STRAY LEAVES FROM A PASSING LIFE.
CHAPTER II.
A DINNER AT THE GRANGE—A PAIR OF OWLS.
As we passed up the gravel walk of the Grange a face was trying its prettiest to look scoldingly out of the window, but could not succeed. When the eyes lighted upon my companion, face and eyes together disappeared. It was a face that I had seen grow under my eyes, but it had never occurred to me hitherto that it had grown so beautiful. Could that tall young lady, who did the duties of mistress of the Grange so demurely, be the little fairy whom only yesterday I used to toss upon my shoulder and carry out into the barnyard to see the fowls, one hand twined around my neck, and the other waving her magic wand with the action of a little queen—the same magic wand that I had spent a whole hour and a half—a boy’s long hour and a half—in peeling and notching with my broken penknife, engraving thereon the cabalistic characters “F. N.,” which, as all the world was supposed to know, signified “Fairy Nell”? And that was “Fairy” who had just disappeared from the honeysuckles. Faith! a far more dangerous fairy than when I was her war-horse and she my imperious queen.
I introduced my companion as an old school-fellow of mine to my father and sister. So fine-looking a young man could not fail to impress my father favorably, who, notwithstanding his seclusion, had a keen eye for persons and appearances. How so fine-looking a young man impressed my sister I cannot say, for it is not given to me to read ladies’ hearts. The dinner was passing pleasantly enough, when one of those odd revulsions of feeling that come to one at times in the most inopportune situations came over me. I am peculiarly subject to fits of this nature, and only time and years have enabled me to overcome them to any extent. By the grave of a friend who was dear to me, and in presence of his weeping relatives, some odd recollection has risen up as it were out of the freshly-dug grave, and grinned at me over the corpse’s head, till I hardly knew whether the tears in my eyes were brought there by laughter or by grief. Just on the attainment of some success, for which I had striven for months or years, may be, and to which I had devoted every energy that was in me, while the flush of it was fresh on my cheek and in my heart, and the congratulations of friends pouring in on me, has come a drear feeling like a winter wind across my summer garden to blast the roses and wither the dew-laden buds just opening to the light. Why this is so I cannot explain; that it is so I know. It is a mockery of human nature, and falls on the harmony of the soul like that terrible “ha! ha!” of the fiend who stands by all the while when poor Faust and innocent Marguerite are opening their hearts to each other.
“And so, Mr. Goodal, you are an old friend of Roger’s? He has told me about most of his friends. It is strange he never mentioned your name before.”
“It is strange,” I broke in hurriedly. “Kenneth is the oldest of all, too. I found him first in the thirteenth century. He bears his years well, does he not, Fairy?”
My father and Nellie both looked perplexed. Kenneth laughed.
“What in the world are you talking about, Roger?” asked my father in amazement.
“Where do you think I found him? Burrowing at the tomb of the Herberts, as though he were anxious to get inside and pass an evening with them.”
“And judging the past by the present, a very agreeable evening I should have spent,” said Kenneth gayly.
“Well, sir, I will not deny that you would have found excellent company,” responded my father, pleased at the compliment. “The Herberts. ..” he began.
“For heaven’s sake, sir, let them rest in their grave. I have already surfeited Mr. Goodal with the history of the Herberts.” Kenneth was about to interpose, but I went on: “A strangely-mixed assembly the Herberts would make in the other world; granting that there is another world, and that the members of our family condescend to know each other there.”
“Roger!” said Nellie in a warning tone, while my father reddened and shifted uneasily in his chair.
“If there be another world and the Herberts are there, it is impossible that they can live together en famille. It can scarcely be even a bowing acquaintance,” I added, feeling all the while that I was as rude and undutiful as though I had risen from my chair and dealt my father a blow in the face. He remembered, as I did not, what was due to our guest, and said coldly:
“Roger, don’t you think that you might advantageously change the subject? Mr. Goodal, I am very far behind the age, and not equal to what I suppose is the prevailing tone among clever young gentlemen of the present day. I am very old fogy, very conservative. Try that sherry.”
The quiet severity of his tone cut me to the quick. The spirit of mischief must have been very near my elbow at that moment. Instead of taking my lesson in good part, I felt like a whipped school-boy, and, regardless of poor Nellie’s pale face and Kenneth’s silence, went on resolutely:
“Well, sir, my ancestors are to me a most interesting topic of conversation, and I take it that a Herbert only shows a proper regard for his own flesh and blood if he inquire after their eternal no less than their temporal welfare. What has become of all the Herberts, I should dearly like to know?”
“I know, sir, what will become of one of them, if he continues his silly and unmannerly cynicism,” said my father, now fairly aroused. He was very easily aroused, and I wonder that he restrained himself so long. “I cannot imagine, Mr. Goodal, what possesses the young men of the present day, or what they are coming to. Irreverence for the dead, irreverence for the living, irreverence for all that is worthy of reverence, seems to stamp their character. I trust, sir, indeed I believe, that you have better feelings than to think that life and death, here and hereafter, are fit subjects for a boy’s sneer. I am sure that you have that respect for church and state and—and things established that is becoming a gentleman. I can only regret that my son is resolved on going as fast as he can to—to—” He glanced at Nellie, and remained silent.
“I know where you would say, sir; and in the event of my happy arrival there, I shall beyond doubt meet a large section of the Herberts who have gone before me—that is, if church and things established are to be believed. When one comes to think of it, what an appalling number of Herberts must have gone to the devil!”
“Nellie, my girl, you had better retire, since your brother forgets how to conduct himself in the presence of ladies and gentlemen.”
But Nellie sat still with scared face, and, though by this time my heart ached, I could not help continuing:
“But, father, what are we to believe, or do we believe anything? Up to a certain period the Herberts were what their present head—whom heaven long preserve!—would call rank Papists. Old Sir Roger, whose epitaph I found Mr. Goodal endeavoring to decipher this afternoon, was a Crusader, a soldier of the cross which, in our enlightenment and hatred of idolatry, we have torn down from the altar where he worshipped, and overturned that altar itself. Was it for love of church and things established, as we understand them, that he sailed away to the Holy Land, and in his pious zeal knocked the life out of many an innocent painim? Was good Abbot Herbert, whose monumental brass in the chancel of S. Wilfrid’s presents him kneeling and adoring before the chalice that he verily believed to hold the blood of Christ, a worshipper of the same God and a holder of the same faith as my uncle, Archdeacon Herbert, who denies and abhors the doctrine of Transubstantiation, although his two daughters, who are of the highest High-Church Anglicans, devoutly believe in something approaching it, and, to prove their faith, have enrolled themselves both in the Confraternity of the Cope, whose recent discovery has set Parliament and all the bench of bishops abuzz? Is it all a humbug all the way down, or were the stout, Crusading, Catholic Herberts real and right, while we are wrong and a religious sham? Does the Reformation mark us off into white sheep and black sheep, consigning them to hell and us to heaven? If not, why were they not Protestants, and why are we not Catholics, or why are we all not unbelievers? Can the same heaven hold all alike—those who adored and adore the Sacrament as God, and those who pronounce adoration of the Sacrament idolatry and an abomination?”
My father’s only reply to this lengthy and irresistible burst of eloquent reasoning was to ask Nellie, who had sat stone-still, and whose eyes were distended in mingled horror and wonder, for a cup of coffee. My long harangue seemed to have a soothing effect upon my nerves. I looked at Goodal, who was looking at his spoon. I felt so sorry that I could have wished all my words unsaid.
