, burst out laughing:
``A bell, that's good. We are on the larboard tack.
What does the bell prove? Why, that we have land to
starboard.''
The firm and measured voice of the doctor replied:
``You have not land to starboard.''
``But we have,'' shouted the skipper.
``No!''
``But that bell tolls from the land.''
``That bell,'' said the doctor, ``tolls from the sea.''
A shudder passed over these daring men, the haggard
faces of the two women appeared above the companion
like two hobgoblins conjured up: the doctor took a step
forward, separating his tall form from the mast. From
the depth of the night's darkness came the toll of the bell.
The doctor resumed:
``There is in the midst of the sea, half-way between
Portland and the Channel Islands, a buoy, placed there
as a caution; that buoy is moored by chains to the shoal,
and floats on the top of the water. On the buoy is fixed
an iron trestle, and across the trestle a bell is hung. In
bad weather heavy seas toss the buoy, and the bell rings.
That is the bell you hear.''
The doctor paused to allow an extra-violent gust of
wind to pass over, waited until the sound of the bell
reasserted itself, and then went on:
``To hear that bell in a storm, when the nor'wester is
blowing, is to be lost. Wherefore? For this reason: if
you hear the bell, it is because the wind brings it to you.
But the wind is nor'westerly, and the breakers of Aurigny
lie east. You hear the bell only because you are between
the buoy and the breakers. It 1S on those breakers the
wind is driving you. You are on the wrong side of the
buoy. If you were on the right side, you would be out
at sea on a safe course, and you would not hear the bell.
The wind would not convey the sound to you. You would
pass close to the buoy without knowing it. We are out
of our course. That bell is shipwreck sounding the tocsin.
Now, look out!''
As the doctor spoke the bell, soothed by a lull of the
storm, rang slowly stroke by stroke; and its intermitting
toll seemed to testify to the truth of the old man's words.
It was as the knell of the abyss.
All listened breathless. Now to the voice. Now to the
bell.
IN the meantime the skipper had caught up his
speaking-trumpet.
``Strike every sail, my lads; let go the sheets, man the
down-hauls, lower ties and brails. Let us steer to the
west, let us regain the high sea; head for the buoy, steer
for the bell, there's an oiling down there. We've yet a
chance.
``Try,'' said the doctor.
Let us remark here, by the way, that this ringing buoy,
a kind of bell-tower on the deep, was removed in 1802.
There are yet alive very old mariners who remember
hearing it. It forewarned, but rather too late.
The orders of the skipper were obeyed. The
Languedocian made a third sailor. All bore a hand. Not
satisfied with brailing up, they furled the sails; lashed the
earrings, secured the clew-lines, bunt-lines, and leech-lines;
and clapped preventer-shrouds on the block straps, which
thus might serve as backstays. They fished the mast.
They battened down the ports and bull's eyes, which is a
method of walling up a ship. These evolutions, though
executed in a lubberly fashion, were, nevertheless,
thoroughly effective. The hooker was stripped to bare poles.
But, in proportion as the vessel, stowing every stitch of
canvas, became more helpless, the havoc of both winds
and waves increased. The seas ran mountains high. The
hurricane, like an executioner hastening to his victim,
began to dismember the craft. There came, in the
twinkling of an eye, a dreadful crash: the topsails were blown
from the bolt-ropes, the chess-trees were hewn asunder, the
deck was swept clear, the shrouds were carried away, the
mast went by the board, all the lumber of the wreck was
flying in shivers. The main shrouds gave out, although
they were turned in, and stoppered to four fathoms.
The magnetic currents common to snowstorms hastened
the destruction of the rigging. It broke as much from
the effect of effluvium as the violence of the wind. Most
of the chain gear, fouled in the blocks, ceased to work.
Forward the bows, aft the quarters, quivered under the
terrific shocks. One wave washed overboard the compass
and its binnacle. A second carried away the boat, which,
like a box slung under a carriage, had been, in accordance
with the quaint Asturian custom, lashed to the bowsprit.
A third bleaker wrenched off the spritsail yard. A fourth
swept away the figurehead and signal light. The rudder
only was left.
To replace the ship's bow lantern they set fire to, and
suspended at the stem, a large block of wood covered
with oakum and tar.
The mast, broken in two, all bristling with quivering
splinters, ropes, blocks, and yards, cumbered the deck. In
falling it had stove in a plank of the starboard gunwale.
The skipper, still firm at the helm, shouted:
``While we can steer we have yet a chance. The lower
planks hold good. Axes, axes! Overboard with the mast!
Clear the decks!''
Both crew and passengers worked with the excitement
of despair.
A few strokes of the hatchets and it was done. They
pushed the mast over the side. The deck was cleared.
``Now,'' continued the skipper, ``take a rope's-end and
lash me to the helm.'' To the tiller they bound him.
While they were fastening him he laughed, and shouted:
``Blow, old hurdy-gurdy, bellow. I've seen your equal
off Cape Machichaco.''
And when secured he clutched the helm with that
strange hilarity which danger awakens.
``All goes well, my lads. Long live our Lady of
Buglose; let us steer west.''
An enormous wave came down abeam, and fell on the
vessel's quarter. There is always in storms a tiger-like
wave, a billow fierce and decisive, which, attaining a
certain height, creeps horizontally over the surface of the
waters for a time, then rises, roars, rages, and, falling
on the distressed vessel, tears it limb from limb.
A cloud of foam covered the entire poop of the
``Matutina.''
There was heard above the confusion of darkness and
waters a crash.
When the spray cleared off, when the stern again rose
in view, the skipper and the helm had disappeared. Both
had been swept away.
The helm and the man they had but just secured to it
had passed with the wave into the hissing turmoil of the
hurricane.
The chief of the band, gazing intently into the
darkness, shouted:
``Te burlas de nosotros?''
To this defiant exclamation there followed another cry.
``Let go the anchor. Save the skipper.''
They rushed to the capstan and let go the anchor.
Hookers carry but one. In this case the anchor reached
the bottom, but only to be lost. The bottom was of the
hardest rock. The billows were raging with resistless
force. The cable snapped like a thread.
The anchor lay at the bottom of the sea. At the
cut-water there remained but the cable-end protruding from
the hawse-hole.
From this moment the hooker became a wreck. The
``Matutina'' was irrevocably disabled. The vessel, just
before in full sail, and almost formidable in her speed, was
now helpless. All her evolutions were uncertain and
executed at random. She yielded passively and like a log
to the capricious fury of the waves. That in a few
minutes there should be in place of an eagle a useless cripple,
such a transformation is to be witnessed only at sea.
The howling of the wind became more and more
frightful. A hurricane has terrible lungs; it makes unceasingly
mournful additions to darkness, which can not be
intensified. The bell on the sea rang despairingly, as if tolled
by a weird hand.
The ``Matutina'' drifted like a cork at the mercy of the
leaves. She sailed no longer-she merely floated. Every
moment she seemed about to turn over on her back, like
a dead fish. The good condition and perfectly
water-tight state of the hull alone saved her from this disaster.
Below the water-line not a plank had started. There was
not a cranny, chink, or crack; and she had not made a
single drop of water in the hold. This was lucky, as the
pump, being out of order, was useless.
The hooker pitched and rolled frightfully in the
seething billows. The vessel had throes as of sickness, and
seemed to be trying to belch forth the unhappy crew.
Helpless they clung to the standing rigging, to the
transoms, to the shank painters, to the gaskets, to the
trolled planks, the protruding nails of which tore their
hands, to the warped riders, and to all the rugged
projections of the stumps of the masts. From time to time
they listened. The toll of the bell came over the waters
fainter and fainter; one would have thought that it also
divas in distress. Its ringing was no more than an
intermittent rattle. Then this rattle died away. Where
were they? At what distance from the buoy? The
sound of the bell had frightened them-its silence
terrified them. The northwester drove them forward in,
perhaps, a fatal course. They felt themselves wafted on
by maddened and ever-recurring gusts of wind. The
wreck sped forward in the darkness. There is nothing
more fearful than being hurried forward blindfold.
They felt the abyss before them, over them, under them.
It was no longer a run, it was a rush.
Suddenly, through the appalling density of the
snowstorm, there loomed a red light.
``A lighthouse!'' cried the crew.
IT was, indeed, the Caskets light.
A lighthouse of the nineteenth century is a high
cylinder of masonry, surmounted by scientifically constructed
machinery for throwing light. The Caskets lighthouse in
particular is a triple white tower, bearing three
light-rooms. These three chambers revolve on clockwork wheels
with such precision that the man on watch who sees
them from sea can invariably take ten steps during
their irradiation and twenty-five during their eclipse.
Everything is based on the focal plan, and on the rotation
of the octagon drum, formed of eight wide simple lenses,
in range, having above and below it two series of dioptric
rings; and algebraic gear, secured from the effects of the
beating of winds and waves by glass a millimetre thick,
yet sometimes broken by the sea-eagles, which dash
themselves like great moths against these gigantic lanterns.
The building which incloses and sustains this mechanism,
and in which it is set, is also mathematically constructed.
Everything about it is plain, exact, bare, precise, correct.
lighthouse is a mathematical figure.
In the seventeenth century a lighthouse was a sort of
plume of the land on the seashore. The architecture of
a lighthouse tower was magnificent and extravagant. It
was covered with balconies, balusters, lodges, alcoves,
weathercocks. Nothing but masks, statues, foliage, vow
lutes, reliefs, figures large and small, medallions with
inscriptions. Pax in bello, said the Eddystone lighthouse.
We may as well observe, by the way, that this declaration
of peace did not always disarm the ocean. Winstanley
repeated it on a lighthouse which he constructed at his
own expense, on a wild spot near Plymouth. The tower
being finished, he shut himself up in it to have it tried by
the tempest. The storm came and carried off the
lighthouse, and Winstanley in it. Such excessive adornment
gave too great a hold to the hurricane; as generals too
brilliantly equipped in battle draw the enemy's fire.
Besides whimsical designs in stone, they were loaded with
whimsical designs in iron, copper, and wood. The
ironwork was in relief, the woodwork stood out. On the
sides of the lighthouse there jutted out, clinging to the
walls among the arabesques, engines of every description,
useful and useless, windlasses, tackles, pulleys,
counterpoises, ladders, cranes, grapnels. On the pinnacle around
the light, delicately wrought ironwork held great iron
chandeliers, in which were placed pieces of rope steeped
in resin; wicks which burned doggedly, and which no
wind extinguished; and from top to bottom the tower was
covered by a complication of sea standards, banderoles,
banners, flags, pennons, colours which rose from stage to
stage, from story to story, a medley of all hues, all shapes,
all heraldic devices, all signals, all confusion, up to the
light chamber, making, in the storm, a gay riot of tatters
about the blaze. That insolent light on the brink of the
abyss showed like a defiance, and inspired shipwrecked
men with a spirit of daring. But the Caskets light was
not after this fashion.
It was, at that period, merely an old barbarous
lighthouse, such as Henry I had built it after the loss of the
``White Ship''-a flaming pile of wood under an iron
trellis, a brazier behind a railing, a head of hair flaming
in the wind.
The only improvement made in this lighthouse since
the twelfth century was a pair of forge-bellows worked
by an indented pendulum and a stone weight, which had
been added to the light chamber in 1610.
The fate of the sea-birds who chanced to fly against
these old lighthouses was more tragic than those of our
days. The birds dashed against them, attracted by the
light, and fell into the brazier, where they could be seen
struggling like black spirits in a hell, and at times they
would fall back again between the railings upon the rock,
red hot, smoking, lame, blind, like half-burned flies out
of a lamp.
To a full-rigged ship in good trim, answering readily
to the pilot's handling the Caskets light is useful; it
cries-Look out; it warns her of the shoal. To a disabled
ship it is simply terrible. The hull, paralysed and inert,
without resistance, without defence against the impulse
of the storm, or the mad heaving of the waves, a fish
without fins, a bird without wings, can but go where the
wind wills. The lighthouse shows the end-points out
the spot where it is doomed to disappear-throws light
upon the burial. It is the torch of the sepulchre.
To light up the inexorable chasm-to warn against the
inevitable-what more tragic mockery!
THE wretched people in distress on board the
``Matutina'' understood at once the mysterious derision which
mocked their shipwreck. The appearance of the lighthouse
raised their spirits at first, then overwhelmed them.
Nothing could be done, nothing attempted. What has been said
of kings, we may say of the waves-we are their people,
we are their prey. All that they rave must be borne.
The nor'wester was driving the hooker on the Caskets.
They were nearing them; no evasion was possible. They
drifted rapidly toward the reef; they felt that they were
getting into shallow waters; the lead, if they could have
thrown it to any purpose, would not have shown more
than three or four fathoms. The shipwrecked people
heard the dull sound of the waves being sucked within
the submarine caves of the steep rock. They made out,
under the lighthouse, like a dark cutting between two
plates of granite, the narrow passage of the ugly
wild-looking little harbour, supposed to be full of the skeletons
of men and carcasses of ships. It looked like the mouth of
a cavern, rather than the entrance of a port. They could
hear the crackling of the pile on high within the iron
grating. A ghastly purple illuminated the storm, the
collision of the rain and hail disturbed the mist. The
black cloud and the red flame fought, serpent against
serpent; live ashes, reft by the wind, flew from the fire,
and the sudden assaults of the sparks seemed to drive the
snowflakes before them. The breakers, blurred at first
in outline, now stood out in bold relief, a medley of rocks
with peaks, crest, and vertebrae. The angles were formed
by strongly marked red lines, and the inclined planes in
blood-like streams of light. As they neared it, the
outline of the reefs increased and rose-sinister.
One of the women, the Irishwoman, told her beads
wildly.
In place of the skipper, who was the pilot, remained the
chief, who was the captain. The Basques all know the
mountain and the sea. They are bold on the precipice,
arid inventive in catastrophes.
They neared the cliff. They were about to strike.
Suddenly they were so close to the great north rock of
the Caskets that it shut out the lighthouse from them.
They saw nothing but the rock and the red light behind
it. The huge rock looming in the mist was like a gigantic
black woman with a hood of fire.
That ill-famed rock is called the Biblet. It faces the
north side the reef, which on the south is faced by
another ridge, L'Etacqaux giulmets. The chief looked at
the Biblet, and shouted-
``A man with a will to take a rope to the rock. Who
can swim?''
No answer.
No one on board knew how to swim, not even the
sailors. An ignorance not uncommon among seafaring
people.
A beam nearly free of its lashings was swinging loose.
The chief clasped it with both hands, crying, ``Help
me.
They unlashed the beam. They had now at their
disposal the very thing they wanted. From the defensive,
they assumed the offensive.
It was a longish beam of heart of oak, sound and strong,
useful either as a support or as an engine of attack, a
lever for a burden, a ram against a tower.
``Ready!'' shouted the chief.
All six getting foothold on the stump of the mast, threw
their weight on the spar projecting over the side, straight
as a lance toward a projection of the cliff.
It was a dangerous manoeuvre. To strike at a
mountain is audacity indeed. The six men might well have
been thrown into the water by the shock.
There is variety in struggles with storms. After the
hurricane the shoal, after the wind the rock. First the
intangible, then the immovable, to be encountered.
Some minutes passed, such minutes as whiten men's
hair.
The rock and the vessel were about to come in collision.
the rock, like a culprit, awaited the blow.
A resistless wave rushed in; it ended the respite. It
caught the vessel underneath, raised it, and swayed it for
an instant as the sling swings its projectile.
``Steady!'' cried the chief, ``it is only a rock, and we
are men.''
The beam was couched, the six men were one with it,
its sharp bolts tore their arm-pits, but they did not feel
them.
The wave dashed the hooker against the rock.
Then came the shock.
It came under the shapeless cloud of foam which always
hides such catastrophes.
When this cloud fell back into the sea, when the waves
rolled back from the rock, the six men were tossing about
the deck, but the ``Matutina'' was floating alongside the
rock-clear of it. The beam had stood and turned the
vessel; the sea was running so fast that in a few seconds
she had left the Caskets behind.
Such things sometimes occur. It was a straight stroke
of the bowsprit that saved Wood of Largo at the mouth
of the Tay. In the wild neighbourhood of Cape
Winterton, and under the command of Captain Hamilton, it was
the appliance of such a lever against the dangerous rock,
Branodu-um that saved the ``Royal Mary'' from
ship-wreck, although she was but a Scotch-built frigate. The
force of the waves can be so abruptly discomposed, that
changes of direction can be easily managed, or at least
are possible even in the most violent collisions. There is
a brute in the tempest. The hurricane is a bull, and can
be turned.
The whole secret of avoiding shipwreck is to try and
pass from the secant to the tangent.
Such was the service rendered by the beam to the
vessel. It had done the work of an oar, had taken the
place of a rudder. But the manoeuvre once performed
could not be repeated. The beam was overboard; the shock
oil the collision had wrenched it out of the men's hands,
and it was lost in the waves. To loosen another beam
would have been to dislocate the hull.
The hurricane carried off the ``Matutina.'' Presently the
Caskets showed as a harmless encumbrance on the horizon.
Nothing looks more out of countenance than a reef of rocks
under such circumstances. There are in nature, in its
obscure aspects, in which the visible blends with the
invisible, certain motionless, surly profiles, which seem to
express that a prey has escaped.
Thus glowered the Caskets while the ``Matutina'' fled.
The lighthouse paled in distance, faded, and disappeared.
There was something mournful in its extinction. Layers
of mist sank down upon the now uncertain light. Its rays
died in the waste of waters, the flame floated, struggled,
sank, and lost its form. It might have been a drowning
creature. The brazier dwindled to the snuff of a candle;
then nothing more but a weak, uncertain flutter. Around
it spread a circle of extravasated glimmer; it was like the
quenching of light in the pit of night.
The bell which had threatened was dumb. The
lighthouse which had threatened had melted away. And yet
it was more awful now that they had ceased to threaten.
One was a voice, the other a torch. There was something
human about them.
They were gone, and naught remained but the abyss.
AGAIN was the hooker running with the shadow into
immeasurable darkness.
The ``Matutina,'' escaped from the Caskets, sank and
rose from billow to billow. A respite, but in chaos.
Spun round by the wind, tossed by all the thousand
motions of the wave, she reflected every mad oscillation
of the sea. She scarcely pitched at all, a terrible
symptom of a ship's distress. Wrecks merely roll. Pitching
is a convulsion of the strife. The helm alone can turn a
vessel to the wind.
In storms, and more especially in the meteors of snow,
sea and night end by melting into amalgamation,
resolving into nothing but a smoke. Mists, whirlwinds, gales,
motion in all directions, no basis, no shelter, no stop.
Constant recommencement, one gulf succeeding another.
No horizon visible; intense blackness for background.
Through all these the hooker drifted.
To have got free of the Caskets, to have eluded the
rock, was a victory for the shipwrecked men; but it was
a victory which left them in stupor. They had raised no
cheer; at sea such an imprudence is not repeated twice.
To throw down a challenge where they could not cast the
lead would have been too serious a jest.
The repulse of the rock was an impossibility achieved.
They were petrified by it. By degrees, however, they
began to hope again. Such are the insubmergible mirages
of the soul! There is no distress so complete but that
even in the most critical moments the inexplicable
sunrise of hope is seen in its depths. These poor wretches
were ready to acknowledge to themselves that they were
saved. It was on their lips.
But suddenly something terrible appeared to them in
the darkness.
On the port bow arose, standing stark, cut out on the
background of mist, a tall, opaque mass, vertical,
right-angled, a tower of the abyss. They watched it
open-mouthed. The storm was driving them toward it. They
knew not what it was. It was the Ortach rock.
THE reef reappeared. After the Caskets comes
Ortach. The storm is no artist; brutal and
all-powerful, it never varies its appliances. The darkness is
inexhaustible. Its snares and perfidies never come to an end.
As for man, he soon comes to the bottom of his resources.
Man expends his strength, the abyss never.
The shipwrecked men turned toward their chief, their
hope. He could only shrug his shoulders. Dismal
contempt of helplessness.
A pavement in the midst of the ocean, such is the
Ortach rock. The Ortach, all of a piece, rises up in a straight
line to eighty feet above the angry beating of the waves.
Waves and ships break against it. An immovable cube,
it plunges its rectilinear planes apeak into the numberless
serpentine curves of the sea.
At night it stands an enormous block resting on the
folds of a huge black sheet. In time of storm it awaits
the stroke of the axe, which is the thunderclap.
But there is never a thunderclap during the
snow-storm. True, the ship has the bandage round her eyes;
darkness is knotted about her; she is like one prepared to
be led to the scaffold. As for the thunderbolt, which
makes quick ending, it is not to be hoped for.
The ``Matutina,'' nothing better than a log upon the
waters, drifted toward this rock, as she had drifted toward
the other. The poor wretches on board, who had for a
moment believed themselves saved, relapsed into their
agony. The destruction they had left behind faced them
again. The reef reappeared from the bottom of the sea.
Nothing had been gained.
The Caskets are a figuring iron9 with a thousand
compartments. The Ortach is a wall. To be wrecked on
the Caskets is to be cut into ribbons; to strike on the
Ortach is to be crushed into powder.
Nevertheless, there was one chance.
On a straight frontage such as that of the Ortach,
neither the wave nor the cannon-ball can ricochet. The
operation is simple; first the flux, then the reflux; a wave
advances, a billow returns.
In such cases the question of life and death is balanced
thus; if the wave carries the vessel on the rock, she breaks
on it and is lost; if the billow retires before the ship has
touched, she is carried back, she is saved.
It was a moment of great anxiety; those on board saw
through the gloom the great decisive wave bearing down
on them. How far was it going to drag them? If the
wave broke upon the ship, they were carried on the rock
and dashed to pieces. If it passed under the ship.
The wave did pass under.
They breathed again.
But what of the recoil? What would the surf do with
them? The surf carried them back. A few minutes later
the ``Matutina'' was free of the breakers. The Ortach faded
from their view, as the Caskets had done. It was their
second victory. For the second time the hooker had verged
on destruction, and had drawn back in time.
MEANWHILE a thickening mist had descended
on the drifting wretches. They were ignorant of
their w hereabout, they could scarcely see a cable's-length
around. Despite a furious storm of hail which forced
them to bend down their heads, the women had
obstinately refused to go below again. No one, however
hopeless, but wishes, if shipwreck be inevitable, to meet
it in the open air. When so near death, a ceiling above
one's head seems like the first outline of a coffin.
They were now in a short and chopping sea. A turgid
sea indicates its constraint. Even in a fog the entrance
into a strait may be known by the boiling-like appearance
of the waves. And thus it was, for they were
unconsciously coasting Aurigny. Between the west of Ortach
and the Caskets and the east of Aurigny the sea is hemmed
in and cramped, and the uneasy position determines locally
the condition of storms. The sea suffers like others, and
when it suffers it is irritable. That channel is a thing to
fear.
The ``Matutina'' was in it.
Imagine under the sea a tortoise shell as big as Hyde
Park or the Champs Elysées, of which every stricture is
a shallow, and every embossment a reef. Such is the
western approach of Aurigny. The sea covers and
conceals this shipwrecking apparatus. On this conglomera
lion of submarine breakers the cloven waves leap and
foam-in calm weather a chopping sea; in storms a chaos.
The shipwrecked men observed this new complication
without endeavouring to explain it to themselves.
Suddenly they understood it. A pale vista broadened in the
zenith; a wan tinge overspread the sea; the livid light
revealed on the port side a long shoal stretching eastward,
toward which the power of the rushing wind was driving
the vessel. The shoal was Aurigny.
What was that shoal? They shuddered. They would
have shuddered even more had a voice answered
them-Aurigny.
No isle so well defended against man's approach as
Aurigny. Below and above water it is protected by a
savage guard, of which Ortach is the outpost. To the
west, Burhou, Sauteriaux, Anfroque, Niangle, Fond du
Croc, Les Jumelles, La Grosse, La Clanque, Les
Eguillons, Le Vrac, La Fosse-Malière; to the east, Sauquet,
Hommeau Floreau, La Brinebetais, La Queslingue,
Croquelihou, La Fourche, Le Saut, Noire Pute, Couple,
Orbue. These are hydra-monsters of the species reef.
One of these reefs is called Le But, the goal, as if to
imply that every voyage ends there.
This obstruction of rocks, simplified by night and sea,
appeared to the shipwrecked men in the shape of a single
dark band, a sort of black blot on the horizon.
Shipwreck is the ideal of helplessness; to be near land,
and unable to reach it; to float, yet not to be able to do
so in any desired direction; to rest the foot on what seems
firm and is fragile; to be full of life when o'ershadowed
by death; to be the prisoner of space; to be walled in
between sky and ocean; to have the infinite overhead like
a dungeon; to be encompassed by the eluding elements
of wind and waves; and to be seized, bound,
paralysed;-such a load of misfortune stupefies and crushes us. We
imagine that in it we catch a glimpse of the sneer of the
opponent who is beyond our reach. That which holds you
fast is that which releases the birds and sets the fishes free.
It appears nothing, and is everything. We are dependent
on the air which is ruffled by our mouths; we are dependent
on the water which we catch in the hollow of our hands.
Draw a glassful from the storm, and it is but a cup of
bitterness-a mouthful is nausea, a waveful is
extermination. The grain of sand in the desert, the foam-flake on
the sea, are fearful symptoms. Omnipotence takes no
care to hide its atoms, it changes weakness into strength,
fills naught with all; and it is with the infinitely little that
the infinitely great crushes you. It is with its drops the
ocean dissolves you. You feel you are a plaything.
A plaything: ghastly epithet !
The ``Matutina'' was a little above Aurigny, which was
not an unfavourable position; but she was drifting toward
its northern point, which was fatal. As a bent bow
discharges its arrow, the nor'wester was shooting the vessel
toward the northern cape. Off that point, a little beyond
the harbour of Corbelets, is that which the seamen of the
Norman archipelago call a ``singe.''
The ``singe,'' or race, is a furious kind of current. A
wreath of funnels in the shallows produces in the waves
a wreath of whirlpools. You escape one to fall into
another. A ship caught hold of by the race, winds round
and round until some sharp rock cleaves her hull; then
the shattered vessel stops, her stern rises from the waves,
the stem completes the revolution in the abyss, the stern
sinks in, and all is sucked down. A circle of foam
broadens and floats, and nothing more is seen on the surface of
the waves but a few bubbles here and there rising from
the smothered breathings below.
The three most dangerous races in the whole Channel
are: one close to the well-known Girdler Sands, one at
Jersey between the Pignonnet and the Point of Noirmont,
and the race of Aurigny.
Had a local pilot been on board the ``Matutina,'' he could
have warned them of their fresh peril. In place of a pilot,
they had their instinct. In situations of extreme danger
men are endowed with second sight. High contortions
of foam were flying along the coast in the frenzied rain
of the wind. It was the spitting of the race. Many a
bark has been swamped in that snare. Without knowing
what awaited them, they approached the spot with horror.
How to double that cape? There were no means of
doing it.
Just as they had seen, first the Caskets, then Ortach,
rise before them. They now saw the point of Aurigny, all
of steep rock. It was like a number of giants, rising up
one after another-a series of frightful duels.
Charybdis and Scylla are but two; the Caskets, Ortach,
and Aurigny are three.
The phenomenon of the horizon being invaded by the
rocks, was thus repeated with the grand monotony of the
abyss. The battles of the ocean have the same sublime
tautology as the combats of Homer.
Each wave, as they neared it, added twenty cubits to
the cape, awfully magnified by the mist; the fast
decreasing distance seemed more inevitable-they were touching
the skirts of the race! The first fold which seized them
would drag them in-another wave surmounted, and all
would be over.
Suddenly the hooker was driven back, as by the blow
of a Titan's fist. The wave reared up under the vessel
and fell back, throwing the waif back in its mane of foam.
The ``Matutina,'' thus impelled, drifted away from
Aurigny.
She was again on the open sea.
Whence had come the succour? From the wind. The
breath of the storm had changed its direction.
The wave had played with them, now it was the wind's
turn. They had saved themselves from the Caskets.
Off Ortach it was the wave which had been their friend.
Now it was the wind. The wind had suddenly veered
from north to south. The sou'wester had succeeded the
nor'wester.
The current is the wind in the waters; the wind is the
current in the air. These two forces had just
counteracted each other, and it had been the wind's will to snatch
its prey from the current.
The sudden fantasies of ocean are uncertain. They
are, perhaps, an embodiment of the perpetual; when at
their mercy man must neither hope nor despair. They
do, and they undo. The ocean amuses itself. Every
shade of wild, untamed ferocity is phased in the vastness
of that cunning sea, which Jean Bart used to call the
``great brute.'' To its claws and their Lashings succeed
soft intervals of velvet paws. Sometimes the storm
hurries on a wreck, at others it works out the problem with
care; it might almost be said that it caresses it. The sea
can afford to take its time, as men in their agonies find
out.
We must own that occasionally these lulls of the torture
announce deliverance. Such cases are rare. However
this may be, men in extreme peril are quick to believe in
rescue; the slightest pause in the storm's threats is
sufficient; they tell themselves that they are out of danger.
After believing themselves buried, they declare their
resurrection; they feverishly embrace what they do not yet
possess; it is clear that the bad luck has turned; they
declare themselves satisfied; they are saved; they cry quits
with God. They should not be in so great a hurry to
give receipts to the Unknown.
The sou'wester set in with a whirlwind. Shipwrecked
men have never any but rough helpers. The ``Matutina''
was dragged rapidly out to sea by the remnant of her
rigging-like a dead woman trailed by the hair. It was like
the enfranchisement granted by Tiberius, at the price of
violation. The wind treated with brutality those whom
it saved; it rendered service with fury; it was help without
pity.
The wreck was breaking up under the severity of its
deliveries.
Hailstones, big and hard enough to charge a
blunderbuss, smote the vessel; at every rotation of the waves these
hailstones rolled about the deck like marbles. The hooker,
whose deck was almost flush with the water, was being
beaten out of shape by the rolling masses of water and its
sheets of spray. On board it each man was for himself.
They clung on as best they could. As each sea swept
over them, it was with a sense of surprise they saw that
all were still there. Several had their faces torn by
splinters.
Happily despair has stout hands. In terror a child's
hand has the grasp of a giant. Agony makes a vise of
a woman's fingers. A girl in a fright can almost bury
her rose-coloured fingers in a piece of iron. With hooked
fingers they hung on somehow, as the waves dashed on
and passed off them, but every wave brought them the
fear of being swept away.
Suddenly they were relieved.
THE hurricane had just stopped short. There was no
longer in the air sou'wester or nor'wester. The fierce
clarions of space were mute. The whole of the waterspout
had poured from the sky without any warning of
diminution, as if it had slid perpendicularly into a gulf
beneath. None knew what had become of it; flakes
replaced the hailstones, the snow began to fall slowly. No
more swell: the sea flattened down.
Such sudden cessations are peculiar to snowstorms. The
electric effluvium exhausted, all becomes still, even the
wave, which in ordinary storms often remains agitated
for a long time. In snowstorms it is not so. No
prolonged anger in the deep. Like a tired-out worker it
becomes drowsy directly, thus almost giving the lie to the
laws of statics, but not astonishing old seamen, who know
that the sea is full of unforeseen surprises.
The same phenomenon takes place, although very rarely,
in ordinary storms. Thus, in our time, on the occasion
of the memorable hurricane of July 27, 1867, at Jersey,
the wind, after fourteen hours' fury, suddenly relapsed
into a dead calm.
In a few minutes the hooker was floating in sleeping
waters.
At the same time (for the last phase of these storms
resembles the first) they could distinguish nothing, all
that had been made visible in the convulsions of the
meteoric cloud was again dark. Pale outlines were fused in
vague mist, and the gloom of infinite space closed about
the vessel. The wall of night-that circular occlusion,
that interior of a cylinder the diameter of which was
lessening minute by minute-enveloped the ``Matutina,'' and,
with the sinister deliberation of an encroaching iceberg,
was drawing in dangerously. In the zenith nothing-a
lid of fog closing down. It was as if the hooker were at
the bottom of the well of the abyss.
In that well the sea was a puddle of liquid lead. No
stir in the waters-ominous immobility! The ocean is
never less tamed than when it is still as a pool.
All was silence, stillness, blindness.
Perchance the silence of inanimate objects is taciturnity.
The last ripples glided along the hull. The deck was
horizontal, with an insensible slope to the sides. Some
broken planks were shifting about irresolutely. The
block on which they had lighted the tow steeped in tar,
in place of the signal light which had been swept away,
swung no longer at the prow, and no longer let fall
burning drops into the sea. What little breeze remained in
the clouds was noiseless. The snow fell thickly, softly,
with scarce a slant. No foam of breakers could be heard.
The peace of shadows was over all.
This repose, succeeding all the past exasperations and
paroxysms was, for the poor creatures so long tossed
about, an unspeakable comfort. It was as though the
punishment of the rack had ceased. They caught a glimpse
about them and above them of something which seemed
like a consent that they should be saved. They regained
confidence. All that had been fury was now tranquillity.
