A VISION OF THE COLOSSEUM, A.D. 1873
O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled thy holy temple: they have made Jerusalem as a place to keep fruit.—Ps. lxxviii.
I had been idly reading, through the quiet afternoon,
A poet’s passionate verses, falling softly into tune
Of even, measured rhythm, and of fine, melodious words,
Rippling along with easy grace like careless song of birds;
Now warblings, half unconscious, like the happy songster’s trill
Poured from some wind-swayed bough when all the woods are still;
Now shriller notes that rose above harsh, grating sounds of war,
Loud clarion-notes, above the drums, proclaiming peace afar—
Loud pæan sounds triumphant that Italy was free,
United, and one mighty realm from smiling sea to sea;
From Sicily’s smoke-crowned peak to Savoy’s Alpine chain
One flag met every rambling breeze that breathed o’er hill and plain;
And haughty Rome, in truth, the Cæsar’s city now once more,
The perilous reign of Peter passed for ever safely o’er.
“Io! triumphe! onward! All ye guarding eagles, come!
And with its ancient glory fill your old imperial home.”
I, sighing, closed the volume. Ah! for me how sadly dim
The poet’s glowing setting of pale Freedom’s Roman hymn,
Whose music, as I heard it, only direst discord made.
The martial beat of rattling drum, the trumpet’s mellowing shade,
Hid all the sweeter utterance of a happy people’s voice
Or sound of pealing church-bells bidding kindly skies rejoice.
I heard above the loudest note the dull, persistent sound
Of forging iron fetters—even riveted while crowned,
Sweet Freedom saw, indignant, built her frail and crumbling throne
Of consecrated marble newly stolen, stone by stone.
“Io! triumphe! onward! But the shouting could not drown
The psalm of homeless friars, weary exiles, marching down,
Chapel and cell denied them; for of these the state has need.
And from the cross’s folly must St. Francis’ sons be freed!
I heard in plaintive chorus nuns sad Miserere sing,
As ceased for them for ever their old convent’s sheltering—
Let them seek aid from Him on high whose faithful sheep they are;
The horses of the hero-king seek not their help so far!
I heard, above th’ exultant fife, the loud-voiced auctioneer
Strike down the church’s garment 'mid the idle jest and jeer
Of souls that trembled not to see the sacred chalice borne
By hands that would have helped of old to press the twisted thorn,
Who would for thirty pieces once their loving Lord have sold—
Why not his spouse’s raiment for twice that, glittering gold?
I heard the heavy rustle of quaint, figured tapestry
By pious fingers cunning wrought in days of chivalry.
Loud chimed the strangers’ clanking coin that paid the moneyed worth,
But faint the modern anthem’s notes proclaiming Freedom’s birth!
Of wandering peoples, too, I heard the tired and restless tread,
Their little harvest grown too scant for even daily bread,
Fair Freedom’s added burden grown too heavy to be borne;
While Italy, sad-hearted, watched her children sail forlorn
To seek across the western sea the life she could not give;
For her cannon must be cast, and a nation she must live.
A nation crowned! Ah! royal state is very heavy dole;
All too quick the world’s pulse beats to heed plaint of weary soul.
Still with triumphant pæans did the poet’s verses ring:
“Shout, Italy, our Italy! all-joyous anthems sing!
Clang out, sad-voiced Roman bells! hail Piedmont’s Victor,—king!”
“Miserere, miserere,”
Sounded church and convent steeple;
“In thy mercy spare us, Saviour,
Leading back thy erring people.”
And as the clanging belfries trembled strangely with the sound,
The Miserere drifting to the peoples gathered round,
Methought the quiet afternoon had faded from my sight,
And I, beneath a Roman sky, alone with deepening night,
Stood in the Colosseum’s shade, with many a wondering thought,
No touch of moonlight falling on the walls the Romans wrought;
The calm stars, gazing earthward, seemed to give nor light nor shade;
No torches’ fitful splendor through the lonely arches played;
And, even as the shade was deep, so deep the silence fell,
So calm the night it scarce could wake the wind-harp’s sighing swell;
No beaded aves drifted from cowled pilgrims of the cross,
No murmur of atoning prayers pleading the nations’ loss;
No tourists’ idle laughter broke the silence of the scene,
While the shrouding arches sheltered my thoughts of what had been.
Years, centuries had vanished as my wingèd thoughts flew fast
To days when Rome imperial o’er the world her robe had cast;
O’er the wild, barbarian legions I saw her eagles shine,
While her nobles quaffed Greek learning in draughts of Grecian wine—
Expounding, too, with easy art, the Christians’ foolish faith:
How traitorous to Cæsar’s state was every Christian breath.
And then I saw the glitter of their perfumed robes no more,
As gleaming wings of seraphs stroked my eyelids softly o’er.
Then I heard the sweet intoning of the Christians’ matin psalm,
And I saw them lowly kneeling before the mystic Lamb:
Maid patrician bent in prayer with the dark slave of the East,
Egypt’s sage, Juda’s captive, meeting at the angels’ feast.
Before that holy altar all one sacred likeness wear—
His who, on the cross outstretched, all our sin and weakness bare:
Subtle Greek before the cross laying down his pride of art;
Falling meekly peace divine on some savage Scythian heart;
Hapless Jew, haughty Northman, Roman proud, and cowering slave,
Bound together by the blood of Him who died all men to save;
One by the bond of suffering, one in the voice of prayer
That rose with solemn sweetness through the catacombs’ dull air:
“Miserere, miserere,”
Rose the sad and earnest pleading;
“In thy mercy spare us, Saviour,
Unto thee the nations leading.”
Lo! as entranced I listened, there mingled with the song
A sound as if of many steps passing the streets along,
And the ancient Roman arches 'neath which I dreaming stood
Grew peopled with the city’s fierce and restless multitude.
What noble game should fitly while the idle hours away,
What gracious pastime fill with joy the Roman holiday?
Should some strong-limbed barbarian lay his life down in its strength,
That the day for Roman matrons should have less of weary length?
Nay, daintier sight the maiden tells, binding her mistress’ zone:
To-day, by Cæsar’s lions, Christian maid shall be o’erthrown!