“My dear father, and my dear Kenneth, and you too, Nellie, pardon me. I have been unmannerly, grossly so. I brought you here, Kenneth, to spend a pleasant evening, and help us to spend one, and some evil genius—a daimon that I carry about with me, and cannot always whip into good behavior—has had possession of me for the last half-hour. It was he that spoke in me, and not my father’s son, who, were he true to the lessons and example of his parent, would as soon think of committing suicide as a breach of hospitality or good manners. Now, as you are antiquarians, I leave you a little to compare notes, while I take Fairy out to trip upon the green, and console her for my passing heresy with orthodoxy and Tupper, who, I need not assure you, is her favorite poet, as he is of all true English country damsels. There is the moon beginning to rise; and there is a certain melting, a certain watery, quality about Tupper admirably adapted to moonlight.”
The rest of the evening passed more pleasantly. After a little we all went out on the lawn, and sat there together. The moonlight nights of the English summer are very lovely. That night was as a thousand such, yet it seemed to me that I had never felt the solemn beauty of nature so deeply or so sensibly before. S. Wilfrid’s shone out high and gray and solemn in the moon. Through the yew-trees of the priory down below gleamed the white tombstones of the churchyard. A streak of silver quivering through the land marked the wandering course of the Leigh. And high up among the beeches and the elms sat we, the odors of the afternoon still lingering on the air, the melody of a nightingale near by wooing the heart of the night with its mystic notes, and the moonlight shimmering on drowsy trees and slumbering foliage that not a breath in all the wide air stirred.
“There is a soft quiet in our English nights, a kind of home feeling about them, that makes them very lovable, and that I have experienced nowhere else,” said Kenneth.
“Oh! I am so glad to hear you say that, Mr. Goodal.”
“May I ask why, Miss Herbert?”
“Well, I hardly know. Because, I suppose, I am so very English.”
“So is Tupper, and Fairy swears by Tupper. At least she would, if she swore at all,” remarked her brother, whose hair was pulled for his pains.
“Were you ever abroad, Miss Herbert?”
“Never; papa wished to take me often, but I refused, because I suppose again I am so very English.”
“Too English to face sea-sickness,” said her brother.
“I believe the fault is mine, Mr. Goodal,” said her father. “You see the gout never leaves me for long together. I am liable at any time to an attack; and gout is a bad companion on foreign travel. It is bad enough at home, as Nellie finds, who insists on being my only nurse; and I am so selfish that I have not the heart to let her go, and I believe she has hardly the heart to leave me.”
“Oh! I don’t wish to go. Cousin Edith goes every year, and we have such battles when she comes back. She cannot endure this climate, she cannot endure the people, she cannot endure the fashions, the language is too harsh and grating for her ear, the cooking is barbarous—every thing is bad. Now, I would rather stay at home and be happy in my ignorance than learn such lessons as that,” said honest Nellie.
“You would never learn such lessons.”
“Don’t you think so? But tell us now, Mr. Goodal, do not you, who have seen so much, find England very dull?”
“Excessively. That is one of its chief beauties. Dulness is one of our national privileges; and Roger here will tell you we pride ourselves on it.”
“Kenneth would say that dulness is only another word for what you would call our beautiful home-life,” said the gentleman appealed to.
“Dulness indeed! I don’t find it dull,” broke in Nellie, bridling up.
“No, the dairy and the kitchen; the dinner and tea; the Priory on a Sunday; the shopping excursions into Leighstone, where there is nothing to buy; the garden and the vinery; the visits to Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Knowles; to Widow Wickham, who is blind; to Mrs. Staynes, who is deaf, and whose husband ran away from her because, as he said, he feared that he would rupture a blood-vessel in trying to talk to her; the parish school and the charity hospital, make the life of a well-behaved young English lady quite a round of excitement. There are such things, too, as riding to hounds, and a ball once in a while, and croquet parties, and picnics, and the Eleusinian mysteries of the tea-table. Who shall say that, with all these opportunities for wild dissipation, English country life is dull?”
“Roger wearies of Leighstone, you perceive,” said my father. “Well, I was restless once myself; but the gout laid hold of me early in life, and it has kept its hold.”
“Now, Mr. Goodal, in all your wanderings, tell me where you have seen anything so delightful as this? Have you seen a ruin more venerable than S. Wilfrid’s, nodding to sleep like a gray old monk on the top of the hill there? Every stone of it has a history; some of them gay, many of them grave. Look at the Priory nestling down below—history again. See how gently the Leigh wanders away through the country. Every cottage and farm on its banks I know, and those in them. Could you find a sweeter perfume in all the world than steals up from my own garden here, where all the flowers are mine, and I sometimes think half know me? All around is beauty and peace, and has been so ever since I was a child. Why, then, should I wish to wander?”
Something more liquid even than their light glistened in Fairy’s eyes, as she turned them on Kenneth at the close. He seemed startled at her sudden outburst, and, after a moment, said almost gravely:
“You are right, Miss Herbert. The beauty that we do not know we may admire, but hardly love. It is like a painting that we glance at, and pass on to see something else. There is no sense of ownership about it. I have wandered, with a crippled friend by my side, through art galleries where all that was beautiful in nature and art was drawn up in a way to fascinate the eye and delight the senses. Yet my crippled friend never suffered by contrast; never felt his deformity there. Knowledge, association, friendship, love—these are the great beautifiers. The little that we can really call our own is dearer to us than all the world—is our world, in fact. An Italian sunset steals and enwraps the senses into, as it were, a third heaven. A London fog is one of the most hideous things in this world; yet a genuine Londoner finds something in his native fog dear to him as the sunset to the Italian, and I confess to the barbarism myself. On our arrival the other day we were greeted by a yellow, dense, smoke-colored fog, such as London alone can produce. It was more than a year since I had seen one, and I enjoyed it. I breathed freely again, for I was at home. You will understand, then, how I appreciate your enthusiasm about Leighstone; and if Leighstone had many like Miss Herbert, I can well understand why its people should be content to stay at home.”
Nellie laughed. “I am afraid, Mr. Goodal, that you have brought back something more than your taste for fogs and your homely Saxon from Italy.”
“Yes, a more rooted love for my own land, a truer appreciation of my countrymen, and more ardent admiration of my fair countrywomen.”
“Ah! now you are talking Italian. But, honestly, which country do you find the most interesting of all you have seen?”
“My own, Miss Herbert.”
“The nation of shop-keepers!” ejaculated I.
“Of Magna Charta,” interposed my father, who, ready enough to condemn his age and his country himself, was Englishman enough to allow no other person to do so with impunity.
“Of hearth and home, of cheerful firesides and family circles,” added Nellie.
“Of work-houses and treadmills,” I growled.
“Of law and order, of civil and religious liberty,” corrected my father.
“Which are of very recent introduction and very insecure tenure,” added I.
“They formed the corner-stone of the great charter on which our English state is built—a charter that has become our glory and the world’s envy.”
“To be broken into and rifled within a century; to be set under the foot of a Henry VIII. and pinned to the petticoat of an Elizabeth; to be mocked at in the death of a Mary, Queen of Scots, and a Charles; to be thrown out of window by a Cromwell. Our charters and our liberties! Oh! we are a thrifty race. We can pocket them all when it suits our convenience, and flaunt them to the world on exhibition-days. Our charter did not save young Raymond Herbert his neck for sticking to his faith during the Reformation, though I believe that same charter provided above all things that the church of God should be free; and a Chief-Justice Herbert sat on the bench and pronounced sentence on the boy, not daring to wag a finger in defence of his own flesh and blood. Of course the Catholic Church was not the church of God, for so the queen’s majesty decreed; and to Chief-Justice Herbert we owe these lands, such of them as were saved. Great heaven! we talk of nobility—English nobility; the proudest race under the sun. The proudest race under the sun, who would scorn to kiss the Pope’s slipper, grovelled in the earth, one and all of them, under the heel of an Elizabeth, and the other day trembled at the frown of a George the Fourth!”