It appeared to them a pledge of peace. Their wretched
hearts dilated. They were able to let go the end of rope
or beam to which they had clung, to rise, hold themselves
up, stand, walk, move about. They felt inexpressibly
calmed. There are in the depths of darkness such phases
of paradise, preparations for other things. It was clear
that they were delivered out of the storm, out of the foam'
out of the wind, out of the uproar. Henceforth all the
chances were in their favour. In three or four hours it
would be sunrise. They would be seen by some passing
ship; they would be rescued. The worst was over, they
were re-entering life. The important feat was to have
been able to keep afloat until the cessation of the tempest.
They said to themselves, ``It is all over this time.''
Suddenly they found that all was indeed over.
One of the sailors, the northern Basque, Galdeazun by
name, went down into the hold to look for a rope, then
came above again and said:
``The hold is full.''
``Of what?'' asked the chief.
``Of water,'' answered the sailor.
The chief cried out:
``what does that mean?''
``It means,'' replied Galdeazun, ``that in half an hour
we shall founder.''
THERE was a hole in the keel. A leak had been
sprung. When it happened no one could have said.
Was it when they touched the Caskets? Was it off
Ortach? Was it when they were whirled about the shallows
west of Aurigny? It was most probable that they had
touched some rock there. They had struck against some
hidden buttress which they had not felt in the midst of
the convulsive fury of the wind which was tossing them.
In tetanus who would feel a prick?
The other sailor, the southern Basque, whose name was
Ave Maria, went down into the hold, too, came on deck
again, and said:
``There are two varas of water in the hold.''
About six feet.
Ave Maria added: ``In less than forty minutes we shah
sink.''
Where was the leak? They couldn't find it. It was
hidden by the water which was filling up the hold. The
vessel had a hole in her hull somewhere under the
water-line, quite forward in the keel. Impossible to find
it-impossible to check it. They had a wound which they
could not stanch. The water, however, was not rising
very fast.
The chief called out:
``We must work the pump.''
Galdeazun replied: ``We have no pump left.''
``Then,'' said the chief, ``we must make for land.''
``Where is the land?''
``I don't know.''
``Nor I.''
``But it must be somewhere.''
``True enough.''
``Let some one steer for it.''
``We have no pilot.
``Stand to the tiller yourself.''
``We have lost the tiller.''
``Let's rig one out of the first beam we can lay hands
on. Nails-a hammer-quick-some tools.''
``The carpenter's box is overboard; we have no tools.''
``We'll steer all the same; no matter where.''
``The rudder is lost.''
``Where is the boat? We'll get in and row.''
``The boat is lost.''
``We'll row the wreck.''
``We have lost the oars.''
``We'll sail.''
``We have lost the sails, and the mast.''
``We'll rig one up with a pole and a tarpaulin for sail.
Let's get clear of this and trust in the wind.''
``There is no wind.''
The wind, indeed, had left them, the storm had fled,
and its departure, which they had believed to mean safety,
meant, in fact, destruction. Had the sou'wester continued
it might have driven them wildly on some shore, might
have beaten the leak in speed-might, perhaps, have
carried them to some propitious sandbank, and cast them on
it before the hooker foundered. The swiftness of the
storm, bearing them away, might have enabled them to
reach land; but no more wind, no more hope. They were
going to die because the hurricane was over.
The end was near!
Wind, hail, the hurricane, the whirlwind-these are
wild combatants that may be overcome; the storm can
be taken in the weak point of its armour; there are
resources against the violence which continually lays itself
open, is off its guard, and often hits wide. But nothing
is to be done against a calm; it offers nothing to the
grasp, of which you can lay hold.
The winds are a charge of Cossacks; stand your ground
and they disperse. Calms are the pincers of the
executioner.
The water, deliberate and sure, irrepressible and heavy,
rose in. the hold, and as it rose the vessel sank-it was
happening slowly.
Those on board the wreck of the ``Matutina'' felt that
most hopeless of catastrophes-an inert catastrophe
undermining them. The still and sinister certainty of their
fate petrified them. No stir in the air, no movement on
the sea. The motionless is the inexorable. Absorption
was sucking them down silently. Through the depths
of the dumb waters-without anger, without passion, not
willing, not knowing, not caring-the fatal centre of the
globe was attracting them downward. Horror in repose
amalgamating them with itself. It was no longer the
wide-open mouth of the sea, the double jaw of the wind
and the wave, vicious in its threat, the grin of the
waterspout, the foaming appetite of the breakers-it was as if
the wretched beings had under them the black yawn of
the infinite.
They felt themselves sinking into Death's peaceful
depths. The height between the vessel and the water
was lessening-that was all. They could calculate her
disappearance to the moment. It was the exact reverse
of submersion by the rising tide. The water was not
rising toward them, they were sinking toward it. They were
digging their own grave. Their own weight was their
sexton.
They were being executed, not by the law of man, but
by the law of things.
The snow was falling, and as the wreck was now
motionless, this white lint made a cloth over the deck and
covered the vessel as with a winding-sheet.
The hold was becoming fuller and deeper-no means
of getting at the leak. They struck a light and fixed
three or four torches in holes as best they could.
Galdeazun brought some old leathern buckets, and they tried to
bale the hold out, standing in a row to pass them from
hand to hand, but the buckets were past use, the leather
of some was unstitched, there were holes in the bottoms
of the others, and the buckets emptied themselves on the
way. The difference in quantity between the water which
was making its way in and that which they returned to
the sea was ludicrous-for a ton that entered a glassful
was baled out; they did not improve their condition. It
was like the expenditure of a miser trying to exhaust a
million, halfpenny by halfpenny.
The chief said: ``Let us lighten the wreck.''
During the storm they had lashed together the few
chests which were on deck. These remained tied to the
stump of the mast. They undid the lashings and rolled
the chests overboard through a breach in the gunwale.
One of these trunks belonged to the Basque woman, who
could not repress a sigh.
``Oh, my new cloak lined with scarlet! Oh, my poor
stockings of birchen-bark lace! Oh. my silver earrings
to wear at Mass on May-day!''
The deck cleared, there remained the cabin to be seen
to. It was greatly incumbered; in it were, as may be
remembered, the luggage belonging to the passengers,
and the bales belonging to the sailors. They took the
luggage, and threw it over the gunwale. They carried
up the bales and cast them into the sea.
Thus they emptied the cabin. The lanthorn, the cap,
the barrels, the sacks, the bales, and the water-butts, the
pot of soup, all went over into the waves.
They unscrewed the nuts of the iron stove, long since
extinguished: they pulled it out, hoisted it on deck,
dragged it to the side, and threw it out of the vessel.
They cast overboard everything they could pull out of
the deck-chains, shrouds, and torn rigging.
From time to time the chief took a torch, and, throwing
its light on the figures painted on the prow to show the
draught of water, looked to see how deep the wreck had
settled down.
THE wreck being lightened was sinking more slowly,
but none the less surely.
The hopelessness of their situation was without
resource-without mitigation; they had exhausted their last
expedient.
``Is there anything else we can throw overboard?''
The doctor, whom every one had forgotten, rose from
the companion, and said:
``Yes.''
``What?'' asked the chief.
The doctor answered, ``Our Crime.''
They shuddered, and all cried out:
``Amen.''
The doctor standing up, pale, raised his hand to heaven,
saying:
``Kneel down.''
They wavered-to waver is the preface to kneeling down.
The doctor went on:
``Let us throw our crimes into the sea, they weigh us
down; it is they that are sinking the ship. Let us think
no more of safety-let us think of salvation. Our last
crime, above all, the crime which we committed, or rather
completed, just now; oh, wretched beings who are
listening to me, it is that which is overwhelming us. For those
who leave intended murder behind them, it is an impious
insolence to tempt the abyss. He who sins against a child
sins against God. True, we were obliged to put to sea,
but it was certain perdition. The storm, warned by the
shadow of our crime, came on. It is well. Regret
nothing however. There, not far off in the darkness, are
the sands of Vauville and Cape La Rogue. It is France.
There was but one possible shelter for us, which was Spain.
France is no less dangerous to us than England. Our
deliverance from the sea would have led but to the gibbet.
Hanged or drowned-we had no alternative. God has
chosen for us; let us give Him thanks. He has
vouchsafed us the grave which cleanses. Brethren, the
inevitable hand is in it. Remember that it was we who just now
did our best to send on high that child, and that at this
very moment, now as I speak, there is, perhaps, above our
heads, a soul accusing us before a Judge whose eye is on
us. Let us make the best use of this last respite; let us
make an effort, if we still may, to repair, as far as we are
able, the evil that we have wrought. If the child survives
us, let us come to his aid; if he is dead, let us seek his
forgiveness. Let us cast our crime from us. Let us
ease our consciences of its weight. Let us strive that our
souls be not swallowed up before God, for that is the
awful shipwreck. Bodies go to the fishes, souls to the devils.
Have pity on yourselves. Kneel down, I tell you.
Repentance is the bark which never sinks. You have lost
your compass! You are wrong! You still have prayer.''
The wolves became lambs-such transformations occur
in last agonies; tigers lick the crucifix; when the dark
portal opens ajar belief is difficult, unbelief impossible.
However imperfect may be the different sketches of
religion essayed by man, even when his belief is shapeless,
even when the outline of the dogma is not in harmony
with the lineaments of the eternity he foresees, there
comes in his last hour a trembling of the soul. There is
something which will begin when life is over; this thought
impresses the last pang.
A man's dying agony is the expiration of a term. In
that fatal second he feels weighing on him a diffused
responsibility. That which has been complicates that
which is to be. The past returns and enters into the
future. What is known becomes as much an abyss as the
unknown. And the two chasms, the one which is full by
his faults, the other of his anticipations, mingle their
reverberations. It is this confusion of the two gulfs which
terrifies the dying man.
They had spent their last grain of hope on the direction
of life; hence they turned in the other. Their only
remaining chance was in its dark shadow. They
understood it. It came on them as a lugubrious flash, followed
by a relapse of horror. That which is intelligible to the
dying man is as what is perceived in the lightning.
Everything, then nothing; you see, then all is blindness. After
death the eye will reopen, and that which was a flash will
become a sun.
They cried out to the doctor:
``Thou, thou, there is no one but thee. We will obey
thee, what must we do? speak.''
The doctor answered:
``The question is how to pass over the unknown
precipice and reach the other bank of life, which is beyond the
tomb. Being the one who knows the most, my danger is
greater than yours. You do well to leave the choice of
the bridge to him whose burden is the heaviest.''
He added:
``Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.
He continued:
``How much time have we still?''
Galdeazun looked at the water-mark, and answered:
``A little more than a quarter of an hour.''
``Good,'' said the doctor.
The low hood of the companion on which he leaned
his elbows made a sort of table; the doctor took from his
pocket his inkhorn and pen and his pocketbook, out of
which he drew a parchment, the same one on the back of
which he had written, a few hours before, some twenty
cramped and crooked lines.
``A light,'' he said.
The snow, falling like the spray of a cataract, had
extinguished the torches one after another; there was but
one left. Ave Maria took it out of the place where it had
been stuck, and, holding it in his hand, came and stood
by the doctor's side.
The doctor replaced his pocketbook in his pocket, put
down pen and inkhorn on the hood of the companion,
unfolded the parchment and said:
``Listen.''
Then in the midst of the sea, on the failing bridge (a
sort of shuddering flooring of the tomb), the doctor
began a solemn reading, to which all the shadows seemed to
listen. The doomed men bowed their heads around him.
The flaming of the torch intensified their pallor. What
the doctor read was written in English. Now and then,
when one of those woebegone looks seemed to ask an
explanation, the doctor would stop to repeat-whether in
French or Spanish, Basque or Italian-the passage he had
Just read. Stifled sobs and hollow beatings of the breast
were heard. The wreck was sinking more and more.
The reading over, the doctor placed the parchment flat
on the companion, seized his pen, and on a clear margin,
which he had carefully left at the bottom of what he had
written, he signed himself, GERNADUS GEESTEMUNDE:
Doctor.
Then, turning toward the others, he said:
``Come and sign.''
The Basque woman approached, took the pen, and
signed herself, ASUNCION.
She handed the pen to the Irish woman, who, not
knowing how to write, made a cross.
The doctor, by the side of this cross, wrote, BARBARA
FERMOY, of Tyrrif island, in the Hebrides.
Then he handed the pen to the chief of the band.
The chief signed, GAIZDORRA: Captal.
The Genoese signed himself under the chief's name,
GIANGIRATE.
The Languedocian signed, JACQUES QUARTOURZE: alias,
the Narbonnais.
The Provençal signed, LUC-PIERRE CAPGAROUPE, of the
Galleys of Mahon.
Under these signatures the doctor added a note:
``Of the crew of three men, the skipper having been
washed overboard by a sea, but two remain, and they
have signed.''
The two sailors affixed their names underneath the
note. The northern Basque signed himself, GALDEAZUN.
The southern Basque signed, AVE MARIA: Robber.
Then the doctor said:
``Capgaroupe.''
``Here,'' said the Provençal.
``Have you Hardquanonne's flask?''
``Yes.''
``Give it me.''
Capgaroupe drank off the last mouthful of brandy and
handed the flask to the doctor.
The water was rising in the hold; the wreck was sinking
deeper and deeper into the sea. The sloping edges of the
ship were covered by a thin gnawing wave, which was
rising. All were crowded on the centre of the deck.
The doctor dried the ink on the signatures by the heat
of the torch, and, folding the parchment into a narrower
compass than the diameter of the neck, put it into the flask.
He called for the cork.
``I don't know where it is,'' said Capgaroupe.
``Here is a piece of rope,'' said Jacques Quartourze.
The doctor corked the flask with a bit of rope, and asked
for some tar. Galdeazun went forward, extinguished the
signal light with a piece of tow, took the vessel in which
it was contained from the stern, and brought it, half full
of burning tar, to the doctor.
The flask holding the parchment which they had all
signed was corked and tarred over.
``It is done,'' said the doctor.
And from out all their mouths, vaguely stammered in
every language, came the dismal utterances of the
catacombs.
``Ainsi soit-ill''
``Meâ culpâ!''
``Asi sea!''
``Aro raï!''
``Amen!''
It was as though the sombre voices of Babel were
scattered through the shadows as Heaven uttered its awful
refusal to hear them.
The doctor turned away from his companions in crime
and distress, and took a few steps toward the gunwale.
Reaching the side, he looked into space, and said, in a
deep voice:
``Bist du bei mir?"10
Perchance he was addressing some phantom.
The wreck was sinking.
Behind the doctor all the others were in a dream. Prayer
mastered them by main force. They did not bow,
they were bent. There was something involuntary in their
contrition; they wavered as a sail flaps when the breeze
fails. And the haggard group took by degrees, with
clasping of hands and prostration of foreheads, attitudes
various, yet of humiliation. Some strange reflection of
the deep seemed to soften their villanous features.
The doctor returned toward them. Whatever had been
his past, the old man was great in the presence of the
catastrophe.
The deep reserve of nature which enveloped him
preoccupied without disconcerting him. He was not one to
be taken unawares. Over him was the calm of a silent
horror: on his countenance the majesty of God's will
comprehended.
This old and thoughtful outlaw unconsciously assumed
the air of a pontiff.
He said,-
``Attend to me.''
He contemplated for a moment the waste of water, and
added,-
``Now we are going to die.''
Then he took the torch from the hands of Ave Maria,
and waved it.
A spark broke from it and flew into the night.
Then the doctor cast the torch into the sea.
The torch was extinguished: all light disappeared.
Nothing left but the huge, unfathomable shadow. It was
like the filling up of the grave.
In the darkness, the doctor was heard saying,-
``Let us pray.''
All knelt down.
It was no longer on the snow, but in the water, that
they knelt.''
They had but a few minutes more.
The doctor alone remained standing.
The flakes of snow falling on him had sprinkled him
with white tears, and made him visible on the background
of darkness. He might have been the speaking statue of
the shadow.
The doctor made the sign of the cross and raised his
voice, while beneath his feet he felt that almost
imperceptible oscillation which prefaces the moment in which
a wreck is about to fonder. He said,-
``Pater nester qui es in clis.''
The Provençal repeated in French,-
``Notre Père êqui tes aux cieux.''
The Irishwoman repeated in Gaelic, understood by the
Basque woman,-
``Ar nathair ata ar neamh.''
The doctor continued,-
``Sanctificetur nomen tuum.''
``Que votre nom soit sanctifiè,'' said the Provençal.
``Naomhthar hainm,'' said the Irishwoman.
``Adveniat regnum tuum,'' continued the doctor.
``Que votre règne arrive,'' said the Provençal.
``Tigeadh do riophachd,'' said the Irishwoman.
As they knelt, the waters had risen to their shoulders.
The doctor went on,-
``Fiat voluntas tua.''
``Què votre volonté soit faite,' stammered the Provençal.
And the Irishwoman and Basque woman cried,-
``Deuntar do thoil ar an Hhalàmb.''
``Sieut in clo, sieut in terra,'' said the doctor.
No voice answered him.
He looked down. All their heads were under water.
They had let themselves be drowned on their knees.
The doctor took in his right hand the flask which he
had placed on the companion, and raised it above his head.
The wreck was going down. As he sank, the doctor
murmured the rest of the prayer.
For an instant his shoulders were above water, then
his head, then nothing remained but his arm holding up
the flask, as if he were showing it to the Infinite.
His arm disappeared; there was no greater fold on the
deep sea than there would have been on a tun of oil.
The snow continued falling.
One thing floated, and was carried by the waves into
the darkness. It was the tarred flask, kept afloat by its
osier cover.
THE storm was no less severe on land than on sea.
The same wild enfranchisement of the elements had
taken place around the abandoned child. The weak and
innocent become their sport in the expenditure of the
unreasoning rage of their blind forces. Shadows discern not,
and things inanimate have not the clemency they are
supposed to possess.
On the land there was hut little wind. There was an
inexplicable dumbness in the cold. There was no hail,
The thickness of the falling snow was fearful.
Hailstones strike, harass, bruise, stun, crush.
Snowflakes do worse: soft and inexorable, the snowflake does
its work in silence; touch it, and it melts. It is pure,
even as the hypocrite is candid. It is by white particles
slowly heaped upon each other that the flake becomes an
avalanche and the knave a criminal.
The child continued to advance into the mist. The fog
presents but a soft obstacle; hence its danger. It yields,
and yet persists. Mist, like snow, is full of treachery.
The child, strange wrestler at war with all these risks,
had succeeded in reaching the bottom of the descent, and
had gained Chesil. Without knowing it he was on an
isthmus, with the ocean on each side; so that he could
not lose his way in the fog, in the snow, or in the
darkness, without falling into the deep waters of the gulf on
the right hand, or into the raging billows of the high sea
on the left. He was traveling on, in ignorance, between
these two abysses.
The Isthmus of Portland was at this period singularly
sharp and rugged. Nothing remains at this date of its
past configuration. Since the idea of manufacturing
Portland stone into Roman cement was first seized, the whole
rock has been subjected to an alteration which has
completely changed its original appearance. Calcareous lias,
slate, and trap are still to be found there, rising from levers
of conglomerate, like teeth from a gum; but the pickaxe
has broken up and leveled those bristling, rugged peaks
which were once the fearful perches of the ossifrage. The
summits exist no longer where the labbes and the skua
gulls used to flock together, soaring, like the envious, to
sully high places. In vain might you seek the tall monolith
called Godolphin, an old British word, signifying ``white
eagle.'' In summer you may still gather on those surfaces,
pierced and perforated like a sponge, rosemary,
penny-royal, wild hyssop, and sea-fennel which when infused
makes a good cordial, and that herb full of knots, which
grows in the sand and from which they make matting;
but you no longer find gray amber, or black tin, or that
triple species of slate-one sort green, one blue, and the
third the colour of sage-leaves. The foxes, the badgers,
the otters, and the martens have taken themselves off;
on the cliffs of Portland, as well as at the extremity of
Cornwall, where there were at one time chamois, none
remain. They still fish in some inlets for plaice and
pilchards; but the scared salmon no longer ascend the
Wey, between Michaelmas and Christmas, to spawn. No
more are seen there, as during the reign of Elizabeth,
those old unknown birds as large as hawks, who could
cut an apple in two, but ate only the pips. You never
meet those crows with yellow beaks, called Cornish
choughs in English, pyrrocorax in Latin, who, in their
mischief' would drop burning twigs on thatched roofs.
Nor that magic bird, the fulmar, a wanderer from the
Scottish archipelago, dropping from his bill an oil which
the islanders used to burn in their lamps. Nor do you
ever find in the evening, in the plash of the ebbing tide,
that ancient, legendary neitse, with the feet of a hog and
the bleat of a calf. The tide no longer throws up the
whiskered seal, with its curled ears and sharp jaws,
dragging itself along on its nailless paws. On that
Portland-nowadays so changed as scarcely to be recognised-the
absence of forests precluded nightingales, but now the
falcon, the swan, and the wild goose have fled. The sheep
of Portland, nowadays, are fat and have fine wool; the
few scattered ewes which nibbled the salt grass there
two centuries ago were small and tough and coarse in the
fleece, as became Celtic flocks brought there by
garlic-eating shepherds, who lived to a hundred, and who, at the
distance of half a mile, could pierce a cuirass with their
yard-long arrows. Uncultivated land makes coarse wool.
The Chesil of to-day resembles in no particular the Chesil
of the past, so much has it been disturbed by man and by
those furious winds which gnaw the very stones.
At present this tongue of land bears a railway,
terminating in a pretty square of houses, called Chesilton, and there
is a Portland station. Railway carriages roll where seals
used to crawl.
The Isthmus of Portland two hundred years ago was a
back of sand, with a vertebral spine of rock.
The child's danger changed its form. What he had
had to fear in the descent was falling to the bottom of
the precipice; in the isthmus, it was failing into the holes.
After dealing with the precipice, he must deal with the
pitfalls. Everything on the seashore is a trap-the rock
is slippery, the strand is quicksand. Resting-places are
but snares. It is walking on ice which may suddenly
crack and yawn with a fissure, through which you
disappear. The ocean has false stages below, like a
well-arranged theatre.
The long backbone of granite. 'from which fall away
both slopes of the isthmus, is awkward of access. It is
difficult to find there what, in scene-shifters' language,
are termed practicables. Man has no hospitality to hope
for from the ocean; from the rock no more than from the
wave. The sea is provident for the bird and the fish
alone. Isthmuses are especially naked and rugged; the
wave, which wears and mines them on either side, reduces.
them to the simplest form. Everywhere there were sharp
relief ridges, cuttings, frightful fragments of torn stone,
yawning with many points, like the jaws of a shark
breaknecks of wet moss, rapid slopes of rock ending in the
sea. Whosoever undertakes to pass over an isthmus meets
at every step misshapen blocks, as large as houses, in the
forms of shinbones, shoulderblades, and thighbones, the
hideous anatomy of dismembered rocks. It is not
without reason that these striæ of the seashore are called
côtes.11
The wayfarer must get out as he best can from the
confusion of these ruins. It is like journeying over the bones
of an enormous skeleton.
Put a child to this labour of Hercules.
Broad daylight might have aided him. It was night.
A guide was necessary. He was alone. All the vigour
of manhood would not have been too much. He had but
the feeble strength of a child. In default of a guide, a
footpath might have aided him; there was none.
By instinct he avoided the sharp ridge of the rocks, and
kept to the strand as much as possible. It was there that
he met with the pitfalls. They were multiplied before him
under three forms: the pitfall of water, the pitfall of snow
and the pitfall of sand. The last is the most dangerous
of all, because the most illusory. To know the peril we
face is alarming; to be ignorant of it is terrible. The
child was fighting against unknown dangers. He was
groping his way through something which might, perhaps,
be the grave.
He did not hesitate. He went round the rocks, avoided
the crevices, guessed at the pitfalls, obeyed the twistings
and turnings caused by such obstacles; yet he went on.
Though unable to advance in a straight line, he walked
with a firm step. When necessary, he drew back with
energy. He knew how to tear himself in time from the
horrid bird-lime of the quicksands. He shook the snow
from about him. He entered the water more than once
up to the knees. Directly that he left it, his wet knees
were frozen by the intense cold of the night. He walked
rapidly in his stiffened garments; yet he took care to
keep his sailor's coat dry and warm on his chest. He was
still tormented by hunger.
The chances of the abyss are illimitable. Everything is
possible in it, even salvation. The issue may be found,
though it be invisible. How the child, wrapped in a
smothering winding-sheet of snow, lost on a narrow
elevation between two jaws of an abyss, managed to cross
the isthmus is what he could not himself have explained.
He had slipped, climbed, rolled, searched, walked,
persevered, that is all. Such is the secret of all triumphs.
At the end of somewhat less than half an hour he felt that
the ground was rising. He had reached the other shore.
Leaving Chesil, he had gained terra firma.
The bridge which now unites Sandford Castle with
Smallmouth Sands did not then exist. It is probable that
in his intelligent groping he had reascended as far as
Wyke Regis, where there was then a, tongue of sand, a
natural road crossing East Fleet.
He was saved from the isthmus; but he found himself
again face to face with the tempest, with the cold, with
the night.
Before him once more lay the plain, shapeless in the
density of impenetrable shadow. He examined the ground,
seeking a footpath. Suddenly he bent down. He had
discovered, in the snow, something which seemed to him a
track.
It was indeed a track-the print of a foot. The print
was cut out clearly in the whiteness of the snow, which
rendered it distinctly visible. He examined it. It was a
naked foot; too small for that of a man, too large for that
of a child.
It was probably the foot of a woman. Beyond that
mark was another, then another, then another. The
footprints followed each other at the distance of a step, and
struck across the plain to the right. They were still
fresh, and slightly covered with little snow. A woman
had just passed that way.
This woman was walking in the direction in which the
child had seen the smoke. With his eyes fixed on the
footprints, he set himself to follow them.
HE journeyed some time along this course.
Unfortunately the footprints were becoming less and less
distinct. Dense and fearful was the falling of the snow. It
was the time when the hooker was so distressed by the
snow-storm at sea.
The child, in distress like the vessel, but after another
fashion, had, in the inextricable intersection of shadows
which rose up before him, no resource but the footsteps
in the snow, and he held to them as the thread of the
labyrinth.
Suddenly, whether the snow had filled them up or for
some other reason, the footsteps ceased. All became even,
level, smooth, without a stain, without a detail. There
was now nothing but a white cloth drawn over the earth
and a black one over the sky. It seemed as if the
foot-passenger had flown away. The child, in despair, bent
down and searched; but in vain.
As he arose he had a sensation of hearing some
indistinct sound, but he could not be sure of it. It resembled
a voice, a breath, a shadow. It was more human than
animal; more sepulchral than living. It was a sound,
but the sound of a dream.
He looked but saw nothing.
Solitude, wide, naked and livid, was before him. He
listened. That which he had thought he heard had faded
away. Perhaps it had been but fancy. He still listened.
All was silent.
There was illusion in the mist.
He went on his way again. He walked forward at
random, with nothing thenceforth to guide him.
As he moved away the noise began again. This time
he could doubt it no longer. It was a groan, almost a
sob.
He turned. He searched the darkness of space with
his eyes. He saw nothing. The sound arose once more.
If limbo could cry out, it would without doubt cry in such
a tone.
Nothing so penetrating, so piercing, so feeble as the
voice-for it was a voice. It arose from a soul. There
was palpitation in the murmur. Nevertheless, it seemed
uttered almost unconsciously. It was an appeal of
suffering, not knowing that it suffered or that it appealed.
The cry-perhaps a first breath, perhaps a last
sigh-was equally distant from the rattle which closes life
and the wail with which it commences. It breathed, it
was stifled, it wept, a gloomy supplication from the depths
of night. The child fixed his attention everywhere, far,
near, on high, below. There was no one. There was
nothing. He listened. The voice arose again. He perceived
it distinctly. The sound somewhat resembled the bleating
of a lamb.
Then he was frightened, and thought of flight.
The groan again. This was the fourth time. It was
strangely miserable and plaintive. One felt that after
that last effort, more mechanical than voluntary, the cry
would probably be extinguished. It was an expiring
exclamation, instinctively appealing to the amount of aid
held in suspense in space. It was some muttering of agony,
addressed to possible Providence.
The child approached in the direction from whence the
sound came
Still he saw nothing.
He advanced again, watchfully.
The complaint continued. Inarticulate and confused
as it was, it had become clear-almost vibrating. The
child was near the voice; but where was he?
He was close to a complaint. The trembling of a cry
passed by his side into space. A human moan floated
away into the darkness. This was what he had met.
Such at least was his impression, dim as the dense mist
in which he was lost.
While he hesitated between an instinct which urged
him to fly and an instinct which commanded him to
remain, he perceived in the snow at his feet, a few steps
before him, a sort of undulation of the dimensions of a
human body-a little eminence, low, long, and narrow,
like the mould over a grave-a sepulchre in a white
churchyard.
At the same time the voice cried out. It was from
beneath the undulation that it proceeded. The child bent
down, crouching before the undulation, and with both his
hands began to clear it away.
Beneath the snow which he removed a form grew
under his hands; and suddenly in the hollow he had made,
there appeared a pale face.
The cry had not proceeded from that face. Its eyes
were shut, and the mouth open but full of snow.
It remained motionless; it stirred not under the hands
of the child. The child, whose fingers were numbed
with frost, shuddered when he touched its coldness. It
was that of a woman. Her disheveled hair was mingled
with the snow. The woman was dead.
Again the child set himself to sweep away the snow.
The neck of the dead woman appeared; then her
shoulders, clothed in rags. Suddenly he felt something move
feebly under his touch. It was something small that was
buried, and which stirred. The child swiftly cleared
away the snow, discovering a wretched little body-thin,
wan with cold, still alive, lying naked on the dead woman's
naked breast.
It was a little girl.
It had been swaddled up, but in rags so scanty that in
its struggles it had freed itself from its tatters. Under
it, its attenuated limbs, and above it, its breath had
somewhat melted the snow. A nurse would have said that it
was five or six months old, but perhaps it might be a year,
for growth, in poverty, suffers heart-breaking reductions
which sometimes even produce rachitis. When its face
was exposed to the air, it gave a cry, the continuation
of its sobs of distress. For the mother not to have heard
that sob proved her irrevocably dead.
The child took the infant in his arms. The stiffened
body of the mother was a fearful sight; a spectral light
proceeded from her face. The mouth, apart and without
breath, seemed to form in the indistinct language of
shadows her answer to the questions put to the dead by the
Invisible. The ghastly reflection of the icy plains was on that
countenance. There was the youthful forehead under
the brown hair, the almost indignant knitting of the
eyebrows, the pinched nostrils, the closed eyelids, the lashes
glued together by the rime, and from the corners of the
eyes to the corners of the mouth, a deep channel of tears.
The snow lighted up the corpse. Winter and the tomb
are not adverse. The corpse is the icicle of man. The
nakedness of her breasts was pathetic. They had
fulfiled their purpose. On them was a sublime blight of
the life infused into one being by another from whom
life has fled, and maternal majesty was there instead of
virginal purity. At the point of one of the nipples was a
white pearl. It was a drop of milk frozen.
Let us explain at once. In the plains over which the
deserted boy was passing in his turn, a beggar woman,
nursing her infant and searching for a refuge, had lost
her way a few hours before. Benumbed with cold she
had sunk under the tempest, and could not rise again.
The falling snow had covered her. So long as she was
able she had clasped her little girl to her bosom, and thus
died.
The infant had tried to suck the marble breast. Blind
trust inspired by nature, for it seems that it is possible
for a woman to suckle her child even after her last sigh.
But the lips of the infant had been unable to find the
breast, where the drop of milk, stolen by death, had frozen,
while under the snow the child, more accustomed to the
cradle than the tomb, had wailed.
The deserted child had heard the cry of the dying child.
He disenterred it.
He took it in his arms.
When she felt herself in his arms she ceased crying.
The faces of the two children touched each other, and the
purple lips of the infant sought the cheek of the boy, as
it had been a breast. The little girl had nearly reached
the moment when the congealed blood stops the action of
the heart. Her mother had touched her with the chill of
her own death-a corpse communicates death; its
numbness is infectious. Her feet, hands, arms, knees, seemed
paralysed by cold. The boy felt the terrible chill. He
had on him a garment dry and warm-his pilot jacket.
He placed the infant on the breast of the corpse, took off
his Jacket, wrapped the infant in it, took it up again in
his arms, and now, almost naked, under the blast of the
north wind which covered him with eddies of snowflakes,
carrying the infant, he pursued his journey.
The little one having succeeded in finding the boy's
cheek, again applied her lips to it, and, soothed by the
warmth, she slept. First kiss of those two souls in the
darkness.
The mother lay there, her back to the snow, her face to
the night; but perhaps at the moment when the little
boy stripped himself to clothe the little girl, the mother
saw him from the depths of infinity.