Within the dread arena pale and firm the martyr stood—
A strange and dazzling sight she seemed amid the soldiers rude;
So slight the little, childish form, so young the radiant face,
Whence streams of holy glory flooded all the pagan place;
The happy lips half-parted with a love that fain would speak,
And the eyes to heaven uplifted beneath the forehead meek—
The eyes whence earth had vanished, heaven’s shadow resting there,
The glimmer of its shining falling softly on her hair.
Ah! happy maid, that, listening, heard above the tumult wild
The loved voice of the Father calling home his little child;
The voice of the Belovèd bidding sweet his loved one come:
“Arise, my Dove, my Beautiful”—it sounded o’er the hum
Of wondering crowds who could not guess whence came the martyr’s strength,
Her heart with joy nigh breaking that it should rest at length
On His whose love had bought it with a price exceeding far
The spoils of all the nations gracing Cæsar’s triumph-car.
One little grain of incense still might save the martyr’s life,
But one little breath for Cæsar still win release from strife—
Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s, to God the life he gave;
Less duty could she offer Him who died that life to save?
And then the vision faded, and once more I stood alone
Where thought of sainted martyrs seemed to consecrate each stone,
And stars as calmly watching o’er as once in days bygone
When Cæsar’s dearest pastime won his slaves a deathless crown.
“Miserere, miserere,”
Seemed the night-wind lowly sighing;
“Call thy erring sheep, O Saviour,
Dearest Lord of love undying!”
Soft then I saw advancing through the darkness’ mighty shade
A tall and stately figure in wide, trailing robes arrayed,
The fair, white arms in longing stretched, as if in woe to seek
The comfort of the broken heart, the strength of all the weak—
Christ’s blessèd cross with arms outspread, as if to mutely plead
For mercy for the sinner, from tender hearts love’s meed;
Of mightiest love the symbol true, the link ’twixt heaven and earth,
The sign by which earth’s frailest one is cleansed for heavenly birth.
In vain! No craving hand can touch that sacred symbol now,
Its holy vision bring no rest to world-tossed, aching brow;
The modern Cæsar has no need to mark where martyrs fell:
“Unto Cæsar what is Cæsar’s”—that word they kept too well.
And murmuring monks but echo, their chaplets telling o’er,
The words these stones repeated in the Roman days of yore;
To earthly science dearer far the walls the pagans built
Than the precious blood of martyrs for love of Jesus spilt.
Perchance beneath these stones might lie rare treasures of old Rome—
The cross in Christian kingdom must not wander from its home!
“Miserere, miserere,”
Seemed the very stones outcrying;
“In thy mercy spare the nations.
Heed, O God! the prisoners’ sighing.”
A sound of low lamenting then filled all the silent place,
Whose darkness won unearthly light from out the stranger’s face—
A face so fair not Paphos’ queen could claim a grace so rare;
Ah! only she, the much-desired, such peerless mien could wear.
And low I heard her murmuring: “Ah! me, woe, woe is me!
So weary are my ears with sound of shouts that speak me free.
Free! Am I free? Upon my head rests weight of royal crown,
And Piedmont’s soldiers guard me, fearing lest I lay it down.
Italy! Am I Italy? That name indeed I bear;
And among the nations standing a nation’s crown I wear—
Proud empires that salute me fair, green lands beyond the sea,
Crying aloud: 'Shout, Italy! Thank Victor thou art free;
Thy peoples shall no longer 'neath the tyrant’s scourge bend low,
And, too, thy seemly garment no unseemly rent shall show;
Among thy peers come thou once more to take thy place and name,
Fair Southern queen, King Victor has ta’en away thy shame.’
“O gold-haired northern peoples! know ye not the sound of chains?
Ne’er heard ye clink of German spur along my Lombard plains?
O rosy-cheeked barbarians! do ye deem that I am free
Because my rulers speed you when ye prate of liberty!’
When ye the wide arms shorten of the world-redeeming cross
Since too far its shadow falls, and ye deem that shade your loss!
Far, far across the western seas I hear their poets sing,
While Freedom’s joy-bells pealing, loud, exulting anthems ring:
'Rise up, dear Italy unchained; thank Victor thou art free,
And bend, oppressed, at Peter’s throne no more thy trembling knee.
Thy sons shall waste in convent cell no more their manhood’s strength;
See! open wide, their prison-doors: free men they are at length!
Dark tyranny and priestcraft prostrate fall before thy king;
Thy children freemen rise once more beneath his sheltering.’
“O strong-armed western people! in your home beyond the sea,
Bearing even as your birthright the grace of liberty,
List not the songs such poets sing: they know not me or mine;
Studded with cruel thorns for me each laurel wreath they twine.
A mournful queen I am, alas! crowned in another’s place—
The mighty One from whom my face hath won its look of grace.
I sit as a usurper where I fain would kneel and pray,
Crowned with Rome’s earthly circlet from her forehead stol’n away!
The world’s imperial mistress once, now queen of love and peace,
Holds she her life and liberty but as earth’s monarchs please?
Fain would they on her gracious brow my coronet have set,
Its lustre dimmed with Savoy’s loss, with Naples’ tears all wet!
The handmaid of her Maker, fair with lustre not of earth.
Should she to Piedmont’s Victor bend her brow of heavenly birth?
The mother of all peoples where the cross’s light is shed,
Was my dull, narrow diadem fit crown to grace her head?
In her old palace I sit throned, crowned with her earthly crown,
With jealous care watched ever, lest I cast the honor down.
I see my children wander wide in exile from their own,
And, when they ask for living bread, my masters give them stone.
I sit beside St. Peter’s chair; like his, my hands are bound;
My eyes weep bitter sorrow at your pæans’ wild, glad sound;
Beneath the heavy cuirass that is girded on my breast
I bear the wreath mysterious St. Peter’s hand hath blessed.
Upon the cannon rests my hand craving to lift the cross,
And 'neath Sardinian colors I bewail the blind world’s loss.
“Miserere, miserere,”
Seemed the weary voice outcrying,
“Spare thy heritage, O Saviour!
Hearken thou the prisoners’ sighing.
“O credulous Western people! cease shouting I am free.
My masters have no knowledge of the truth of liberty,
Who murmur with ignoble lips my old and honored name,
And seek to rebaptize me with unholy rites of shame.
Are ye drunk with Freedom’s dregs that ye have forgot her face,
And bend before th’ unworthy thing men show you in her place?
Stretch not your hands, God-fearing race, to welcome such as these:
God, who your shepherd is, and judge, gives not to such his peace.