I need not dwell on the fact that in those days I had a particular fondness for the sound of my own voice. I gloried in what seemed to me startling paradoxes, and flashes of wisdom that loosened bolts and rivets of prejudice, shattered massive edifices of falsehood, undermined in a twinkling social and moral weaknesses, which, of course, had waited in snug security all these long years for my coming to expose them to the scorn of a wondering world. What a hero I was, what a trenchant manner I had of putting things, what a keen intellect lay concealed under that calm exterior, and what a deep debt the world would have owed me had it only listened in time to my Cassandra warnings, it will be quite unnecessary for me to point out.
“I suppose I ought to be very much ashamed of myself,” said Kenneth good-humoredly; “but I still confess that I find my own country the most interesting of any that I have seen. It may be that the very variety, the strange contradictions in our national life and character, noticed by our radical here, are in themselves no small cause for that interest. If we have had a Henry VIII., we have had an Alfred and an Edward; if we have had an Elizabeth, we have also had a Maud; if our nobles cowered before a woman, they faced a man at Runnymede, and at their head were English churchmen, albeit not English churchmen of the stamp of to-day. If we broke through our charter, let us at least take the merit of having restored something of it, although it is somewhat mortifying to find that centuries of wandering and of history and discovery only land us at our old starting-point.”
“I give in. Bah! we are spoiling the night with history, while all nature is smiling at us in her beautiful calm.”
“Ah! you have driven away the nightingale; it sings no more,” said Fairy.
“Surely some one can console us for its absence,” said Kenneth, glancing at Nellie.
“I do not understand Italian,” she laughed back.
“Your denial is a confession of guilt. I heard Roger call you Fairy. There be good fairies and bad. You would not be placed among the bad?”
“Why not?”
“Because all the bad fairies are old.”
“And ride on broomsticks,” added I.
Unlike her brother, who had not a note of music in him, Fairy had a beautiful voice, which had had the additional advantage of a very careful cultivation. She sang us a simple old ballad that touched our hearts; and when that was done, we insisted on another. Then the very trees seemed to listen, the flowers to open as to a new sunlight, and shed their sweetness in sympathy, as she sang one of those ballads of sighs and tears, hope and despair and sorrowful lamentation, caught from the heart of a nation whose feelings have been stirred to the depths to give forth all that was in them in the beautiful music that their poet has wedded to words. The ballad was “The Last Rose of Summer,” and as the notes died away the foliage seemed to move and murmur with applause, while after a pause the nightingale trilled out again its wonderful song in rivalry. There was silence for a short time, which was broken by Kenneth saying:
“I must break up Fairy-land, and go back to the Black Bull.”
But of this we would not hear. It was agreed that Kenneth should take up his quarters with us. The conversation outlasted our usual hours at Leighstone. Kenneth sustained the burden; and with a wonderful grace and charm he did so. He had read as well as travelled, and more deeply and extensively than is common with men of his years; for his conversation was full of that easy and delightful illustration that only a student whose sharp angles have been worn off by contact with the world outside his study can command and gracefully use, leaving the gem of knowledge that a man possesses, be it small or great, perfect in its setting. Much of what he related was relieved by some shrewd and happy remark of his own that showed him a close observer, while a genial good-nature and tendency to take the best possible view of things diffused itself through all. It was late when my father said:
“Mr. Goodal, you have tempted me into inviting an attack of my old enemy by sitting here so long. There is no necessity for your going to-morrow, is there, since you are simply on a walking tour? Roger is a great rambler, and there are many pretty spots about Leighstone, many an old ruin that will repay a visit. Indeed, ruins are the most interesting objects of these days. My walking days, I fear, are over. A visitor is a Godsend to us down here, and, though you ramblers soon tire of one spot, there is more in Leighstone than can be well seen in a day.”
Thus pressed, he consented, and our little party broke up.
“Are you an owl!” I asked Kenneth, as my father and sister retired.
“Somewhat,” he replied, smiling.
“Then come to my room, and you shall give your to-whoo to my to-whit. I was born an owl, having been introduced into this world, I am informed, in the small hours; and the habits of the species cling to me. Take that easy-chair and try this cigar. These slippers will ease your feet. Though not a drinking man, properly so called, I confess to a liking for the juice of the grape. The fondness for it is still strong in the sluggish blood of the Norse, and I cannot help my blood. Therefore, at an hour like this, a night-cap will not hurt us. Of what color shall it be? Of the deep claret tint of Bordeaux, the dark-red hue of Burgundy, or the golden amber of the generous Spaniard? Though, as I tell you, not a drinking man, I think a good cigar and a little wine vastly improves the moonlight, provided the quantity be not such as to obscure the vision of eye or brain. That is not exactly a theory of my own. It was constantly and deeply impressed upon me by a very reverend friend of mine, with whom I read for a year. Indeed I fear his faith in port was deeper than his faith in the Pentateuch. The drunkard is to me the lowest of animals, ever has been, and ever will be. Were the world ruled—as it is scarcely likely to be just yet—by my suggestions, the fate of the Duke of Clarence should be the doom of every drunkard, with only this difference; that each one be drowned in his own favorite liquor, soaked there till he dissolved, and the contents ladled out and poured down the throat of whoever, by any accident, mistook the gutter for his bed. You will pardon my air; in my own room I am supreme lord and master. Kenneth, my boy, I like you. I feel as though I had known you all my life. That must have been the reason for my unruly, ungracious, and unmannerly explosion down-stairs at dinner. I have an uncontrollable habit of breaking out in that style sometimes, and the effect on my father, whom I need not tell you I love and revere above all men living, is what you see.”
He smoked in silence a few seconds, and then, turning on me, suddenly asked:
“Where did you learn your theology?”
The question was the last in the world that would have presented itself to me, and was a little startling, but put in too earnest a manner for a sneer, and too kindly to give offence. I answered blandly that I was guiltless of laying claim to any special theology.
“Well, your opinions, then—the faith, the reasons, on which you ground your life and views of life. Your conversation at times drifts into a certain tone that makes me ask. Where or what have you studied?”
“Nowhere; nothing; everywhere; everything; everybody; I read whatever I come across. And as for theology—for my theology, such as it is—I suppose I am chiefly indebted to that remarkably clever organ of opinion known as the Journal of the Age.”
A few whiffs in silence, and then he said:
“I thought so.”
“What did you think?”
“That you were a reader of the Journal of the Age. Most youngsters who read anything above a sporting journal or a sensational novel are. I have been a student of it myself—a very close student. I knew the editor well. We were at one time bosom friends. He took me in training, and I recognized the symptoms in you at once.”
“How so?”
“The Journal of the Age—and it has numerous admirers and imitators—is, in these days, the ablest organ of a great and almost universal worship of an awful trinity that has existed since man was first created; and the name of that awful trinity is—the devil, the world, and the flesh.”
I stared at him in silent astonishment. All the gayety of his manner, all its softness, had gone, and he seemed in deadly earnest, as he went on:
“This worship is not paraded in its grossest form. Not at all. It is graced by all that wit can give and undisciplined intellect devise. It has a brilliant sneer for Faith, a scornful smile for Hope, and a chill politeness for Charity. I revelled in it for a time. Heaven forgive me! I was happy enough to escape.”