IT was little more than four hours since the hooker had
sailed from the creek of Portland, leaving the boy on
the shore. During the long hours since he had been
deserted, and had been journeying onward, he had met but
three persons of that human society into which he was,
perchance, about to enter. A man-the man on the hill-a
woman-the woman in the snow-and the little girl whom
he was carrying in his arms.
He was exhausted by fatigue and hunger, yet advanced
more resolutely than ever, with less strength and an added
burden. He was now almost naked. The few rags which
remained to him, hardened by the frost, were sharp as
glass, and cut his skin. He became colder, but the infant
was warmer. That which he lost was not thrown away,
but was gained by her. He found out that the poor
infant enjoyed the comfort which was to her the renewal
of life. He continued to advance.
From time to time, still holding her securely, he bent
down, and taking a handful of snow he rubbed his feet
with it, to prevent their being frostbitten. At other
times, his throat feeling as if it were on fire, he put a
little snow in his mouth and sucked it; this for a moment
assuaged his thirst, but changed it into fever-a relief
which was an aggravation.
The storm had become shapeless from its violence.
Deluges of snow are possible. This was one. The
paroxysm scourged the shore at the same time that it
uptore the depths of ocean. This was, perhaps, the moment
when the distracted hooker was going to pieces in the
battle of tile breakers.
He traveled under this north wind, still toward the
east, over wide surfaces of snow. He knew not how the
hours had passed. For a long time he had ceased to see
the smoke. Such indications are soon effaced in the night,
besides, it vitas past the hour when fires are put out. Or
he had, perhaps, made a mistake, and it was possible that
neither town nor village existed in the direction in which
he was traveling. Doubting, he yet persevered.
Two or three times the little infant cried. Then he
adopted in his gait a rocking movement, and the child was
soothed and silenced. She ended by falling into a sound
sleep. Shivering himself, he felt her warm. He
frequently tightened the folds of the jacket round the babe's
neck, so that the frost should not get in through any
opening, and that no melted snow should drop between
the garment and the child.
The plain was unequal. In the declivities into which
it sloped, the snow, driven by the wind into the dips of
the ground, was so deep, in comparison with a child so
small, that it almost engulfed him, and he had to struggle
through it, half buried. He walked on, working away
the snow with his knees.
Having cleared the ravine, he reached the high land'
swept by the winds, where the snow lay thin. Then he
found the surface a sheet of ice. The little girl's
lukewarm breath, playing on his face, warmed it for a
moment, then lingered, and froze in his hair, stiffening it
into icicles.
He felt the approach of another danger. He could not
afford to fall. He knew that if he did so, he should never
rise again. He was overcome by fatigue, and the weight
of the darkness would, as with the dead woman, have
held him to the ground, and the ice glued him alive to the
earth.
He had tripped upon the slopes of precipices, and had
recovered himself: he had stumbled into holes, and had
got out again. Thenceforward the slightest fall would
be death, a false step opened for him a tomb. He must
not slip. He had not strength to rise even to his knees.
Now everything was slippery; everywhere there was rime
and frozen snow. The little creature whom he carried
made his progress fearfully difficult. She was not only
a burden, which his weariness and exhaustion made
excessive, but was also an embarrassment. She occupied
both his arms: and, to him who walks over ice, both arms
are a natural and necessary balancing power.
He was obliged to do without this balance.
He did without it and advanced, bending under his
burden, not knowing what would become of him.
This little infant was the drop causing the cup of
distress to overflow.
He advanced, reeling at every step, as if on a
springboard, and accomplishing, without spectators, miracles of
equilibrium. Let us repeat that he was, perhaps, followed
on this path of pain by eyes unsleeping in the distances
of the shadows-the eyes of the mother and the eyes of
God. He staggered, slipped, recovered himself, took care
of the infant, and, gathering the jacket about her, he
covered up her head; staggered again,
advanced-slipped-then drew himself up. The cowardly wind drove against
him. Apparently, he made much more way than was
necessary. He was, to all appearance, on the plains where
Bincleaves Farm was afterward established, between what
are now called Spring Gardens and the Parsonage House.
Homesteads and cottages occupy the place of waste lands.
Sometimes less than a century separates a steppe from a
city.
Suddenly, a lull having occurred in the icy blast which
was blinding him, he perceived, at a short distance in front
of him, a cluster of gables and of chimneys shown in
relief by the snow. The reverse of a silhouette-a city
painted in white on a black horizon, something like what
we call nowadays a negative proof.
Roofs-dwellings-shelter! He had arrived somewhere at last. He felt the
ineffable encouragement of hope. The watch of a ship
which has wandered from her course feels some such
emotion when he cries, ``Land ho!''
He hurried his steps.
At length, then, he was near mankind. He would
soon be amid living creatures. There was no longer
anything to fear. There glowed within him that sudden
warmth-security; that out of which he was emerging
was over; thenceforward there would no longer be night,
nor winter, nor tempest. It seemed to him that he had left
all evil chances behind him. The infant was no longer
a burden. He almost ran.
His eyes were fixed on the roofs. There was life there.
He never took his eyes off them. A dead man might gaze
thus on what might appear through the half-open lid of
his sepulchre. There were the chimneys of which he had
seen the smoke.
No smoke arose from them now. It was not long
before he reached the houses. He came to the outskirts of
a town-an open street. At that period bars to streets
were falling into disuse.
The street began by two houses. In those two houses
neither candle nor lamp was to be seen; nor in the whole
street; nor in the whole town, so far as eye could reach.
The house to the right was a roof rather than a
house-nothing could be more mean. The walls were of mud,
the roof was of straw, and there was more thatch than
wall. A large nettle, springing from the bottom of the
wall, reached the roof. The hovel had but one door, which
was like that of a dog-kennel; and a window, which was
but a hole. All was shut up. At the side an inhabited
pig-sty told that the house was also inhabited.
The house on the left was large, high, built entirely of
stone, with a slated roof. It was also closed. It was the
rich man's home, opposite to that of the pauper.
The boy did not hesitate. He approached the great
mansion. The double folding-door of massive oak, studded
with large nails, was of the kind that leads one to expect
that behind it there is a stout armoury of bolts and locks.
An iron knocker was attached to it. He raised the knocker
with some difficulty, for his benumbed hands were stumps
rather than hands. He knocked once.
No answer.
He struck again; and two knocks.
No movement was heard in the house.
He knocked a third time.
There was no sound. He saw that they were all asleep
and did not care to get up.
Then he turned to the hovel. He picked up a pebble
from the snow and knocked against the low door.
There was no answer.
He raised himself on tiptoe, and knocked with his
pebble against the pane too softly to break the glass, but
loud enough to be heard.
No voice was heard; no step moved; no candle was
lighted.
He saw that there, as well, they did not care to awake.
The house of stone and the thatched hovel were equally
deaf to the wretched.
The boy decided on pushing on further, and
penetrating the strait of houses which stretched away in front of
him, so dark that it seemed more like a gulf between two
cliffs than the entrance to a town.
IT was Weymouth which he had just entered.
Weymouth then was not the respectable and fine Weymouth
of to-day.
Ancient Weymouth did not present, like the present
one, an irreproachable rectangular quay, with an inn and
a statue in honour of George III. This resulted from the
fact that George III had not yet been born. For the
same reason, they had not yet designed on the slope of
the green hill toward the east, fashioned flat on the soil
by cutting away the turf and leaving the bare chalk to
the view, the white horse, an acre long, bearing the king
upon his back, and always turning, in honour of George
III, his tail to the city. These honours, however, were
deserved. George III, having lost in his old age the
intellect he had never possessed in his youth, was not
responsible for the calamities of his reign. He was an innocent.
Why not erect statues to him?
Weymouth, a hundred and eighty years ago, was about
as symmetrical as a game of spillikins in confusion. In
legends it is said that Astaroth traveled over the world,
carrying on her back a wallet which contained everything,
even good women in their houses. A pell-mell of sheds
thrown from her devil's bag would give an idea of that
irregular Weymouth-the good women in the sheds
included. The Music Hall remains as a specimen of those
buildings; a confusion of wooden dens, carved, and eaten
by worms (which carve in another fashion)-shapeless,
overhanging buildings, some with pillars, leaning one
against the other for support against the sea wind and
leaving between them awkward spaces of narrow and
winding channels, lanes, and passages, often flooded by
the equinoctial tides. A heap of old grandmother houses,
crowded round a grandfather church, such was
Weymouth; a sort of old Norman village thrown up on the
coast of England.
The traveler, who entered the tavern, now replaced by
the hotel, instead of paying royally his twenty-five francs
for a fried sole and a bottle of wine, had to suffer the
humiliation of eating a pennyworth of soup made of
fish-which soup, by-the-bye, was very good. Wretched fare!
The deserted child, carrying the foundling, passed
through the first street, then the second, then the third.
He raised his eyes, seeking in the higher stories and in
the roofs a lighted window-pane, but all were closed and
dark. At intervals he knocked at the doors. No one
answered. Nothing makes the heart so like a stone as being
warm between sheets. The noise and the shaking had at
length awakened the infant. He knew this because he
felt her suck his cheek. She did not cry, believing him
her mother.
He was about to turn and wander long, perhaps, in the
intersections of the Scrambridge lanes, where there were
then more cultivated plots than dwellings, more thorn
hedges than houses; but fortunately he struck into a
passage which existed to this day near Trinity schools. This
passage led him to a water-brink, where there was a
roughly built quay with a parapet, and to the right he
made out a bridge. It was the bridge over the Wey,
connecting Weymouth with Melcombe Regis, and under the
arches of which the Backwater joins the harbour.
Weymouth, a hamlet, was then the suburb of Melcombe
Regis, a city and port. Now Melcombe Regis is a parish
of Weymouth. The village has absorbed the city. It
was the bridge which did the work. Bridges are strange
vehicles of suction, which inhale the population, and
sometimes swell one river-bank at the expense of its opposite
neighbour.
The boy went to the bridge, which at that period was
a covered timber structure. He crossed it. Thanks to
its roofing, there was no snow on the planks. His bare
feet had a moment's comfort as they crossed them.
Having passed over the bridge, he was in Melcombe Regis.
There were fewer wooden houses than stone ones there.
He was no longer in the village; he was in the city.
The bridge opened on a rather fine street called St. Thomas's Street. He entered it. Here and there were
high carved gables and shop-fronts. He set to knocking
at the doors again: he had no strength left to call or shout.
At Melcombe Regis, as at Weymouth, no one was
stirring. The doors were all carefully double-locked. The
windows were covered by their shutters, as the eyes by
their lids. Every precaution had been taken to avoid
being aroused by disagreeable surprises. The little
wanderer was suffering the indefinable depression made by
a sleeping town. Its silence, as of a paralysed ant's nest,
makes the head swim. All its lethargies mingle their
nightmares, its slumbers are a crowd, and from its human
bodies, lying prone, there arises a vapour of dreams. Sleep
has gloomy associates beyond this life: the decomposed
thoughts of the sleepers float above them in a mist which
is both of death and of life, and combine with the Possible,
which has also, perhaps, the power of thought, as it floats
in space. Hence arise entanglements. Dreams, those
clouds, interpose their folds and their transparencies over
that star, the mind. Above those closed eyelids, where
vision has taken the place of sight, a sepulchral
disintegration of outlines and appearances dilates itself into
impalpability. Mysterious, diffused existences amalgamate
themselves with life on that border of death, which sleep
is. Those larvæ and souls mingle in the air. Even he
who sleeps not feels a medium press upon him full of
sinister life. The surrounding chimera, in which he
suspects a reality, impedes him. The waking man, wending
his way amid the sleep phantoms of others, unconsciously
pushes back passing shadows, has, or imagines that he has,
a vague fear of adverse contact with the invisible, and
feels at every moment the obscure pressure of a hostile
encounter which immediately dissolves. There is
something of the effect of a forest in the nocturnal diffusion
of dreams.
This is what is called being afraid without reason.
What a man feels a child feels still more.
The uneasiness of nocturnal fear, increased by the
spectral houses, increased the weight of the sad burden under
which he was struggling.
He entered Conyear Lane, and perceived at the end of
that passage the Backwater, which he took for the ocean.
He no longer knew in what direction the sea lay. He
retraced his steps, struck to the left by Maiden Street,
and returned as far as St. Alban's Row.
There by chance and without selection, he knocked
violently at any house that he happened to pass. His blows,
on which he was expending his last energies, were jerky
and without aim; now ceasing altogether for a time, now
renewed as if in irritation. It was the violence of his
fever striking against the doors.
One voice answered.
That of Time.
Three o'clock tolled slowly behind him from the old
belfry of St. Nicholas.
Then all sank into silence again.
That no inhabitant should have opened the lattice may
appear surprising. Nevertheless, that silence is in a great
measure to be explained. We must remember that, in
January, 1790, they were just over a somewhat severe
outbreak of the plague in London, and that the fear of
receiving sick vagabonds caused a diminution of hospitality
everywhere. People would not even open their windows
for fear of inhaling the poison.
The child felt the coldness of men more terribly than
the coldness of night. The coldness of men is intentional.
He felt a tightening on his sinking heart which he had
not known on the open plains. Now he had entered into
the midst of life, and remained alone. This was the
summit of misery. The pitiless desert he had understood; the
unrelenting town was too much to bear.
The hour, the strokes of which he had just counted,
had been another blow. Nothing is so freezing in certain
situations as the voice of the hour. It is a declaration of
indifference. It is Eternity saying, ``What does it
matter to me?''
He stopped, and it is not certain that, in that miserable
minute, he did not ask himself whether it would not be
easier to lie down there and die. However, the little
infant leaned her head against his shoulder, and fell asleep
again.
This blind confidence set him onward again. He whom
all supports were failing felt that he was himself a basis
of support. Irresistible summons of duty!
Neither such ideas nor such a situation belonged to his
age. It is probable that he did not understand them.
It was a matter of instinct. He did what he chanced
to do.
He set out again in the direction of Johnstone Row.
But now he no longer walked; he dragged himself along.
He left St. Mary's Street to the left, made zigzags through
lanes, and at the end of a winding passage found himself
in a rather wide, open space. It was a piece of waste land
not built upon; probably the spot where Chesterfield Place
now stands. The houses ended there. He perceived the
sea to the right, and scarcely anything more of the town
to his left.
What was to become of him? Here was the country
again. To the east great inclined plains of snow marked
out the wide slopes of Radipole. Should he continue this
journey? Should he advance and re-enter the solitudes?
Should he return and re-enter the streets? What was he
to do between those two silences-the mute plain and
the deaf city? Which of the two refusals should he
choose?
There is the anchor of mercy. There is also the look
of piteousness. It was that look which the poor little
despairing wanderer threw around him.
All at once he heard a menace.
A STRANGE and alarming grinding of teeth reached
him through the darkness.
It was enough to drive one back: he advanced. To
those to whom silence has become dreadful, a howl is
comforting.
That fierce growl reassured him-that threat was a
promise. There was there a being alive and awake, though
it might be a wild beast. He advanced in the direction
whence came the snarl.
He turned the corner of a wall, and, behind in a vast
sepulchral light made by the reflection of snow and sea,
he saw a thing placed as if for shelter. It was a cart,
unless it was a hovel. It had wheels-it was a carriage.
It had a roof-it was a dwelling. From the roof arose
a funnel, and out of the funnel smoke. This smoke was
red, and seemed to imply a good fire in the interior.
Behind, projecting hinges indicated a door, and in the centre
of the door a square opening showed a light inside the
caravan. He approached.
Whatever had growled perceived his approach and
became furious. It was no longer a growl which he had to
meet, it was a roar. He heard a sharp sound, as of a chain
violently pulled to its full length, and suddenly, under the
door, between the hind wheels, two rows of sharp white
teeth appeared. At the same time as the mouth between
the wheels, a head was put through the window.
``Peace there!'' said the head.
The mouth was silent.
The head began again:
``Is any one there?''
The child answered:
``Yes.''
``Who?''
``I.''
``You? Who are you? whence do you come?''
``I am weary,'' said the child.
``What o'clock is it?''
``I am cold.''
``What are you doing there?''
``I am hungry.''
The head replied:
``Every one can not be as happy as a lord. Go away.''
The head was withdrawn and the window closed.
The child bowed his forehead, drew the sleeping infant
closer in his arms, and collected his strength to resume
his journey; he had taken a few steps and was hurrying
away.
However, at the same time that the window closed the
door had opened; a step had been let down, the voice which
had spoken to the child cried out angrily from the inside
of the van.
``Well! why do you not enter?''
The child turned back.
``Come in,'' resumed the voice. ``Who has sent me a
fellow like this, who is hungry and cold, and who does
not come in?''
The child, at once repulsed and invited, remained
motionless.
The voice continued:
``You are told to come in, you young rascal.''
He made up his mind, and placed one foot on the
lowest step.
There was a great growl under the van. He drew
back. The gaping jaws appeared.
``Peace!'' cried the voice of the man.
The jaws retreated, the growling ceased.
``Come up!'' continued the man.
The child with difficulty climbed up the three steps. He
was impeded by the infant so benumbed, rolled up and
enveloped in the jacket that nothing could be
distinguished of her, and that she was but a little shapeless
mass.
He passed over the three steps; and, having reached
the threshold, stopped.
No candle was burning in the caravan, probably from
the economy of want. The hut was lighted only by a
red tinge, arising from the opening at the top of the
stove, in which sparkled a peat fire. On the stove was
smoking a porringer and a saucepan, containing to all
appearance something to eat. The savoury odour was
perceptible. The hut was furnished with a chest, a stool, and
an unlighted lantern which hung from the ceiling.
Besides, to the partition were attached some boards on
brackets and some hooks, from which hung a variety of things.
On the boards and nails were rows of glasses, coppers,
an alembic, a vessel rather like those used for Raining
wax, which are called granulators, and a confusion of
strange objects, of which the child understood nothing,
and which were utensils for cooking and chemistry. The
caravan was oblong in shape, the stove being in front.
It was not even a little room; it was scarcely a big box.
There was more light outside from the snow than inside
from the stove. Everything in the caravan was indistinct
and misty. Nevertheless, a reflection of the fire on the
ceiling enabled the spectator to read in large letters:
II II
III III
IV IV
V V
VI VI
Part 1
BOOK 3
NIGHT NOT SO BLACK AS MAN
I PORTLAND BILL
II LEFT ALONE
III ALONE
IV QUESTIONS
V THE TREE OF HUMAN INVENTION
VI STRUGGLE BETWEEN DEATH AND NIGHT
VII THE NORTH POINT OF PORTLAND
BOOK 4
THE HOOKER AT SEA
I SUPERHUMAN LAWS
II OUR FIRST ROUGH SKETCHES FILLED IN
III TROUBLED MEN ON THE TROUBLED SEA
IV A CLOUD DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS ENTERS ON THE
SCENE
V HARDQUANONNE
VI THEY THINK THAT HELP IS AT HAND
VII SUPERHUMAN HORRORS
VIII IL ET NOX
IX THE CHARGE CONFIDED TO A RAGING SEA
X THE COLOSSAL SAVAGE, THE STORM
XI THE CASKETS
XII FACE TO FACE WITH THE ROCK
XIII FACE TO FACE WITH NIGHT
XIV ORTACH
XV PORTENTOSUM MARE
XVI THE PROBLEM SUDDENLY WORKS IN SILENCE
XVII THE LAST RESOURCE
XVIII THE HIGHEST RESOURCE
BOOK 5
THE CHILD IN THE SHADOW
I CHESIL
II THE EFFECT OF SNOW
III A BURDEN MAKES A ROUGH ROW ROUGHER
IV ANOTHER FORM OF DESERT
V MISANTHROPY PLAYS ITS PRANKS
The child, in fact, was entering the house of Homo and Ursus. The one he had just heard growling, the other speaking.
The child, having reached the threshold, perceived near the stove a man, tall, smooth, thin and old, dressed in gray, whose head, as he stood, reached the roof. The man could not have raised himself on tiptoe. The caravan was just his size.
``Come in!'' said the man, who was Ursus.
The child entered.
``Put down your bundle.''
The child placed his burden carefully on the top of the chest, for fear of awakening and terrifying it.
The man continued,-
``How gently you put it down! You could not be more careful were it a case of relics. Is it that you are afraid of tearing a hole in your rags? Worthless vagabond! in the streets at this hour! Who are you? Answer! But no. I forbid you to answer. There! You are cold. Warm yourself as quick as you can,'' and he shoved him by the shoulders in front of the fire.
``How wet you are! You're frozen through! A nice state to come into a house! Come, take off those rags, you villain!'' and as with one hand. and with feverish haste, he dragged off the boy's rags which tore into shreds, with the other he took down from a nail a man's shirt, and one of those knitted jackets which are up to this day called kiss-me-quicks.
``Here are clothes.''
He chose out of a heap a woolen rag, and chafed before the fire the limbs of the exhausted and bewildered child, who at that moment, warm and naked, felt as if he revere seeing and touching heaven. The limbs having been rubbed, he next wiped the boy's feet.
``Come, you limb! you have nothing frost-bitten! I was a fool to fancy you had something frozen, hind legs or fore paws. You will not lose the use of them this time. Dress yourself!''
The child put on the shirt, and the man slipped the knitted jacket over it.
``Now ....''
The man kicked the stool forward and made the little lion sit down, again shoving him by the shoulders; then he pointed with his finger to the porringer which was smoking upon the stove. What the child saw in the porringer was again heaven to him-namely a potato and a bit of bacon.
``You are hungry-eat!''
The man took from the shelf a crust of hard bread and an iron fork, and handed them to the child.
The boy hesitated.
``Perhaps you expect me to lay the cloth,'' said the man, and he placed the porringer on the child's lap.
``Gobble that up.''
Hunger overcame astonishment. The child began to eat. The poor boy devoured rather than ate. The glad sound of the crunching of bread filled the hut. The man grumbled,-
``Not so quick, you horrid glutton! Isn't he a greedy scoundrel? When such scum are hungry, they eat in a revolting fashion. You should see a lord sup. In my time, I have seen dukes eat. They don't eat; that's noble. They drink, however. Come you pig! stuff yourself!''
The absence of ears, which is the concomitant of a hungry stomach, caused the child to take little heed of these violent epithets, tempered as they were by charity of action involving a contradiction resulting in his benefit. For the moment he was absorbed by two exigencies and by two ecstasies-food and warmth.
Ursus continued his imprecations, muttering to himself-
``I have seen King James, supping in propriâ personâ, in the Banqueting House, where are to be admired the paintings of the famous Rubens. His Majesty touched nothing. This beggar here, browses-browses, a word derived from brute. What put it into my head to come to this Weymouth seven times devoted to the infernal deities? I have sold nothing since morning. I have harangued the snow. I have played the flute to the hurricane. I have not pocketed a farthing; and now, to-night beggars drop in. Horrid place! There is battle, struggle, competition between the fools in the street and myself. They try to give me nothing but farthings. I try to give them nothing but drugs. Well! to-day I've made nothing. Not an idiot on the highway. Not a penny in the till. Eat away! Hell-born boy! Tear and crunch! We have fallen on times when nothing can equal the cynicism of spongers. Fatten at my expense, parasite! This wretched boy is more than hungry; he is mad. It is not appetite, it is ferocity. He is carried away by a rapid virus. Perhaps he has the plague. Have you the plague, you thief? Suppose he were to give it to Homo! No, never! Let the populace die, but not my wolf. But by-the-bye I am hungry myself. I declare that this is all very disagreeable. I have worked far into the night. There are seasons in a man's life when he is hard pressed. I was to-night, by hunger. I was alone. I made a fire. I had but one potato, one crust of bread, a mouthful of bacon, and a drop of milk, and I put it to warm. I said to myself, `good.' I think I am going to eat, and bang! this crocodile falls upon me at the very moment. He installs himself clean between my food and myself. Behold! how my larder is devastated! Eat! pike, eat! You shark! how many teeth have you in your jaws? Guzzle, wolf-cub; no I withdraw that word. I respect wolves. Swallow up my food, boa. I have worked all day, and far into the night, on an empty stomach; my throat is sore; my pancreas in distress; my entrails torn; and my reward is to see another eat. 'Tis all one, though! We will divide. He shall have the bread, the potato and the bacon, but I will have the milk.''
Just then a wail, touching and prolonged, arose in the hut. The man listened.
``You cry! sycophant! Why do you cry?''
The boy turned toward him, it was evident that it was not he who cried. He had his mouth full.
The cry continued.
The man went to the chest.
``So it is your bundle that wails! Vale of Jehoshaphat! Behold a vociferating parcel! What the devil has your bundle got to croak about?''
He unrolled the jacket, an infant's head appeared, the mouth open and crying.
``Well! Who goes there !'' said the man. ``Here is another of them. When is this to end? Who is there? To arms! corporal! call out the guard; another bang! What have you brought me, thief? Don't you see it is thirsty? Come! the little one must have a drink. So now I shall not have even the milk!''
He took down from the things lying in disorder on the shelf a bandage of linen, a sponge, and a phial, muttering savagely, ``What an infernal place!''
Then he looked at the little infant. `` 'Tis a girl! one can tell that by her scream, and she is drenched as well.'' He dragged away, as he had done from the boy, the tatters in which she was knotted up rather than dressed, and swathed her in a rag, which, though of coarse linen, was clean and dry. This rough and sudden dressing made the infant angry.
``She mews relentlessly,'' said he.
He bit off a long piece of sponge, tore from the roll a square piece of linen, drew from it a bit of thread, took the saucepan containing the milk from the stove, filled the phial with milk, drove down the sponge half-way into its neck, covered the sponge with linen, tied this cork in with the thread, applied his cheeks to the phial to be sure that it was not too hot, and seized under his left arm the bewildered bundle which was still crying. ``Come! take your supper, creature! Let me suckle you,'' and he put the neck of the bottle to its mouth.
The little infant drank greedily.
He held the phial at the necessary incline, grumbling,-``They are all the same, the cowards! When they have all they want they are silent.''
The child had drunk so ravenously, and had seized so eagerly this breast offered by a cross-grained Providence, that she was taken with a fit of coughing.
``You are going to choke!'' growled Ursus. ``A fine gobbler this one, too!''
He drew away the sponge which she was sucking, allowed the cough to subside, and then replaced the phial to her lips, saying, ``Suck! you little wretch!''
In the meantime the boy had laid down his fork. Seeing the infant drink had made him forget to eat. The moment before, while he ate, the expression in his face was satisfaction-now it was gratitude. He watched the infant's renewal of life; the completion of the resurrection begun by himself filled his eyes with an ineffable brilliancy. Ursus went on muttering angry words between his teeth. The little boy now and then lifted toward Ursus his eyes moist with the unspeakable emotion which the poor little being felt but was unable to express. Ursus addressed him furiously.
``Well, will you eat?''
``And you?'' said the child, trembling all over, and with tears in his eyes. ``You will have nothing!''
``Will you be kind enough to eat it all up, you cub! There is not too much for you, since there was not enough for me.''
The child took up his fork, but did not eat.
``Eat,'' shouted Ursus. ``What has it got to do with me? Who speaks of me? Wretched little barefooted clerk of Penniless Parish, I tell you, eat it all up. You are here to eat, drink, and sleep-eat, or I will kick you out, both of you.''
The boy, under this menace, began to eat again. He had not much trouble in finishing what was left in the porringer. Ursus muttered, ``This building is badly Joined. The cold comes in by the window-pane.'' A pane had indeed been broken in front, either by a jolt of the caravan or by a stone thrown by some mischievous boy. Ursus had placed a star of paper over the fracture, which had become unpasted.
The blast entered there.
He was half seated on the chest. The infant in his arms, and at the same time on his lap, was sucking rapturously at the bottle, in the happy somnolency of cherubim before their Creator and infants at their mothers' breast.
``She is drunk,'' said Ursus; and he continued, ``After this, preach sermons on temperance!''
The wind tore from the pane the plaster of paper, which flew across the hut; but this was nothing to the children who were entering life anew; while the little girl drank, and the little boy ate, Ursus grumbled:
``Drunkenness begins in the infant in swaddling clothes. What useless trouble Bishop Tillotson gives himself, thundering against excessive drinking. What an odious draught of wind! And then my stove is old. It allows puffs of smoke to escape enough to give you trichiasis. One has the inconvenience of cold, and the inconvenience of fire. One can not see clearly. That being over there abuses my hospitality. Well! I have not been able to distinguish the animal's face yet. Comfort is wanting here. By Jove! I am a great admirer of exquisite banquets in well-closed rooms. I have missed my vocation. I was born to be a sensualist. The greatest of Stoics was Philoxenus, who wished to possess the neck of a crane, so as to be longer in tasting the pleasures of the table. Receipts to-day, naught. Nothing sold all day. Inhabitants, servants, and tradesmen, here is the doctor, here are the drugs. You are losing your time, old friend. Pack up your physic. Every one is well down here. It's a cursed town, where every one is well! The skies alone have diarrha-what snow! Anaxagoras taught that the snow was black, and he was right, cold being blackness. Ice is night. What a hurricane! I can fancy the delight of those at sea. The hurricane is the passage of demons. It is the row of the tempest fiends galloping and rolling head over heels above our bone-boxes. In the cloud this one has a tail, that one has horns, another a flame for a tongue' another claws to its wings, another a lord chancellor's paunch, another an academician's pate. You may observe a form in every sound. To every fresh wind a fresh demon. The ear hears, the eye sees, the crash is a face. Zounds! There are folks at sea-that is certain. My friends ! get through the storm as best you can. I have enough to do to get through life. Come now, do I keep an inn, or do I not? Why should I trade with these travelers? The universal distress sends its sputterings even as far as my poverty. Into my cabin fall hideous drops of the far-spreading mud of mankind. I am given up to the voracity of travelers. I am a prey-the prey of those dying of hunger. Stinter, night, a pasteboard hut, an unfortunate friend below and without, the storm, a potato, a fire as big as my fist, parasites, the wind penetrating through every cranny, not a halfpenny, and bundles which set to howling. I open them, and find beggars inside. Is this fair? Besides, the laws are violated. Ah! vagabond with your vagabond child! Mischievous pickpocket, evil-minded abortion, so you walk the streets after curfew? If our good king only knew it, would he not have you thrown into the bottom of a ditch, just to teach you better! My gentleman walks out at night with my lady, and with the glass at fifteen degrees of frost, bareheaded and barefooted. Understand that such things are forbidden. There are rules and regulations, you lawless wretches. Vagabonds are punished, honest folks who have houses are guarded an] protected. Kings are the fathers of their people. I have my own house You would have been whipped in the public street had you chanced to have been met, and quite right, too. There must be order in an established city. For my own part, I did wrong not to denounce you to the constable. But I am such a fool! I understand what is right and do what is wrong. Oh, the ruffian! to come here in such a state! I did not see the snow upon them when they came in; it had melted, and here's my whole house swamped. I have an inundation in my home. I shall have to burn an incredible amount of coals to dry up this lake-coals at twelve farthings, the miners' standard! How am I going to manage to fit three into this caravan? Now it is over; I enter the nursery; I am going to have in my house the weaning of the future beggardom of England. I shall have for employment, office, and function, to fashion the miscarried fortunes of that colossal Prostitute, Misery, to bring to perfection future gallows' birds, and to give young thieves the forms of philosophy. The tongue of the wolf is the warning of God. And to think that if I had not been eaten up by creatures of this kind for the last thirty years, I should be rich; Homo would be fat; I should have a medicine-chest full of rarities: as many surgical instruments as Doctor Linacre, surgeon to King Henry VIII; divers animals of all kinds; Egyptian mummies, and similar curiosities; I should be a member of the College of Physicians, and have the right of using the library, built in 1652 by the celebrated Hervey, and of studying in the lantern of that dome whence you can see the whole of London. I could continue my observations of solar obfuscation, and prove that a caligenous vapour arises from the planet. Such was the opinion of John Kepler, who was born the year before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and who was mathematician to the emperor. The sun is a chimney which sometimes smokes; so does my stove. My stove is no better than the sun. Yes, I should have made my fortune; my part would have been different one I should not be the insignificant fellow I am. I should not degrade science in the highways, for the crowd is not worthy of the doctrine, the crowd being nothing better than a confused mixture of all sorts of ages, sexes, humours, and conditions, that wise men of all periods have not hesitated to despise, and whose extravagance and passion the most moderate men in their justice detest! Oh, I am weary of existence! After all, one does not live long! This human life is soon done with. But, no-it is long. At intervals, that we should not become too discouraged, that we may have the stupidity to consent to bear our being, and not profit by the magnificent opportunities to hang ourselves which cords and vigils afford, nature puts on an air of taking a little care of man-not to-night, though. The rogue causes the wheat to spring up, ripens the grape, gives her song to the nightingale. From time to time a ray of morning or a glass of gin, and that is what we call happiness! It is a narrow border of good round a huge winding-sheet of evil. We have a destiny of which the devil has woven the stuff, and God has sewn the hem. In the meantime, you have eaten my supper, you thief!''