“Miserere, miserere,
Mighty Lord of all the living,
In thy mercy spare the erring,
Sacred Heart of love forgiving!”
“The great arched walls sent echoing back the sad, indignant plaint,
The light from that fair, mournful face grew evermore more faint,
Till, fading in the darkness, light and shadow both were gone,
And I sat where crimson sunset with southern splendor shone,
Lighting the western city with a flood of harmless fire,
With a glory, quickly fading, enwreathing mast and spire;
Whence no mellow bells pealed earthward, sounding the angel’s call,
Nor Miserere drifted from roof and tower tall;
The busy craft went sailing up and down the crowded stream—
Upon my lap the poet’s book, the conjurer of my dream.
Vision and sound had vanished, only still dim echoes fell
Of pleading voices rising on the night-wind’s scarce-felt swell:
“Miserere, miserere,
Hear, O God! the prisoners’ sighing;
Spare thy heritage, O Saviour!
Dearest Lord of love undying.”
THE DOOM OF THE BELL.
Two men were sitting in a garret at the very top of one of the craziest old houses in Bruges—not a house dating from the fifteenth century, such as those we admire to this day, but a house that was already two hundred years old when those were built. It stood on the brink of the canal beyond which are now the public gardens that have displaced the ramparts of the once turbulent and independent city. Then the houses crowded into the wide fosse of not too fragrant water, and leaned their balconied gables over it. This was not in the busy or the splendid quarter; it was far from the cathedral and the Guildhall. And in those prosperous times of the Hanseatic League, of the Venetian and Genoese merchant-princes visiting and marrying among their full peers of the city of Bruges—the times of the grand palaces built by those royal and learned traders—these two men I speak of were poor, obscure, and with little prospect of ever being anything else. Yet one of them had it in him to do as great things as the Van Eycks, and to take the art-loving city by storm, if he could only get “a chance.” It was the same in the year 1425 as it is now, and men in picturesque short-hose and flat caps were marvellously like those we see in ugly chimney-pots and tight trousers. The rivalry of other artists—none very eminent—and the ungetable patronage of rich men stood in this young painter’s way, and he got disheartened and disgusted. This garret was his studio, his bedroom, and his kitchen. It was cheap, and the light could be managed easily and properly to suit his painting; but it was not one of those elaborately artistic studios, a picture in itself, which we associate with the idea of the “old masters.” The things that were there had evidently drifted there and got heaped up by accident—homely things most of them, and disposed with the carelessness natural to a man who had little belief or hope in his future. There was an air about the whole place as well as its owner that seemed to say as plainly as any words, “What is the use?” But the other man was a contrast to him. He was much older; a wiry form, and eager, small eyes, and an air of resistance to outward circumstances, “as if he could not help it,” but not in the sense of what is popularly called an “iron will,” were his chief distinguishing marks. He was neither artist nor merchant, and he lived “by his wits.” In those days, just the same as now, that meant something bordering on dishonesty; and such men were known as useful, but scarcely reputable. This individual was seated on a low trunk or chest of polished wood, but not carved, nor even adorned with curious hinges or iron-work; the other stood opposite, leaning on the high sill of a window in the gable, looking down into the canal.
“Peter,” said the latter after a pause, “have you heard of any one dying lately in the great houses, or, for that matter, in the rookeries?”
“No, not dying—at least, not lately,” said the other slowly.
“Not dying?” said the first, laying the same emphasis on the word as his friend had done, and not showing any lack of understanding or sign of surprise.
“Well, I mean she recovered; but she was pretty near death, and of course will be again as soon as it is safe. It put some of his lordship’s plans out a little when he heard how badly Simon had done his work. But you know it was not at his house, but in a kind of prison, and she was put there on a charge of stealing her mistress’ Genoese pearl-embroidered robe, and it was said the lady begged as a favor she might not be publicly executed for the attempt, but allowed some time to repent and prepare; and when she was ready, she was to be told that one day, within the week, she would be poisoned by something in her food, which she could not taste and which would give her no pain, but put her to sleep—for ever. But no one believed that this was her mistress’ request, nor that she ever stole anything, of course. Every one knows that poor Dame Margaret is a cipher in her husband’s house—a worse victim of my Lord Conrad’s than any one there, many as they are; and he is just now out of reach of punishment, being, by the Count of Flanders’ influence, a member of the government, a councillor, and I know not what besides. But it seems Simon did not do his work aright, and the poor girl is still there, and no doubt, in a week or two, the experiment will be quietly tried again and with success. Jan, are you listening?”
“Yes,” said the artist as he turned round with absent look and a gesture, as if he had unconsciously been picking off some buttons from his sleeve and dropping them in the canal below.
“Well, what do you think of it?”
“Peter,” said the other abruptly, “is Simon your friend?”
“Well, we have had dealings together sometimes. He sells me clothes now and then; you know he has a good deal of such stuff on his hands.”
“If I could pay him,” said the artist bitterly, “I should not need any go-between; but I have nothing. I want something he could give me, and, if I had it, I should not need any patron, and would take none, short of the Count of Flanders himself.”
“Riddles again,” said Peter quietly; “poverty makes you mysterious.”
“I’ll tell you plainly what the riddle is, if you’ll help me.”
“For friendship’s sake?”
“Oh! no, indeed. Is there one in all Bruges would do it, or I expect it of him?”
“Well, well, do not croak; but you know by experience that it is hard to live.”
“If you will get me what I want of Simon, you shall have one-fourth of my future reward and Simon one-fourth.”
“Too mean terms, those, Jan,” said Peter quietly, but intently watching his friend’s face.
“Very well, each a third, then; I knew you would want no less. But, look you,” he added, brightening up, “no one can share the fame, and I shall be known all over Flanders and Brabant, and France—ay, even Italy and Germany; and who knows if the Greek merchants will not carry my name to the court of Constantinople itself?—and you two poor wretches will have nothing but a pitiful handful of gold.”
“Quite enough for me, at any rate,” said Peter composedly; “it will be more than I ever had before. But do not let us 'count our chickens before they are hatched.’ What is it, though, that you want to work this miracle with?”
“Only a vial of her blood after the girl has been dead four hours.”
Peter betrayed no emotion.