“With what result?”
“Briefly with this: with the conviction that man did not make this world; that he did not make himself, or send himself into it; that consequently he was not and could never be absolutely his own master; that he was sent in and called out by Another, by a Greater than he, by a Creator, by a God. I became and am a Catholic, to find that what for a time I had blindly worshipped were the three enemies against whom I was warned to fight all the days of my life.”
“And the Journal of the Age?”
“The editor cut me as soon as he found I believed in God in preference to himself. He is the fiercest opponent of Papal Infallibility with whom I ever had the honor of acquaintance.”
“I cannot say that your words and the manner in which you speak them do not impress me. Still, it never occurred to me that so insignificant a being as Roger Herbert was worthy the combined attack of the three formidable adversaries you have named. What have the devil, the world, and the flesh to do with me?”
“Yes, there is the difficulty, not only with Roger Herbert, but with everybody else. It does seem strange that influences so powerful and mysterious should be for ever ranged against such wretched little beings as we are, whom a toothache tortures and a fever kills. Yet surely man’s life on earth is not all fever and its prevention, toothache and its cure, or a course of eating, doctoring, and tailoring. If we believe at all in a life that can never end, in a soul, surely that is something worth thought and care. An eternal life that must range itself on one side or the other seems worthy of a struggle between the powers of good and evil, if good and evil there be. Nay, man is bound of his own right, of his own free will, of his very existence, to choose between one and the other, to be good or be bad, and not stumble on listlessly as a thing of chance, tossed at will from one to the other. We do not sufficiently realize the greatest of our obligations. We should feel disgraced if we did not pay our tailor or our wine-merchant; but such a thought never presents itself to us when the question concerns God or the devil, or that part of us that does not wear clothes and does not drink wine.”
He had risen while he was speaking, and spoke with an energy and earnestness I had never yet witnessed in any man. Whether right or wrong, his view of things towered so high above my own blurred and crooked vision that I felt myself crouch and grow small before him. The watch-tower of his faith planted him high up among the stars of heaven, while I groped and struggled far away down in the darkness. Oh! if I could only climb up there and stand with him, and see the world and all things in it from that divine and serene height, instead of impiously endeavoring to build up my own and others’ little Babel that was to reach the skies and enable us to behold God. But conversions are not wrought by a few sentences nor by the mere emotions of the heart; not by Truth itself, which is for ever speaking, for ever standing before and confronting us, its mark upon its forehead, yet we pass it blindly by; for has it not been said that “having eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not”?
“Kenneth,” I said, stretching out my hand, which he clasped in both of his, “the subject which has been called up I feel to be far too solemn to be dismissed with the sneer and scoff that have grown into my nature. Indeed, I always so regarded it secretly; but perhaps the foolish manner in which I have hitherto treated it was owing somewhat to the foolish people with whom I have had to deal from my boyhood. They give their reasons about this, that, and the other as parrots repeat their lesson, with interjectory shrieks and occasional ruffling of the poll, all after the same pattern. You seem to me to be in earnest; but, if you please, we will say no more about it—at least now.”
“As you please,” he replied. “Here I am at the end of my cigar. So good-night, my dear boy. Well, you have had my to-whit to your to-whoo.”
And so a strange day ended. I sat thinking some time over our conversation. Kenneth’s observations opened quite a new train of thought. It had never occurred to me before that life was a great battle-field, and that all men were, as it were, ranged under two standards, under the folds of which they were compelled to fight. Everything had come to me in its place. A man might have his private opinions on men and things, as he collects a private museum for his own amusement; but in the main one lived and died, acted and thought, passed through and out of life, in much the same manner as his neighbor, not inquiring and not being inquired into too closely. Life was made for us, and we lived it much in the same way as we learned our alphabet, we never knew well how, or took our medicine, in the regulation doses. Sometimes we were a little rebellious, and suffered accordingly; that was all. Excess on any side was a bore to everybody else. It was very easy, and on the whole not unpleasant. We nursed our special crotchets, we read our newspapers, we watched our children at their gambols, we chatted carelessly away out on the bosom of the broad stream along which we were being borne so surely and swiftly into the universal goal. Why should we scan the sky and search beneath the silent waters, trembling at storms to come and treacherous whirlpools, hidden sand-banks, and cruel rocks on which many a brave bark had gone down? Chart and compass were for others; a pleasant sail only for us. There was a Captain up aloft somewhere; it was his duty and not ours to see that all was right and taut—ours to glide along in slumbrous ease, between eternal banks of regions unexplored; to feast our eyes on fair scenes, and lap our senses in musical repose. That was the true life. Sunken rocks, passing storms, mutinies among the crew, bursting of engines—what were such things to us? Had we not paid our fares and made our provision for the voyage, and was not the Captain bound to land us safely at our journey’s end, if he valued his position and reputation?
The devil, the world, and the flesh! What nightmare summoned these up, and set them glaring horribly into the eyes of a peaceful British subject? What had the devil to do with me or I with the devil? What were the world and the flesh? Take my father, now; what had they to do with him? Or Fairy? Why, her life was as pure as that sky that smiled down upon her with all its starry eyes. Let me see; there were others, however, who afforded better subjects for investigation. Whenever you want to find out anything disagreeable, call on your friends and neighbors. There was the Abbot Jones, now; let us weigh him in the triple scale. How fared the devil, the world, and the flesh with the Abbot Jones? He was, as I said to Kenneth, a very genial man; he had lived a good life, married into an excellent family, paid his bills, had a choice library, a good table, was an excellent judge of cattle, and a preacher whom everybody praised. Abbot Jones was faultless! There was not a flaw to be found in him from the tip of his highly-polished toe to the top of his highly-polished head. He had a goodly income, but he used it cautiously; for Clara and Alice were now grown up, and were scarcely girls to waste their lives in a nunnery, like my cousins, the daughters of Archdeacon Herbert, who adored all that was sweetly mortifying and secluded, yet, by one of those odd contradictions in female and human nature generally, never missed a fashion or a ball. Yes, Abbot Jones was a good and exemplary man. To be sure, he did not walk barefoot or sandal-shod, not alone among the highways, where men could see and admire, but into the byways of life, down among the alleys of the poor, where clustered disease, drunkenness, despair, death; where life is but one long sorrow. But then for what purpose did he pay a curate, unless to do just this kind of dirty, apostolic work, while the abbot devoted himself to the cares of his family, the publication of an occasional pamphlet, and that pleasant drawing-room religion that finds its perfection in good dinners, sage maxims, and cautious deportment? If the curate neglected his duty, that was clearly the curate’s fault, and not the abbot’s. If the abbot were clothed, not exactly in purple, but in the very best of broadcloth, and fasted only by the doctor’s orders, prayed not too severely, fared sumptuously every day of his life, he paid for every inch of cloth, every ounce of meat, every drop of that port for which his table was famous; for he still clung to the clerical taste for a wine that at one time assumed a semi-ecclesiastical character, and certain crumbs from his table went now and then to a stray Lazarus. Yes, he was a faultless man, as the world went. He did not profess to be consumed with the zeal for souls. His life did not aim at being an apostolic one. He had simply adopted a profitable and not unpleasant profession. If a S. Paul had come, straggling, footsore, and weary, into Leighstone, and begun preaching to the people and attacking shepherds who guarded not their fold, but quietly napped and sipped their port, while the wolves of irreligion, of vice and misery in every form, entered in and rent the flock from corner to corner, the abbot would very probably have had S. Paul arrested for a seditious vagrant and a disturber of the public peace.