In the meantime the infant whom he was holding all the time in his arms very tenderly while he was vituperating shut its eyes languidly; a sign of repletion. Ursus examined the phial, and grumbled,-
``She has drunk it all up, the impudent creature!''
He arose, and sustaining the infant with his left arm, with his right he raised the lid of the chest and drew from beneath it a bearskin, the one he called, as will be remembered, his real skin. While he was doing this he heard the other child eating, and looked at him sidewise.
``It will be something to do if, henceforth, I have to feed that grooving glutton. It will be a worm gnawing at the Ideals of my industry.''
He spread out, still with one arm, the bearskin on the chest, working his elbows and managing his movements so as not to disturb the sleep into which the infant was just sinking.
Then he laid her down on the fur, on the side next the fire. Having done so, he placed the phial on the stove, and exclaimed,-
``I am thirsty, if you like!''
He looked into the pot. There were a few good mouthfuls of milk left in it; he raised it to his lips. Just as he was about to drink his eye fell on the little girl. He replaced the pot on the stove, took the phial, uncorked it, poured into it all the milk that remained, which was just sufficient to fill it, replaced the sponge and the linen rag over it, and tied it round the neck of the bottle.
``All the same, I'm hungry and thirsty,'' he observed.
And he added:
``When one can not eat bread one must drink water.''
Behind the stove there was a jug with the spout off. He took it and handed it to the boy.
``Will you drink?''
The child drank, and then went on eating.
Ursus seized the pitcher again, and conveyed it to his mouth. The temperature of the water which it contained had been unequally modified by the proximity of the stove.
He swallowed some mouthfuls and made a grimace.
``Water! pretending to be pure, thou resemblest false friends. Thou art warm at the top and cold at bottom.''
In the meantime the boy had finished his supper. The porringer was more than empty, it was cleaned out. He picked up and ate pensively a few crumbs caught in the folds of the knitted jacket on his lap. Ursus turned toward him.
``That is not all. Now, a word with you. The mouth is not made only for eating, it is made for speaking. Now that you are warmed and stuffed, you beast, take care of yourself. You are going to answer my questions. Whence do you come?''
The child replied:
``I do not know.''
``How do you mean, you don't know?''
``I was abandoned this evening on the seashore.''
``You little scamp! what's your name? He is so good for nothing that his relations desert him.''
``I have no relations.''
``Give in a little to my tastes, and observe that I do not like those who sing to a tune of fibs. Thou must have relatives since you have a sister.''
``It is not my sister.''
``It is not your sister?''
``No.',
``Who is it then?''
``It is a baby that I found.''
``Found?''
``Yes.''
``What! did you pick her up?''
``Yes.''
``Where? If you lie I will exterminate you.'
``On the breast of a woman who was dead in the snow.''
``When?''
``An hour ago.''
``Where?''
``A league from here.''
The arched brow of Ursus knitted and took that pointed shape which characterises emotion on the brow of a philosopher.
``Dead! Lucky for her! We must leave her in the snow. She is well off there. In which direction?''
``In the direction of the sea.''
``Did you cross the bridge?''
``Yes.''
Ursus opened the window at the back and examined the view.
The weather had not improved. The snow was falling thickly and mournfully.
He shut the window.
He went to the broken glass; he filled the hole with a rag; he heaped the stove with peat; he spread out as far as he could the bearskin on the chest; took a large book which he had in a corner, placed it under the skin for a pillow, and laid the head of the sleeping infant on it.
Then he turned to the boy.
``Lie down there.''
The boy obeyed, and stretched himself at full length by the side of the infant.
Ursus rolled the bearskin over the two children, and tucked it under their feet.
He took down from a shelf, and tied round his waist, a linen belt with a large pocket containing, no doubt, a case of instruments and bottles of restoratives.
Then he took the lantern from where it hung to the ceiling and lighted it. It was a dark lantern. When lighted it still left the children in shadow.
Ursus half opened the door and said:
``I am going out; do not be afraid. I shall return. Go to sleep.''
Then letting down the steps he called Homo. He was answered by a loving growl.
Ursus, holding the lantern in his hand, descended. The steps were replaced, the door was reclosed. The children remained alone.
From without, a voice, the voice of Ursus, said:
``You, boy, who have just eaten up my supper, are you already asleep?''
``No,'' replied the child.
``Well, if she cries, give her the rest of the milk.''
The clinking of a chain being undone was heard, and the sound of a man's footsteps, mingled with that of the pads of an animal, died off in the distance. A few minutes after both children slept profoundly.
The boy and girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through the silent hours, in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows; such dreams as were possible to their age floated from one to the other; beneath their closed eyelids there shone, perhaps, a starlight; if the word marriage were not inappropriate to the situation, they were husband and wife after the fashion of the angels. Such innocence in such darkness, such purity in such an embrace, such foretastes of heaven are possible only to childhood, and no immensity approaches the greatness of little children. Of all gulfs this is the deepest. The fearful perpetuity of the dead chained beyond life, the mighty animosity of the ocean to a wreck, the whiteness of the snow over buried bodies, do not equal in pathos two children's mouths meeting divinely in sleep;12 and the meeting of which is not even a kiss. A betrothal perchance, perchance a catastrophe. The unknown weighs down upon their juxtaposition. It charms, it terrifies; who knows which? It stays the pulse. Innocence is higher than virtue. Innocence is holy ignorance. They slept. They were in peace. They were warm. The nakedness of their bodies, embraced each in each, amalgamated with the virginity of their souls. They were there as in the nest of the abyss.
THE beginning of day is sinister. A sad pale light
penetrated the hut. It was the frozen dawn. That
wan light which throws into relief the mournful reality
of objects which are blurred into spectral forms by the
night did not awake the children, so soundly were they
sleeping. The caravan was warm. Their breathings
alternated like two peaceful waves. There was no longer
a hurricane without The light of dawn was slowly
taking possession of the horizon. The constellations were
being extinguished, like candles blown out one after the
other. Only a few large stars resisted. The deep-toned
song of the Infinite was coming from the sea.
The fire in the stove was not quite out. The twilight
broke, little by little, into daylight. The boy slept less
heavily than the girl. At length, a ray brighter than the
others broke through the pane, and he opened his eyes.
The sleep of childhood ends in forgetfulness. He lay in
a state of semi-stupor, without knowing where he was or
what was near him, without making an effort to
remember, gazing at the ceiling, and setting himself an aimless
task as he gazed dreamily at the letters of the
inscription-Ursus, Philosopher-which, being unable to read, he
examined without the power of deciphering.
The sound of a key turning in the lock caused him to
turn his head.
The door turned on its hinges, the steps were let down.
Ursus was returning. He ascended the steps, his
extinguished lantern in his hand. At the same time the
pattering of four paws fell upon the steps. It was Homo,
following Ursus, who had also returned to his home.
The boy awoke with somewhat of a start. The wolf,
having probably an appetite, gave him a morning yawn,
showing two rows of very white teeth. He stopped when
he had got half-way up the steps, and placed both
forepaws within the caravan, leaning on the threshold, like a
preacher with his elbows on the edge of the pulpit. He
sniffed the chest from afar, not being in the habit of
finding it occupied as it then was. His wolfine form, framed
by the doorway, was designed in black against the light
of morning. He made up his mind, and entered. The
boy, seeing the wolf in the caravan, got out of the
bear-skin, and, standing up, placed himself in front of the little
infant, who was sleeping more soundly than ever.
Ursus had just hung the lantern up on a nail in the
ceiling. Silently, and with mechanical deliberation, he
unbuckled the belt in which was his case, and replaced it
on the shelf. He looked at nothing, and seemed to see
nothing. His eyes were glassy. Something was moving
him deeply in his mind. His thoughts at length found
breath, as usual, in a rapid outflow of words. He
exclaimed:
``Happy, doubtless! Dead ! stone dead!''
He bent down, and put a shovelful of turf mould into
the stove; and, as he poked the peat, he growled out:
``I had a deal of trouble to find her. The mischief of
the unknown had buried her under two feet of snow. Had
it not been for Homo, who sees as clearly with his nose
as Christopher Columbus did with his mind, I should be
still there, scratching at the avalanche, and playing hide
and seek with Death. Diogenes took his lantern and
sought for a man; I took my lantern and sought for a
woman. He found a sarcasm, and I found mourning.
How cold she was. I touched her hand-a stone! What
silence in her eyes. How can any one be such a fool as
to die and leave a child behind! It will not be convenient
to pack three into this box. A pretty family I have now!
A boy and a girl!''
While Ursus was speaking, Homo sidled up close to
the stove. The hand of the sleeping infant was hanging
down between the stove and the chest. The wolf set to
licking it. He licked it so softly that he did not awake
the little infant.
Ursus turned round.
``Well done, Homo. I shall be father and you shall
be uncle.''
Then he betook himself again to arranging the fire with
philosophical care, without interrupting his aside.
``Adoption! It is settled; Homo is willing.''
He drew himself up.
``I should like to know who is responsible for that
woman's death? Is it man? or ....''
He raised his eyes, but looked beyond the ceiling, and
his lips murmured:
``Is it Thou?''
Then his brow dropped, as if under a burden, and he
continued:
``The night took the trouble to kill the woman.''
Raising his eyes, they met those of the boy, just
awakened, who was listening. Ursus addressed him abruptly:
``What are you laughing about?''
The boy answered:
``I am not laughing.''
Ursus felt a kind of shock, looked at him fixedly for a
few minutes and said:
``Then you are frightful.''
The interior of the caravan, on the previous night, had
been so dark that Ursus had not yet seen the boy's face.
The broad daylight revealed it. He placed the palms of
his hands on the two shoulders of the boy, and, examining
his countenance more and more piercingly, exclaimed:
``Do not laugh any more!''
``I am not laughing,'' said the child.
Ursus was seized with a shudder from head to foot.
``You do laugh, I tell you.''
Then, seizing the child with a grasp which would have
been one of fury had it not been one of pity, he asked
him roughly:
``Who did that to you?''
The child replied:
``I don't know what you mean.''
``How long have you had that laugh?''
``I have always been thus,'' said the child.
Ursus turned toward the chest, saying in a low voice:
``I thought that work was out of date.''
He took from the top of it, very softly, so as not to
awaken the infant, the book which he had placed there for
a pillow.
``Let us see `Conquest,' '' he murmured.
It was a bundle of paper in folio, bound in soft
parchment. He turned the pages with his thumb, stopped at
a certain one, opened the book wide on the stove, and read:
`` `De Denasatis,' it is here.''
And he continued:
`` `Bucca fissa usque ad aures, genezivis denudatis,
nasoque murdridato, masca eris, et ridebis semper.'
``There it is for certain.''
Then he replaced the book on one of the shelves,
growling:
``It might not be wholesome to inquire too deeply into
a case of the kind. We will remain on the surface; laugh
away, my boy!''
Just then the little girl awoke. Her good-day was a
cry.
``Come, nurse, give her the breast,'' said Ursus.
The infant sat up. Ursus taking the phial from the
stove gave it to her to suck.
Then the sun arose. He was level with the horizon.
His red rays gleamed through the glass and struck against
the face of the infant, which was turned toward him. Her
eyeballs, fixed on the sun, reflected his purple orbit like
two mirrors. The eyeballs were immovable, the eyelids
also.
``See!'' said Ursus. ``She is blind.''
THERE was, in those days, an old tradition.
That tradition was Lord Linnæus Clancharlie.
Linnæus Baron Clancharlie, a contemporary of
Cromwell, was one of the peers of England, few in number be
it said, who accepted the Republic. The reason of his
acceptance of it might, indeed, for want of a better, be
found in the fact that, for the time being, the Republic
was triumphant. It was a matter of course that Lord
Clancharlie should adhere to the Republic, as long as the
Republic had the upper hand; but, after the close of the
Revolution and the fall of the Parliamentary
government, Lord Clancharlie had persisted in his fidelity to it.
It would have been easy for the noble patrician to re-enter
the reconstituted Upper House, repentance being ever
well received on restorations, and Charles II being a kind
prince enough to those who returned to their allegiance
to him; but Lord Clancharlie had failed to understand
what was due to events. While the nation overwhelmed
with acclamation the king, come to retake possession of
England; while unanimity was recording its verdict, while
the people were bowing their salutation to the monarchy,
while the dynasty was rising anew amid a glorious and
triumphant recantation, at the moment when the past was
becoming the future, and the future becoming the past,
that nobleman remained refractory. He turned his head
away from all that joy, and voluntarily exiled himself.
While he could have been a peer, he preferred being an
outlaw. Years had thus passed away. He had grown
old in his fidelity to the dead Republic, and was therefore
crowned with the ridicule which is the natural reward of
such folly.
He had retired into Switzerland, and dwelt in a sort of
lofty ruin on the banks of the Lake of Geneva. He had
chosen his dwelling in the most rugged nook of the lake,
between Chillon, where is the dungeon of Bonnivard, and
Vevay, where is Ludlow's tomb. The rugged Alps, filled
with twilight, winds, and clouds, were around him: and
he lived there, hidden in the great shadows that fall from
the mountains. He was rarely met by any passer-by.
The man was out of his country, almost out of his century.
At that time, to those who understood and were posted
in the affairs of the period, no resistance to established
things was justifiable. England was happy; a
restoration is as the reconciliation of husband and wife, prince
and nation return to each other; no state can be more
graceful or more pleasant. Great Britain beamed with
joy; to have a king at all was a good deal-but,
furthermore, the king was a charming one. Charles II was
amiable, a man of pleasure, yet able to govern, and great, if
not after the fashion of Louis XIV. He was essentially
a gentleman. Charles II was admired by his subjects.
He had made war in Hanover for reasons best known
to himself; at least, no one else knew them. He had sold
Dunkirk to France, a manuvre of state policy. The
Whig peers, concerning whom Chamberlayne says, ``The
cursed Republic infected with its stinking breath several
of the high nobility,'' had had the good sense to bow to
the inevitable, to conform to the times, and to resume their
seats in the House of Lords. To do so it sufficed that
they should take the oath of allegiance to the king. When
these facts were considered, the glorious reign, the
excellent king, august princes given back by divine mercy to
the people's love; when it was remembered that persons
of such consideration as Monk, and, later on, Jeffreys,
had rallied round the throne; that they had been properly
rewarded for their loyalty and zeal by the most splendid
appointments and the most lucrative offices; that Lord
Clancharlie could not be ignorant of this, and that it only
depended on himself to be seated by their side, glorious
in his honours; that England had, thanks to her king, risen
again to the summit of prosperity; that London was all
banquets and carousels; that everybody was rich and
enthusiastic; that the court was gallant, gay, and
magnificent;-if by chance, far from these splendours, in some
melancholy, indescribable half-light, like nightfall, that
old man, clad in the same garb as the common people, was
observed pale, absent-minded, bent toward the grave,
standing on the shore of the lake, scarce heeding the storm
and the winter, walking as though at random, his eye fixed,
his white hair tossed by the wind of the shadow, silent,
pensive, solitary, who could forbear to smile?
It was the sketch of a madman.
Thinking of Lord Clancharlie, of what he might have
been and what he was, a smile was indulgent; some laughed
out aloud, others could not restrain their anger. It is
easy to understand that men of sense were much shocked
by the insolence implied by his isolation.
One extenuating circumstance: Lord Clancharlie had
never had any brains. Every one agreed on that point.
IT is disagreeable to see one's fellows practice obstinacy.
Imitations of Regulus are not popular, and public opinion
holds them in some derision. Stubborn people are like
reproaches, and we have a right to laugh at them.
Besides, to sum up, are these perversities, these rugged
notches, virtues? Is there not in these excessive
advertisements of self-abnegation and of honour a good deal of
ostentation? It is all parade more than anything else.
Why such exaggeration of solitude and exile? to carry
nothing to extremes is the wise man's maxim. Be in
opposition if you choose, blame if you will, but decently,
and crying out all the while ``Long live the King!'' The
true virtue is common-sense-what falls ought to fall, what
succeeds ought to succeed. Providence acts advisedly,
it crowns him who deserves the crown; do you pretend to
know better than Providence? When matters are
settled-when one rule has replaced another-when success is
the scale in which truth and falsehood are weighed, in one
side the catastrophe, in the other the triumph; then doubt
is no longer possible, the honest man rallies to the winning
side, and, although it may happen to serve his fortune and
his family, he does not allow himself to be influenced by
that consideration, but, thinking only of the public weal,
holds out his hand heartily to the conqueror.
What would become of the state if no one consented to
serve it? Would not everything come to a standstill?
To keep his place is the duty of a good citizen. Learn to
sacrifice your secret preferences. Appointments must be
filled, and some one must necessarily sacrifice himself.
To be faithful to public functions is true fidelity. The
retirement of public officials would paralyse the state.
What! banish yourself!-how weak! As an
example?-what vanity! As a defiance?-what audacity! What do
you set yourself up to be, I wonder? Learn that we are
just as good as you. If we chose, we, too, could be
intractable and untamable, and do worse things than you;
but we prefer to be sensible people. Because I am a
Trimalcion, you think that I could not be a Cato! What
nonsense.
NEVER was a situation more clearly defined or more
decisive than that of 1660. Never had a course of conduct
been more plainly indicated to a well-ordered mind.
England was out of Cromwell's grasp. Under the Republic
many irregularities had been committed. British
preponderance had been created. With the aid of the Thirty
Years' War, Germany had been overcome; with the aid
of the Fronde, France had been humiliated; with the aid of
the Duke of Braganza, the power of Spain had been
lessened. Cromwell had tamed Mazarin; in signing treaties
the Protector of England wrote his name above that of
the King of France. The United Provinces had been put
under a Me of eight millions; Algiers and Tunis had been
attacked; Jamaica conquered; Lisbon humbled; French
rivalry encouraged in Barcelona, and Masaniello in
Naples; Portugal had been made fast to England; the seas
had been swept of Barbary pirates from Gibraltar to
Crete; maritime domination had been founded under two
forms-Victory and Commerce. On the 10th of August,
1653, the man of thirty-three victories, the old Admiral
who called himself the sailors' grandfather, Martin
Happertz van Tromp, who had beaten the Spanish, had been
destroyed by the English fleet. The Atlantic had been
cleared of the Spanish navy, the Pacific of the Dutch, the
Mediterranean of the Venetian; and, by the patent of
navigation, England had taken possession of the seacoast
of the world. By the ocean she commanded the world;
at sea the Dutch flag humbly saluted the British flag.
France, in the person of the Ambassador Mancini, bent
the knee to Oliver Cromwell; and Cromwell played with
Calais and Dunkirk as with two shuttlecocks on a
battledore. The Continent had been taught to tremble, peace
had been dictated, war declared, the British ensign raised
on every pinnacle. By itself the Protector's regiment
of Ironsides weighed in the fears of Europe against an
army. Cromwell used to say, ``I wish the Republic of
England to be respected, as was respected the Republic of
Rome.'' No longer were delusions held sacred: speech
was free, the press was free. In the public street men
said what they listed; they printed what they pleased
without control or censorship. The equilibrium of thrones had
been destroyed. The whole order of European monarchy,
in which the Stuarts formed a link, had been overturned.
But at last England had emerged from this odious order
of things, and had won its pardon.
The indulgent Charles II had granted the declaration
of Breda. He had conceded to England oblivion of the
period in which the son of the Huntingdon brewer placed
his foot on the neck of Louis XIV. England said its meâ
culpâ, and breathed again. The cup of joy was, as we
have just said, full; gibbets for the regicides adding to
the universal delight. A restoration is a smile; but a few
gibbets are not out of place, and satisfaction is due to the
conscience of the public. To be good subjects was
thenceforth the people's sole ambition. The spirit of lawlessness
had been expelled. Royalty was reconstituted. Men had
recovered from the follies of politics. They mocked at
revolution, they jeered at the Republic; and as to those
times when such strange words as Right, Liberty,
Progress had been in the mouth-why, they laughed at such
bombast! Admirable was the return to common-sense.
England had been in a dream. What joy to be quit of
such errors! Was ever anything so mad? Where should
we be if every one had his rights? Fancy every one's
having a hand in the government? Can you imagine a city
ruled by its citizens? Why, the citizens are the team, and
the team can not be driver. To put to the vote is to throw
to the winds. Would you have states driven like clouds?
Disorder can not build up order. With chaos for an
architect, the edifice would be a Babel. And, besides, what
tyranny is this pretended liberty! As for me, I wish to
enjoy myself; not to govern. It is a bore to have to vote;
I want to dance. A prince is a providence, and takes care
of us all. Truly the king is generous to take so much
trouble for our sakes. Besides, he is to the manner born.
He knows what it is. It's his business. Peace, War,
Legislation, Finance-what have the people to do with
such things? Of course the people have to pay; of course
the people have to serve; but that should suffice them.
They have a place in policy; from them come two essential
things, the army and the budget. To be liable to
contribute and to be liable to serve; is not that enough? What
more should they want? They are the military and the
financial arm. A magnificent rôle. The king reigns for
them, and they must reward him accordingly. Taxation
and the civil list are the salaries paid by the peoples and
earned by the prince. The people give their blood and
their money in return for which they are led. To wish
to lead themselves! what an absurd idea! They require
a guide; being ignorant, they are blind. Has not the
blind man his dog? Only the people have a lion, the king,
who consents to act the dog. How kind of him! But
why are the people ignorant? because it is good for them.
Ignorance is the guardian of Virtue. Where there is no
perspective there is no ambition. The ignorant man is
in useful darkness, which, suppressing sight, suppresses
covetousness: whence innocence. He who reads, thinks;
who thinks, reasons. But not to reason is duty; and
happiness as well. These truths are incontestable; society is
based on them.
Thus had sound social doctrines been re-established in
England; thus had the nation been reinstated. At the
same time a correct taste in literature was reviving.
Shakespeare was despised, Dryden admired. ``Dryden is
the greatest poet of England, and of the century,'' said
Atterbury, the translator of ``Achitophel.'' It was about
the time when M. Huet, Bishop of Avranches, wrote to
Saumaise, who had done the author of ``Paradise Lost''
the honour to refute and abuse him: ``How can you trouble
yourself about so mean a thing as that Milton?''
Everything was falling into its proper place: Dryden above,
Shakespeare below; Charles II on the throne, Cromwell
on the gibbet. England was raising herself out of the
shame and the excesses of the past. It is a great
happiness for nations to be led back by monarchy to good order
in the state and good taste in letters.
That such benefits should be misunderstood is difficult
to believe. To turn the cold shoulder to Charles II, to
reward with ingratitude the magnanimity which he
displayed in ascending the throne-was not such conduct
abominable? Lord Linnæus Clancharlie had inflicted this
vexation upon honest men. To sulk at his country's
happiness, alack, what aberrations
We know that, in 1650, Parliament had drawn up this
form of declaration: ``I promise to remain faithful to
the Republic, without king, sovereign, or lord.'' Under
pretext of having taken this monstrous oath, Lord
Clancharlie was living out of the kingdom, and, in the face of
the general joy, thought that he had the right to be sad.
He had a morose esteem for that which was no more, and
was absurdly attached to things which had been.
To excuse him was impossible. The kindest-hearted
abandoned him; his friends had long done him the honour
to believe that he had entered the republican ranks only
to observe the more closely the flaws in the republican
armour, and to smite it the more surely when the day should
come, for the sacred cause of the king. These lurkings
in ambush for the convenient hour to strike the enemy a
deathblow in the back are attributes of loyalty. Such
a line of conduct had been expected of Lord Clancharlie,
so strong was the wish to judge him favourably; but, in
the face of his strange persistence in republicanism,
people were obliged to lower their estimate. Evidently Lord
Clancharlie was confirmed in his convictions-that is to
say, an idiot!
The explanation given by the indulgent wavered
between puerile stubbornness and senile obstinacy.
The severe and the just went further; they blighted
the name of the renegade. Folly has its rights, but it
has also its limits. A man may be a brute, but he has no
right to be a rebel. And, after all, what was this Lord
Clancharlie? A deserter. He had fled his camp, the
aristocracy, for that of the enemy, the people. This
faithful man was a traitor. It is true that he was a traitor
to the stronger and faithful to the weaker; it is true that
the camp repudiated by him was the conquering camp, and
the camp adopted by him the conquered; it is true that
by his treason he lost everything-his political privileges
and his domestic hearth, his title and his country. He
gained nothing but ridicule, he attained no benefit but
exile.
But what does all this prove?-that he was a fool.
Granted.
Plainly a dupe and traitor in one. Let a man be as
great a fool as he likes, so that he does not set a bad
example. Fools need only be civil, and in consideration
thereof they may aim at being the basis of monarchies.
The narrowness of Clancharlie's mind was
incomprehensible. His eyes were still dazzled by the phantasmagoria
of the Revolution. He had allowed himself to be taken
in by the Republic-yes; and cast out. He was an affront
to his country. The attitude he assumed was downright
felony. Absence was an insult. He held aloof from the
public Joy as from the plague. In his voluntary
banishment he found some indescribable refuge from the
national rejoicing. He treated loyalty as a contagion: over
the widespread gladness at the revival of the monarchy,
denounced by him as a lazaretto, he was the black flag.
What! could he look thus askance at order reconstituted,
a nation exalted, and a religion restored? Over such
serenity why cast his shadow? Take umbrage at England's
contentment! Must he be the one blot in the clear blue
sky! Be as a threat! Protest against a nation's will!
refuse his Yes to the universal consent! It would be
disgusting, if it were not the part of a fool. Clancharlie
could not have taken into account the fact that it did not
matter if one had taken the wrong turn with Cromwell
as long as one found one's way back into the right path
with Monk.
Take Monk's case. He commands the republican army.
Charles II, having been informed of his honesty, writes
to him. Monk, who combines virtue with tact,
dissimulates at first, then suddenly at the head of his troops
dissolves the rebel Parliament and re-establishes the king
on the throne. Monk is created Duke of Albemarle, has
the honour of having saved society, becomes very rich, sheds
a glory over his own time, is created Knight of the Garter,
and has the prospect of being buried in Westminster
Abbey. Such glory is the reward of British fidelity!
Lord Clancharlie could never rise to a sense of duty
thus carried out. He had the infatuation and obstinacy
of an exile. He contented himself with hollow phrases.
He was tongue-tied by pride. The words conscience
and dignity are but words, after all. One must
penetrate to the depths. These depths Lord Clancharlie had
not reached. His ``eye was single,'' and, before
committing an act, he wished to observe it so closely as to be able
to judge it by more senses than one. Hence arose absurd
disgust to the facts examined. No man can be a
statesman who gives way to such overstrained delicacy.
Excess of conscientiousness degenerates into infirmity.
Scruple is one-handed when a sceptre is to be seized, and a
eunuch when fortune is to be wedded. Distrust scruples
they drag you too far. Unreasonable fidelity is like a
ladder leading into a cavern-one step down, another, then
another, and there you are in the dark. The clever
reascend; fools remain in it. Conscience must not be
allowed to practice such austerity. If it be, it will fall until,
from transition to transition, it at length reaches the deep
gloom of political prudery. Then one is lost. Thus it
was with Lord Clancharlie.
Principles terminate in a precipice.
He was walking, his hands behind him, along the shores
of the Lake of Geneva. A fine way of getting on!
In London they sometimes spoke of the exile. He
was accused before the tribunal of public opinion. They
pleaded for and against him. The cause having been
heard, he was acquitted on the ground of stupidity.
Many zealous friends of the former Republic had given
their adherence to the Stuarts. For this they deserve
praise. They naturally calumniated him a little. The
obstinate are repulsive to the compliant. Men of sense,
in favour and good places at Court, weary of his
disagreeable attitude, took pleasure in saying, ``If he has not
rallied to the throne, it is because he has not been sufficiently
paid,'' etc. ``He wanted the chancellorship which the king
has given to Hyde.'' One of his old friends went so far
as to whisper, ``He told me so himself.'' Remote as was
the solitude of Linnæus Clancharlie, something of this talk
would reach him through the outlaws he met, such as old
regicides like Andrew Broughton, who lived at Lausanne.
Clancharlie confined himself to an imperceptible shrug
of the shoulders, a sign of profound deterioration. On
one occasion he added to the shrug these few words,
murmured in a low voice, ``I pity those who believe such
things.''
CHARLES II, good man! despised him. The happiness
of England under Charles II was more than happiness,
it was enchantment. A restoration is like an old oil
painting, blackened by time, and revarnished. All the past
reappeared, good old manners returned, beautiful women
reigned and governed. Evelyn notices it. We read in
his Journal, ``Luxury, profaneness, contempt of God.
I saw the king on Sunday evening with his courtesans,
Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarin, and two or three others,
all nearly naked, in the gaming-room.'' We feel that
there is ill-nature in this description, for Evelyn was a
grumbling Puritan, tainted with republican reveries. He
did not appreciate the profitable example given by kings
in those grand Babylonian gayeties, which, after all,
maintain luxury. He did not understand the utility of vice.
Here is a maxim: Do not extirpate vice if you want to
have charming women; if you do you are like idiots who
destroy the chrysalis while they delight in the butterfly.
Charles II, as we have said, scarcely remembered that
a rebel called Clancharlie existed; but James II was more
heedful. Charles II governed gently, it was his way; we
may add, that he did not govern the worse on that account.
A sailor sometimes makes on a rope intended to baffle the
wind a slack knot, which he leaves to the wind to tighten.
Such is the stupidity of the storm and of the people.
The slack knot very soon becomes a tight one. So did
the government of Charles II.
Under James II the throttling began; a necessary
throttling of what remained of the Revolution. James
II had a laudable ambition to be an efficient king. The
reign of Charles II was, in his opinion, but a sketch of
restoration. James wished for a still more complete
return to order. He had, in 1660, deplored that they had
confined themselves to the hanging of ten regicides. He
was a more genuine reconstructor of authority. He
infused vigour into serious principles. He installed true
Justice, which is superior to sentimental declamations, and
attends, above all things, to the interests of society. In
his protecting severities we recognise the father of the
state. He intrusted the hand of justice to Jeffreys and
its sword to Kirke. That useful Colonel, one day, hanged
and rehanged the same man, a republican, asking him each
time, ``Will you renounce the Republic?'' The villain,
having each time said ``No,'' was despatched-``I hanged
him four times,'' said Kirke with satisfaction. The
renewal of executions is a great sign of power in the
executive authority. Lady Lisle, who, though she had sent
her son to fight against Monmouth, had concealed two
rebels in her house, was executed; another rebel, having been
honourable enough to declare that an anabaptist female had
given him shelter, was pardoned, and the woman was
burned alive. Kirke, on another occasion, gave a town
to understand that he knew its principles to be republican
by hanging nineteen burgesses. These reprisals were
certainly legitimate, for it must be remembered that, under
Cromwell, they cut off the noses and ears of the stone
saints in the churches. James II, who had had the sense
to choose Jeffreys and Kirke, was a prince imbued with
true religion; he practiced mortification in the ugliness
of his mistresses; he listened to le Père la Colombière, a
preacher almost as unctuous as le Père Cheminais, but
with more fire, who had the glory of being, during the
first part of his life, the counselor of James II, and,
during the latter, the inspirer of Mary Alcock. It was,
thanks to this strong religious nourishment, that, later
on, James II was enabled to bear exile with dignity, and
to exhibit, in his retirement at Saint Germain, the
spectacle of a king rising superior to adversity, calmly
touching for king's evil, and conversing with Jesuits.
It will be readily understood that such a king would
trouble himself to a certain extent about such a rebel as
Lord Linnæus Clancharlie. Hereditary peerages have a
certain hold on the future, and it was evident that if any
precautions were necessary with regard to that lord,
James II was not the man to hesitate.
LORD LINNÆUS CLANCHARLIE had not
always been old and proscribed; he had had his phase
of youth and passion. We know from Harrison and
Pride that Cromwell, when young, loved women and
pleasure, a taste which, at times (another reading of the
text ``Woman''), betrays a seditious man. Distrust the
loosely clasped girdle. Male præcinctam juvenem cavete.
Lord Chancharlie, like Cromwell, had had his wild hours
and his irregularities. He was known to have had a natural
child, a son This son was born in England in the last
days of the Republic, just as his father was going into
exile. Hence he had never seen his father. This bastard
of Lord Clancharlie had grown up as page at the court
of Charles II. He was styled Lord David Dirry-Moir:
he was a lord by courtesy, his mother being a woman of
quality. The mother, while Lord Clancharlie was
becoming an owl in Switzerland, made up her mind, being a
beauty, to give over sulking and was forgiven that Goth,
her first lover, by one undeniably polished and at the same
time a royalist, for it was the king himself.
She had been but a short time the mistress of Charles
II, sufficiently long, however, to have made his
Majesty-who was delighted to have won so pretty a woman from
the Republic-bestow on the little Lord David, the son
of his conquest, the office of keeper of the stick, which
made that bastard officer, boarded at the king's expense,
by a natural revulsion of feeling, an ardent adherent of
the Stuarts. Lord David was for some time one of the
hundred and seventy wearing the great sword, while
afterward, entering the corps of pensioners, he became
one of the forty who bear the gilded halberd. He had,
besides being one of the noble company instituted by
Henry VIII as a bodyguard, the privilege of laying the
dishes on the king's table. Thus it was that while his
father was growing gray in exile, Lord David prospered
under Charles II.