“Rather an unusual request,” he said meditatively, “and one that savors strongly of witchcraft, which you know is scarcely less dangerous than heresy. You remember what happened at Constance scarcely more than ten years ago?”
“Nonsense! What has heresy to do with the mixing of my colors? And who but a leech will find out the mixture? And after all, if a fool were to use this potion just mixed as I shall mix it, and paint a picture with it, his picture would be only fit for a tavern-sign, and no one could tell the difference. If you need the ingredients, you need the skill more.”
“Why, Jan, you are getting enthusiastic—a miracle, that, in itself. I thought you had made up your mind that you would never do anything that would get known.”
“Well, I have a feeling, since you mentioned this case, that I shall be known before I die, and known by this means too. Can you get me what I want?”
“I dare say I can. But shall I tell the old sinner Simon that I want it for you, or say it is for a leech?”
“Why lie about it?” said the young man fiercely.
“Prudence, you know,” said the other, perfectly unabashed.
“No; tell him the bare truth, but swear him to secrecy. If he tells it, he shall forfeit his share.”
“He could get twice as much for denouncing you.”
“Let him! Where is his interest to denounce me? He is not a fiend, and he knows it is hard to live.”
“He did, but may be he has forgotten it in his present position. All the grandees know him now.”
“But you forget, Peter, that his own business is more dangerous than my undertaking could be, even taking it for granted I should be suspected of witchcraft, and he would scarcely like to draw attention on his own delicate doings.”
“So far true,” said Peter. “I respect your shrewdness; you can talk sense sometimes. I will get that vial for you some time this week or next.”
“Do not forget the exact time after death—four hours. The perfection of the mixture would be gone if you did not attend to that. I shall come with you to the door, and wait for you and the vial, any night and any hour you mention.”
“Very well,” said Peter, as he got up and stretched himself. “I suppose your larder is empty?”
“Oh! I forgot. You can have what there is—cheese three days old, and some fresh brown bread, and two eggs, new-laid yesterday morning, which my friend the washerwoman gave me for sitting up at night with her sick boy. She would make me take them, and I am glad now I need not eat them myself. I should feel mean, if I did; and yet, if they stayed there till to-morrow, hunger would drive me to it. You are welcome to them.”
Meanwhile, Peter had silently helped himself to all the articles mentioned except one “hunch” of bread, and left the garret with a cool “Thank you.” Jan turned back to the window, and stayed nearly an hour looking down into the drowsy canal with its fringe of dark, huddled houses, each, as he thought, a frame for a picture full of the same agony of hopeless aspirations and submission to grim and sordid circumstances as his own. But he saw through glasses of his own staining; for many of those wretched, crazy, but beautiful houses held pictures of a bright home life and love that looked no higher or farther for happiness, and was, in truth, the outcome of a mind more philosophical than the future glory of Flemish art, staring into the flood from his garret window, could boast of possessing.
Three months went by, and no one saw the young artist, save the man who sold him his meagre provisions, Peter, and his friend of the eggs. Five days after the conversation we have recorded Peter and he were walking home at two o’clock in the morning through the streets, where no one but the watchman had leave and license to be, calling out the hour when the chimes struck it. It was bright moonlight, and the two men would gladly have dispensed with the beauty of the night, much as it enhanced the charm of the great mansions they passed, the carved doorways, the delicate balconies, the ponderous, magnificent iron bell-pulls, the lions’ and griffins’ heads on the many bridges over the narrow canals. Even Jan passed hurriedly by, standing nervously back in a doorway if he heard the clear cry of a watchman, starting as a loose stone rattled under his feet in the pavement, and even when his companion ill-naturedly put his hand in a fountain and noisily disturbed the water with a “swish” that made the other turn pale and look around in horror of being pursued.
As the weeks went by and the young man worked on alone, feverishly and battling with his own superstitions as well as the fear of being denounced by his two associates, an odd change came over him. Peter noticed it about one month after the day they had procured the vial of blood. Jan was taken with a pious fit that day, and insisted on spending some miserable pence he had on candles offered for the soul of the poisoned girl, and which he, with genuine devoutness, put on the iron spikes provided for the purpose in the church of Notre Dame. That day, having spent all in this way, he fasted altogether and nearly fainted at his easel; but when he left off work Peter saw that a startled, expectant look was in his eyes, which he directed furtively every now and then to one particular corner of his room. When questioned he hurriedly turned the conversation; but the scared look grew more and more intense as time went on. At last, one night, the young man asked Peter seriously and with great trepidation to stay and sleep with him.
“I believe I am getting nervous,” he said, with a laugh that was anything but genuine. Peter made no objection, but in the middle of the night he was awakened by Jan. The poor fellow was in a violent cold perspiration, and, pointing excitedly to the same corner, cried:
“There she is; and she never says a word, but only looks at me reproachfully! She has been there every night since the first Month’s Mind!”
“Pshaw!” said Peter, “I see nothing there, Jan; you should be bled—that is all. You have been overworking yourself.”
But nothing would persuade the artist that the ghost of the poisoned girl was not there, silent and reproachful; and there, day after day and night after night, he saw her, and, though he longed to speak to her, he never dared.
Three months were over and his picture was done; but he was only the skeleton of his former self, and he looked, as Peter said, like what the Florentine woman had said of Dante—“the man who had gone down to hell and come back again.” His bitterness was gone, so was his hopelessness, but there was no healthy joy or youthful enthusiasm in their place; he seemed to have grown old all at once, except for the feverish, eager haste to show his picture and win the name that should darken that of the national pets and the popular favorites. Where to show it? was a question Peter put more than once, but Jan waived it as not worth any anxiety. He should write a notice, and post it on the church doors and those of the Guildhall and the Exchange, to the effect that a new and unknown painter had a picture for sale and exhibition at such and such a place; and if the public did not care to come there to see it, they might see it once on next market-day in the Grande Place, where the artist would show it himself, free to all.
The subject was “Judith and Holofernes”—a common subject enough in those days, but the artist thought that no one had ever treated it in the same way before. When we see it in the market-place and hear the comments of the people, we shall understand in what lay the difference.
The day appointed by the artist came. All the rich and learned men had noticed the placard on the church doors, and the connoisseurs and critics were on the alert. This unpatroned and self-confident painter stung their curiosity, and the merchants, native and foreign, were also eager to see and, if they liked it, “buy up” the new sensation. The people, too, had heard of the exhibition, and many crowded earlier than usual to the market-place to get a glimpse of the mysterious picture being set up by the artist.