Take my uncle, the archdeacon; what thought he of the world, the flesh, and the devil? As for the last-named enemy of the human race, he did not believe in him. A personal devil was to him simply a bogy wherewith to frighten children. It was the outgrowth of mediæval superstition, a Christianized version of a pagan fable. The devil was a gay subject with Archdeacon Herbert, who was the wittiest and courtliest of churchmen. His mission was up among the gods of this world; his confessional ladies’ boudoirs, his penance an epigram, his absolution the acceptance of an invitation to dinner. He breathed in a perfumed atmosphere; his educated ear loved the rustle of silks; he saw no heaven to equal a coach-and-four in Rotten Row during the season. It was in every way fitting that such a man should sooner or later be a bishop of the Church Established. He was an ornament to his class—a man who could represent it in society as well as in the pulpit, whose presence distilled dignity and perfume, and whose views were what are called large and liberal—that is to say, no “views” at all. What the three enemies had to do with my uncle I could not see. I could only see that he would scarcely have been chosen as one of The Twelve; but then who would be chosen as one of The Twelve in these days?
I went to the window and looked out. The moon was going down behind S. Wilfrid’s, and Leighstone was buried in gloomy shadow. Down there below me in the darkness throbbed thousands of hearts resting a little in peaceful slumber till the morning came to wake them again to the toil and the struggle, the pleasure and the pain, the good and the evil, of another day. The good and the evil. Was there no good and evil waiting down there by the bedside of every one, to face them in the morning, and not leave them until they returned to that bedside at night? Was there a great angel somewhere up above in that solemn, silent, ever-watchful heaven, with an open scroll, writing down in awful letters the good and the bad, the white and the black, in the life of each one of us? Were we worth this care, weak little mortals, human machines, that we were? What should our good or our evil count against the great Spirit, whom we are told lives up above there in the passionless calm of a fixed eternity? Did we shake our puny fists for ever in the face of that broad, bent heaven that wrapped us in and overwhelmed us in its folds, what effect would it have? If we held them up in prayer, what profited it? Who of men could storm heaven or search hell? And yet, as Kenneth said, a life that could not end was an awful thing. That the existence we feel within us is never to cease; that the power of discriminating between good and evil, define them, laugh at them or quibble about them as we may, can never die out of us; that we are irresistibly impelled to one or the other; that they are always knocking at the door of our hearts, for we feel them there; that they cannot be blind influences, knowing not when to come or when to go, but the voices of keen intelligences acting over the great universe, wherever man lives and moves and has his being; that they are not creations of our own, for they are independent of us; we may call evil good and good wicked, but in the end the good will show itself, and the evil throw off its disguise in spite of us—what does all this say but that there is an eternal conflict going on, and that, will he or will he not, every man born into the world must take a share in it?
That being so, search thine own heart, friend. Leave thy uncle, leave thy neighbor, and come back to thyself. Let them answer for their share; answer thou for thine. Which is thy standard? It cannot be both. What part hast thou borne in the conflict? What giants killed? What foes overcome? Hast thou slain that doughty giant within thee—thine own self? Is there no evil in thee to be cast out? No stain upon the scutcheon of thy pure soul? No vanity, no pride, no love of self above all and before all, no worship of the world, no bowing to Mammon or other strange gods, not to mention graver blots than all of these? Let thy neighbor pass till all the dross is purged out of thee. There is not a libertine in all the world but would wish all the world better, provided he had not to become better with it. Thy good wishes for others are shared by all men alike, by the worst as by the best. Begin at home, friend, and root out and build up there. Trim thy own garden, cast out the weeds, water and tend it well. The very sight of it is heaven to the weary wayfarer who, having wandered far away from his own garden, sinks down at thy side, begrimed with the dust of the road and the smoke of sin. You may tear him to pieces, you may lacerate his soul, you may cast him, bound hand and foot, into the outer darkness, yet never touch his heart. But he will stand afar off and admire when he sees thy garden blowing fair, and all the winds of heaven at play there, all the dews of heaven glistening there, all the sunshine of heaven beaming there; then will he come and creep close up to thee, desiring to take off the shoes from his feet, soiled with his many wanderings in foul places. Then for the first time he feels that he has wandered from the way, will see the stains upon him, and with trembling fingers hasten to cast them off, and, standing barefoot and humble before Him who made thee pure, falter out at length, “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”
TO BE CONTINUED.
CALDERON’S AUTOS SACRAMENTALES.
CONCLUDED.
II.
I. BALTASSAR’S FEAST.[55]
Of all Calderon’s autos, this is the one which has been the most generally admired, both on account of its intense dramatic power and popular character.
It has been translated several times into German (see note at end of previous article on the autos), and into English by Mr. MacCarthy.
The latter says in his preface: “This auto must be classed with those whose action relates directly to the Blessed Sacrament, because it puts before us, in the profanation of the vases of the Temple by Baltassar, a type of the desecration of the Holy Sacrament, and symbolizes to us, in the punishment that follows this sacrilege, the magnitude and sublimity of the Eucharistic Mystery. Although this immediate relation between the action of the auto and the sacrament becomes only manifestly clear in the last scene, nevertheless all the preceding part, which is only preparing us for the final catastrophe, stands in immediate connection with it, and, through it, with the action of the auto. The wonderful simplicity of this relation, and the lively dramatic treatment of the subject, allow us to place this auto, justly, in the same category with those that, comparatively speaking, are easy to be understood, and which, like The Great Theatre of the World, have especial claims upon popularity, even if many of its details contain very deep allusions, the meaning of which, at first sight, is not very intelligible.”
The auto opens in the garden of Baltassar’s palace with a scene between Daniel and Thought, who, dressed in a coat of many colors, represents the Fool.
After a long description of his abstract self he states that he has this day been assigned to King Baltassar’s mind, and ironically remarks that he, Thought, is not the only fool, and apologizes for his rudeness in not listening to Daniel:
“It were difficult to try
To keep up a conversation,
We being in our separate station,
Wisdom thou, and Folly I.”
Daniel answers that there is no reason why they should not converse, for the sweetest harmony is that which proceeds from two different chords.
Thought hesitates no longer, and informs Daniel that he is thinking of the wedding which Babylon celebrates this day with great rejoicings. The groom is King Baltassar, son and heir of Nabuchodonosor; the happy bride the fair Empress of the East, Idolatry herself.
That the king is already wedded to Vanity is no hindrance, as his law allows him a thousand wives.
Daniel breaks forth in lamentations for God’s people and the unhappy kingdom; while clownish Thought asks if Daniel himself is interested in the ladies, since he makes such an outcry over the news, and insinuates that envy and his captivity are the causes of his grief.
With a flourish of trumpets enter Baltassar and Vanity at one side, and Idolatry, fantastically dressed, at the other, with attendants, followers, etc.
The king courteously welcomes his new wife, who replies that it is right that she should come to his kingdom, since here first after the Flood idolatry arose.
The king declares that his own idea, his sole ambition, has been to unite Idolatry and Vanity, and then suddenly becomes absorbed in thought while fondly regarding his wives; to their questions as to the cause of his suspense he answers that, fired by their beauty, he wishes to relate the wondrous story of his conquests.
Wonderful indeed is the story which follows, extending, in the original, through three hundred and fifty uninterrupted lines.