After which he prospered under James II.
The king is dead. Long live the king! It is the non
deficit alter, aureus.
It was on the accession of the Duke of York, that he
obtained permission to call himself David Lord
Dirry-Moir, from an estate which his mother, who had just died,
had left him, in that great forest of Scotland, where is
found the krag, a bird which scoops out a nest with its
beak in the trunk of the oak.
JAMES II was a king, and affected to be a general. He
loved to surround himself with young officers. He showed
himself frequently in public on horseback, in a helmet
and cuirass, with a huge projecting wig hanging below
the helmet and over the cuirass,-a sort of equestrian
statue of imbecile war. He took a fancy to the graceful
mien of the young Lord David. He liked the royalist for
being the son of a republican. The repudiation of a father
does not damage the foundation of a court fortune. The
king made Lord David gentleman of the bedchamber, at
a salary of a thousand a year.
It was a fine promotion. A gentleman of the
bedchamber sleeps near the king every night, on a bed which
is made up for him. There are twelve gentlemen, who
relieve each other.
Lord David, while he held that post, was also head of
the king's granary, giving out corn for the horses and
receiving a salary of 2601. Under him were the five
coachmen of the king, the five postilions of the king, the
five grooms of the king, the twelve footmen of the king,
and the four chair-bearers of the king. He had the
management of the race-horses which the king kept at
Newmarket, and which cost his Majesty 600£. a year. He
worked his will on the king's wardrobe, from which the
knights of the garter are furnished with their robes of
ceremony. He was saluted to the ground by the usher
of the black rod, who belongs to the king. That usher,
under James II, was the knight of Duppa. Mr. Baker,
who was clerk of the crown, and Mr. Brown, who was
clerk of the Parliament, kowtowed to Lord David. The
court of England, which is magnificent, is a model of
hospitality. Lord David presided, as one of the twelve,
at banquets and receptions. He had the glory of
standing behind the king on offertory days, when the king
gives to the church the golden Byzantium; on collar-days,
when the king wears the collar of his order; on
communion days, when no one takes the sacrament excepting
the king and the princes. It was he who, on Holy
Thursday, introduced into his Majesty's presence the twelve
poor men to whom the king gives as many silver pence
as the years of his age, and as many shillings as the years
of his reign. The duty devolved on him, when the king
was ill, to call to the assistance of his Majesty the two
grooms of the almonry, who are priests, and to prevent
the approach of doctors without permission from the
council of state. Besides, he was lieutenant-colonel of
the Scotch regiment of Guards, the one which plays the
Scottish march. As such, he made several campaigns,
and with glory, for he was a gallant soldier. He was a
brave lord, well-made, handsome, generous, and majestic
in look and in manner. His person was like his quality.
He was tall in stature, as well as high in birth.
At one time he stood a chance of being made groom of
the stole, which would have given him the privilege of
putting the king's shirt on his Majesty: but to hold that
office it was necessary to be either prince or peer. Now,
to create a peer is a serious thing; it is to create a
peerage, and that makes many people jealous. It is a favour;
a favour which gives the king one friend and a hundred
enemies, without taking into account that the one friend
becomes ungrateful. James II, from policy, was
indisposed to create peerages, but he transferred them freely.
The transfer of a peerage produces no sensation. It is
simply the continuation of a name. The order is little
affected by it.
The good-will of royalty had no objection to raise Lord
David Dirry-Moir to the upper house so long as it could
do so by means of a substituted peerage. Nothing would
have pleased his Majesty better than to transform Lord
David Dirry-Moir, lord by courtesy, into a lord by right.
THE opportunity occurred.
One day it was announced that several things had
happened to the old exile, Lord Clancharlie, the most
important of which was that he was dead. Death does just
this much good to folks: it causes a little talk about
them. People related what they knew, or what they
thought they knew, of the last years of Lord Linnæus.
What they said was probably legend and conjecture. If
these random tales were to be credited, Lord Clancharlie
must have had his republicanism intensified toward the
end of his life, to the extent of marrying (strange
obstinacy of the exile!) Ann Bradshaw, the daughter of a
regicide; they were precise about the name. She had also
died, it was said, but in giving birth to a boy. If these
details should prove to be correct, his child would of
course be the legitimate and rightful heir of Lord
Clancharlie. These reports, however, were extremely vague
in form and were rumours rather than facts.
Circumstances which happened in Switzerland, in those days,
were as remote from the England of that period as those
which take place in China from the England of to-day.
Lord Clancharlie must have been fifty-nine at the time of
his marriage, they said, and sixty at the birth of his son,
and must have died shortly after, leaving his infant
orphaned both of father and mother. This was possible,
perhaps, but improbable. They added that the child was
beautiful as the day,-just as we read in all the fairy
tales. King James put an end to these rumours,
evidently without foundation, by declaring, one fine
morning, Lord David Dirry-Moir sole and positive heir in
default of legitimate issue, and by his royal pleasure, of
Lord Linnæus Clancharlie, his natural father, the absence
of all other issue, and descent being established, patents of
which grant were registered in the House of Lords. By
these patents the king instituted Lord David Dirry-Moir,
in the titles, rights, and prerogatives of the late Lord
Linnæus Clancharlie, on the sole condition that Lord
David should wed, when she attained a marriageable age,
a girl who was, at that time, a mere infant a few months
old, and whom the king had, in her cradle, created a
duchess, no one knew exactly why; or, rather, every one knew
why. This little infant was called the Duchess Josiana.
The English fashion then ran on Spanish names. One
of Charles II's bastards was called Carlos, Earl of
Plymouth. It is likely that Josiana was a contraction for
Josefa-y-Ana. Josiana, however, may have been a
name-the feminine of Josias. One of Henry VIII's
gentlemen was called Josias du Passage.
It was to this little duchess that the king granted the
peerage of Clancharlie. She was a peeress till there
should be a peer; the peer should be her husband. The
peerage was founded on a double castleward, the barony
of Clancharlie and the barony of Hunkerville; besides,
the barons of Clancharlie were, in recompense of an
ancient feat of arms, and by royal licence, Marquises of
Corleone, in Sicily.
Peers of England can not bear foreign titles; there are,
nevertheless, exceptions; thus-Henry Arundel, Baron
Arundel of Wardour, was, as well as Lord Clifford, a
Count of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Lord
Cowper is a prince. The Duke of Hamilton is Duke of
Chatelherault, in France; Basil Fielding, Earl of Denbigh,
is Count of Hapsburg, of Lauffenberg, and of
Rheinfelden, in Germany. The Duke of Marlborough was Prince
of Mindelheim, in Suabia, just as the Duke of Wellington
was Prince of Waterloo, in Belgium. The same Lord
Wellington was a Spanish Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo and
Portuguese Count of Vimiera.
There were in England, and there are still, lands both
noble and common. The lands of the Lords of
Clancharlie were all noble. These lands, burghs, bailiwicks,
fiefs, rents, freeholds, and domains, adherent to the
peerage of Clancharlie-Hunkerville, belonged provisionally
to Lady Josiana; and the king declared that, once married
to Josiana, Lord David Dirry-Moir should be Baron
Clancharlie.
Besides the Clancharlie inheritance, Lady Josiana had
her own fortune. She possessed great wealth, much of
which was derived from the gifts of Madame sans queue
to the Duke of York. Madame sans queue is short for
Madame. Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans,
the lady of highest rank in France after the queen, was
thus called.
HAVING prospered under Charles and James, Lord
David prospered under William. His Jacobite feeling
did not reach to the extent of following James into exile.
While he continued to love his legitimate king, he had
the good sense to serve the usurper; he was, moreover,
although sometimes disposed to rebel against discipline,
an excellent officer. He passed from the land to the sea
forces, and distinguished himself in the White Squadron.
He rose in it to be what was then called captain of a light
frigate. Altogether he made a very fine fellow, carrying
to a great extent the elegancies of vice; a bit of a poet,
like every one else; a good servant of the state, a good
servant to the prince; assiduous at feasts, at galas, at
ladies' receptions, at ceremonies, and in battle; servile in
a gentlemanlike way; very haughty; with eyesight dull or
keen, according to the object examined; inclined to
integrity; obsequious or arrogant, as occasion required; frank
and sincere on first acquaintance, with the power of
assuming the mask afterward; very observant of the smiles
and frowns of the royal humour; careless before a sword's
point; always ready to risk his life on a sign from his
Majesty with heroism and complacency capable of any
insult but of no impoliteness; a man of courtesy and
etiquette, proud of kneeling at great regal ceremonies; of
a gay valour; a courtier on the surface, a paladin below;
quite young at forty-five. Lord David sang French
songs, an elegant gayety which had delighted Charles II.
He loved eloquence and fine language. He greatly ad
mired those celebrated discourses which are called the
funeral orations of Bossuet.
From his mother he had inherited almost enough to
live on, about 10,000£ a year. He managed to get on
with it-by running into debt. In magnificence,
extravagance, and novelty he was without a rival. Directly he
was copied he changed his fashion. On horseback he wore
loose boots of cowhide, which turned over, with spurs.
He had hats like nobody else's; unheard-of lace, and bands
of which he alone had the pattern.
TOWARD 1705, although Lady Josiana was
twenty-three and Lord David forty-four, the wedding had
not yet taken place, and that for the best reasons in the
world. Did they hate each other? Far from it; but what
can not escape from you inspires you with no haste to
obtain it. Josiana wanted to remain free. David to remain
young. To have no tie until as late as possible appeared
to him to be a prolongation of youth. Middle-aged young
men abounded in those rakish times. They grew gray as
young fops. The wig was an accomplice: later on, powder
became the auxiliary. At fifty-five Lord Charles
Gerrard, Baron Gerrard, one of the Gerrards of Promley,
filled London with his successes. The young and pretty
Duchess of Buckingham, Countess of Coventry, made a
fool of herself for love of the handsome Thomas Bellasys,
Viscount Fauconberg, who was sixty-seven. People
quoted the famous verses of Corneille, the septuagenarian,
to a girl of twenty-``Marquise, si mon visage.'' Women,
too, had their successes in the autumn of life. Witness
Ninon and Marion. Such were the models of the day.
Josiana and David carried on a flirtation of a particular
shade. They did not love, they pleased, each other. To
be at each other's side sufficed them. Why hasten the
conclusion? The novels of those days carried lovers and
engaged couples to that kind of stage which was the most
becoming. Besides, Josiana, while she knew herself to
be a bastard, felt herself a princess, and carried her
authority over him with a high tone in all their arrangements.
She had a fancy for Lord David. Lord David was
handsome, but that was over and above the bargain. She
considered him to be fashionable.
To be fashionable is everything. Caliban, fashionable
and magnificent, would distance Ariel, poor. Lord David
was handsome; so much the better. The danger in being
handsome is being insipid; and that he was not. He
betted, boxed, ran into debt. Josiana thought great things
of his horses, his dogs, his losses at play, his mistresses.
Lord David, on his side, bowed down before the
fascinations of the Duchess Josiana-a maiden without spot or
scruple; haughty, inaccessible, and audacious. He
addressed sonnets to her, which Josiana sometimes read. In
these sonnets he declared that to possess Josiana would be
to rise to the stars, which did not prevent his always
putting the ascent off to the following year. He waited in
the antechamber outside Josiana's heart; and this suited
the convenience of both. At court all admired the good
taste of this delay. Lady Josiana said: ``It is a bore that
I should be obliged to marry Lord David; I, who would
desire nothing better than to be in love with him!''
Josiana was ``the flesh.'' Nothing could be more
resplendent. She was very tall-too tall. Her hair was
of that tinge which might be called red gold. She was
plump, fresh, strong, and rosy, with immense boldness
and wit. She had eyes which were too intelligible. She
had neither lovers nor chastity. She walled herself round
with pride. Men! oh, lie! a god only would be worthy
of her, or a monster. If virtue consists in the protection
of an inaccessible position, Josiana possessed all possible
virtue, but without any innocence. She disdained
intrigues; but she would not have been displeased had she
been supposed to have engaged in some, provided that the
objects were uncommon, and proportioned to the merits
of one so highly placed. She thought little of her
reputation, but much of her glory. To appear yielding, and
to be unapproachable, is perfection. Josiana felt herself
majestic and material. Hers was a cumbrous beauty. She
usurped rather than charmed. She trod upon hearts. She
was earthly. She would have been as much astonished
at being proved to have a soul in her bosom as wings on
her back. She discoursed on Locke; she was polite; she
was suspected of knowing Arabic.
To be the ``flesh'' and to be woman are two different
things. Where a woman is vulnerable, on the side of
pity, for instance, which so readily turns to love, Josiana
was not. Not that she was unfeeling. The ancient
comparison of flesh to marble is absolutely false. The beauty
of flesh consists in not being marble: its beauty is to
palpitate, to tremble, to blush, to bleed, to have firmness
without hardness; to be white without being cold; to have its
sensations and its infirmities; its beauty is to be life, and
marble is death.
Flesh, when it attains a certain degree of beauty' has
almost a claim to the right of nudity; it conceals itself
in its own dazzling charms as in a veil. He who might
have looked upon Josiana nude would have perceived her
outlines only through a surrounding glory. She would
have shown herself without hesitation to a satyr or a
eunuch. She had the self-possession of a goddess. To
have made her nudity a torment, ever eluding a pursuing
Tantalus, would have been an amusement to her.
The king had made her a duchess, and Jupiter a
Nereid-a double irradiation of which the strange brightness of
this creature was composed. In admiring her you felt
yourself becoming a pagan and a lackey. Her origin
had been bastardy and the ocean. She appeared to have
emerged from the foam. From the stream had risen the
first jet of her destiny; but the spring was royal. In her
there was something of the wave, of chance, of the
patrician, and of the tempest. She was well read and
accomplished. Never had a passion approached her, yet
she had sounded them all. She had a disgust for
realisations, and at the same time a taste for them. If she had
stabbed herself, it would, like Lucretia, not have been until
afterward. She was a virgin stained with every
defilement in its visionary stage. She was a possible Astarte
in a real Diana. She was, in the insolence of high birth,
tempting and inaccessible. Nevertheless, she might find
it amusing to plan a fall for herself. She dwelt in a halo
of glory, half wishing to descend from it, and perhaps
feeling curious to know what a fall was like. She was a
little too heavy for her cloud. To err is a diversion.
Princely unconstraint has the privilege of experiment;
and what is frailty in a plebeian is only frolic in a duchess.
Josiana was in everything-in birth, in beauty, in irony,
in brilliancy-almost a queen. She had felt a moment's
enthusiasm for Louis de Bouffles, who used to break
horse-shoes between his fingers. She regretted that Hercules
was dead. She lived in some undefined expectation of
a voluptuous and supreme ideal.
Morally, Josiana brought to one's mind the line:
Part 2
BOOK 6
THE EVERLASTING PRESENCE OF THE PAST: MAN REFLECTS MAN
I LORD CLANCHARLIE
I I
II II
III III
II LORD DAVID DIRRY-MOIR
I I
II II
III III
III THE DUCHESS JOSIANA
Hers was a noble neck, a splendid bosom, heaving harmoniously over a royal heart, a glance full of life and light, a countenance pure and haughty, and who knows? below the surface was there not, in a semi-transparent and misty depth, an undulating, supernatural prolongation, perchance deformed and dragon-like-a proud virtue ending in vice in the depths of dreams.
WITH all that she was a prude.
It was the fashion.
Remember Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was of a type that prevailed in England for
three centuries: the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth.
Elizabeth was more than English, she was Anglican.
Hence the deep respect of the Episcopalian Church for
that queen-a respect resented by the Church of Rome,
which counterbalanced it with a dash of
excommunication. In the mouth of Sixtus V, when anathematising
Elizabeth, malediction turned to madrigal: ``Un gran
cervello di principessa,'' he says. Mary Stuart, less
concerned with the church and more with the woman part
of the question, had little respect for her sister Elizabeth;
and wrote to her as queen to queen and coquette to prude:
``Your disinclination to marriage arises from your not
wishing to lose the liberty of being made love to.'' Mary
Stuart played with the fan, Elizabeth with the axe. An
uneven match. They were rivals, besides, in literature.
Mary Stuart composed French verses; Elizabeth
translated Horace. The ugly Elizabeth decreed herself
beautiful; liked quatrains and acrostics; had the keys of towns
presented to her by cupids; bit her lips, after the Italian
fashion, rolled her eyes after the Spanish; had in her
wardrobe three thousand dresses and costumes, of which
several were for the character of Minerva and Amphitrite;
esteemed the Irish for the width of their shoulders;
covered her farthingale with braids and spangles; loved roses;
cursed, swore, and stamped; struck her maids of honour
with her clinched fists; used to send Dudley to the devil
beat Burleigh, the Chancellor, who would cry-poor old
fool! spat on Matthew; collared Hatton; boxed the ears
of Essex; showed her legs to Bassompierre; and was a
virgin.
What she did for Bassompierre the Queen of Sheba
had done for Solomon,13
consequently she was right, Holy
Writ having created the precedent. That which is biblical
may well be Anglican. Biblical precedent goes so far as
to speak of a child who was called Ebnehaquem or
Melilechet-that is to say, the Wise Man's son.
Why object to such manners? Cynicism is at least as
good as hypocrisy.
Nowadays England, whose Loyola is named Wesley,
casts down her eyes a little at the remembrance of that
past age. She is vexed at the memory, yet proud of it.
Amid such manners as these, a taste for deformity
existed, especially among van omen, and singularly among
beautiful women. Where is the use of being beautiful if
one does not possess a baboon? Where is the charm of
being a queen if one can not bandy words with a dwarf?
Mary Stuart had ``been kind'' to the bandy-legged Rizzio.
Maria Theresa, of Spain, had been ``somewhat familiar''
with a negro. Whence the black abbess. In the alcoves
of the great century, a hump was the fashion; witness the
Marshal of Luxembourg, and before Luxembourg, Conde,
``such a pretty little man!''
Beauties themselves might be ill-made without
detriment; it was admitted. Anne Boleyn had one breast
bigger than the other, six fingers to one hand, and a
projecting tooth; Lavalliere was bandy-legged; which did not
hinder Henry VIII from going mad for the one and
Louis XIV for the other.
Morals were equally awry. There was not a woman of
high rank who was not teratological. Agnes possessed
the principles of Messalina. They were women by day,
ghouls by night. They sought the scaffold to kiss the
heads of the newly beheaded on their iron stakes.
Marguerite de Valois, a predecessor of the prudes, wore,
fastened to her belt, the hearts of her lovers in tin boxes,
padlocked. Henry IV had hidden himself under her
farthingale.
In the 18th century, the Duchess de Berry, daughter of
the Regent, was in herself an abstract, of obscene and royal
type, of all these creatures.
These fine ladies, moreover, knew Latin. From the
16th century this had been accounted a feminine
accomplishment. Lady Jane Grey had carried fashion to the
point of knowing Hebrew. The Duchess Josiana
latinised. Then (another fine thing) she was secretly a
Catholic; after the manner of her uncle, Charles II, rather than
her father, James II. James II had lost his crown for
his Catholicism, and Josiana did not care to risk her
peerage. Thus it was that while a Catholic among her
intimate friends and the refined of both sexes, she was
outwardly a Protestant for the benefit of the riff-raff.
This is the pleasant view to take of religion. You
enjoy all the good things belonging to the official
Episcopalian church, and later on you die, like Grotius, in the
odour of Catholicity, having the glory of a Mass being said
for you by le Père Petau.
Although plump and healthy, Josiana was, we repeat,
a perfect prude.
At times, her sleepy and voluptuous way of dragging
out the end of her phrases was like the creeping of a
tiger's paws in the jungle.
The advantage of prudes is that they disorganise the
human race. They deprive it of the honour of their
adherence. Beyond all, keep the human species at a
distance. This is a point of the greatest importance.
When one has not got Olympus, one must take the Hôtel
de Rambouillet. Juno resolves herself into Araminta.
A pretension to divinity not admitted creates affectation.
In default of thunderclaps there is impertinence. The
temple shrivels into the boudoir. Not having the power
to be a goddess, she is an idol.
There is, besides, in prudery, a certain pedantry which
is pleasing to women. The coquette and the pedant are
neighbours. Their kinship is visible in the fop. The
subtile is derived from the sensual. Gluttony affects
delicacy, a grimace of disgust conceals cupidity. And then
woman feels her weak point guarded by all that casuist
try of gallantry which takes the place of scruples in prudes.
It is a line of circumvallation with a ditch. Every prude
puts on an air of repugnance. It is a protection. She
will consent, but she disdains-for the present.
Josiana had an uneasy conscience. She felt such a
leaning toward immodesty that she was a prude. The recoils
of pride in the direction opposed to our vices lead us to
those of a contrary nature. It was the excessive effort to
be chaste which made her a prude. To be too much on the
defensive points to a secret desire for attack; the shy
woman is not strait-laced. She shut herself up in the
arrogance of the exceptional circumstances of her rank,
meditating, perhaps, all the while, some sudden lapse from it.
It was the dawn of the 18th century. England was a
sketch of what France was during the regency. Walpole
and Dubois are not unlike. Marlborough was fighting
against his former king, James II, to whom it was said
he had sold his sister, Miss Churchill. Bolingbroke was
in his meridian, and Richelieu in his dawn. Gallantry
found its convenience in a certain medley of ranks. Men
were equalised by the same vices as they were later on,
perhaps, by the same ideas. Degradation of rank, an
aristocratic prelude, began what the Revolution was to
complete. It was not very far off the time when Jelyotte was
seen publicly sitting, in broad daylight, on the bed of the
Marquis d'Epinay. It is true (for manners re-echo each
other) that in the 16th century Smeton's nightcap had
been found under Anne Boleyn's pillow.
If the word woman signifies 'fault, as I forget what
Council decided, never was woman so womanlike as then.
Never, covering her frailly by her charms, and her
weakness by her omnipotence, has she claimed absolution more
imperiously. In making the forbidden the permitted
fruit, Eve fell; in making the permitted the forbidden
fruit, she triumphs. That is the climax. In the 18th
century the wife bolts out her husband. She shuts
herself up in Eden with Satan. Adam is left outside.
ALL Josiana's instincts impelled her to yield herself
gallantly, rather than to give herself legally. To
surrender on the score of gallantry implies learning, recalls
Menalcas and Amaryllis, and is almost a literary act.
Mademoiselle de Scudéry, putting aside the attraction of
ugliness for ugliness' sake, had no other motive for
yielding to Pelisson.
The maiden a sovereign, the wife a subject, such was
the old English notion. Josiana was deferring the hour
of this subjection as long as she could. She must
eventually marry Lord David, since such was the royal pleasure.
It was a necessity, doubtless; but what a pity! Josiana
appreciated Lord David, and showed him off. There was
between them a tacit agreement, neither to conclude nor
to break off the engagement. They eluded each other.
This method of making love, one step in advance, and two
back, is expressed in the dances of the period, the minuet
and the gavotte.
It is unbecoming to be married-fades one's ribbons,
and makes one look old. An espousal is a dreary
absorption of brilliancy. A woman handed over to you by a
notary, how commonplace! The brutality of marriage
creates definite situations; suppresses the will; kills choice;
has a syntax, like grammar; replaces inspiration by
orthography; makes a dictation of love; disperses all Life's
mysteries; diminishes the rights both of sovereign and
subject; by a turn of the scale destroys the charming
equilibrium of the sexes, the one robust in bodily strength,
the other all-powerful in feminine weakness: strength on
one side, beauty on the other; makes one a master and
the other a servant, while without marriage one is a slave,
the other a queen.
To make Love prosaically decent, how gross! to deprive
it of all impropriety, how dull!
Lord David was ripening. Forty; 'tis a marked period.
He did not perceive this, and in truth he looked no more
than thirty. He considered it more amusing to desire
Josiana than to possess her. He possessed others. He
had mistresses. On the other hand, Josiana had dreams.
The Duchess Josiana had a peculiarity, less rare than
it is supposed. One of her eyes was blue and the other
black. Her pupils were made for love and hate, for
happiness and misery. Night and day were mingled in her
look.
Her ambition was this; to show herself capable of
impossibilities. One day she said to Swift, ``You people
fancy that you know what scorn is.'' ``You people''
meant the human race.
She was a skin-deep Papist. Her Catholicism did not
exceed the amount necessary for fashion. She would
have been a Puseyite in the present day. She wore great
dresses of velvet, satin, or moire, some composed of
fifteen or sixteen yards of material, with embroideries of gold
and silver; and round her waist many knots of pearls,
alternating with other precious stones. She was
extravagant in gold lace. Sometimes she wore an embroidered
cloth jacket like a bachelor. She rode on a man's saddle,
notwithstanding the invention of side-saddles, introduced
into England in the 14th century by Anne, wife of
Richard II. She washed her face, arms, shoulders, and
neck in sugar-candy, diluted in white of egg, after the
fashion of Castile. There came over her face, after any
one had spoken wittily in her presence, a reflective smile
of singular grace. She was free from malice, and rather
good-natured than otherwise.
JOSIANA was bored. The fact is so natural as to be
scarcely worth mentioning.
Lord David held the position of judge in the gay life of
London. He was looked up to by the nobility and gentry.
Let us register a glory of Lord David's. He was daring
enough to wear his own hair. The reaction against the
wig was beginning. Just as in 1824 Eugene Deveria was
the first to allow his beard to grow, so in 1702 Prince
Devereux was the first to risk wearing his own hair in
public disguised by artful curling. For to risk one's hair
was almost to risk one's head. The indignation was
universal. Nevertheless Prince Devereux was Viscount
Hereford, and a peer of England. He was insulted, and
the deed was well worth the insult. In the hottest part
of the row Lord David suddenly appeared without his wig
and in his own hair. Such conduct shakes the
foundations of society. Lord David was insulted even more
than Viscount Hereford. He held his ground. Prince
Devereux was the first, Lord David Dirry-Moir the second.
It is sometimes more difficult to be second than first. It
requires less genius, but more courage. The first,
intoxicated by the novelty, may ignore the danger; the second
sees the abyss, and rushes into it. Lord David flung
himself into the abyss of no longer wearing a wig. Later on
these lords found imitators. Following these two
revolutionists, men found sufficient audacity to wear their own
hair, and powder was introduced as an extenuating
circumstance.
In order to establish, before we pass on, an important
period of history, we should remark that the first blow
in the war of wigs was really struck by a Queen, Christina
of Sweden, who wore men's clothes, and had appeared in
1680, in her hair of golden brown, powdered, and brushed
up from her head. She had, besides, says Misson, a
slight beard. The pope, on his part, by a bull of March,
1694, had somewhat let down the wig, by taking it from
the heads of the bishops and priests, and in ordering
churchmen to let their hair grow.
Lord David, then, did not wear a wig, and did wear
cowhide boots. Such great things made him a mark for
public admiration. There was not a club of which he was
not the leader, not a boxing match in which he was not
desired as referee. The referee is the arbitrator.
He had drawn up the rules of several clubs in high life.
He founded several resorts of fashionable society, of which
one, the Lady Guinea, was still in existence in Pall Mali
in 1772. The Lady Guinea was a club in which all the
youth of the peerage congregated. They gamed there.
The lowest stake allowed was a rouleau of fifty guineas,
and there was never less than 20,000 guineas on the table.
By the side of each player was a little stand, on which to
place his cup of tea, and a gilt bowl in which to put the
rouleaux of guineas. The players, like servants when
cleaning knives, wore leather sleeves to save their lace,
breast-plates of leather to protect their ruffles, shades on
their brows to shelter their eyes from the great glare of
the lamps, and, to keep their curls in order,
broad-brimmed hats covered with flowers. They were masked
to conceal their excitement, especially when playing the
game of quinze. All, moreover, had their coats turned
the wrong way, for luck. Lord David was a member of
the Beefsteak Club, the Surly Club, and of the
Splitfarthing Club, of the Cross Club, the Scratchpenny Club, of
the Sealed Knot, a Royalist club, and of the Martinus
Scribblerus, founded by Swift, to take the place of the
Rota, founded by Milton.
Though handsome, he belonged to the Ugly Club. This
club was dedicated to deformity. The members agreed
to fight, not about a beautiful woman, but about an ugly
man. The hall of the club was adorned by hideous
portraits-Thersites, Triboulet, Duns, Hudibras, Scarron;
over the chimney was Æsop, between two men, each blind
of an eye, Cocles and Camoëns (Cocles being blind of
the left, Camoëns of the right eye), so arranged that the
two profiles without eyes were turned to each other. The
day that the beautiful Mrs. Visart caught the
smallpox, the Ugly Club toasted her. This club was still in
existence in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and
Mirabeau was elected an honorary member.
Since the restoration of Charles II, revolutionary clubs
had been abolished. The tavern in the little street by
Moorfields where the Calf's Head Club was held, had
been pulled down; it was so called because on the 30th
of January, the day on which the blood of Charles I
flowed on the scaffold, the members had drunk red wine
out of the skull of a calf to the health of Cromwell. To
the republican clubs had succeeded monarchical clubs. In
them people amused themselves with decency.
There was the Hell-fire Club, where they played at
being impious. It was a joust of sacrilege. Hell
auction there to the highest bidder in blasphemy.
There was the Butting Club, so called from its members
butting folks with their heads. They found some street
porter with a wide chest and a stupid countenance.
They offered him, and compelled him, if necessary, to
accept a pot of porter, in return for which he was to allow
them to butt him with their heads four times in the chest,
and on this they betted. One day a man, a great brute
of a Welshman named Gogangerdd, expired at the third
butt. This looked serious. An inquest was held, and the
jury returned the following verdict:-``Died of an
inflation of the heart, caused by excessive drinking.''
Gogangerdd had certainly drunk the contents of the pot of
porter.
There was the Fun Club. Fun is like cant, like humour,
a word which is untranslatable. Fun is to farce what
pepper is to salt. To get into a house and break a
valuable mirror, slash the family portraits, poison the dog,
put the cat in the aviary, is called ``cutting a bit of fun.''
To give bad news which is untrue, whereby people put
on mourning by mistake, is fun. It was fun to cut a
square hole in the Holbein at Hampton Court. Fun would
have been proud to have broken the arm of the Venus of
Milo. Under James II a young millionaire lord who had
during the night set fire to a thatched cottage, a feat
which made all London burst with laughter, was
proclaimed the King of Fun. The poor devils in the cottage
were saved in their night clothes. The members of the
Fun Club, all of the highest aristocracy, used to run about
London during the hours when the citizens were asleep,
pulling the hinges from the shutters, cutting off the pipes
of pumps, filling up cisterns, digging up cultivated plots
of ground, putting out lamps, sawing through the beams
which supported houses, breaking the window panes,
especially in the poor quarters of the town. It was the
rich who acted thus toward the poor. For this reason
no complaint was possible. That was the best of the
joke.
These manners have not altogether disappeared. In
many places in England and in English
possessions-at Guernsey, for instance-your house is now and then
somewhat damaged during the night, or a fence is broken,
or a knocker twisted off your door. If it were poor
people who did these things, they would be sent to jail;
but they are done by pleasant young gentlemen.
The most fashionable of the clubs was presided over
by an emperor, who wore a crescent on his forehead, and
was called the Grand Mohawk. The Mohawk surpassed
the Fun. Do evil for evil's sake was the programme.
The Mohawk Club had one great object-to injure. To
fulfil this duty, all means were held good. In becoming
a Mohawk, the members took an oath to be hurtful. To
injure at any price, no matter when, no matter whom, no
matter where, was a matter of duty. Every member of
the Mohawk Club was bound to possess an
accomplishment. One was ``a dancing master''; that is to say he
made the rustics frisk about by pricking the calves of their
legs with the point of his sword. Others knew how to
make a man sweat; that is to say, a circle of gentlemen
with drawn rapiers would surround a poor wretch, so that
it was impossible for him not to turn his back upon some
one. The gentleman behind him chastised him for this
by a prick of his sword, which made him spring round;
another prick in the back warned the fellow that one of
noble blood was behind him, and so on, each one wounding
him in his turn. When the man, closed round by the
circle of swords and covered with blood, had turned and
danced about enough, they ordered their servants to beat
him with sticks, to change the course of his ideas. Others
``hit the lion''; that is, they gayly stopped a passenger,
broke his nose with a blow of the fist, and then shoved
both thumbs into his eyes. If his eyes were gouged out,
he was paid for them.
Such were, toward the beginning of the eighteenth
century, the pastimes of the rich idlers of London. The
idlers of Paris had theirs. M. de Charolais was firing his
gun at a citizen standing on his own threshold. In all
times youth has had its amusements.
Lord David Dirry-Moir brought into all these
institutions his magnificent and liberal spirit. Just like any
one else, he would gayly set fire to a cot of woodwork and
thatch, and just scorch those within; but he would
rebuild their houses in stone. He insulted two ladies. One
was unmarried: he gave her a portion; the other was
married: he had her husband appointed chaplain.