No one did see it, however. A good many stalls, booths, and awnings were up long before daylight, and no one noticed the stand of the new-comer, put up in a corner, and screened all round with the commonest tent-cloth. As soon as dawn made it possible to see things a little, the stand was found to be open, and a picture, unframed, was seen set up on trestles, and some coarse crimson drapery skilfully arranged round it, so as to take the place of the frame which the artist was too poor to buy. A few loungers came up, and, fancying this was the screen to some mystery-play to be acted later in the day, sauntered away again, like uncritical creatures as they were. Presently a priest and a merchant came up, evidently searching for some particular booth, and soon stopped before the picture.
“Here it is,” shortly said one of them.
“So that is the picture?” said the other; and for a while they both stood in silence, examining it in detail.
“Wonderful!” said the merchant presently. “It beats the hospital 'St. John.’”
“There is a strange power about the drawing,” said the other.
“But the coloring!” retorted the merchant. “See the depth, the life-likeness, the intensity; and yet there is nothing violent or merely sense-appealing. It is horror, but rather mental than physical horror.”
“True,” said the priest. “I wonder if he had a model.”
“Most likely, but there is more than he ever saw in any common model; the merit rests with himself alone, I should judge.”
“Well, do you think of buying it?”
“I am inclined to do so, but want to examine it more closely first. Besides, I see no one here to represent the painter, or even guard the picture.”
“Oh! I have no doubt there is some one hovering about—perhaps that countryman who looks so vacant. You know the professional tricks of our worthy artists!”
And with this he called the person in question, who surely looked vacant enough to be in disguise.
“Can you tell me what you think of this picture, friend?” he asked.
“Very fine, messire.”
“You do not think it like one of Hendrick Corlaens, do you?”
“I never saw that, messire,” bashfully said the countryman.
“But you think this is fine?”
“Very, very.”
“Why do you like it?”
“It seems like life.”
“Like death too?”
“Yes, messire.”
“How far did you come this morning?” asked the merchant, fancying his companion’s shrewdness had overshot the mark this time.
“Forty-three miles. I started before midnight from Stundsen.”
“I think,” said the merchant to his brother-critic, “we shall make nothing of this man. He must be one of my brother-in-law’s men at Stundsen. He is quite genuine in his stupidity.”
And the pair moved nearer the picture, while others came up and stopped, till there was soon a little knot of admirers talking in whispers. The crowd grew as the day went on. In the side street leading into the Place the doors of Notre Dame opened to let out the flood of worshippers that had flowed in since dawn from the country, and who now rushed from their devotions to their business. Noise was uppermost, trade was brisk; the sun got hot and men got thirsty. It was soon a riotous as well as a picturesque scene, and a spectator on that balcony of the curiously-carved corner window on the same side of the Place as the Guildhall could scarcely have told which stalls the hurrying masses most besieged, so tangled was the web of human beings jostling and jolting each other along the uneven pavement. A good many had stared and gazed at the picture. It was the subject of many comments and disputes that day; men quarrelled over its merits as they drank their sour wine, and women talked of it in whispers over their bargains. Some children had screamed and kicked at first sight of it; altogether it had not failed to be known, seen, and talked about. Our two friends of early morning had hung about it all day and overheard most of the remarks of the crowd. Some people had been disappointed in finding that it was not the sign of a play representing the slaying of Holofernes, but only a picture; a Venetian and a Greek, daintily dressed and speaking some soft, foreign tongue—a wonder to the sturdy Flemish peasants from the dykes and canals by the sea—lounged near the unpainted railing that protected the picture from the crowd. No one could see behind the picture, but many thought the artist was hidden within the closely sewn curtains, that never flapped in the breeze like the rest of the market awnings. These two and the first critics listened in eager silence to the judgment of the crowd, put forth in short sentences at long intervals. On coming up one woman said to her companion:
“Why, I thought they always painted Judith with black hair; this one has hair the color of mine.”
“Perhaps it was his betrothed he painted,” said the other, “and in compliment to her he made it a portrait.”
“Then I should not like to be he. A ghostly bride he would have.”
“But look at her eyes; they seem like a corpse’s just come back to life.”
“Pshaw! how could a corpse come back to life? You mean a ghost.”
“No—Lazarus, you know. I can fancy how frightened and reproachful he might have looked when he woke up and found himself in his shroud.”
“I think he would look glad and thankful. But come away. It seems as if I should dream of that face.”
“Yes; it makes me feel very strange the more I look at it.”
And the two women moved off.
Presently another voice was heard in a muffled tone.
“See the blood in Holofernes’ throat. It looks as if it were moving.”
“Judith looks too weak and small to kill him,” said another.
“So she does,” said a third, and he added, in a lower tone: “I once had a cousin very like that picture.”
“Is she dead?” asked a woman, a stranger to the speaker.
“Yes,” said the man, with some surprise.
“I thought no live person could remind you of this face,” answered the woman, as if in explanation.
The two couples of critics glanced appreciatively and with a smile at each other, and the Greek said to his friend:
“Your boors are no bad critics, after all. I think the barbarians rather beat us in painting.”
“Beat you!” laughed the Venetian. “Speak for yourself. But it is your religion that has fossilized your art; otherwise you would have been—”
“No,” said the other thoughtfully, “I think you mistake; I doubt if we have the gift you, and the Flemings also, have for painting. Our literature is as far above that of this northern people as heaven is above the earth, and our sculpture, of course, is unrivalled; but they have the gift of music, and of architecture, and of painting—the two last marvellously developed. And in the first I think your people—I do not mean Venetians, but some of your other Italian neighbors—have just now reached a good climax. At Milan I heard some chanting that would put us to shame, and even here I have heard something not unlike it. Yes, I cede the palm to the barbarians in the arts of Euterpe and—”
“But in architecture yours is the peer of any northern style,” said the Venetian.
“I doubt it,” said the Greek. “There is a strange impression comes over me in these vast, sky-high, delicately-carved cathedrals, dim and resonant, that comes nowhere else—not in our gold-colored, mosaic-paved, dome-crowned churches, nor your St. Mark, the daughter of our St. Sophia.”
“Every one knows how liberal are your views,” said the other, with a smile.