In the introduction the king relates the strange fate of his father, Nabuchodonosor, whose worthy successor he declares himself to be, and describes his vaulting ambition, which will not be satisfied until he is the sole ruler over all the region of Senaar, which beheld the building of the Tower of Babel; this leads to an account of the Deluge, so poetical and characteristic that we give its finest portion here:[56]
“First began a dew as soft
As those tears the golden sunrise
Kisseth from Aurora’s lids;
Then a gentle rain, as dulcet
As those showers the green earth drinks
In the early days of summer;
From the clouds then water-lances,
Darting at the mountains, struck them;
In the clouds their sharp points shimmer’d,
On the mountains rang their but-ends;
Then the rivulets were loosened,
Roused to madness, ran their currents,
Rose to rushing rivers, then
Swelled to seas of seas. O Summit
Of all wisdom! thou alone
Knowest how thy hand can punish!
… Then a mighty sea-storm rushed
Through the rents and rocky ruptures,
By whose mouths the great earth yawns,
When its breath resounds and rumbles
From internal caves. The air
… Roared confined, the palpitation
Of its fierce internal pulses
Making the great hills to shake,
And the mighty rocks to tremble.
The strong bridle of the sand,
Which the furious onset curbeth
Of the white horse of the sea
With its foam-face silver fronted,
Loosened every curbing rein,
So that the great steed, exulting,
Rushed upon the prostrate shore,
With loud neighing to o’errun it.”
The ark alone is saved, and Nimrod resolves to anticipate a second Deluge, and erect a more ambitious refuge. The building of the Tower of Babel and the Confusion of Tongues then follow, and the king closes his long monologue with the determination to rebuild Nimrod’s tower, urged to the task by the opportune conjunction of Idolatry and Vanity.
These express their gratification at this lofty scheme, and offer to perpetuate the fame of his great deeds.
The king, exulting, exclaims: “Who shall break this bond?”
Daniel, advancing, “The hand of God!” and returns the same answer to the king’s angry question, “What can save thee from my power or defend thee?”
Baltassar is profoundly moved, but spares Daniel because Vanity loathes the captive and Idolatry disdains his religion.
In the fourth scene the prophet addresses the Most High, and cries: “Who can endure these offences, these pretences of Vanity and displays of Idolatry? Who will end so great an evil?”
“I will,” answers Death, who enters, wearing a sword and dagger, and dressed symbolically in a cloak covered with figures of skeletons.
Daniel. “Awful shape, to whom I bow
Through the shadowy glooms that screen thee,
Never until now I’ve seen thee:
Fearful phantom, who art thou?”
Death’s answer in the following monologue is most impressive and beautiful. Our space, unfortunately, will let us quote but a part:
“Daniel, thou Prophet of the God of Truth,
I am the end of all who life begin,
The drop of venom in the serpent’s tooth,
The cruel child of envy and of sin.
Abel first showed the world’s dark door uncouth,
But Cain threw wide the door, and let me in;
Since then I’ve darkened o’er life’s checker’d path,
The dread avenger of Jehovah’s wrath.
… The proudest palace that supremely stands,
’Gainst which the wildest winds in vain may beat;
The strongest wall, that like a rock withstands
The shock of shells, the furious fire-ball’s heat—
All are but easy triumphs of my hands,
All are but humble spoils beneath my feet;
If against me no palace-wall is proof,
Ah! what can save the lowly cottage-roof?
Beauty, nor power, nor genius, can survive,
Naught can resist my voice when I sweep by;
For whatsoever has been let to live,
It is my destined duty to see die.
With all the stern commands that thou mayst give,
I am, God’s Judgment, ready to comply;
Yea, and so quickly shall my service run
That ere the word is said the deed is done!”
Death then recounts some of his past achievements to prove his readiness to inflict punishment on the king.
Daniel, however, expressly forbids him to kill Baltassar, and gives him leave only to awaken him to a sense of coming woe and the fact that he is mortal.
This Death does by appearing to the king and showing him a small book lost by him some time before (i.e., the remembrance of his mortality, which he had forgotten), in which is written his debt to Death.
He leaves the terror-stricken monarch with an admonition to remember his obligation.
Thought, hovering between Vanity and Idolatry, soon, however, effaces the impression left by the terrible visitor.
The king and Thought, lulled by their combined flatteries, fall asleep, while Death enters and delivers the following monologue, which, as Mr. MacCarthy truly says, “belongs unquestionably to the deepest and most beautiful poetry that has ever flown from the pen of Calderon”:
Death. “Man the rest of slumber tries,
Never the reflection making
That, O God! asleep and waking,
Every day he lives and dies;
That a living corse he lies,
After each day’s daily strife,
Stricken by an unseen knife,
In brief lapse of life, not breath,
A repose which is not death;
But what is death teaches life:
Sugared poison ’tis, which sinks
On the heart, which it o’ercometh,
Which it hindereth and benumbeth.
And can a man, then, live who poison drinks?
’Tis forgetting, when the links
That gave life by mutual fretting
To the Senses, snap, or letting
The imprisoned Five go free,
They can hear not, touch, or see;
And can a man forget this strange forgetting?
It is frenzy, that which moves
Heart and eyes to taste and see
Joys and shapes that ne’er can be:
And can a man be found who frenzy loves?
’Tis a lethargy that proves
My best friend; in trust for me,
Death’s dull, drowsy weight bears he,
And, by failing limb and eye,
Teaches man the way to die:
And can a man, then, seek this lethargy?
’Tis a shadow, which is made
Without light’s contrasted aid,
Moving in a spectral way,
Sad, phantasmal foe of day:
And can a man seek rest beneath such shade?
Finally, ’tis well portrayed
As Death’s Image: o’er and o’er
Men have knelt its shrine before,
Men have bowed the suppliant knee,
All illusion though it be:
And can a man this Image, then, adore?
Since Baltassar here doth sleep,
Since he hath the poison drank,
Since he treads oblivion’s blank,
Since no more his pulses leap,
Since the lethargy is deep,
Since, in horror and confusion,
To all other sights’ exclusion,
He has seen the Image—seen
What this shade, this poison, mean,
What this frenzy, this illusion:
Since Baltassar sleepeth so,
Let him sleep, and never waken:
Be his body and soul o’ertaken
By the eternal slumber.”
(He draws his sword, and is about to kill him.)
Daniel rushes in and saves the sleeper, who is dreaming a mysterious vision, which is visibly represented to the spectators.
The king on awakening is captivated, as usual, by Idolatry, who proposes to him a magnificent feast, in which shall be used the sacred vessels carried away from Jerusalem.
The feast is prepared; the table is brought in, on which are displayed the sacred vessels; the attendants begin serving the banquet, while Thought plays the court-fool.
In the midst of the revelry Death enters, disguised as one of the servants, and, when the king calls for wine, presents him with one of the golden goblets from the table, with a mysterious aside referring to the Lord’s Supper, where the cup contains both death and life, as it is drunk worthily or unworthily.
The king rises and gives the toast: “For ever, Moloch, god of the Assyrians, live!”
A great clap of thunder is heard, darkness settles on the feast, and a fiery hand writes upon the wall the fatal “Mane, Thecel, Phares.”
Idolatry, Vanity, and Thought in turn fail to interpret the mysterious words, and the first named suggests that Daniel should be summoned.[57]
The prophet comes and explains the hidden meaning of the words, declaring that God’s wrath has been aroused by the misuse of the sacred vessels, which, until the law of grace reigns on earth, foreshow the Blessed Sacrament.