Cockfighting owed him some praiseworthy
improvements. It was marvellous to see Lord David dress a cock
for the pit. Cocks lay hold of each other by the feathers,
as men by the hair. Lord David, therefore, made his cock
as bald as possible. With a pair of scissors he cut off all
the feathers from the tail and from the head to the
shoulders, and all those on the neck. So much less for
the enemy's beak, he used to say. Then he extended the
cock's wings, and cut each feather, one after another, to
a point, and thus the wings were furnished with darts. So
much for the enemy's eyes, he would say. Then he
scraped its claws with a penknife, sharpened its nails, fitted
it with spurs of sharp steel, spat on its head, spat on its
neck, anointed it with spittle, as they used to rub oil over
athletes; then set it down in the pit, a redoubtable
champion, exclaiming, ``That's how to make a cock an eagle,
and a bird of the poultry yard a bird of the mountain.''
Lord David attended prize-fights, and was their living
law. On occasions of great performances it was he who
had the stakes driven in and the ropes stretched, and who
fixed the number of feet for the ring. When he was a
second, he followed his man step by step, a bottle in one
hand, a sponge in the other, crying out to him to hit hard,
suggesting stratagems, advising him as he fought, wiping
away the blood, raising him when overthrown, placing
him on his knee, putting the mouth of the bottle between
his teeth, and from his own mouth, filled with water,
blowing a fine rain into his eyes and ears, a thing which
reanimates even a dying man. If he was referee, he saw
that there was no foul play, prevented any one,
whosoever he might be, from assisting the combatants,
excepting the seconds, declared the man beaten who did not
fairly face his opponent, watched that the time between
the rounds did not exceed half a minute, prevented butting,
and declared whoever resorted to it beaten, and forbade a
man's being hit when down. All this science, however,
did not render him a pedant, nor destroy his ease of
manner In society.
When he was referee, rough, pimple-faced, unshorn
friends of either combatant never dared to come to the
aid of their failing man, nor, in order to upset the chances
of the betting, jumped over the barrier, entered the ring,
broke the ropes, pulled down the stakes, and violently
interposed in the battle. Lord David was one of the few
referees whom they dared not thrash.
No one could train like him. The pugilist whose
trainer he consented to become was sure to win. Lord
David would choose a Hercules-massive as a rock, tall
as a tower-and make him his child. The problem was
to turn that human rock from a defensive to an offensive
state. In this he excelled. Having once adopted the
Cyclops, he never left him. He became his nurse; he
measured out his wine, weighed his meat, and counted
his hours of sleep. It was he who invented the athlete's
admirable rules, afterward reproduced by Morely. In
the mornings, a raw egg and a glass of sherry; at twelve,
some slices of a leg of mutton, almost raw, with tea; at four,
toast and tea; in the evening, pale ale and toast; after
which he undressed his man, rubbed him, and put him to
bed. In the street, he never allowed him to leave his
sight, keeping him out of every danger, runaway horses,
the wheels of carriages, drunken soldiers, pretty girls.
He watched over his virtue. This maternal solicitude
continually brought some new perfection into the pupil's
education. He taught him the blow with the fist which
breaks the teeth, and the twist of the thumb which
gouges out the eye. What could be more touching?
Thus he was preparing himself for public life to which
he was to be called later on. It is no easy matter to
become an accomplished gentleman.
Lord David Dirry-Moir was passionately fond of
open-air exhibitions, of shows, of circuses with wild beasts, of
the caravans of mountebanks, of clowns, tumblers,
merry-men, open-air farces, and the wonders of a fair. The
true noble is he who smacks of the people. Therefore it
was that Lord David frequented the taverns and low
haunts of London and the Cinque Ports. In order to be
able at need, and without compromising his rank in the
white squadron, to be cheek-by-jowl with a topman or a
caulker, he used to wear a sailor's jacket when he went
into the slums. For such disguise, his not wearing a wig
was convenient; for even under Louis XIV the people kept
to their hair like the lion to his mane. This gave him
great freedom of action. The low people whom Lord
David used to meet in the stews, and with whom he mixed,
held him in high esteem, without ever dreaming that lie
was a lord. They called him Tom-Jim-Jack. Under
this name he was famous and very popular among the
dregs of the people. He played the blackguard in a
masterly style: when necessary, he used his fists. This
phase of his fashionable life was highly appreciated by
Lady Josiana.
ABOVE this couple there was Anne, Queen of England.
An ordinary woman was Queen Anne. She was gay,
kindly, august-to a certain extent. No quality of hers
attained to virtue, none to vice. Her stoutness was bloated;
her fun, heavy; her good-nature, stupid. She was
stubborn and weak. As a wife, she was faithless and
faithful, having favourites to whom she gave up her heart and
a husband for whom she kept her bed. As a Christian,
she was a heretic and a bigot. She had one
beauty-the well-developed neck of a Niobe. The rest of her
person was indifferently formed. She was a clumsy
coquette, and a chaste one. Her skin was white and fine;
she displayed a great deal of it. It was she who
introduced the fashion of necklaces of large pearls clasped
round the throat. She had a narrow forehead, sensual
lips' fleshy cheeks, large eyes, short sight. Her short
sight extended to her mind. Beyond a burst of
merriment now and then, almost as ponderous as her anger,
she lived in a sort of taciturn grumble and a grumbling
silence. Words escaped from her which had to be guessed
at. She was a mixture of a good woman and a
mischievous devil. She liked surprises, which is extremely
woman-like. Anne was a pattern-just sketched roughly-of the
universal Eve. To that sketch had fallen that chance,
the throne. She drank. Her husband was a Dane,
thorough-bred. A Tory, she governed by the Whigs;
like a woman, like a mad woman. She had fits of rage.
She was violent, a brawler. Nobody more awkward than
Anne in directing affairs of state. She allowed events
to fall about as they might chance. Her whole policy was
cracked. She excelled in bringing about great
catastrophes from little causes. When a whim of authority took
hold of her, she called it giving a stir with the poker. She
would say with an air of profound thought, ``No peer may
keep his hat on before the king except DeCourcy, Baron
Kingsale, an Irish peer.'' Or, ``It would be an injustice
were my husband not to be Lord High Admiral, since
my father was.'' And she made George of Denmark
High Admiral of England and of all her Majesty's
plantations. She was perpetually perspiring bad humour; she
did not explain her thought, she exuded it. There was
something of the Sphinx in this goose.
She rather liked fun, teasing, and practical jokes.
Could she have made Apollo a hunchback, it would have
delighted her. But she would have left him a god.
Good-natured, her ideal was to allow none to despair, and
to worry all. She had often a rough word in her mouth;
a little more, and she would have sworn like Elizabeth.
From time to time she would take from a man's pocket,
which she wore in her skirt, a little round box, of chased
silver, on which was her portrait, in profile, between the
two letters Q. A.; she would open this box, and take from
it, on her finger, a little pomade, with which she reddened
her lips; and, having coloured her mouth, would laugh.
She was greedily fond of the flat Zealand ginger-bread
cakes. She was proud of being fat.
More of a Puritan than anything else, she would,
nevertheless, have liked to devote herself to stage plays. She
had an absurd academy of music, copied after that of
France. In 1700 a Frenchman, named Forteroche,
wanted to build a royal circus at Paris, at a cost of 400,000
francs, which scheme was opposed by D'Argenson. This
Forteroche passed into England, and proposed to Queen
Anne, who was immediately charmed by the idea, to
build in London a theatre with machinery; with a fourth
under-stage finer than that of the King of France. Like
Louis XIV, she liked to be driven at a gallop. Her teams
and relays would sometimes do the distance between
London and Windsor in less than an hour and a quarter.
IN Anne's time, no meeting was allowed without the
permission of two justices of the peace. The assembly
of twelve persons, were it only to eat oysters and drink
porter, was a felony. Under her reign, otherwise
relatively mild, pressing for the fleet was carried on with
extreme violence: a gloomy evidence that the Englishman
is a subject rather than a citizen. For centuries England
suffered under that process of tyranny which gave the
lie to all the old charters of freedom, and out of which
France especially gathered a cause of triumph and
indignation. What in some degree diminishes the triumph
is, that while sailors were pressed in England, soldiers
were pressed in France. In every great town of France,
any able-bodied man, going through the streets on his
business, was liable to be shoved by the crimps into a
house called the oven. There he was shut up with others
in the same plight, those fit for service were picked out,
and the recruiters sold them to the officers. In 1695,
there were thirty of these ovens in Paris.
The laws against Ireland, emanating from Queen Anne,
were atrocious. Anne was born in 1664, two years before
the great fire of London, on which the astrologers (there
were some left, and Louis XIV was born with the
assistance of an astrologer, and swaddled in a horoscope)
predicted that being the elder sister of fire, she would
be queen. And so she was, thanks to astrology and the
Revolution of 1688. She had the humiliation of having
only Gilbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, for god-father.
To be god-child of the Pope was no longer possible in
England. A mere primate is but a poor sort of
godfather. Anne had to put up with one, however. It was
her own fault. Why was she a Protestant?
Denmark had paid for her virginity (virginitas empta,
as the old charters expressed it) by a dowry of 6,250£ a
year, secured on the bailiwick of Wardinburg and the
island of Fehmarn. Anne followed, without conviction,
and by routine, the traditions of William. The English,
under that royalty born of a Revolution, possessed as
much liberty as they could lay hands on between the
Tower of London, into which they put orators, and the
pillory, into which they put writers. Anne spoke a little
Danish in her private chats with her husband, and a little
French in her private chats with Bolingbroke. Wretched
gibberish, but the height of English fashion, especially
at Court, was to talk French. There was never a bon
mot but in French. Anne paid a deal of attention to her
coins, especially to copper coins, which are the low and
popular ones; she wanted to cut a great figure on them.
Six farthings were struck during her reign. On the back
of the first three she had merely a throne struck; on the
back of the fourth she ordered a triumphal chariot, and
on the back of the sixth a goddess holding a sword in one
hand and an olive branch in the other, with the scroll,
Bello et pace. Her father, James II, was candid and
cruel; she was brutal.
At the same time she was mild at bottom. A
contradiction which only appears such. A fit of anger
metamorphosed her. Heat sugar and it will boil.
Anne was popular. England likes feminine rulers.
Why? France excludes them. There is a reason at
once. Perhaps there is no other. With English
historians Elizabeth embodies grandeur, Anne, good-nature.
As they will. Be it so. But there is nothing delicate in
the reigns of these women. The lines are heavy. It is
gross grandeur and gross good-nature. As to their
immaculate virtue, England is tenacious of it, and we are
not going to oppose the idea. Elizabeth was a virgin
tempered by Essex; Anne, a wife complicated by
Bolingbroke.
ONE idiotic habit of the people is to attribute to the
king what they do themselves. They fight. Whose the
glory? The king's. They pay. Whose the generosity?
The king's. Then the people love him for being so rich.
The king receives a crown from the poor, and returns
them a earthing. How generous he is! The colossus
which is the pedestal contemplates the pigmy which is
the statue. How great is this myrmidon! he is on my
back. A dwarf has an excellent way of being taller than
a giant; it is to perch himself on his shoulders. But
that the giant should allow it, there is the wonder-and
that he should admire the height of the dwarf, there is
the folly. Simplicity of mankind! The equestrian statue,
reserved for kings alone, is an excellent figure of royalty:
the horse is the people. Only that the horse becomes
transfigured by degrees. It begins in an ass; it ends in
a lion. Then it throws its rider, and you have 1642 in
England and 1789 in France; and sometimes it devours
him, and you have in England 1649, and in France 1793.
That the lion should relapse into the donkey is
astonishing; but it is so. This was occurring in England. It
had resumed the pack-saddle, idolatry of the crown.
Queen Anne, as we have just observed, was popular.
What was she doing to be so? Nothing.
Nothing!-that is all that is asked of the sovereign of England. He
receives for that nothing 1,250,000£ a year. In 1705,
England, which had had but thirteen men-of-war under
Elizabeth, and thirty-six under James I, counted a
hundred and fifty in her fleet. The English had three armies,
5,000 men in Catalonia; 10,000 in Portugal; 50,000 in
Flanders; and, besides, was paying 1,666,666£ a year to
monarchical and diplomatic Europe, a sort of prostitute
the English people has always had in keeping.
Parliament having voted a patriotic loan of thirty-four million
francs of annuities, there had been a crush at the exchequer
to subscribe it. England was sending a squadron to the
East Indies, and a squadron to the West of Spain under
Admiral Leake, without mentioning the reserve of four
hundred sail, under Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel.
England had lately annexed Scotland. It was the interval
between Hochstadt and Ramillies, and the first of these
victories was foretelling the second. England, in its cast of
the net at Hochstadt, had made prisoners of twenty-seven
battalions and four regiments of dragoons, and deprived
France of one hundred leagues of country-France
drawing back dismayed from the Danube to the Rhine.
England was stretching her hand out toward Sardinia and the
Balearic Islands. She was bringing into her ports in
triumph ten Spanish line-of-battle ships, and many a galleon
laden with gold. Hudson's Bay and Straits were already
half given over by Louis XIV. It was felt that he was
about to give up his hold over Acadia, St. Christopher's,
and Newfoundland, and that he would be but too happy
if England would only tolerate the King of France
fishing for cod at Cape Breton. England was about to impose
upon him the shame of demolishing himself the
fortifications of Dunkirk. Meanwhile, she had taken Gibraltar,
and was taking Barcelona. What great things
accomplished! How was it possible to refuse Anne admiration
for taking the trouble of living fit the period?
From a certain point of view, the reign of Anne appears
a reflection of the reign of Louis XIV. Anne, for a
moment even with that king in the race which is called hiss
tory, bears to him the vague resemblance of a reflection
Like him, she plays at a great reign; she has her
monuments, her arts, her victories, her captains, her men of
letters, her privy purse to pension celebrities, her gallery
of chefs-d'uvre, side by side with those of his Majesty.
Her court, too, was a cortege, with the features of a
triumph, an order, and a march. It was a miniature copy
of all the great men of Versailles, not giants themselves.
In it there is enough to deceive the eye; add God save
the Queen, which might have been taken from Lulli, and
the ensemble becomes an illusion. Not a personage is
missing. Christopher Wren is a very passable Mansard;
Somers is as good as Lamoignon; Anne has a Racine in
Dryden, a Boileau in Pope, a Colbert in Godolphin, a
Louvois in Pembroke, and a Turenne in Marlborough.
Heighten the wigs and lower the foreheads. The whole
is solemn and pompous, and the Windsor of the time has
a faded resemblance to Marty. Still the whole was
effeminate, and Anne's Père Tellier was called Sarah Jennings.
However, there is an outline of incipient irony, which
fifty years later was to turn to philosophy, in the
literature of the age, and the Protestant Tartuffe is unmasked
by Swift just in the same way as the Catholic Tartuffe
is denounced by Moliere. Although the England of the
period quarrels and fights France, she imitates her and
draws enlightenment from her; and the light on the
façade of England is French light. It is a pity that
Anne s reign lasted but twelve years, or the English
would not hesitate to call it the century of Anne, as
we say the century of Louis XIV. Anne appeared in
1702, as Louis XIV declined. It is one of the curiosities
of history that the rise of that pale planet coincides with
the setting of the planet of purple, and that at the moment
in which France had the king Sun, England should have
had the queen Moon.
A detail to be noted. Louis XIV, although they made
war with him, was greatly admired in England. ``He is
the kind of king they want in France,'' said the English.
The love of the English for their own liberty is mingled
with a certain acceptance of servitude for others. That
favourable regard of the chains which bind their
neighbours sometimes attains to enthusiasm for the despot next
door.
To sum up, Anne rendered her people hureux, as the
French translator of Beeverell's book repeats three times,
with graceful reiteration at the sixth and ninth page of
his dedication, and the third of his preface.
QUEEN ANNE bore a little grudge to the Duchess
Josiana, for two reasons. First, because she thought
the Duchess Josiana handsome. Secondly, because she
thought the Duchess Josiana's betrothed handsome. Two
reasons for jealousy are sufficient for a woman. One is
sufficient for a queen. Let us add that she bore her a
grudge for being her sister. Anne did not like women to
be pretty. She considered it against good morals. As
for herself, she was ugly. Not from choice, however. A
part of her religion she derived from that ugliness.
Josiana, beautiful and philosophical, was a cause of vexation
to the queen. To an ugly queen a pretty duchess is not
an agreeable sister.
There was another grievance, Josiana's ``improper''
birth. Anne was the daughter of Anne Hyde, a simple
gentlewoman, legitimately, but vexatiously, married by
James II when Duke of York. Anne, having this
inferior blood in her veins, felt herself but half royal, and
Josiana, having come into the world quite irregularly,
drew closer attention to the incorrectness, less great, but
really existing, in the birth of the queen. The daughter
of mésalliance looked without love upon the daughter of
bastardy, so near her. It was an unpleasant resemblance.
Josiana had a right to say to Anne, ``My mother was at
least as good as yours.'' At court no one said so, but
they evidently thought it. This was bore to her Royal
Majesty. Why this Josiana? What had put it into her
head to be born? What good was a Josiana? Certain
relationships are detrimental. Nevertheless, Anne smiled
on Josiana. Perhaps she might even have liked her, had
she not been her sister.
IT is useful to know what people do, and a certain
surveillance is wise. Josiana had Lord David watched
by a little creature of hers, in whom she reposed
confidence, and whose name was Barkilphedro.
Lord David had Josiana discreetly observed by a
creature of his, of whom he was sure, and whose name was
Barkilphedro.
Queen Anne, on her part, kept herself secretly informed
of the actions and conduct of the Duchess Josiana, her
bastard sister, and of Lord David, her future
brother-in-law by the left hand, by a creature of hers, on whom she
counted fully, and whose name was Barkilphedro.
This Barkilphedro had his fingers on that
keyboard-Josiana, Lord David, a queen. A man between two
women. What modulations possible! What
amalgamation of souls!
Barkilphedro had not always held the magnificent
position of whispering into three ears.
He was an old servant of the Duke of York. He had
tried to be a churchman but had failed. The Pulse of
York, an English and a Roman prince, compounded of
royal Popery and legal Anglicanism, had his Catholic
house and his Protestant house, and might have pushed
Barkilphedro in one or the other hierarchy; but he did
not judge him to be Catholic enough to make him
almoner, or Protestant enough to make him chaplain. So
that between two religions, Barkilphedro found himself
with his soul on the ground.
Not a bad posture, either, for certain reptile souls.
Certain ways are impracticable, except by crawling flat
on the belly.
An obscure but fattening servitude had long made up
Barkilphedro's whole existence. Service is something;
but he wanted power besides. He was, perhaps, about to
reach it when James II fell. He had to begin all over
again. Nothing to do under William III, a sullen prince,
and exercising in his mode of reigning a prudery which
he believed to be probity. Barkilphedro, when his
protector, James II, was dethroned, did not lapse all at once
into rags. There is a something which survives deposed
princes, and which feeds and sustains their parasites.
The remains of the exhaustible sap causes leaves to live
on for two or three days on the branches of the uprooted
tree; then, all at once, the leaf yellows and dries up: and
thus it is with the courtier.
Thanks to that embalming which is called legitimacy,
the prince himself, although fallen and cast away, lasts
and keeps preserved; it is not so with the courtier, much
more dead-than the king. The king, beyond there, is a
mummy; the courtier, here, is a phantom. To be the
shadow of a shadow is leanness indeed. Hence
Barkilphedro became famished. Then he took up the character
of a man of letters.
But he was thrust back even from the kitchens.
Sometimes he knew not where to sleep. ``Who will give me
shelter?'' he would ask. He struggled on. A11 that is
interesting in patience in distress he possessed. He had,
besides, the talent of the termite-knowing how to bore
a hole from the bottom to the top. By dint of making
use of the name of James II, of old memories, of fables
of fidelity, of touching stories, he pierced as far as the
Duchess Josiana's heart.
Josiana took a liking to this man of poverty and wit,
an interesting combination. She presented him to Lord
Dirry-Moir, gave him a shelter in the servants' hall among
her domestics, retained him in her household, was kind
to him, and sometimes even spoke to him. Barkilphedro
felt neither hunger nor cold again. Josiana addressed
him in the second person; it was the fashion for great
ladies to do so to men of letters who allowed it. The
Marquis de Mailly received Roy, whom she had never
seen before, in bed, and said to him, ``C'est toi qui as fait
l'Année galante! Bon jour.'' Later on. the men of letters
returned the custom. The day came when Fabre
d'Eglantine said to the Duchesse de Rohan, ``N'est-tu pas
la Chabot?''
For Barkilphedro to be ``thee'd'' and ``thou'd'' was a
success; he was overjoyed by it. He had aspired to this
contemptuous familiarity. ``Lady Josiana thees-and-thous
me,'' he would say to himself. And he would rub his
hands. He profited by this theeing-and-thouing to make
further way. He became a sort of constant attendant in
Josiana's private rooms; in no way troublesome;
unperceived; the duchess would almost have changed her shift
before him. All this, however, was precarious.
Barkilphedro was aiming at a position. A duchess was half-way;
an underground passage which did not lead to the queen
was having bored for nothing.
One day Barkilphedro said to Josiana; ``Would your
Grace like to make my fortune?''
``What dost thou want?''
``An appointment.''
``An appointment? for thee!''
``Yes, madame.''
``What an idea! thou to ask for an appointment! thou,
who art good for nothing.''
``That's just the reason.''
Josiana burst out laughing. ``Among the offices to
which thou art unsuited, which dost thou desire?''
``That of cork drawer of the bottles of the ocean.''
Josiana's laughter redoubled. ``What meanest thou?
Thou art fooling.''
``No, madame.''
``To amuse myself, I shall answer you seriously,'' said
the duchess. ``What dost thou wish to be? Repeat it.''
``Uncorker of the bottles of the ocean.''
``Everything is possible at court. Is there an
appointment of that kind?''
``Yes, madame.''
``This is news to me. Go on.''
``There is such an appointment.''
``Swear it on the soul which thou dost not possess.
``I swear it.''
``I do not believe thee.''
``Thank you, madame.''
``Then thou wishest?-Begin again.''
``To uncork the bottles of the ocean.''
``That is a situation which can give little trouble. It is
like grooming a bronze horse.''
``Very nearly.'
``Nothing to do. Well, 'tis a situation to suit thee.
Thou art good for that much.''
``You see I am good for something.''
``Come! thou art talking nonsense. Is there such an
appointment i''
Barkilphedro assumed an attitude of deferential
gravity.
``Madame, you had an august father, James II, tile
king, and you have an illustrious brother-in-law, George
of Denmark, Duke of Cumberland; your father was, and
your brother is, Lord High Admiral of England-''
``Is what thou tellest me fresh news? I know all that
as well as thou.''
``But here is what your Grace does not know. In the
sea there are three kinds of things: those at the bottom,
lagan; those which float, flotsam; those which the sea
throws up on the shore, jetsam.''
``And then?''
``These three things-lagan, flotsam, and
jetsam-belong to the Lord High Admiral.''
``And then?''
``Your Grace understands.''
``No.''
``All that is in the sea, all that sinks, all that floats,
all that is cast ashore-all belongs to the Admiral of
England.''
``Everything! Really? And then?''
``Except the sturgeon, which belongs to the king.''
``I should have thought,'' said Josiana, ``all that would
have belonged to Neptune.''
``Neptune is a fool. He has given up everything. He
has allowed the English to take everything.''
``Finish what thou wert saying.''
`` `Prizes of the sea' is the name given to such
treasure-trove.''
``Be it so.''
``It is boundless: there is always something floating,
something being cast up. It is the contribution of the
sea-the tax which the ocean pays to England.''
``With all my heart. But pray conclude.''
``Your Grace understands that in this way the ocean
creates a department.''
``Where?''
``At the Admiralty.''
``What department?''
``The Sea Prize Department.''
``Well?''
``The department is subdivided into three
offices-Lagan, Flotsam, and Jetsam-and in each there is an
of ricer.''
``And then?''
``A ship at sea writes to give notice on any subject to
those on land;-that it is sailing in such a latitude-that
it has met a sea monster-that it is in sight of shore-that
it is in distress-that it is about to founder-that it is
lost, etc. The captain takes a bottle, puts into it a bit of
paper on which he has written the information, corks up
the flask, and casts it into the sea. If the bottle goes to
the bottom, it is in the department of the lagan officer
if it floats, it is in the department of the flotsam officer,
if it be thrown upon shore, it concerns the jetsam officer.''
``And wouldst thou like to be the jetsam officer?''
``Precisely so.''
``And that is what thou callest uncorking the bottles
of the ocean?''
``Since there is such an appointment.''
``Why dost thou wish for the last-named place in
preference to both the others?''
``Because it is vacant just now.''
``In what does the appointment consist?''
``Madame, in 1598 a tarred bottle, picked up by a man,
conger-fishing on the strand of Epidium Promontorium,
was brought to Queen Elizabeth; and a parchment drawn
out of it gave information to England that Holland had
taken, without saying anything about it, an unknown
country, Nova Zembla; that the capture had taken place
in June, 1596; that in that country people were eaten by
bears; and that the manner of passing the winter was
described on a paper inclosed in a musket-case hanging
in the chimney of the wooden house built in the island,
and left by the Dutchmen, who were all dead: and that
the chimney was built of a barrel with the end knocked
out, sunk into the roof.''
``I don't understand much of thy rigmarole.''
``Be it so. Elizabeth understood. A country the more
for Holland was a country the less for England. The
bottle which had given the information was held to be of
importance; and thenceforward an order was issued that
anybody who should find a sealed bottle on the seashore
should take it to the Lord High Admiral of England,
under pain of the gallows. The Admiral intrusts the
opening of such bottles to an officer, who presents the
contents to the queen, if there be reason for so doing.''
``Are many such bottles brought to the Admiralty?''
``But few. But it's all the same. The appointment
exists. There is for the officer a room and lodgings at the
Admiralty.''
``And for that way of doing nothing, how is one paid?''
``One hundred guineas a year.''
``And thou wouldst trouble me for that much? '
``It is enough to live upon.''
``Like a beggar.''
``As it becomes one of my sort.''
``One hundred guineas! It's a bagatelle.''
``What keeps you for a minute, keeps us for a year.
That's the advantage of the poor.''
``Thou shalt have the place.''
A week afterward, thanks to Josiana's exertions, thanks
to the influence of Lord David Dirry-Moir,
Barkilphedro-safe thenceforward, drawn out of his precarious
existence, lodged, and boarded, with a salary of a hundred
guineas-was installed at the Admiralty.
THERE is one thing the most pressing of all: to be
ungrateful.
Barkilphedro was not wanting therein.
Having received so many benefits from Josiana, he had
naturally but one thought,-to revenge himself on her.
When we add that Josiana was beautiful, great, young
rich, powerful, illustrious, while Barkilphedro was ugly,
little, old, poor, dependent, obscure, he must necessarily
revenge himself for all this as well.
When a man is made out of night, how is he to forgive
so many beams of light?
Barkilphedro was an Irishman who had denied
Ireland-a bad species.
Barkilphedro had but one thing in his favour,-that he
had a very big belly. A big belly passes for a sign of
kind-heartedness. Yet his belly was but an addition to
Barkilphedro's hypocrisy; for the man was full of malice.
What was Barkilphedro's ape? None. The age
necessary for his project of the moment. He was old in
his wrinkles and gray hairs, young in the activity of his
mind. He was active and ponderous; a sort of
hippopotamus-monkey. A royalist, certainly; a
republican-who knows? a Catholic, perhaps; a Protestant, without
doubt. For Stuart, probably; for Brunswick, evidently.
To be For, is a power only on the condition of being at
the same time Against. Barkilphedro practiced this
wisdom
The appointment of drawer of the bottles of the ocean
was not as absurd as Barkilphedro had appeared to make
out. The complaints, which would in these times be
termed declamations, of Garcia Fernandez in his
``Chart-Book of the Sea,'' against the robbery of jetsam, called
right of wreck, and against the pillage of wreck by the
inhabitants of the coast, had created a sensation in
England, and had obtained for the shipwrecked this
reform-that their goods, chattels, and property, instead of being
stolen by the country-people, were confiscated by the Lord
High Admiral. All the débris of the sea cast upon the
English shore-merchandise, broken hulls of ships, bales,
chests, etc.-belonged to the Lord High Admiral;
but-and here was revealed the importance of the place
asked for by Barkilphedro-the floating receptacles
containing messages and declarations awakened particularly
the attention of the Admiralty. Shipwrecks are one of
England's gravest cares. Navigation being her life,
ship-wreck is her anxiety. England is kept in perpetual care
by the sea. The little glass bottle thrown to the waves
by the doomed ship contains final intelligence, precious
from every point of view. Intelligence concerning the
ship, intelligence concerning the crew, intelligence
concerning the place, the time, the manner of loss,
intelligence concerning the winds which have broken up the
vessel, intelligence concerning the currents which bore the
floating flask ashore. The situation filled by Barkilphedro
has been abolished more than a century, but it had its real
utility. The last holder was William Hussey, of
Doddington, in Lincolnshire. The man who held it was a
sort of guardian of the things of the sea. All the closed
and sealed-up vessels, bottles, flasks, jars, thrown upon
the English coast by the tide, were brought to him. He
alone had the right to open them; he was first in the
secrets of their contents; he put them in order, and
ticketed them with his signature. The expression ``loger
un papier au greffe,'' still used in the Channel Islands, is
thence derived. However, one precaution was certainly
taken. Not one of these bottles could be unsealed except
in the presence of two jurors of the Admiralty sworn to
secrecy, who signed, conjointly with the holder of the
jetsam office, the official report of the opening. But these
jurors being held to secrecy, there resulted for
Barkilphedro a certain discretionary latitude; it depended upon
him, to a certain extent, to suppress a fact or bring it to
light.
These fragile floating messages were far from being
what Barkilphedro had told Josiana, rare and
insignificant. Sometimes they reached land with little delay; at
others, after many years. That depended on the winds
and the currents. The fashion of casting bottles on the
surface of the sea has somewhat passed away, like that
of vowing offerings, but in those religious times, those
who were about to die were glad thus to send their last
thought to God and to men, and at times these messages
from the sea were plentiful at the Admiralty. A
parchment preserved in the hall at Audlyene (ancient spelling),
with notes by the Earl of Suffolk, Grand Treasurer of
England under James I, bears witness that in the one
year, 1615, fifty-two flasks, bladders, and tarred vessels,
containing mention of sinking ships, were brought and
registered in the records of the Lord High Admiral.
Court appointments are the drop of oil in the widow's
cruse, they ever increase. Thus it is that the porter has
become chancellor, and the groom, constable. The
special officer charged with the appointment desired and
obtained by Barkilphedro was invariably a confidential
man. Elizabeth had wished that it should be so. At
court, to speak of confidence is to speak of intrigue,
and to speak of intrigue is to speak of advancement. This
functionary had come to be a personage of some
consideration. He was a clerk, and ranked directly after the
two grooms of the almonry. He had the right of entrance
into the palace, but we must add, what was called the
humble entrance-humilis introïtus-and even into the
bedchamber. For it was the custom that he should
inform the monarch, on occasions of sufficient importance,
of the objects found, which were often very curious: the
wills of men in despair-farewells cast to
fatherland-revelations of falsified logs, bills of lading, and crimes
committed at sea, legacies to the crown, etc., that he
should maintain his records in communication with the
court, and should account, from time to time, to the
king or queen, concerning the opening of these ill-omened
bottles. It was the black cabinet of the ocean.
Elizabeth, who was always glad of an opportunity of
speaking Latin, used to ask Tonfield, of Coley in
Berkshire, jetsam officer of her day, when he brought her one
of these papers cast up by the sea-``Quid mihi scribit
Neptunus?'' (What does Neptune write me?)
The way had been eaten, the insect had succeeded.
Barkilphedro approached the queen.
This was all he wanted.
To make his fortune?
No.
To unmake that of others?
A greater happiness.
To hurt is to enjoy.
To have within one the desire of injuring, vague but
implacable, and never to lose sight of it, is not given to
all.
Barkilphedro possessed that fixity of intention.
As the bulldog holds on with his jaws, so did his
thought.
To feel himself inexorable gave him a depth of gloomy
satisfaction. As long as he had a prey under his teeth,
or in his soul, a certainty of evil-doing, he wanted
nothing.
He was happy, shivering in the cold which his
neighbour was suffering. To be malignant is an opulence.
Such a man is believed to be poor, and, in truth, is so;
but he has all his riches in malice, and prefers having
them so. Everything is in what contents one. To do
a bad turn, which is the same as a good turn, is better
than money. Bad for him who endures, good for him
who does it. Catesby, the colleague of Guy Fawkes in
the Popish powder plot, said: ``To see Parliament blown
upside down, I wouldn't miss it for a million sterling.''
What was Barkilphedro? That meanest and most
terrible of things-an envious man.