“Yes?” asked the Greek, evidently in innocence. “But I am only fair to others. I would rather be a Greek than a barbarian, as the adage of one of our old heathen philosophers has it; but I can see that God has not rained every blessing on one spot, and that my native land, as he did on the Garden of Eden before Adam fell.”
“Hush!” said the Venetian, interrupting him. “Some girl has fainted.”
Some little stir was taking place in the crowd; it was a girl who had fainted, and an old woman, strong and powerful, was holding her.
Among the many questions tossed to and fro and never answered, our four friends all managed to hear the words of the old woman to her nearest neighbors.
“Yes, that is the portrait of her sister and my granddaughter, just as if the poor lost girl had sat for it herself. But then this must have been painted since she lost her rosy color. And I believe the painter knows what became of her, and where she is, if she is alive; and, God forgive me! I always accused the Lord Conrad of Schön of her ruin and disappearance. I will know, too, if this painter is to be found anywhere in Flanders. Oh! yes, Agnes is very well; she will be herself again directly, nervous little thing!” And the old woman, with a kind of savage tenderness, shielded the face of her granddaughter in her bosom, while the girl slowly revived.
Some people hinted that the painter was hidden in the closed tent behind the picture, and others brought out shears to cut the curtains; but the priest here interposed.
“I think, my friends,” he said in a clear, authoritative voice, “that you had better leave this matter to the proper authorities. Messire Van Simler and I will see that this good woman is heard, and, if need be, helped to find her granddaughter, or any news of her death and fate. It would be an unwarrantable act to cut these curtains open: if there is no one there, you will feel like fools, the dupes of the childish trick of an unknown painter; if you find the person you are looking for, you may do him a mischief and come yourselves under the eye of the law. I advise you to let the matter rest. And you, my good friend, here is an address you may find useful whenever you wish to make further inquiries. It would be best to take your charge home.”
The manner rather than the words of the speaker took effect at once, and the group dissolved to make room for other sight-seers, all gaping, all admiring, and all ending by feeling uncomfortable and leaving the stand with muttered words of equal wonder and fear. But it is impossible to follow each comment, and we have yet other scenes to look at before we close the history of this picture.
Among the crowd that day had been Peter and Simon, and the former, familiar as he was with the painting, had ceased to feel impressed by the weird, indescribable beauty and awe that were its very essence. But he had been, in a business-like way, alive to everything connected with what was to him the instrument of future success, and the fainting scene and its close were especially observed. He noticed the drift of all the remarks made on the picture; he had foretold it himself—for he was nothing if not worldly-wise—and he carefully scanned the faces of the four critics who had so pertinaciously lingered round the stand all day. He knew them all for enlightened men, above the nonsense of the age, good art-critics, and men born to be masters of their kind. Even the young Venetian had the making of a statesman in him; the Greek was as simple-minded as he was generous, and, though his countrymen had a bad name at Bruges for conventional sins of which not half of them were really guilty, he was, even with the most ignorant, a signal exception. The other two were trusted native citizens, bosom friends, patrons of all that was good, learned, and improving, and, what was more, powerful in the council and civic government. The first, by the way, was a canon of the cathedral, by private inheritance a rich man, and, by dint of charity to the starving and liberality to men of letters, raised above the scandal that attended on rich ecclesiastics. These four were representative men, and though each a representative of the best type of his own class and nation, still no less entitled to be called representative men.
Peter noted the way Messire Van Simler went that evening; the canon he knew well by reputation. Then he came back to the Place and helped a young peasant to lift and pack the picture, leaving on the planks in front of the booth the address of the artist and a notice that purchasers were asked to meet the painter at his own studio any time each day before dark. The peasant seemed slim and tall for a Flemish countryman, but his cap concealed his face, and his loose vest was well calculated to increase his seeming bulk; still, when he got to the studio in the old garret over the canal, and threw off his cap, he proved to be the person you must have suspected—the painter himself. He said nothing, and Peter did not offer to speak; but the former, as soon as he came in, glanced hurriedly into one corner and then back at the picture. Over their scanty supper the two exchanged a few monosyllables as to the result of the show, but each was uneasy and spoke as if compelled by the suspicion of the other. Next morning Peter went to Van Simler’s house before the latter was out of bed, and was received during the merchant’s ample breakfast. No one came to Jan’s garret the first day, and he stayed at home alone with his work, now and then retouching it, as if drawn to it by a spell he could not master; but each time he worked at it he seemed more ill and nervous. Towards dusk he heard a footstep on the stair, and opened the door to let in some light on the break-neck place, full of corners and broken steps, where some stranger was evidently groping his way. It was the Greek. He greeted the painter with grave earnestness and more interest than is usual with a purchaser.
“I have come,” he said after the first civilities, “to buy both your pictures and you, and pack both at once, as my ships will be in port by the night after to-morrow night, and it needs time to meet them. They cannot wait—at least, that one cannot which happens to be most convenient for you to go in. Have you any objection to go with me to Greece?—any tie to detain you here?”
Jan looked into the corner before he answered, and shuddered. “I fear I have,” he said unwillingly. The Greek looked fixedly at him.
“I will not keep you any longer than you like, and you probably like travelling? There are scenes in Greece and the East that will delight you, if you have a liking for Scriptural subjects; and the journey need not be longer than the interval between this cargo from here and the next cargo back.”
Jan said nothing.
“You see I am bent on having you as well as your picture,” the merchant went on; “but if you insist on refusing me your company, I will take the picture at once. I have men below ready to carry it away, and I will give you your own price at once, in gold coin.”
And Jan still gazed into the furthest—and empty—corner.
“I have reasons for my haste,” said the Greek, slowly, at last. Jan turned inquiringly.
“Good reasons,” said his visitor gravely and gently, “which I will tell you when we are at sea, if you will trust me till then; if not, I will even tell you now, though the proverb says that 'walls have ears.’”
Jan seemed to need no immediate explanation, but said:
“Take the picture, and welcome, and believe in my gratitude, though I cannot put it into words; but I can take no gold for the picture.”
“Why, you invited purchasers to come here to you!”
“I have learned to-day that I cannot sell it.”
“Well,” said the Greek, with a look of intelligence, “I think you and I understand each other, then, and I may as well take you and the picture too.”
