In 1840 certain mechanics of the Faubourg St. Antoine, weary, as they put it, of being hoodwinked by journalists and of serving as tools for the ambition of ready speech-makers, resolved to found and to edit a journal of pure radicalism and of logic apart from evasion or circumlocution. They combined therefore and deliberated for the firm establishment of their doctrines; they took as their basis the republican device of liberty, equality and the rest. But liberty seemed to them incompatible with the duty of labour, equality with the law of property, and they therefore decided on communism. One of them, however, pointed out that in communism the sharpest would preside over the division and would get the lion’s share; it was decreed thereupon that no one should have the right to intellectual superiority. But it was further remarked that even physical beauty might constitute an aristocracy, so they decreed that there should be an equality in ugliness. Finally, as those who till the ground are yoked to the ground, it was settled that true communists could not follow agriculture, must have only the world for their fatherland and humanity itself for their family, whence it became them to have recourse to caravans and go round the world eternally. We are not relating a parable, we have known those who were present at the convention in question and we have read the first number of their journal, which was entitled The Humanitarian and was suppressed in 1841. As to this, the press reports of the period may be consulted. Had the journal continued and had the incipient sect recruited proselytes for the Icarian emigration, as the old attorney Cabet was doing at the same period, a new race of Bohemians would have been organised, and vagabondage would have counted one race the more.
CHAPTER III
LEGEND AND HISTORY OF RAYMUND LULLY
We have explained that the Church proscribed initiation because it was indignant at the profanations of the Gnosis. When Mohammed armed eastern fanaticism against faith he opposed savage and warlike credulity to the piety which is ignorant but which prays. His successors set foot in Europe and threatened to overrun it speedily. The Christians said: Providence is chastising us; and the Moslems answered: Fatality is on our side.
The Jewish Kabalists, who were in dread of being burnt as sorcerers in countries called catholic, sought an asylum among the Arabs, for these in their eyes were heretics but not idolaters. They admitted some of them to a knowledge of their mysteries, and Islam, which had already conquered by force, was before long in a position to hope that it might prevail also by science over those whom educated Araby termed in its disdain the barbarians of the West. To onslaughts of physical force the genius of France opposed the strokes of its own terrific hammer. Before the flowing tide of Mohammedan armies a mail-clad finger had traced a clear line and a mighty voice of victory cried to the flood: Thou shalt go no further. The genius of science raised up Raymund Lully, and he reclaimed the heritage of Solomon for that Saviour Who was the Son of David; it was he who for the first time called the children of blind faith to the splendours of universal knowledge. The pseudo-scholars, and the people who are wise in their own conceit, continue to speak with scorn of this truly great man; but the popular instinct has avenged him. Romance and legend have taken up his story, with the result that he is pictured as one impassioned like Abelard, initiated like Faust, an alchemist even as Hermes, a man of penitence and learning like St. Jerome, a rover after the manner of the Wandering Jew, a martyr in fine like St. Stephen, and one who was glorious in death almost as the Saviour of the world.
Let us make our beginning with the romance: it is one of the most touching and beautiful that have come within our knowledge.
On a certain Sunday, in the year 1250, a beautiful and accomplished lady, named Ambrosia di Castello, originally of Genoa, went, as she was accustomed, to hear mass in the church of Palma, a town in the island of Majorca. A mounted cavalier of distinguished appearance and richly dressed, who was passing at the time in the street, noticed the lady and pulled up as one thunderstruck. She entered the church, quickly disappearing in the shadow of the great porch. The cavalier, quite unconscious of what he did, spurred his horse and rode after her into the midst of the affrighted worshippers. Great was the astonishment and scandal. The cavalier was well known; he was the Seigneur Raymund Lully, Seneschal of the Isles and Mayor of the Palace. He had a wife and three children, while Ambrosia di Castello was also married and enjoyed, moreover, an irreproachable reputation. Raymund Lully passed therefore for a great libertine. His equestrian entrance into the church of Palma was noised over the whole town, and Ambrosia, in the greatest confusion, sought the advice of her husband. He was apparently a man of sense, and he did not consider his wife insulted because her beauty had turned the head of a young and brilliant nobleman. He proposed that Ambrosia should cure her admirer by a folly as grotesque as his own. Meanwhile, Raymund Lully had written already to the lady, to excuse, or rather to accuse himself still further. What had prompted him, he said, was “strange, supernatural, irresistible.” He respected her honour and the affections which, he knew, belonged to another; but he had been overwhelmed. He felt that his imprudence required for its expiation high self-devotion, great sacrifices, miracles to be accomplished, the penitence of a Stylite and the feats of a knight-errant.
Ambrosia answered: “To respond adequately to a love which you term supernatural would require an immortal existence. If this love be sacrificed heroically to our respective duties during the lives of those who are dear to each of us, it will, beyond all doubt, create for itself an eternity at that moment when conscience and the world will permit us to love one another. It is said that there is an elixir of life; seek to discover it, and when you are certain that you have succeeded, come and see me. Till then, live for your wife and your children, as I also will live for the husband whom I love; and if you meet me in the street make no sign of recognition.”
It was evidently a gracious congé, which put off her lover till Doomsday; but he refused to understand it as such, and from that day forth the brilliant noble disappeared to make room for the grave and thoughtful alchemist. Don Juan had become Faust. Many years passed away; the wife of Raymund Lully died; Ambrosia di Castello in her turn became a widow; but the alchemist appeared to have forgotten her and to be absorbed only in his sublime work.
At length, one day, the widow being alone, Raymund Lully was announced, and there entered the apartment a bald and emaciated old man, who held in his hand a phial filled with a bright and ruddy elixir. He advanced with unsteady step, seeking her with his eyes. The object which they sought was before them but he did not recognise her, who in his imagination had remained always young and beautiful.
“It is I,” she said at length. “What would you with me?”