Envy is a thing ever easily placed at court.
Courts abound in impertinent people, in idlers, in rich
loungers hungering for gossip, in those who seek for
needles in trusses of hay, in triflers, in banterers bantered,
in witty ninnies, who can not do without converse with
an envious man.
What a refreshing thing is the evil spoken to you of
others.
Envy is good stuff to make a spy. There is a
profound analogy between that natural passion, envy, and
that social function, espionage. The spy hunts on others'
account, like the dog. The envious man hunts on his
own, like the cat.
A fierce Myself, such is the envious man.
He had other qualities. Barkilphedro was discreet,
secret, concrete. He kept in everything and racked
himself with his hate. Enormous baseness implies enormous
vanity. He was liked by those whom he amused, and
hated by all others; but he felt that he was disdained
by those who hated him, and despised by those who liked
him. He restrained himself. All his gall simmered
noiselessly in his hostile resignation. He was indignant, as
if rogues had the right to be so. He was the furies' silent
prey. To swallow everything was his talent. There were
deaf wraths within him, frenzies of interior rage, black
and brooding flames unseen; he was a smoke-consuming
man of passion. The surface was smiling. He was kind,
prompt, easy, amiable, obliging. Never mind to whom,
never mind where, he bowed. For a breath of wind he
inclined to the earth. What a source of fortune to have
a reed for a spine! Such concealed and venomous beings
are not so rare as is believed. We live surrounded by
ill-omened crawling things. Wherefore the malevolent? A
keen question! The dreamer constantly proposes it to
himself, and the thinker never resolves it. Hence the sad
eye of the philosophers ever fixed upon that mountain of
darkness which is destiny, and from the top of which the
colossal spectre of evil casts handfuls of serpents over the
earth.
Barkilphedro's body was obese, and his face lean. A
fat bust and a bony countenance. His nails were
channeled and short, his fingers knotted, his thumbs flat, his
hair coarse, his temples wide apart, and his forehead a
murderer's, broad and low. The littleness of his eye was
hidden under his bushy eyebrows. His nose, long, sharp,
and flabby, nearly met his mouth. Barkilphedro, properly
attired as an emperor, would have somewhat resembled
Domitian. His face of muddy yellow might have been
modeled in slimy paste-his immovable cheeks were like
putty; he had all kinds of ugly refractory wrinkles; the
angle of his jaw was massive, his chin heavy, his ear
underbred. In repose, and seen in profile, his upper lip
was raised at an acute angle, showing two teeth. Those
teeth seemed to look at you. The teeth can look, just as
the eye can bite.
Patience, temperance, continence, reserve, self-control,
amenity, deference, gentleness, politeness, sobriety,
chastity, completed and finished Barkilphedro. He
calumniated those virtues by their possession.
In a short time Barkilphedro took a foothold at court.
THERE are two ways of making a footing at court.
In the clouds, and you are august; in the mud, and
you are powerful.
In the first case, you belong to Olympus.
In the second case, you belong to the private closet.
He who belongs to Olympus has but the thunderbolt,
he who is of the private closet has the police.
The private closet contains all the instruments of
government, and sometimes, for it is a traitor, its
chastisement. Heliogabalus goes there to die. Then it is called
the latrines.
Generally it is less tragic. It is there that Alberoni
admires Vendôme. Royal personages willingly make it
their place of audience. It takes the place of the throne.
Louis XIV receives the Duchess of Burgundy there.
Philip V is shoulder to shoulder there with the queen.
The priest penetrates into it. The private closet is
sometimes a branch of the confessional. Therefore it is that
at court there are underground fortunes-not always the
least. If, under Louis XI, you would be great, be Pierre
de Rohan, Marshal of France; if you would be influential,
be Olivier le Daim, the barber; if you would, under Mary
de Medicis, be glorious, be Sillery, the Chancellor; if you
would be a person of consideration, be La Hannon, the
maid; if you would, under Louis XV, be illustrious, be
Choiseul, the minister; if you would be formidable, be
Lebel, the valet. Given Louis XIV, Bontemps, who
makes his bed, is more powerful than Louvois, who raises
his armies, and Turenne, who gains his victories. From
Richelieu take Père Joseph, and you have Richelieu
nearly empty. There is the mystery the less. His
eminence in scarlet is magnificent; his eminence in gray is
terrible. What power in being a worm! All the Narvaez
amalgamated with all the O'Donnells do less work than
one Sor Patrocinio.
Of course, the condition of this power is littleness. If
you would remain powerful, remain petty. Be
Nothingness. The serpent in repose, twisted into a circle, is a
figure at the same time of the infinite and of naught.
One of these viper-like fortunes had fallen to
Barkilphedro.
He had crawled where he wanted.
Flat beasts can get in everywhere. Louis XIV had
bugs in his bed and Jesuits in his policy.
The incompatibility is nil.
In this world everything is a clock. To gravitate is to
oscillate. One pole is attracted to the other. Francis I
is attracted by Triboulet; Louis XIV is attracted by
Lebel. There exists a deep affinity between extreme
elevation and extreme debasement.
It is abasement which directs. Nothing is easier of
comprehension. It is he who is below who pulls the
strings. No position more convenient. He is the eye,
and has the ear. He is the eye of the government; he
has the ear of the king. To have the eye of the king is
to draw and shut, at one's whim, the bolt of the royal
conscience, and to throw into that conscience whatever
one wishes. The mind of the king is his cupboard; if he
be a ragpicker, it is his basket. The ears of kings belong
not to kings, and therefore it is that, on the whole, the
poor devils are not altogether responsible for their
actions. He who does not possess his own thought does not
possess his own deed. A king obeys-what? Any evil
spirit buzzing from outside in his ear; a noisome fly
of the abyss.
This buzzing commands. A reign is a dictation.
The loud voice is the sovereign; the low voice,
sovereignty. Those who know how to distinguish, in a reign,
this low voice, and to hear what it whispers to the loud,
are the real historians.
QUEEN ANNE had several of these low voices about
her. Barkilphedro was one.
Besides the queen, he secretly worked, influenced, and
plotted upon Lady Josiana and Lord David. As we have
said, he whispered in three ears, one more than Dangeau.
Dangeau whispered in but two, in the days when,
thrusting himself between Louis XIV, in love with Henrietta.
his sister-in-law, and Henrietta, in love with Louis XIV,
her brother-in-law, he being Louis' secretary, without the
knowledge of Henrietta, and Henrietta's without the
knowledge of Louis, he wrote the questions and answers
of both the love-making marionettes.
Barkilphedro was so cheerful, so accepting, so incapable
of taking up the defence of anybody, possessing so little
devotion at bottom, so ugly, so mischievous, that it was
quite natural that a regal personage should come to be
unable to do without him. Once Anne had tasted
Barkilphedro she would have no other flatterer. He flattered
her as they flattered Louis the Great, by stinging her
neighbours. ``The king being ignorant,'' says Madame
de Montchevreuil, ``one is obliged to mock at the savants.''
To poison the sting, from time to time, is the acme of
art. Nero loves to see Locusta at work.
Royal palaces are very easily entered; these madrepores
have a way in soon guessed at, contrived, examined, and
scooped out at need by the gnawing thing which is called
the courtier. A pretext to enter is sufficient.
Barkilphedro, having found this pretext, his position with the
queen soon became the same as that with the Duchess
Josiana-that of an indispensable domestic animal. A
witticism risked one day by him immediately led to his
perfect understanding of the queen and how to estimate
exactly her kindness of heart. The queen was greatly
attached to her Lord Steward, William Cavendish, Duke
of Devonshire, who was a great fool. This lord, who had
obtained every Oxford degree and did not know how to
spell, one fine morning committed the folly of dying. To
die is a very imprudent thing at court, for there is then no
further restraint in speaking of you. The queen, in the
presence of Barkilphedro, lamented the event, finally
exclaiming, with a sigh: ``It is a pity that so many virtues
should have been borne, and served by so poor an intellect.''
``Dieu veuille avoir son âne!'' whispered Barkilphedro,
in a low voice, and in French.
The queen smiled. Barkilphedro noted the smile. His
conclusion was that biting pleased. Free licence had
been given to his spite. From that day he thrust his
curiosity everywhere, and his malignity with it. He was
given his way, so much was he feared. He who can make
the king laugh makes the others tremble. He was a
powerful buffoon. Every day he worked his way forward
underground. Barkilphedro became a necessity. Many
great people honoured him with their confidence, to the
extent of charging him, when they required him, with
their disgraceful commissions.
There are wheels within wheels at court
Barkilphedro became the motive power. Have you remarked, in
certain mechanisms, the smallness of the motive wheel?
Josiana, in particular, who, as we have explained, made
use of Barkilphedro's talents as a spy, reposed such
confidence in him that she had not hesitated to intrust him
with one of the master-keys of her apartments, by means
of which he was able to enter them at any hour. This
excessive licence of insight into private life was in fashion
in the seventeenth century. It was called ``giving the
key.'' Josiana had given two of these confidential
keys-Lord David had one, Barkilphedro the other. However,
to enter straight into a bedchamber was, in the old code
of manners, a thing not in the least out of the way.
Thence resulted incidents. La Ferté, suddenly drawing
back the bed curtains of Mademoiselle Lafont, found,
inside, Sainson, the black musketeer, etc., etc.
Barkilphedro excelled in making the cunning
discoveries which place the great in the power of the little. His
walk in the dark was winding, soft, clever. Like every
perfect spy, he was composed of the inclemency of the
executioner and the patience of a micrograph. He was a
born courtier. Every courtier is a noctambulist. The
courtier prowls in the night, which is called power. He
carries a dark lantern in his hand. He lights up the spot
he wishes, and remains in darkness himself. What he
seeks with his lantern is not a man, it is a fool. What
he finds is the king.
Kings do not like to see those about them pretend to
greatness. Irony aimed at any one except themselves
has a charm for them. The talent of Barkilphedro
consisted in a perpetual dwarfing of the peers and princes to
the advantage of her Majesty's stature, thus increased in
proportion. The master-key held by Barkilphedro was
made with two sets of wards, one at each end, so as to
open the inner apartments in both Josiana's favourite
residences-Hunkerville House in London, Corleone Lodge
at Windsor. These two houses were part of the
Clancharlie inheritance. Hunkerville House was close to
Oldgate. Oldgate was a gate of London, which was entered
by the Harwich road, and on which was displayed a
statue of Charles II, with a painted angel on his head,
and beneath his feet a carved lion and unicorn. From
Hunkerville House, in an easterly wind, you heard the
peals of St. Marylebone. Corleone Lodge was a
Florentine palace of brick and stone, with a marble colonnade,
built on pilework, at Windsor, at the head of the wooden
bridge, and having one of the finest courts in England.
In the latter palace, near Windsor Castle, Josiana was
within the queen's reach. Nevertheless, Josiana liked it.
Scarcely anything in appearance, everything in the root;
such was the influence of Barkilphedro over the queen.
There is nothing more difficult than to drag up these bad
grasses of the court-they take a deep root, and offer no
hold above the surface. To root out a Roquelaure, a
Triboulet, or a Brummel, is almost impossible.
From day to day, and more and more, did the queen
take Barkilphedro into her good graces. Sarah Jennings
is famous; Barkilphedro is unknown. His existence
remains ignored. The name of Barkilphedro has not reached
as far as history. All the moles are not caught by the
mole-trapper.
Barkilphedro, once a candidate for orders, had studied
a little of everything. Skimming all things leaves naught
for result. One may be victim of the omnis res scibilis.
Having the vessel of the Danaïdes in one's head is the
misfortune of a whole race of learned men, who may be
termed the sterile. What Barkilphedro had put into his
brain had left it empty.
The mind, like nature, abhors vacuum. Into
emptiness nature puts love; the mind often puts hate. Hate
occupies.
Hate for hate's sake exists. Art for art's sake exists
in nature more than is believed. A man hates-he must
do something (gratuitous hate formidable word! It
means hate which is itself its own payment. The bear
lives by licking his claws. Not indefinitely, of course.
The claws must be revictualed. Something must be put
under them.
Hate indistinct is sweet and suffices for a time; but one
must end by having an object. An animosity diffused
over creation is exhausting, like every solitary pleasure.
Hate without an object is like a shooting-match without
a target. What lends interest to the game is a heart to
be pierced. One can not hate solely for honour; some
seasoning is necessary-a man, a woman, somebody, to
destroy. This service of making the game interesting; of
offering an end; of throwing passion into hate by fixing
it on an object; of amusing the hunter by the sight of
his living prey; of giving the watcher the hope of the
smoking and boiling blood about to flow; of amusing the
birdcatcher by the credulity of the uselessly-winged lark;
of being a victim, unknowingly reared for murder by a
master-mind; all this exquisite and horrible service, of
which the person rendering it is unconscious, Josiana
rendered Barkilphedro.
Thought is a projectile. Barkilphedro had, from the
first day, begun to aim at Josiana the evil intentions
which were in his mind. An intention and a carbine are
alike. Barkilphedro aimed at Josiana, directing against
the duchess all his secret malice. That astonishes you!
What has the bird done at which you fire? You want to
eat it, you say. And so it was with Barkilphedro.
Josiana could not be struck in the heart-the spot
where the enigma lies is hard to wound; but she could
be struck in the head-that is, in her pride. It was
there that she thought herself strong, and that she was
weak.
Barkilphedro had found it out. If Josiana had been
able to see clearly through the night of Barkilphedro, if
she had been able to distinguish what lay in ambush
behind his smile, that proud woman, so highly situated,
would have trembled. Fortunately for the tranquillity
of her sleep, she was in complete ignorance of what was
in the man.
The unexpected spreads, one knows not whence. The
profound depths of life are dangerous. There is no small
hate. Hate is always enormous. It preserves its stature
in the smallest being, and remains a monster. An
elephant hated by a worm is in danger.
Even before he struck, Barkilphedro felt, with joy, the
foretaste of the evil action which he was about to
commit. He did not as yet know what he was going to do to
Josiana; but he had made up his mind to do something.
To have come to this decision was a great step taken.
To crush Josiana utterly would have been too great a
triumph. He did not hope for so much; but to
humiliate her, lessen her, bring her grief, redden her proud eyes
with tears of rage-what a success! He counted on it.
Tenacious, diligent, faithful to the torment of his
neighbour, not to be torn from his purpose, nature had not
formed him for nothing. He well understood how to find
the flaw in Josiana's golden armour, and how to make the
blood of that Olympian flow.
What benefit, we ask again, would accrue to him in so
doing? An immense benefit; doing evil to one who had
done good to him. What is an envious man? An
ungrateful one. He hates the light which lights and warms
him. Zoilus hated that benefit to man, Homer. To
inflict on Josiana what would nowadays be called
vivisection-to place her, all convulsed, on his anatomical table;
to dissect her alive, at his leisure, in some surgery; to
cut her up, as an amateur, while she should scream: this
dream delighted Barkilphedro.
To arrive at this result it was necessary to suffer
somewhat himself; he did so willingly. We may pinch
ourselves with our own pincers. The knife as it shuts cuts
our fingers. What does it matter? That he should
partake of Josiana's torture was a matter of little moment.
The executioner handling the red-hot iron, when about to
brand a prisoner, takes no heed of a little burn. Because
another suffers much, he suffers nothing. To see the
victim's writhings takes all pain from the inflicter.
Do harm, whatever happens.
To plan evil for others is mingled with an acceptance
of some hazy responsibility. We risk ourselves in the
danger which we impel toward another, because the
chain of events sometimes, of course, brings unexpected
accidents. This does not stop the man who is truly
malicious. He feels as much joy as the patient suffers agony.
He is tickled by the laceration of the victim. The
malicious man blooms in hideous joy. Pain reflects itself on
him in a sense of welfare. The Duke of Alva used to
warm his hands at the stake. The pile was torture, the
reflection of it pleasure. That such transpositions should
be possible makes one shudder. Our dark side is
unfathomable. Supplice exquis (exquisite torture)-the
expression is of Bodin14-has
perhaps this terrible triple sense:
search for the torture; suffering of the tortured; delight
of the torturer.
Ambition, appetite; all such words signify some one
sacrificed to some one satiated. It is sad that hope should
be wicked. Is it that the outpourings of our wishes flow
naturally to the direction to which we most incline, that
of evil? One of the hardest labours of the just man is to
expunge from his soul a malevolence which it is difficult
to efface. Almost all our desires, when examined, contain
what we dare not avow.
In the completely wicked man this exists in hideous
perfection. So much the worse for others, signifies so
much the better for himself. The shadows of the caverns
of man's mind.
Josiana, in a plenitude of security of the fruit of
ignorant pride, had a contempt for all danger. The feminine
faculty of disdain is extraordinary. Josiana's disdain,
unreasoning, involuntary, and confident. Barkilphedro
was to her so contemptible that she would have been
astonished had any one remarked to her that such a
creature existed. She went, and came, and laughed before
this man who was looking at her with evil eyes.
Thoughtful, he bided his time.
In proportion as he waited, his determination to cast a
despair into this woman's life augmented. Inexorable
high tide of malice.
In the meantime he gave himself excellent reasons for
his determination. It must not be thought that scoundrels
are deficient in self-esteem. They enter into details with
themselves in their lofty monologues, and they take matters
with a high hand. How? This Josiana had bestowed
charity on him! She had thrown some crumbs of her
enormous wealth to him, as to a beggar. She had nailed
and riveted him to an office unworthy of him. Yes;
that he, Barkilphedro, almost a clergyman, of varied and
profound talent, a learned man, with the material in him
for a bishop, should have for employ the registration of
nasty patience-trying shards, that he should have to pass
his life in the garret of a register-office, gravely uncorking
stupid bottles, incrusted with all the nastiness of the sea,
deciphering musty parchments, like filthy
conjuring-books, dirty wills, and other illegible stuff of the kind,
was the fault of this Josiana. Worst of all! this creature
``thee'd'' and ``thou'd'' him! And he should not revenge
himself!-he should not punish such conduct! Well, in
that case there would no longer be justice on earth!
WHAT! this woman, this extravagant thing, this
libidinous dreamer, a virgin until the opportunity
occurred, this bit of flesh as yet unfreed, this bold creature
under a princess's coronet; this Diana by pride as yet
un-taken by the first comer, just because chance had so willed
it; this bastard of a low-lived king who had not the
intellect to keep his place; this duchess by a lucky hit, who,
being a fine lady, played the goddess, and who, had she
been poor, would have been a prostitute; this lady, more or
less, this robber of a proscribed man's goods, this
overbearing strumpet, because one day he, Barkilphedro, had not
money enough to buy his dinner and to get a lodging,
had had the impudence to seat him in her house at
the corner of a table, and to put him up in some hole in
her intolerable palace; where? never mind where;
perhaps in the barn, perhaps in the cellar, what does it
matter? a little better than her valets, a little worse than
her horses. She had abused his distress; his,
Barkilphedro's, in hastening to do him treacherous Food, a thing
which the rich do in order to humiliate the poor, and to
tie them, like curs led by a string. Besides, what did the
service she rendered him cost her? A service is worth
what it costs. She had spare rooms in her house. She
came to Barkilphedro's aid! A great thing, indeed; had
she eaten a spoonful the less of turtle soup for it? had
she deprived herself of anything in the hateful overflowing
of her superfluous luxuries? No. She had added to it a
vanity, a luxury, a good action like a ring on her finger,
the relief of a man of wit, the patronisation of a
clergyman. She could give herself airs; say, ``I lavish
kindness; I fill the mouths of men of letters; I am his
benefactress. How lucky the wretch was to find me out!
What a patroness of the arts I am!'' All for having set
up a truckle bed in a wretched garret in the roof. As for
the place in the Admiralty, Barkilphedro owed it to
Josiana; by Jove, a pretty appointment! Josiana had
made Barkilphedro what he was. She had created him.
Be it so. Yes, created nothing. Less than nothing. For
in his absurd situation he felt borne down, tongue-tied,
disfigured. What did he owe Josiana? The thanks due
from a hunchback to the mother who bore him deformed.
Behold your privileged ones, your folks overwhelmed
with fortune, your parvenus, your favourites of that
horrid step-mother, Fortune! And that man of talent,
Barkilphedro, was obliged to stand on staircases, to bow to
footmen, to climb to the top of the house at night, to be
courteous, assiduous, pleasant, respectful, and to have ever
on his muzzle a respectful grimace. Was not it enough to
make him gnash his teeth with rage! And all the while
she was putting pearls round her neck, and making
amorous poses to her fool, Lord David Dirry-Moir; the
hussy!
Never let any one do you a service. They will abuse
the advantage it gives them. Never allow yourself to be
taken in the act of inanition. They would relieve you.
Because he was starving, this woman had found it a
sufficient pretext to give him bread. From that moment he
was her servant; a craving of the stomach, and there is
the chain for life! To be obliged is to be sold. The
happy, the powerful, make use of the moment you stretch
out your hand to place a penny in it, and at the crisis of
your weakness make you a slave, and a slave of the worst
kind, the slave of an act of charity. A slave forced to
love the enslaver. What infamy! what want of delicacy;
what an assault on your self-respect! Then all is over.
You are sentenced for life to consider this man good, that
woman beautiful; to remain in the back rows; to approve,
to applaud, to admire, to worship, to prostrate yourself,
to blister your knees by long genuflections, to sugar your
words when you are gnawing your lips with anger, when
you are biting down your cries of fury, and when you
have within you more savage turbulence and more bitter
foam than the ocean!
It is thus that the rich make prisoners of the poor.
This slime of a good action performed toward you
bedaubs and bespatters you with mud forever.
An alms is irremediable. Gratitude is paralysis. A
benefit is a sticky and repugnant adherence which deprives
you of free movement. Those odious, opulent, and spoiled
creatures whose pity has thus injured you are well aware
of this. It is done-you are their creature. They have
bought you-and how? By a bone taken from their dog
and cast to you. They have flung that bone at your
head. You have been stoned as much as benefited. It
is all one. Have you gnawed the bone-yes or no? You
have had your place in the dog-kennel as well. Then be
thankful. Be ever thankful. Adore your masters. Kneel
on indefinitely. A benefit implies an understood
inferiority accepted by you. It means that you feel them to be
gods and yourself a poor devil. Your diminution
augments them. Your bent form makes theirs more upright.
In the tones of their voices there is an impertinent
inflection. Their family matters, their marriages, their
baptisms, their child-bearings, their progeny, all concern
you. A wolf cub is born to them. Well! you have to
compose a sonnet. You are a poet because you are low.
Isn't it enough to make the stars fall! A little more,
and they would make you wear their old shoes.
``Who have you got there, my dear? How ugly he is!
Who is that man?''
``I do not know. A sort of scholar, whom I feed.''
Thus converse these idiots, without even lowering their
voice. You hear, and remain mechanically amiable. If
you are ill, your masters will send for the doctor-not
their own. Occasionally they may even inquire after you.
Being of a different species from you, and at an
inaccesible height above you, they are affable. Their height
makes them easy. They know that equality is impossible.
By force of disdain they are polite. At table they give
you a little nod. Sometimes they absolutely know how
your name is spelled! They only show that they are your
protectors by walking unconsciously over all the delicacy
and susceptibility you possess. They treat you with
good-nature. Is all this to be borne?
No doubt he was eager to punish Josiana. He must
teach her with whom she had to deal!
Oh! my rich gentry, because you can not eat up
everything; because opulence produces indigestion, seeing that
your stomachs are no bigger than ours; because it is, after
all, better to distribute the remainder than to throw it
away, you exalt a morsel flung to the poor into an act of
magnificence. Oh! you give us bread, you give us
shelter, you give us clothes, you give us employment, an d
you push audacity, folly, cruelty, stupidity, and absurdity
to the pitch of believing that we are grateful. The bread
is the bread of servitude, the shelter is a footman's
bedroom, the clothes are a livery, the employment is
ridiculous-paid for, it is true, but brutalising;
Oh! you believe in the right to humiliate us with
lodging and nourishment, and you imagine that we are your
debtors, and you count on our gratitude? Very well! we
will eat up your substance, we will devour you alive and
gnaw your heartstrings with our teeth.
This Josiana! was it not absurd? what merit had she?
She had accomplished the wonderful work of coming into
the world as a testimony of the folly of her father, and
the shame of her mother. She had done us the favour to
exist, and for her kindness in becoming a public scandal
they paid her millions; she had estates and castles,
warrens, parks, lakes, forests, and I know not what besides,
and with all that she was making a fool of herself, and
verses were addressed to her! And Barkilphedro, who
had studied and laboured and taken pains, and stuffed his
eyes and his brain with great books, who had grown
mouldy in old works and in science, who was full of wit,
who could command armies, who could, if he would, write
tragedies like Otway and Dryden, who was made to be an
emperor, Barkilphedro had been reduced to permit this
nobody to prevent him from dying of hunger. Could the
usurpation of the rich, the hateful elect of chance, go
further? They put on the semblance of being generous
to us, of protecting us, and of smiling on us, and we would
drink their blood and lick our lips after it! That this
low woman of the court should have the odious power of
being a benefactress, and that a man so superior should
be condemned to pick up such bribes falling from such a
hand, what a frightful iniquity! and what social system
is this which has for its base disproportion and injustice?
Would it not be best to take it by the four corners, and
to throw pell-mell to the ceiling the damask table-cloth,
and the festival, and the orgies, and the tippling and
drunkenness, and the guests, and those with their elbows
on the table, and those with their paws under it, and the
insolent who give and the idiots who accept, and to spit it
all back again in the face of Providence, and fling all the
earth to the heavens. In the meantime let us stick our
claws into Josiana.
Thus dreamed Barkilphedro. Such were the ragings
of his soul. It is the habit of the envious man to absolve
himself, amalgamating with his personal grievance the
public wrongs.
All the wild forms of hateful passions went and came
in the intellect of this ferocious being. At the corners of
old maps of the world of the fifteenth century are great
vague spaces without shape or name, on which are written
these three words, Hic sunt leones. Such a dark corner
is there also in man. Passions grow and growl
somewhere within us, and we may say of an obscure portion
of our souls, there are lions here.
Is this scaffolding of wild reasoning absolutely absurd?
does it lack a certain justice? We must confess it does
not.
It is fearful to think that judgment within us is not
justice. Judgment is the relative, justice is the absolute.
Think of the difference between a judge and a just man.
Wicked men lead conscience astray with authority.
There are gymnastics of untruth. A sophist is a forger,
and this forger sometimes brutalises good sense.
A certain logic, very supple, very implacable, and very
agile, is at the service of evil, and excels in stabbing truth
in the dark. These are blows struck by.the devil at
Providence.
The worst of it was that Barkilphedro had a
presentiment. He was undertaking a heavy task, and he was
afraid that after all the evil achieved might not be
proportionate to the work.
To be corrosive as he was, to have within himself a will
of steel, a hate of diamond, a burning curiosity for the
catastrophe, and to burn nothing, to decapitate nothing,
to exterminate nothing; to be what he was, a force of
devastation, a voracious animosity, a devourer of the
happiness of others, to have been created (for there is a
creator, whether God or devil), to have been created
Barkilphedro all over, and to inflict perhaps after all but
a fillip of the finger-could this be possible? could it be
that Barkilphedro should miss his aim! To be a lever
powerful enough to heave great masses of rock, and when
sprung to the utmost power, to succeed only in giving an
affected woman a bump in the forehead! to be a catapult
dealing ruin on a pole-kitten! To accomplish the task of
Sisyphus, to crush an ant; to sweat all over with hate,
and for nothing at all. Would not this be humiliating,
when he felt himself a mechanism of hostility capable of
reducing the world to powder! To put into movement
all the wheels within wheels, to work in the darkness all
the mechanism of a Marty machine, and to succeed
perhaps in pinching the end of a little rosy finger! He was
to turn over and over blocks of marble, perchance with
the result of ruffling a little the smooth surface of the
court! Providence has a way of thus expending forces
grandly. The movement of a mountain often only
displaces a molehill.
Besides this, when the court is the dangerous arena,
nothing is more dangerous than to aim at your enemy
and miss him. In the first place, it unmasks you and
irritates him; but besides and above all, it displeases the
master. Kings do not like the unskilful. Let us have
no contusions, no ugly gashes. Kill anybody, but give
no one a bloody nose. He who kills is clever, he who
wounds awkward. Kings do not like to see their
servants lamed. They are displeased if you chip a porcelain
jar on their chimney-piece, or a courtier in their cortege.
The court must be kept neat. Break and replace; that
does not matter. Besides, all this agrees perfectly with
the taste of princes for scandal. Speak evil, do none; or
if you do, let it be in grand style.
Stab, do not scratch, unless the pin be poisoned. This
would be an extenuating circumstance, and was, we may
remember, the case with Barkilphedro.
Every malicious pigmy is a phial in which is inclosed
the dragon of Solomon. The phial is microscopic, the
dragon immense. A formidable condensation, awaiting
the gigantic hour of dilation! Ennui consoled by the
premeditation of explosion! The prisoner is larger than the
prison. A latent giant! how wonderful! A minnow in
which is contained a hydra. To be this fearful magical
box, to contain within him a Leviathan, is to the dwarf
both a torture and a delight.
Nor would anything have caused Barkilphedro to let
go his hold. He awaited his time. Was it to come?
What mattered that? He watched for it. Self-love is
mixed up in the malice of the very wicked man. To make
holes and gaps in a court fortune higher than your own,
to undermine it at all risks and perils, while incased and
concealed yourself, is, we repeat, exceedingly interesting.
The player at such a game becomes eager, even to passion.
He throws himself into the work as if he were composing
an epic. To be very mean, and to attack that which is
great, is in itself a brilliant action. It is a fine thing to
be a flea on a lion.
The noble beast feels the bite, and expends his mighty
anger against the atom. An encounter with a tiger would
weary him less; see how the actors exchange their parts.
The lion, humiliated, feels the sting of the insect, and the
flea can say, ``I have in my veins the blood of a lion.''
However, these reflections but half appeased the
cravings of Barkilphedro's pride. Consolations, palliations at
most. To vex is one thing; to torment would be infinitely
better. Barkilphedro had a thought which returned to
him without ceasing, his success might not go beyond
just irritating the epidermis of Josiana. What could he
hope for more; he so obscure, against her so radiant! A
scratch is worth but little to him who longs to see the
crimson blood of his flayed victim, and to hear her cries
as she lies before him more than naked, without even that
garment, the skin! With such a craving, how sad to be
powerless!
Alas, there is nothing perfect!
However, he resigned himself. Not being able to do
better, he only dreamed half his dream. To play a
treacherous trick is an object after all.
What a man is he who revenges himself for a benefit
received! Barkilphedro was a giant among such men.
Usually, ingratitude 1s forgetfulness. With this man,
patented in wickedness, it was fury. The vulgar ingrate
is full of ashes: what was within Barkilphedro? A
furnace. A furnace walled round by hate, silence, and
rancour, awaiting Josiana for fuel. Never had a man abhorred
a woman to such a point without reason. How terrible!
She was his dream, his preoccupation, his ennui, his rage.
Perhaps he was a little in love with her.
To find the vulnerable SpGt in Josiana, and to strike
her there, was, for all the causes we have just
mentioned, the imperturbable determination of Barkilphedro.
The wish is insufficient; the power is required. How was
he to set about it? There was the question.
Vulgar vagabonds set the scene of any wickedness they
intend to commit with care. They do not feel themselves
strong enough to seize the opportunity as it passes, to
take possession of it by fair means or foul, and to
constrain it to serve them. Deep scoundrels disdain
preliminary combinations. They start from their villanies alone,
merely arming themselves all round, prepared to avail
themselves of various chances which may occur, and then,
like Barkilphedro, await the opportunity. They know
that a ready-made scheme runs the risk of fitting ill into
the event which may present itself. It is not thus that
a man makes himself master of possibilities, and guides
them as he pleases. You can come to no previous
arrangement with destiny. To-morrow will not obey you.
There is a certain want of discipline in chance.
Therefore they watch for it, and summon it suddenly,
authoritatively, on the spot. No plan, no sketch, no rough
model; no ready-made shoe ill-fitting the unexpected.
They plunge headlong into the dark. To turn to
immediate and rapid profit any circumstance that can aid him is
the quality which distinguishes the able scoundrel, and
elevates the villain into the demon. To strike suddenly
at fortune, that is true genius.
The true scoundrel strikes you from a sling with the
first stone he can pick up. Clever malefactors count on
the unexpected, that senseless accomplice of so many
crimes. They grasp the incident and leap on it; there
is no better Ars poetica for this species of talent.
Meanwhile be sure with whom you have to deal. Survey the
ground.
With Barkilphedro the ground was Queen Anne.
Barkilphedro approached the queen, and so close that
sometimes he fancied he heard the monologues of her Majesty.
Sometimes he was present unheeded at conversations
between the sisters. Neither did they forbid his sliding in
a word. He profited by this to lessen himself-a way of
inspiring confidence. Thus, one day in the garden at
Hampton Court, being behind the duchess, who was behind
the queen, he heard Anne, following the fashion,
awkwardly enunciating sentiments.