“No,” said Jan, “you do not understand me, but I understand you and am grateful. If I am in danger, it matters little; I prefer meeting such a danger as you fear for me to seeing what I should see always, on the ship, in the East, as well as here—or at the stake.”
“Your mind is—preoccupied, my young friend,” said the merchant. “But let me take the picture; at least, it is better to have the evidence put out of the way in time. Let me call to my men.”
“Yes, but no gold for it,” said Jan without emotion, as he pushed away the purse on the table. “Take the picture; there will be only one face then, and I shall not be torturing myself as to whether the likeness is faithful enough or not.”
The Greek bent out of the window and whistled to two men sitting on the narrow stone-work of the canal; one of them struck a flint, lit a pine torch, and, beckoning the other to follow him, came up the winding stairs. Jan said not a word, and the picture was packed and carried away, while the merchant lingered yet, pressing gold, protection, and future patronage upon the benumbed artist. Even the hint of fame could not stir the young man.
“I have done my life’s work,” he said gloomily. “I shall never paint the equal of that picture again, and I do not wish to,” he added with a shudder; “and for the sake of my reputation I must not paint anything below that standard.”
“But why should not you do even better?” said the Greek.
“I thought you knew,” said the young man, in puzzled uncertainty.
“I know nothing, and my suspicions are too vague to shape my judgment on the merits of this particular work of yours. I gathered all I do know, or even suspect, from the remarks of the people to-day. I am used to watching indications of men’s fancies, prejudices, passions, say even superstitions, and I thought it a pity that such people as we heard to-day should have it in their power to end or mar the career of an artist of your genius. We want some young, rising painter—one who can rival the Italians; one who can show that there is a future for art, that it is progressive and improvable; one especially who will defy conventionalities—for I own that your independent treatment of a 'Judith’ fascinated me. But if I cannot prevail upon you to accept my services at present, you will not refuse to take this address; it will find me, no matter where I may be, and it will be even a personal safeguard for you in my absence and during the interval that may elapse before I hear of your appeal.”
“Thank you a thousand times for your unprovoked and generous interest!” said Jan more warmly than he had spoken before. “I shall never forget it. God grant my life or death may be guided and determined by the highest Power! I should not trust myself to decide wisely, if I had the choice offered me; but if it is ordained that I should live long, I prefer your being the instrument of my salvation.”
The merchant left, and Jan stayed alone all night; he was stonily calm, watching, thinking, waiting as if for an expected event, and never breaking his fast through the long, dark hours. When early morning came, two men in gray cloaks opened his door and respectfully ordered him to come with them to Van Simler’s house, which he did without surprise and without remonstrance. Here he found the canon, who with Van Simler told him briefly that they thought it for his good to be taken into the country to the castle of Stundsen, belonging to the merchant’s brother-in-law. They did not tell him why, and it did not even occur to him to ask. As he passed from the large dining-hall where this short interview took place to a room furnished with Spanish leather and carved oak—his room, he was told, for a few hours—he thought he recognized the Greek anxiously and quickly open a door that led to the passage, as if to assure himself of the presence of some expected person.
Van Simler and his friend, meanwhile, had a short and significant talk, a few words of which are here set down to explain facts that may look to the undiscerning reader like the conventional tricks of modern mediævalists, to whom plots and kidnapping are “daily bread.” “Now,” said the merchant, “if that scoundrel Peter goes no further, there is every hope of getting this obstinate young genius out of the city in safety; but he may try to get two prices and hint the matter to Conrad Schön.”
The canon shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, in that case,” he said, “all would be in vain, for Count Conrad has the sovereign’s ear; and you know the hobby the Count of Flanders has lately bestridden.”
“The youth ought to have gone with the Greek; but the latter says he believes him half-mad, which accounts for his staying in the jaws of the lion.”
“I have heard of Jan the painter before,” said the priest, “and, had he been a different person, I should have gone to him myself; but, from my general knowledge of his character, any one would do better than one of us, and I am glad the Greek forestalled me. Why did not you keep Peter under lock and key when he came here?”
“It was a mistake, I own,” said the other; “but still, if I had, there was Simon in the secret.”
“Simon is a fool, and nothing of this would have occurred to him.”
“I doubt about his being a fool; at any rate, he is a dangerous one.
“He is a fool in such matters as these, though dangerous enough in his way, as you say. Now, our Greek friend has just left the house, I see, and there is nothing to detain me here just now. You take the transport business in your hands? Well and good; while I attend to any foolish charge made in the city. I expect I shall see old Mother Colette before dark to-night.”
There is no need to go through the details of the few days that followed. In one word, Peter was more powerful than Jan’s four protectors put together, but only because he had Conrad Schön at his back, and behind him a greater “presence” yet—no less a person than the Count of Flanders, who had lately taken a mania about witchcraft. It was easy to play upon his vanity and tickle his supposed superior sense of discovery, and Conrad had reasons for diverting to the young artist the opprobrium which even he, with all his power, could not fail to have brought upon himself in such an independent and proud burgher-city as Bruges for the wrong done to the orphan daughter of one of her citizens and an attendant of his wife; for there was still a lingering in Flanders of the old knightly feeling of the earlier days of chivalry, which made it the duty of a knight to consider every house-maiden within his walls as his own daughter or sister, and protect, and even defend, her as such.
The dark accusations of Conrad and his informant against the defenceless painter were but too readily listened to, and, before his friends could conceal him, the sovereign had already sent to demand his person. We will pass over the mock examination which the count held, more with a view to satisfy his own curiosity than to assure himself of the prisoner’s guilt; over the honest but bitter malignity with which old Mother Colette, an unconscious tool sought out by Jan’s enemies, testified against the man who, to make such a startling and mysterious likeness of her lost granddaughter, must have been intimately acquainted with her; and, lastly, over Jan’s strange apathy and silence, his refusal to deny the charges brought against him, and his seeming relief at being condemned to die.
He never told any one the reason of all this, and the secret would have died with him, if Peter, years afterwards, when the picture again came to light and became famous, had not made known the hallucination of the painter, to which was really due the success others had stupidly attributed to forbidden practices. The last thing that concerns us is the strange sentence and fanciful doom pronounced by the Count of Flanders, the carrying out of which will take us up into the belfry of the Guildhall, just above the market-place where the unlucky picture had first roused the ignorant suspicions of the mob.