Baltassar and his wives tremble at the solemn words. Thought, an expression of the reproaches of his master’s conscience, turns against the king, who laments the desertion of his friends in the hour of need.
Death, during this scene, has been approaching nearer and nearer, and now draws his sword and stabs the unhappy monarch, who cries:
“This is death, then!
Was the venom not sufficient
That I drank of?”
Death. “No; that venom
Was the death of the soul; the body’s
This swift death-stroke representeth.”
The king, struggling with Death, is forced to confess:
“He who dares profane God’s cup,
Him he striketh down forever;
He who sinfully receives
Desecrates God’s holiest vessel!”
These are his last words. Idolatry awakens from her dream, and longs to see the light of the law of grace now while the written law reigns.
Death declares that it is foreshadowed in Gedeon’s fleece, in the manna, in the honey-comb, in the lion’s mouth, and in the shew-bread.
Daniel. “If these emblems
Show it not, then be it shown
In the full foreshadowing presence
Of the feast here now transformed
Into Bread and Wine—stupendous
Miracle of God; his greatest
Sacrament in type presented.”
The scene opens to the sound of solemn music; a table is seen arranged as an altar, with a monstrance and chalice in the middle, and two wax candles on each side.
The auto closes with Idolatry’s declaration that she is transformed into Latria, and the usual personal address to the audience.
II. THE PAINTER OF HIS OWN DISHONOR.
We have already remarked that the auto El Pintor de su Deshonra is a replica of a secular play bearing the same title.
It will not be out of place to give a short analysis of the latter, premising that it is one of the greatest of Calderon’s tragedies.
In the first act the Governor of Gaeta welcomes to his residence his friend Don Juan Roca, whose young wife, Seraphine, soon becomes intimate with the governor’s daughter, Portia, to whom she reveals the secret that she has been ardently loved by Portia’s brother, Don Alvaro, whose love she has as ardently returned.
News, however, was received of his shipwreck and death, and she finally yielded to her father’s urgent requests, and gave her hand to Don Juan.
The unhappy lady faints while reciting her griefs, and Portia hastens for aid. At this moment a stranger enters, perceives the unconscious lady, and bends over her with an expression of the warmest interest. Seraphine opens her eyes, and with the cry “Alvaro!” faints again.
Her old lover, saved from the waves, has returned to find her another’s wife.
From this moment begins a struggle between love and duty, depicted with all the tenderness and power of which the poet was capable.
Seraphine attempts with all her strength to master her love for Alvaro, and tells him, with forced coolness, how much she is attached to her husband by duty and inclination.
During this interview a cannon is heard—the signal announcing the approaching departure of Don Juan’s ship. Seraphine withdraws to follow him to their home in Spain, and leaves Alvaro in a state of utter hopelessness.
The second act reveals to us Don Juan (an enthusiastic lover of art) in his home in Barcelona, painting his wife’s portrait.
The remembrance of the past seems banished from Seraphine’s heart, and everything indicates a state of peace and happiness.
Don Juan withdraws a moment, when a sailor enters the room.
It is Don Alvaro, who, unable to forget his love, has followed Seraphine to Barcelona. He overwhelms her with his affection; but she shows him so firmly and eloquently that his pleading is in vain that he in turn resolves to conquer his passion and leave her for ever.
He still lingers near, but makes no attempt to approach her again.
One day, during the Carnival, Don Juan’s villa takes fire. Seraphine is borne insensible from the house by her husband, who confides her to Don Alvaro, whom he does not, of course, recognize, and returns to help the others who are in danger.
Don Alvaro, meanwhile, is left with Seraphine in his arms. His love revives stronger than ever in the terrible temptation, and he bears the still insensible Seraphine to his ship, and makes sail with the greatest haste.
Don Juan does not return until the ship is under way, discovers too late that he has been deceived, and throws himself into the sea in order to overtake the fugitives.
In the last act we find Don Juan at Gaeta, disguised as an artist, in order to obtain more easily access into private houses, and discover who has stolen his wife.
He is introduced to Prince Urbino, who commissions him to paint the portrait of a beautiful woman whom he has seen at a neighboring forester’s house, which he visits in order to meet Portia secretly.
The same place has been chosen by Don Alvaro to conceal Seraphine, who is the beautiful lady who has attracted the prince’s attention.
Don Juan repairs to the appointed spot, and erects his easel near a window, through the blinds of which he can see, unnoticed, the fair one.
The artist discovers, with feelings which can be imagined, his wife asleep in the garden. She murmurs words which prove her innocence. But this cannot save her; she must be sacrificed to remove the stain on her husband’s honor.
Don Juan expresses his feelings in a most powerful soliloquy, when Alvaro enters and embraces the sleeping Seraphine. At that instant two shots are heard, and the innocent and guilty fall bleeding to the ground.
The auto founded on the above play is, in the opinion of no less a critic than Wilhelm Val Schmidt, the first of its class, and withal much less technical than is usual with these plays.
The dramatis personæ include the Artist, the World, Love, Lucifer, Sin, Grace, Knowledge, Nature (i.e., human nature at first in a state of innocence), Innocence, and the Will (i.e., free-will).
The first car represents a dragon, which opens and discloses Lucifer, whose first speech proves the trite remark about the devil quoting Scripture; for he immediately proceeds to cite Jeremias and David, who alluded to him as the dragon.
He then summons Sin, and repeats to her his partly-known history, which contains some singular ideas.
He was the favorite of the Father in his former home, where he saw, before the original existed, the portrait of so rare a beauty that, inflamed with love, and to prevent the Prince from marrying her, he rebelled, and, placing himself at the head of the other discontented spirits, was defeated and doomed to perpetual exile and darkness.
So far Sin is acquainted with the story; but from this point all is new to her.
The greatest of Lucifer’s sufferings arises from his envy of the Prince, who is all that is wise and lovely: a learned theologian, legislator, philosopher, physician, logician, astrologist, mathematician, architect—“witness the palace of the world”—geometrician, rhetorician, musician, and poet.
But none of these qualities so enrages and astonishes Lucifer as the Prince’s talent for painting. He has already been engaged six days on a landscape. At the beginning the ground of the canvas was so bare and rough that he only drew on it the outline in shadowy figures. The first day he gave it light; the second day he introduced heaven and earth, dividing the waters and the firmament; the third day, seeing the earth so arid and bare, he painted flowers in it and fruits, and the fourth day the sun and moon. He filled, the fifth day, the air and waters with birds and fishes; and this sixth day he has covered the landscape with various animals.
Nothing of all this astonishes Lucifer so much as the Prince’s intention to embody in a palpable form the ideal which was the cause of Lucifer’s fall.
The divine Artist has himself chosen the colors and selected clay and occult minerals, which Lucifer fears a breath may animate: “Since if a breath can dissipate dust, I suspect, I lament, I fear, that dust may live by the inspiration of a breath.”
Animated by this fear, Lucifer has summoned Sin to aid him in destroying this image, so that the Prince may be The Painter of his own Dishonor.
A palace appears, and near the entrance the painting on an easel. Lucifer and Sin retire; for the Artist, accompanied by the Virtues, comes to put a careful hand to his work.
Sin knows not where to conceal herself. Lucifer bids her hide in a cave in the bank of a stream.
Sin answers that she is afraid of the water, because she foresees that it is to be (in the water of baptism) the antidote to sin.
The flowers, grain, and vine all terrify her, before which, as symbols of some unknown sacrament, she reverently bows.
She at last conceals herself in a tree, which Lucifer calls from that moment the tree of death.