``Animals are happy,'' said the queen. ``They run no
risk of going to hell.''
``They are there already,'' replied Josiana.
This answer, which bluntly substituted philosophy for
religion, displeased the queen. If, perchance, there was
depth in the observation, Anne felt shocked.
``My dear,'' said she to Josiana, ``we talk of hell like a
couple of fools. Ask Barkilphedro all about it. He ought
to know such things.''
``As a devil?'' said Josiana.
``As a beast,'' replied Barkilphedro, with a bow.
``Madame,'' said the queen to Josiana, ``he is cleverer
than we.''
For a man like Barkilphedro to approach the queen was
to obtain a hold on her. He could say, I hold her. Now,
he wanted a means of taking advantage of his power for
his own benefit. He had his foothold in the court. To be
settled there was a fine thing. No chance could now
escape him. More than once he had made the queen smile
maliciously. This was having a licence to shoot. But
was there any preserved game? Did this licence to shoot
permit him to break the wing or the leg of one like the
sister of her Majesty? The first point to make clear was,
did the queen love her sister? One false step would lose
all. Barkilphedro watched.
Before he plays, the player looks at the cards. What
trumps has he? Barkilphedro began by examining the
age of the two women. Josiana, twenty-three; Anne,
forty-one. So far so good. He held trumps. The
moment that woman ceases to count by springs, and begins
to count by winters, she becomes cross. A dull rancour
possesses her against the time of which she carries the
proofs. Fresh-blown beauties, perfume for others, are to
such a one but thorns. Of the roses she feels but the prick.
It seems as if all the freshness is stolen from her, and that
beauty decreases in her because it increases in others.
To profit by this secret ill-humour, to dive into the wrinkle
on the face of this woman of forty, who was a queen,
seemed a good game for Barkilphedro.
Envy excels in exciting jealousy, as a rat draws the
crocodile from its hole.
Barkilphedro fixed his wise gaze on Anne. He saw into
the queen, as one sees into a stagnant pool. The marsh
has its transparency. In dirty water we see vices, in
muddy water we see stupidity; Anne was muddy water.
Embryos of sentiments and larvæ of ideas moved in her
thick brain. They were not distinct; they had scarcely any
outline. But they were realities, however shapeless. The
queen thought this; the queen desired that. To decide
what was the difficulty. The confused transformations
which work in stagnant water are difficult to study. The
queen, habitually obscure, sometimes made sudden and
stupid revelations. It was on these that it was necessary
to seize. He must take advantage of them on the moment.
How did the queen feel toward the Duchess Josiana?
Did she wish her good or evil?
Here was the problem. Barkilphedro set himself to
solve it. This problem solved, he might go further.
Divers chances served Barkilphedro; his tenacity at the
watch above all.
Anne was, on her husband's side, slightly related to the
new Queen of Prussia, wife of the king with the hundred
chamberlains. She had her portrait painted on enamel,
after the process of Turquet of Mayerne. The Queen of
Prussia had also a younger illegitimate sister, the Baroness
Drika.
One day, in the presence of Barkilphedro, Anne asked
the Russian ambassador some question about this Drika.
``They say she is rich?''
``Very rich.''
``She has palaces?''
``More magnificent than those of her sister, the queen.''
``Whom will she marry?''
``A great lord, the Count Gormo.''
``Pretty?''
``Charming.''
``Is she young?''
``Very young.''
``As beautiful as the queen?''
The ambassador lowered his voice, and replied: ``More
beautiful.''
``That is insolent,'' murmured Barkilphedro.
The queen was silent then she exclaimed: ``Those
bastards!''
Barkilphedro noticed the plural.
Another time, when the queen was leaving the chapel,
Barkilphedro kept pretty close to her Majesty, behind the
two grooms of the almonry. Lord David Dirry-Moir,
crossing the ranks of women, made a sensation by his
handsome appearance. As he passed there was an
explosion of feminine exclamations.
``How elegant! How gallant! What a noble air!
How handsome!''
``How disagreeable!'' grumbled the queen.
Barkilphedro overheard this; it decided him.
He could hurt the duchess without displeasing the queen.
The first problem was solved; but now the second
presented itself.
What could he do to harm the duchess? What means
did his wretched appointment offer to attain so difficult
an object?
Evidently none.
LET us note a circumstance. Josiana had le tour.
This is easy to understand when we reflect that she
was, although illegitimate, the queen's sister-that is to
say, a princely personage.
To have le tour; what does it mean?
Viscount St. John, otherwise Bolingbroke, wrote as
follows to Thomas Leonard, Earl of Sussex: ``Two things
mark the great-in England, they have le tour; in France,
le pour.''
When the King of France traveled, the courier of the
court stopped at the halting place in the evening, and
assigned lodgings to his Majesty's suite.
Among the gentlemen some had an immense privilege.
``They have le pour,'' says the ``Journal Historique'', for
the year 169d, page 6; ``which means that the courier
who marks the billets puts `Pour' before their
names-as `Pour M. le Prince de Soubise'; instead of which, when
he marks the lodging of one who is not royal, he does not
put pour, but simply the name-as `Le Due de Gesvres,
le Due de Mazarin.' '' This pour on a door indicated a
prince or a favourite. A favourite is worse than a prince.
The king granted le pour, like a blue ribbon or a peerage.
Avoir le tour in England was less glorious, but more
real. It was a sign of intimate communication with the
sovereign. Whoever might be, by birth or favour, in a
position to receive direct communications from majesty,
had in the wall of their bedchamber a shaft, in which was
adjusted a bell. The bell sounded, the shaft opened, a
royal missive appeared on a gold plate or on a cushion of
velvet, and the shaft closed. This was intimate and
solemn, the mysterious in the familiar. The shaft was used
for no other purpose. The sound of the bell announced
a royal message. No one saw who brought it. It was of
course merely the page of the king or the queen. Leicester
avait le tour under Elizabeth; Buckingham under James
I. Josiana had it under Anne, though not much in favour.
Never was a privilege more envied.
This privilege entailed additional servility. The
recipient was more of a servant. At court that which
elevates degrades. Avoir le tour was said in French, this
circumstance of English etiquette having, probably, been
borrowed from some old French folly.
Lady Josiana, a virgin peeress as Elizabeth had been a
virgin queen, led-sometimes in the city, and sometimes
in the country, according to the season-an almost princely
life, and kept nearly a court at which Lord David was
courtier, with many others.
Not being married, Lord David and Lady Josiana could
show themselves together in public without exciting
ridicule, and they did so frequently. They often went to
plays and racecourses in the same carriage, and sat
together in the same box. They were chilled by the
impending marriage, which was not only permitted to them, but
imposed upon them; but they felt an attraction for each
other's society. The privacy permitted to the engaged
has a frontier easily passed. From this they abstained;
that which is easy is in bad taste.
The best pugilistic encounters then took place at
Lambeth, a parish in which the Lord Archbishop of
Canterbury has a palace, though the air there is unhealthy, and
a rich library open at certain hours to decent people.
One evening in winter there was in a meadow there,
the gates of which were locked, a fight, at which Josiana,
escorted by Lord David, was present. She had asked:
``Are women admitted?''
And David had responded: ``Sunt fæminæ magnates!''
Liberal translation, ``Not shopkeepers.'' Literal
translation, ``Great ladies exist'': A duchess goes everywhere!
This is why Lady Josiana saw a boxing match.
Lady Josiana made only this concession to
propriety-she dressed as a man, a very common custom at that
period. Women seldom traveled otherwise. Out of every
six persons who traveled by the coach from Windsor, it
was rare that there were not one or two among them who
were women in male attire; a certain sign of high birth.
Lord David, being in company with a woman, could
not take any part in the match himself, and merely
assisted as one of the audience.
Lady Josiana betrayed her quality in one way; she had
an opera glass, then used by gentlemen only.
This encounter in the noble science was presided over
by Lord Germaine, great-grandfather, or granduncle, of
that Lord Germaine who, toward the end of the
eighteenth century, was colonel, ran away in a battle, was
afterward made Minister of War, and only escaped from
the bolts of the enemy, to fall by a worse fate, shot
through and through by the sarcasm of Sheridan.
Many gentlemen were betting. Harry Bellew, of
Carleton, who had claims to the extinct peerage of
Bella-aqua, with Henry, Lord Hyde, member of Parliament
for the borough of Dunhivid, which is also called
Launceston; the Honourable Peregrine Betrie, member for the
borough of Truro, with Sir Thomas Colpepper, member
for Maidstone; the Laird of Lamyrbau, which is on the
borders of Lothian, with Samuel Trefusis, of the borough
of Penrhyn; Sir Bartholomew Gracedieu, of the borough
of Saint Ives, with the Honourable Charles Bodville, who
was called Lord Robartes, and who was Custos
Rotulorum of the county of Cornwall; besides many others.
Of the two combatants, one was an Irishman, named
after his native mountain in Tipperary,
Phelem-ghe-Madone, and the other a Scot, named Helmsgail.
They represented the national pride of each country.
Ireland and Scotland were about to set to; Erin was
going to fisticuff Gajothel. So that the bets amounted to
over forty thousand guineas, besides the stakes.
The two champions were naked, excepting short
breeches buckled over the hips, and spiked boots laced as
high as the ankles.
Helmsgail, the Scot, was a youth scarcely nineteen, but
he had already had his forehead sewn up, for which reason
they laid 2 1-3 to 1 on him. The month before he had
broken the ribs and gouged out the eyes of a pugilist
named Sixmileswater. This explained the enthusiasm he
created. He had won his backers twelve thousand
pounds. Besides having his forehead sewn up Helmsgail's
jaw had been broken. He was neatly made and active.
He was about the height of a small woman, upright, thick
set, and of a stature low and threatening. And nothing
had been lost of the advantages given him by nature;
not a muscle which was not trained to its object,
pugilism. His firm chest was compact, and brown and
shining like brass. He smiled, and three teeth which he had
lost added to this smile.
His adversary was tall and overgrown-that is to say,
weak.
He was a man forty years of age, six feet high, with
the chest of a hippopotamus, and a mild expression of
face. The blow of his fist would break in the deck of a
vessel, but he did not know how to use it.
The Irishman, Phelem-ghe-Madone, was all surface,
and seemed to have entered the ring to receive, rather
than to give, blows. Only it was felt that he would take
a deal of punishment. Like underdone beef, tough to
chew, and impossible to swallow. He was what was
termed, in local slang, raw meat. He squinted. He
seemed resigned.
The two men had passed the preceding night in the
same bed, and had slept together. They had each
drunk port wine from the same glass, to the three-inch
mark.
Each had his group of seconds-men of savage
expression, threatening the umpires when it suited their side.
Among Helmsgail's supporters was to be seen John
Gromane, celebrated for having carried an ox on his back;
and one called John Bray, who had once carried on his
back ten bushels of flour, at fifteen pecks to the bushel,
besides the miller himself, and had walked over two
hundred paces under the weight. On the side of
Phelem-ghe-Madone, Lord Hyde had brought from Launceston a
certain Kilter, who lived at Green castle, and could throw a
stone weighing twenty pounds to a greater height than
the highest tower of the castle.
These three men, Kilter, Bray, and Gromane, were
Cornishmen by birth, and did honour to their county.
The other seconds were brutal fellows, with broad
backs, bowed legs, knotted fists, dull faces; ragged,
fearing nothing, nearly all jail-birds.
Many of them understood admirably how to make the
police drunk. Each profession should have its peculiar
talents.
The field chosen was further off than the bear garden,
where they formerly baited bears, bulls, and dogs; it was
beyond the line of the furthest houses, by the side of the
ruins of the Priory of Saint Mary Overy, dismantled by
Henry VIII. The wind was northerly, and biting; a
small rain fell, which was instantly frozen into ice.
Some gentlemen present were evidently fathers of families,
recognised as such by their putting up their umbrellas.
On the side of Phelem-ghe-Madone was Colonel
Moncreif, as umpire; and Kilter, as second, to support him on
his knee.
On the side of Helmsgail the Honourable Pughe
Beaumaris was umpire, with Lord Desertum, from Kilcarry, as
bottle-holder, to support him on his knee.
The two combatants stood for a few seconds motionless
in the ring, while the watches were being compared.
They then approached each other and shook hands.
Phelem-ghe-Madone said to Helmsgail: ``I should
prefer going home.
Helmsgail answered, handsomely: ``The gentlemen must
not be disappointed on any account.''
Naked as they were, they felt the cold.
Phelem-ghe-Madone shook. His teeth chattered.
Doctor Eleanor Sharpe, nephew of the Archbishop of
York, cried out to them: ``Set to, boys; it will warm you.''
Those friendly words thawed them.
They set to.
But neither one nor the other was angry. There were
three ineffectual rounds. The Rev. Dr. Gumdraith, one
of the forty Fellows of All Souls' College, cried: ``Spirit
them up with gin.''
But the two umpires and the two seconds adhered to
the rule. Yet it was exceedingly cold.
First blood was claimed.
They were again set face to face.
They looked at each other, approached, stretched their
arms, touched each other's fists, and then drew back.
All at once, Helmsgail, the little man, sprang forward.
The real fight had begun.
Phelem-ghe-Madone was struck in the face, between
the eyes. His whole face streamed with blood. The
crowd cried: Helmsgail has tapped his claret!''
There was applause. Phelem-ghe-Madone, turning his
arms like the sails of a windmill, struck out at random.
The Honourable Peregrine Bertie said, ``Blinded''; but
lie was not blind yet.
Then Helmsgail heard on all sides these encouraging
words: ``Bung up his peepers !''
On the whole, the two champions were really well
matched; and, notwithstanding the unfavourable weather,
it was seen that the fight would be a success.
The great giant, Phelem-ghe-Madone, had to bear the
inconveniences of his advantages; he moved heavily. His
arms were massive as clubs; but his chest was a mass. His
little opponent ran, struck, sprung, gnashed his teeth;
redoubling vigour by quickness, from knowledge of the
science.
On the one side was the primitive blow of the
fist-savage, uncultivated, in a state of ignorance; on the other
side, the civilised blow of the fist. Helmsgail fought as
much with his nerves as with his muscles, and with as much
intention as force. Phelem-ghe-Madone was a kind of
sluggish mauler-somewhat mauled himself, to begin
with. It was art against nature. It was cultivated
ferocity against barbarism.
It was clear that the barbarian would be beaten, but
not very quickly. Hence the interest.
A little man against a big one, and the chances are in
favour of the little one. The cat has the best of it with a
dog. Goliath are always vanquished by Davids.
A hail of exclamations followed the combatants.
``Bravo, Helmsgail! Good! Well done, Highlander!
Now, Phelem!''
And the friends of Helmsgail repeated their benevolent
exhortation: ``Bung up his peepers!''
Helmsgail did better. Rapidly bending down and
back again, with the undulation of a serpent, he struck
Phelem-ghe-Madone in the sternum. The colossus
staggered.
``Foul blow!'' cried Viscount Barnard.
Phelem-ghe-Madone sank down on the knee of his
second, saying: ``I am beginning to get warm.''
Lord Desertum consulted the umpires, and said: ``Five
minutes before time is called.''
Phelem-ghe-Madone was becoming weaker. Kilter
wiped the blood from his face and the sweat from his
body with a flannel, and placed the neck of a bottle to his
mouth. They had come to the eleventh round. Phelem,
besides the scar on his forehead, had his breast disfigured
by blows, his belly swollen, and the fore part of the head
scarified. Helmsgail was untouched.
A kind of tumult arose among the gentlemen.
Lord Barnard repeated, ``Foul blow!''
``Bets void!'' said the Laird of Lamyrbau.
``I claim my stake!'' replied Sir Thomas Colpepper.
And the honourable member for the borough of St. Ives,
Sir Bartholomew Gracedieu, added, ``Give me back my
five hundred guineas, and I will go. Stop the fight.''
Phelem arose, staggering like a drunken man, and said:
``Let us go on fighting, on one condition-that I also
shall have the right to give one foul blow.''
They cried ``Agreed i'' from all parts of the ring.
Helmsgail shrugged his shoulders. Five minutes elapsed,
and they set to again.
The fighting, which was agony to Phelem, was play to
Helmsgail. Such are the triumphs of science.
The little man found means of putting the big one into
chancery-that is to say, Helmsgail suddenly took under
his left arm, which was bent like a steel crescent, the
huge head of Phelem-ghe-Madone, and held it there under
his armpit, the neck bent and twisted, while Helmsgail's
right fist fell again and again like a hammer on a nail,
only from below and striking upward, thus smashing
his opponent's face at his ease. When Phelem, released
at length, lifted his head, he had no longer a face.
That which had been a nose, eyes, and a mouth, non
looked only like a black sponge soaked in blood. He
spat, and on the ground lay four of his teeth.
Then he fell. Kilter received him on his knee.
Helmsgail was hardly touched: he had some
insignificant bruises, and a scratch on his collar bone.
No one was cold now. They laid sixteen and a quarter
to one on Helmsgail.
Harry Carlton cried out:
``It is all over with Phelem-ghe-Madone. I will lay my
peerage of Bella-aqua, and my title of Lord Bellew,
against the Archbishop of Canterbury's old wig, on
Helmsgail.
``Give me your muzzle,'' said Kilter to
Phelem-ghe-Madone. And stuffing the bloody flannel into the bottle,
he washed him all over with gin. The mouth reappeared,
and he opened one eyelid. His temples seemed
fractured.
``One round more, my friend,'' said Kilter; and he
added, ``for the honour of the low town.''
The Welsh and the Irish understand each other, still
Phelem made no sign of having any power of
understanding left.
Phelem arose, supported by Kilter. It was the
twenty-fifth round. From the way in which this Cyclops, for he
had but one eye, placed himself in position, it was evident
that this was the last round, for no one doubted his defeat.
He placed his guard below his chin, with the
awkwardness of a failing man.
Helmsgail, with a skin hardly sweating, cried
out,-``I'll back myself, a thousand to one.''
Helmsgail, raising his arm, struck out; and, what was
strange, both fell. A ghastly chuckle was heard. It was
Phelem-ghe-Madone's expression of delight. While
receiving the terrible blow given him by Helmsgail on the
skull, he had given him a foul blow on the navel.
Helmsgail, lying on his back, rattled in his throat.
The spectators looked at him as he lay on the ground,
and said, ``Paid back!'' All clapped their hands, even
those who had lost. Phelem-ghe-Madone had given foul
blow for foul blow, and had only asserted his right.
They carried Helmsgail ok on a hand-barrow. The
opinion was that he would not recover.
Lord Robartes exclaimed, ``I win twelve hundred
guineas.''
Phelem-ghe-Madone was evidently maimed for life.
As she left, Josiana took the arm of Lord David, an act
which was tolerated among people engaged. She said
to him: ``It is very fine, but-''
``But what?''
``I thought it would have driven away my spleen. It
has not.''
Lord David stopped, looked at Josiana, shut his mouth,
and inflated his cheeks, while he nodded his bead, which
signified attention, and said to the duchess: ``For spleen
there is but one remedy.''
``What is it?''
``Gwynplaine. ''
The duchess asked: ``And who is Gwynplaine?''
NATURE had been prodigal of her kindness to
Gwynplaine. She had bestowed on him a mouth opening
to his ears, ears folding over to his eyes, a shapeless nose
to support the spectacles of the grimace maker, and a face
that no one could look upon without laughing.
We have just said that nature had loaded Gwynplaine
with her gifts. But was it nature? Had she not been
assisted?
Two slits for eyes, a hiatus for a mouth, a snub
protuberance with two holes for nostrils, a flattened face, all
having for the result an appearance of laughter; it is
certain that nature never produces such perfection
single-handed.
But is laughter a synonym of joy?
If, in the presence of this mountebank-for he was
one-the first impression of gayety wore off, and the man
were observed with attention, traces of art were to be
recognised. Such a face could never have been created by
chance, it must have resulted from intention. Such
perfect completeness is not in nature. Man can do nothing
to create beauty, but everything to produce ugliness. A
Hottentot profile can not be changed into a Roman outline,
but out of a Grecian nose you may make a Calmuck's. It
only requires to obliterate the root of the nose, and to
flatten the nostrils. The dog Latin of the Middle Ages
had a reason for its creation of the verb denasare. Had
Gwynplaine when a child been so worthy of attention
that his face had been subjected to transmutation? Why
not? Needed there a greater motive than the
speculation of his future exhibition? According to all
appearance, industrious manipulators of children had worked
upon his face. It seemed evident that a mysterious and
probably occult science, which was to surgery what
alchemy was to chemistry, had chiseled his flesh, evidently
at a very tender age, and manufactured his countenance
with premeditation. That science, clever with the knife,
skilled in obtusions and ligatures, had enlarged the mouth,
cut away the lips, laid bare the gums, distended the ears,
cut the cartilages, displaced the eyelids and the cheeks,
enlarged the zygomatic muscle, pressed the scars and
cicatrices to a level, turned back the skin over the lesions
while the face was thus stretched, from all which resulted
that powerful and profound piece of sculpture, the mask,
Gwynplaine.
Man is not born thus.
However it may have been, the manipulation of
Gwynplaine had succeeded admirably. Gwynplaine was a gift
of Providence to dispel the sadness of man.
Of what providence? Is there a providence of demons
as well as of God? We put the question without
answering it.
Gwynplaine was a mountebank. He showed himself on
the platform. No such effect had ever before been
produced. Hypochondriacs were cured by the sight of him
alone. He was avoided by follies in mourning, because
they were compelled to laugh when they saw him,
without regard to their decent gravity. One day the
executioner came, and Gwynplaine made him laugh. Every one
who saw Gwynplaine held his sides; he spoke, and they
rolled on the ground. He was removed from sadness as
is pole from pole. Spleen at the one; Gwynplaine at the
other.
Thus he rose rapidly in the fair ground and at the cross
roads to the very satisfactory renown of a horrible man.
It was Gwynplaine's laugh which created the laughter
of others, yet he did not laugh himself. His face
laughed; his thoughts did not. The extraordinary face
which chance or a special and weird industry had
fashioned for him laughed alone. Gwynplaine had nothing
to do with it. The outside did not depend on the interior.
The laugh which he had not placed, himself, on his brow,
on his eyelids, on his mouth, he could not remove. It had
been stamped forever on his face. It was automatic, and
the more irresistible because it seemed petrified. No one
could escape from this rictus. Two convulsions of the
face are infectious; laughing and yawning. By virtue of
the mysterious operation to which Gwynplaine had
probably been subjected in his infancy, every part of his face
contributed to that rictus; his whole physiognomy led to
that result, as a wheel centres in the nave. All his
emotions, whatever they might have been, augmented his
strange face of joy, or, to speak more correctly, aggravated
it. Any astonishment which might seize him, any
suffering which he might feel, any anger which might take
possession of him, any pity which might move him, would
only increase this hilarity of his muscles. If he wept, he
laughed; and whatever Gwynplaine was, whatever he
wished to be, whatever he thought, the moment that he
raised his head, the crowd, if crowd there was, had before
them one impersonation: an overwhelming burst of
laughter.
It was like a head of Medusa, but Medusa hilarious.
All feeling or thought in the mind of the spectator was
suddenly put to flight by the unexpected apparition, and
laughter was inevitable. Antique art formerly placed on
the outside of the Greek theatre a joyous brazen face,
called Comedy. It laughed and occasioned laughter, but
remained pensive All parody which borders on folly, all
irony which borders on wisdom, were condensed and
amalgamated in that face. The burden of care, of
disillusion, anxiety, and grief were expressed in its
impassive countenance, and resulted in a lugubrious sum of
mirth. One corner of the mouth was raised, in mockery
of the human race; the other side, in blasphemy of the gods.
Men confronted that model of the ideal sarcasm and
exemplification of the irony which each one possesses within
him; and the crowd, continually renewed round its fixed
laugh, died away with delight before its sepulchral
immobility of mirth.
One might almost have said that Gwynplaine was that
dark, dead mask of ancient comedy, adjusted to the body
of a living man. That infernal head of implacable hilarity
he supported on his neck. What a weight for the
shoulders of a man-an everlasting laugh!
An everlasting laugh!
Let us understand each other; we will explain. The
Manicheans believed the absolute occasionally gives way,
and that God himself sometimes abdicates for a time. So
also of the will. We do not admit that it can ever be
utterly powerless. The whole of existence resembles a
letter modified in the postscript. For Gwynplaine the
postscript was this: by the force of his will, and by
concentrating all his attention, and on condition that no
emotion should come to distract and turn away the fixedness
of his effort, he could manage to suspend the everlasting
rictus of his face, and to throw over it a kind of tragic veil,
and then the spectator laughed no longer; he shuddered.
This exertion Gwynplaine scarcely ever made. It was
a terrible effort, and an insupportable tension. Moreover,
it happened that on the slightest distraction, or the
slightest emotion, the laugh, driven back for a moment, returned
like a tide with an impulse which was irresistible in
proportion to the force of the adverse emotion.
With this exception, Gwynplaine's laugh was
everlasting.
On seeing Gwynplaine, all laughed. When they had
laughed they turned away their heads. Women especially
shrank from him with horror. The man was frightful.
The joyous convulsion of laughter was as a tribute paid;
they submitted to it gladly, but almost mechanically.
Besides, when once the novelty of the laugh had passed
over, Gwynplaine was intolerable for a woman to see, and
impossible to contemplate.
But he was tall, well made, and agile, and no way
deformed excepting in his face.
This led to the presumption that Gwynplaine was rather
a creation of art than a work of nature. Gwynplaine,
beautiful in figure, had probably been beautiful in face.
At his birth he had no doubt resembled other infants.
They had left the body intact, and retouched only the
face.
Gwynplaine had been made to order-at least, that was
probable. They had left him his teeth; teeth are
necessary to a laugh. The death's head retains them. The
operation performed on him must have been frightful.
That he had no remembrance of it was no proof that it
had not taken place. Surgical sculpture of the kind could
never have succeeded except on a very young child, and
consequently on one having little consciousness of what
happened to him, and who might easily take a wound for
a sickness. Besides, we must remember that they had in
those times means of putting patients to sleep, and of
suppressing all suffering; only then it was called magic,
while now it is called anaesthesia.
Besides this face, those who had brought him up had
given him the resources of a gymnast and an athlete.
His articulations, usefully displaced and fashioned to
bending the wrong way, had received the education of a clown,
and could, like the hinges of a door, move backward and
forward. In appropriating him to the profession of
mountebank nothing had been neglected. His hair had
been dyed with ochre once for all; a secret which has
been rediscovered at the present day. Pretty women use
it, and that which was formerly considered ugly is now
considered an embellishment. Gwynplaine had yellow
hair. His hair having probably been dyed with some
corrosive preparation had left it woolly and rough to the
touch. Its yellow bristles, rather a mane than a head of
hair, covered and concealed a lofty brow, evidently made
to contain thought. - The operation, whatever it had been,
which had deprived his features of harmony, and put all
their flesh into disorder, had had no effect on the bony
structure of his head. The facial angle was powerful and
surprisingly grand. Behind his laugh there was a soul,
dreaming as all our souls dream.
However, his laugh was to Gwynplaine quite a talent.
He could do nothing with it, so he turned it to account.
By means of it he gained his living.
Gwynplaine, as you have doubtless already guessed, was
the child abandoned one winter evening on the coast of
Portland, and received into a poor caravan at Weymouth.
THAT boy was at this time a man. Fifteen years had
elapsed. It was in 1705. Gwynplaine was in his
twenty-fifth year.
Ursus had kept the two children with him. They were
a group of wanderers. Ursus and Homo had aged.
Ursus become quite bald. The wolf was growing
gray. The age of wolves is not ascertained like that of
dogs. According to Molière, there are wolves which live
to eighty, among others the little koupara and the rank
wolf, the Canis nubilus of Say.
The little girl found on the dead woman was now a tall
creature of sixteen, with brown hair, slight, fragile, almost
trembling from delicacy, and almost inspiring fear lest
she should break; admirably beautiful, her eyes full of
light, yet blind. That fatal winter night which threw
down the beggar woman and her infant in the snow had
struck a double blow. It had killed the mother and
blinded the child. Gutta serene had forever paralysed
the eyes of the girl, now become woman in her turn. On
her face, through which the light of day never passed, the
depressed corners of the mouth indicated the bitterness
of the privation. Her eyes, large and clear, had a strange
quality extinguished forever to her, to others they were
brilliant. They were mysterious torches lighting only
the outside. They gave light, but possessed it not. These
sightless eyes were resplendent. A captive of shadow,
she lighted up the dull place she inhabited. From the
depth of her incurable darkness, from behind the black
wall called blindness, she flung her rays. She saw not
the sun without, but her soul was perceptible from within.
In her dead look there was a celestial earnestness.
She was the night, and from the irremediable darkness
with which she was amalgamated she came out a star.
Ursus, with his mania for Latin names, had christened
her Dea. He had taken his wolf into consultation. He
had said to him, ``You represent man, I represent the
beasts. We are of the lower world, this little one shall
represent the world on high. Such feebleness is
all-powerful. In this manner the universe shall be complete
in our hut in its three orders-human, animal, and
Divine.'' The wolf made no objection. Therefore the
foundling was called Dea.
As to Gwynplaine, Ursus had not the trouble of
inventing a name for him. The morning of the day on which
he had realised the disfigurement of the little boy and
the blindness of the infant he had asked him, ``Boy, what
is your name?'' and the boy had answered, ``They call
me Gwynplaine.'' ``Be Gwynplaine then,'' said Ursus.
Dea assisted Gwynplaine in his performances. If
human misery could be summed up, it might have been
summed up in Gwynplaine and Dea. Each seemed born
in a compartment of the sepulchre; Gwynplaine in the
horrible, Dea in the darkness. Their existences were
shadowed by two different kinds of darkness, taken from
the two formidable sides of night. Dea had that shadow
in her, Gwynplaine had it on him. There was a phantom
in Dea, a spectre in Gwynplaine. Dea was sunk in the
mournful, Gwynplaine in something worse. There was
for Gwynplaine, who could see, a heartrending possibility
that existed not for Dea, who was blind; he could
compare himself with other men. Now, in a situation such as
that of Gwynplaine's, admitting that he should seek to
examine it, to compare himself with others was to understand
himself no more. To have, like Dea, empty sight from
which the world is absent, is a supreme distress, yet less
than to be an enigma to one's self; to feel that something is
wanting here as well, and that something, one's self; to see
the universe and not to see one's self. Dea had a veil over
her, the night; Gwynplaine a mask, his face.
Inexpressible fact, it was by his own flesh that Gwynplaine was
masked! What his visage had been, he knew not. His
face had vanished. They had affixed to him a false self.
He had for a face, a disappearance. His head lived, his
face was dead. He never remembered to have seen it.
Mankind was for Gwynplaine, as for Dea, an exterior
fact. It was far off. She was alone, he was alone. The
isolation of Dea was funereal, she saw nothing; that of
Gwynplaine sinister, he saw all things For Dea creation
never passed the bounds of touch and hearing; reality
was bounded, limited, short, immediately lost. Nothing
was infinite to her darkness. For Gwynplaine to live
was to have the crowd forever before him and outside
him. Dea was the proscribed from light, Gwynplaine the
banned of life. They were beyond the pale of hope, and
had reached the depth of possible calamity; they had
sunk into it, both of them. An observer who had watched
them would have felt his reverie melt into
immeasurable pity. What must they not have suffered! The
decree of misfortune weighed visibly on these human
creatures, and never had fate encompassed two beings
who had done nothing to deserve it, and more clearly
turned destiny into torture, and life into hell.
They were in a Paradise.
They were in love.
Gwynplaine adored Dea. Dea idolised Gwynplaine.
``How beautiful you are!'' she would say to him.
ONLY one woman on earth saw Gwynplaine. It was
the blind girl. She had learned what Gwynplaine had
done for her from Ursus, to whom he had related his
rough journey from Portland to Weymouth, and the
many sufferings which he had endured when deserted by
the gang. She knew that when an infant dying upon
her dead mother, sucking a corpse, a being scarcely bigger
than herself had taken her up; that this being, exiled,
and, as it were, buried under the refusal of the universe
to aid him, had heard her cry; that all the world being
deaf to him, he had not been deaf to her; that the child,
alone, weak, cast of
II II
IV THE LEADER OF FASHIONS
V QUEEN ANNE
I I
II II
III III
VI BARKILPHEDRO
VII BARKILPHEDRO GNAWS HIS WAY
VIII INFERI
IX HATE IS AS STRONG AS LOVE
X THE FLAME WHICH WOULD BE SEEN IF MAN WERE TRANSPARENT
XI BARKILPHEDRO IN AMBUSCADE
XII SCOTLAND, IRELAND, AND ENGLAND
BOOK 7
GWYNPLAINE AND DEA
I WHEREIN WE SEE THE FACE OF HIM OF WHOM WE HAVE
HITHERTO SEEN ONLY THE ACTS
II DEA
III ``OCULOS NON HABET, ET VIDET''