Here, where swings the largest bell of the famous carillon, we find the artist once more. The great dark mass hangs dumb beside him; very little light is here, but enough to see by dimly, and make out some of the maze of beams and iron-braced stays that uphold the old bell. Even some of the inscription is visible; its gilt letters in relief gleam out of the dimness and naturally fix the eye in that kind of magnetic gaze which some say is favorable to sleep. Jan was half crouched in one corner, wondering why he was there and how long it was intended he should stay; the two men who had brought him had simply told him that the count had sent him up there to see if he could rival the penance of St. Simeon Stylites, for a few hours at least. Presently the bell began to stir and sway softly, slowly; one dull, muffled tone came out as the tongue touched the outbent lips of the mighty bell; the next stroke came louder, the next swing was wider, and Jan’s head already throbbed with the unwelcome noise. Now the monster was alive in earnest. Warming to its work, it swung further and further; it tossed its base upwards, till the beams groaned and creaked, and all kinds of hideous minor noises seemed to be embroidered on the constant dull echo between each stroke. A strange wind blew in Jan’s face; it was the breath of the bell, whose relentless beat grew more and more regular, more and more monotonous, as it went on. The artist dared not move; one hair’s breadth nearer the terrific engine would be his death, one blow of its lips would be more effectual than any stroke of axe or pile of faggots. He shrank close to the wall, but, as his body just cleared the bell in its mad flingings and tossings, his mind seemed to be struck by it at every toll, almost absorbed in it, drawn to it with fatal curiosity. Was that the bell whose sound had been so majestic, so solemn, so beautiful in his ears as a child, so grand when it rang out above the others—eighty of them—that chimed on the great church holidays and welcomed the victorious sovereign when he came back from war? Was this the heart of the great angel that poetry and popular belief had endowed the belfry with—this terrible, maddening, brazen-tongued, relentless engine? It only just missed touching him each time it flung itself on his side of the beam-chamber; if it were to swing only a little more fiercely, as it seemed easy for it to do, one blow would crush him. Already the air seemed to suck him in under the bell, into some dark vault, no doubt—some bottomless pit; had his conductors known, when they put him there, that it was time for the bell to toll, or had they forgotten him? How long would this go on? His brain could not stand it much longer, he felt, but to scream was useless; the great, dread voice hushed all other sound. It seemed presently as if the gilt lettering got brighter; it took the shape of a glaring yellow eye; now redder, like fire, now alive, now like the eyes in his “Judith,” that the woman had said were the “eyes of a corpse just come back to life.” But had bells eyes as well as tongues? he asked himself helplessly. He remembered learning about the Cyclops and their single eyes in the middle of their foreheads; now he really saw a worse monster, with an eye of flame set in its huge, black, bulging lip. Was that the gold the Greek had offered him? Surely it was that, and no eye. Of course his fancy had betrayed him. But how could the gold have got there and got stuck to the rim of the accursed bell? How long had he been there, and when were they coming to fetch him? But they could not get in while that fiend was tossing and bellowing in these narrow walls. What was that other noise now?—a whirring of a thousand wheels! Where? It seemed all round; and now the bell appeared to him in a network of wheels, all going round faster than the eye could follow—a mass of moving air formed of many hazy circles intertwined; he knew they were wheels, but could not actually see them. He dared not hold his ears and head with his hands, for between each fling of the bell there was not time to lift his hands; and if they were caught—Some one was there now—come to bring him away. How did he get in? But it was not a man; it had long, fair hair and a misty sort of covering. He knew the face. Was there an angel of the bell, after all, who was going to stop the great tongue and deliver him? No; that face was a dead face—Judith just as he had painted her, just as he saw her in the corner of his room; and this was his room, and he had been dreaming of the bell. Scarcely—he could not dream of such a noise; then the devil must have got into his room and changed everything. But the clangor never stopped, and never spoke either louder or softer—one eternal, dreary, vexing, maddening ring. He would go mad, no doubt, if he stayed there another quarter of an hour; how long had he been there? Now he was fascinated by the unerring accuracy of the strokes, and, in a trance, expected feverishly the next dull boom, and mechanically counted on his fingers till the next was due again, and so on for five minutes. Suppose he should hang on to the tongue; would it make a feather’s weight of difference in the time or the sound of the stroke? He wondered how the bell sounded to those in the Place; they did not heed it at all, most likely, or some thought it must be getting near their time for dinner, while pious women were reminded to say a prayer, and some gleeful child would clap its hands and count the strokes. He could count the beats of his heart and the throbs in his head. He was not mad yet, he hoped, and his thoughts came regularly, and he saw pictures burned into the air one minute and gone the next; if he could have put them on canvas, they would have made his name and fortune. He was sure he could catch their shading; they looked as if fire had been made liquid and colored. It was better than any of the windows in the cathedral, famous as they were through the art-world for their undiscoverable secret of vivid, jewel-like coloring. But one picture followed the other so soon that, had he painted them all, it would have taken him twice the threescore years and ten of an ordinary life, and they would have filled every Church in Flanders fuller than twenty chapels in each could require. What was the coloring of “Judith,” with the pitiful chemical combination for which he had risked so much, to these rich, mellow, miraculous tones, with a thousand new, unnamable shades, and shadows that looked more like the depths of a dark-blue Italian lake than the darkness of common air? But through all these meditations of a second’s length, though they seemed like the reveries of hours, the boom of the pitiless bell went on, crashing through the brain of the prisoner, shattering each new picture which the last interval had stamped on his fancy, sounding to him now like a roaring fall of water, now a ploughing avalanche, now a thunder-clap, now the fall of a burning house, now the thud of earth upon a coffin, now the blow of a massive cudgel on his own head. Instinctively he cowered lower, and a beam struck him on the back with a sudden violent blow that made him stand upright and remember that the bell was there, but no cudgel; but as he rose he had stretched out his hand, blindly feeling for support, and touched the great rocking monster. A thrill went through his frame; he looked upward and vaguely wondered if this was the end, and he saw his “Judith” again, a shadowy form among the rafters. The next feeling of consciousness was that of lying flat on his back and a strong, cold wind wafting across his feet; he put up his hand to lift his head a little and press his left temple, and then— The bell had only tolled for a quarter of an hour. As soon as it stopped the same men who had taken Jan up came again and found him dead, lying in a cramped position on his side, and one leg still stretched out beneath the now silent bell.[[51]]