The Artist enters, Innocence bearing the palette, Knowledge the mall-stick, and Grace the brushes.
He declares his intention to show his power in the portrait his love wishes to paint, and asks the attendant Virtues to add their gifts to Human Nature.
He proceeds to work, while the Virtues call upon the sun, moon, etc., to praise the Lord.
The Artist finishes his work by breathing the breath of life into it. The picture falls, and in its place appears Human Nature, who expresses most vividly her wonder at her creation, and joins in the general anthem, “Bless the Lord.” Lucifer confesses that he and Sin are de trop, and they depart to seek some disguise in which to return and carry out their undertaking. While the chorus repeats the praises of the Lord, Human Nature naïvely asks, “How can I bless him, if I do not know him? Who will tell me who He is or who I am?”
The Artist advances and answers her question. Nature demands who he is. “I am who am, and have been, and am to be; and since thou hast been created for Love’s spouse, let thy love be grateful.”
“What command dost thou lay on me, my Love? I will never break it.”
“All that thou seest here is thine; that tree alone is mine.”
Nature asks who can ever divert her love, and is answered, “Thy Free-will.”
“What new spirit and force was created in my new being by that word, which told me that there was something in me besides myself? Voice, tell me, who is Free-will.”
Free-will appears as a rustic, and answers, “I.”
Nature then proceeds to name the various objects about her, accompanying each name with some appropriate remark, and is led quite naturally to indulge in some boasting at her dominion over such a beautiful and varied kingdom.
This is the moment Lucifer and Sin select to appear in the disguise of rustics. The latter remains concealed in the tree; the former introduces himself to Human Nature as a gardener, and says very gallantly that he lost his last place on her account.
Nature hastens to turn a conversation becoming somewhat personal by asking what he is cultivating.
“That beautiful tree.”
“It is extremely lovely.”
“There is something more singular about it than being merely lovely.”
“What?”
“Earth, who brought it forth, can tell thee.”
“I am earth, since I was formed of earth; so I will tell the Earth to keep me no longer in suspense.”
“Then speak to her, and thou shalt see.”
“Mother Earth, what is this hidden mystery?”
Sin. “Eat, and thou shalt be as God.”
Then follow the Fall and a powerful scene depicting Nature’s confusion and grief, as she is dragged off by Satan as his slave, while Sin claims Free-will as her prey.
The Artist enters and finds Knowledge, Innocence, and Grace in tears; the latter informs him of the Fall.
He thus reproaches his creation for her ingratitude: “What more could I do for thee, my best design, than form thee with my own hands? I gave thee my image, a soul that cost thee nothing, and yet thou desertest me for my greatest enemy.”
He then pronounces the curse upon Mankind and the Serpent, and declares he will blot out the world, the scene of their sin.
The clouds break and the sea bursts its limits; the Earth trembles and struggles with the waves, and in agony calls on the Lord for mercy.
In the midst of this confusion of the elements Human Nature is heard crying for help.
Lucifer. “Why callest thou for aid, if I, the only one whom it behooves to give it, delight in seeing thee annihilated?”
Sin also makes the same declaration. The World alone attempts to save its queen.
At last the Artist casts her a plank, saying, “Mortal, again see whom thou hast deserted, and for whom; since he whom thou hast offended saves thee, and he whom thou lovest abandons thee! One day thou wilt know of what this plank, fragment of a miraculous ark, is symbol.”
The World, Nature, and Free-will are saved; the latter enters, bound with Sin, who declares that Sin and Human Nature are so nearly the same that one cannot go anywhere without the other.
We have said anachronisms are frequent; the poet here even makes his characters jest about it.
Human Nature. “Since here there are no real persons, and Allegory can traverse centuries in hours, it seems to me that the salute the angels are singing to this celestial aurora declares in resounding words…”
Music. “In heaven and on earth peace to man and glory to God.”
Free-will. “The story has made a fine jump from the Creation to the Flood, and I think there is going to be another, if I understand that song aright—from the Deluge to the Nativity!”
The chant continues, to the infinite discomfort of Lucifer and Sin, who at last determine in their rage to disfigure Human Nature so that her Creator himself could not recognize her.
Lucifer holds her hands, while Sin brands upon her brow the sign of slavery.
Lucifer then commands the World to remain on guard, and let no one enter without careful scrutiny, for fear lest the Artist may attempt to avenge the wrong done him.
The Artist enters, accompanied by Divine Love.
They are soon discovered by the World, who exclaims: “Who goes there?”
“Friends.”
“Your name?”
“A Man.”
“And the World, the faithful sentinel of Sin, does not know how thou hast entered here?”
“I did not come that Sin should know me.”
“I do not know thee.”
“So John will say.”
“By what door didst thou enter?”
“By that of Divine Love, who accompanies me.”
“What is thy office?”
“I was once an Artist in a certain allegory, and must still be the same.”
“Artist?”
“Yes, since I came to retouch a figure of mine which an error has blotted.”
“Since thou art a painter thou canst do me a favor.…”
“What is it?”
The World then informs him that there is a certain Spouse who has been carried away from her husband, and is now in the power of a Tyrant, who is endeavoring to force her to accompany him to another world, the seat of his rule.
The Artist weeps, because he remembers his own Spouse, whose fate is similar to that of this one.
The world begs the Artist to make a portrait of this fair disconsolate one, that he (the World) may wear it on his breast.
The Artist consents, and conceals himself in order to work unobserved.
The World goes in search of Human Nature, while the Artist looks about for some hiding-place. Love points to a cross near by, and says that as the first offence was committed in a tree, this one will witness his vengeance.
The Artist calls for his colors, and Love presents him with a box, in opening which his hands are stained a bloody red.
“Take this!”
“It is all carmine.”
“I have no other color.”
“Do not let it afflict thee, Love, that blood must retouch what Sin has blotted. The brushes!”
Love hands him three nails—“Here they are!”
“How sharp and cruel! What can be the canvas for such brushes!”
Love gives him a canvas in the shape of a heart—“a heart.”
“Of bronze?”
“Yes.”
“How I grieve to see it so hardened, when I intended to form in it a second figure! Give me the mall-stick.”
Love presents him with a small lance. “Here it is.”
“The point is steel! Less cruel instruments Innocence, Grace, and Knowledge once gave me!”
“Be not astonished if these are more cruel than those; for then thou didst paint as God, and now as Man!”
While the Artist is working Nature, Free-will, and Sin enter, and later Lucifer, who, wearied of Nature’s continual lamentation, comes to drag her to his realm.
Artist. “Why should I delay my vengeance, seeing them together? Give me, Love, the weapons which I brought for this occasion!”
“Thy voice is the lightning, this weapon only its symbol; but I deliver it to thee with sorrow!”
“When my offended honor is so deeply concerned?”
“I am Love, and she is weeping; but I will direct my gaze to thy wrongs, and without fail shall hit the mark.”
“My hand cannot err, traitrous adulterers, who conspired against me; the honor of an insulted man obliges me to this! I am the Painter of his own Dishonor; die both at one stroke!” (Fires. Lucifer and Sin both fall.)
Love. “Thou hast hit Sin, and not Human Nature!”
The Artist answers that it cannot be said that his shot has failed, since by this tree Nature lives, and Lucifer and Sin are killed.
The Artist points to a fountain of seven streams, and the Virtues, and invites Human Nature to bathe in the blood from his side, and be restored to her original condition.
The auto closes with an expression of gratitude from Nature, and the usual allusion to the Sacrament in whose honor the present festival is celebrated.