Scenes and Portraits

by Frederic Manning

"Our life, O King, is a series of accidents," said Bagoas. "A little thing is sufficient to divert the whole course of our progress; it has even been said by our philosophers that the world itself is an accident, and that God is chance. I am inclined to believe, being old-fashioned, in Providence; for chance is merely a cause that is imperceptible, and if the deflection of atoms falling through space caused the world, that deflection was the result of some feature peculiar to the atoms themselves. I believe that, if the world were formed in this way, the cause was inherent in the atoms, and I believe that the progress of each man through life is derived from causes inherent in himself. But the operations of the human mind are so far removed from our experience, and so elusive in themselves, that we cannot explain them otherwise than by saying that Bel, by the hands of his angels, puts into man's mind ideas of good or of evil according to the purpose of his inscrutable wisdom. The greater part of man's life is purely spontaneous, sensible rather than reasonable in so far as the majority of our actions do not result from any reflective process, and hence it is unreasonable to ask a man to give reasons for all his acts, as it would be to ask you, O King, to give a reason for your last campaign."

"That was a reason of State," said Merodach simply.

"The reason was the reason of a great King, whose wisdom is as inscrutable as the wisdom of Bel," answered Bagoas. "It was a lapse of the mind that led me to Adam; one might say almost an act of Providence, or to be scientific, chance. This morning at daybreak I had a desire to ride abroad, for I had not slept during the night, and the sweetness of the air enticed me into the country. I took a falcon upon my wrist. Falconry was a delight of my youth. But I had barely proceeded a mile before I became preoccupied with my own thoughts. The hares passed me unobserved; the doves were free of the air. I was thinking how often man has crept up toward civilisation, and then receded from it again, as the tides creep up and recede from the beach; how the light of the world has passed from nation to nation, and none have brought it to the goal; how man forgets the evils which the last generation had abolished, and rushes back upon them to escape from present evils; and it seemed to me impossible that our race could attain to perfection in conditions of such mutability. We sow our wisdom with full hands. We think that it may increase fifty-fold. Alas! some of our seed falls in marshy places, some among stones, some is devoured by the birds of the air, some flourishes exceedingly, and is beaten down by storms of hail, or withered by the fierce heat; and that which survives and bears fruit is scarcely sufficient for the sowing of the field again.

"Every night a priest of Bel watches the stars; with optic glasses he explores the vast abyss, through which the sun and its choir of planets journey toward their fate; and when his mind is troubled by that infinity, his eyes seek thy city, O King, and mankind to him is but a little heap of withered leaves, which a sudden wind whirls in a circling dance. From his tower, O King, he looks upon thy city, which to us, from here, is splendid with a multitude of lights, and murmurous with life. He knows that in the streets the young man is seeking pleasure, that women are bearing children, that the old are dying. All the wealth and misery of the world are at his feet; and he turns again to that star which is destined to burn up the world in a tumultuous kiss. What is the lust of the young to him; the pangs of child-birth; the bitterness; the regret; the anguish of approaching death? A little heap of withered leaves suddenly caught up in a windy dance; a little flame, flickering ere it goes out into darkness.

"From this spirit of detachment in the philosopher is bred a corresponding spirit of aloofness in the multitude. They see the towers of Bel, black against the evening sky, and the watcher to them is but a man enamoured of the silence, smitten with madness by the stars; a man whose life is in the future, whose wisdom is but a sure foreknowledge of death and fate, whose very presence among them is a prophecy of corruption and change; and they ask, well may they ask! what is his wisdom worth to us? The days are blue and gold, blue and silver are the nights; and the birds are clamorous among the dripping boughs; why should we pause to think of fate? What does his wisdom profit him when in a little time he dies, and is equal with us in the dust? The flowers bud, blossom, and seed, without thought for the departing year; the birds go delightfully upon the ways of the wind, though the arrows which shall bring them to earth are stored in the quiver. Shall we do otherwise?

"Truly the worshipper of wisdom is a lonely man. The results which he obtains are never the possession of the many. They may excite the curiosity of the few, they may become an affectation with the amateur, but they do not touch the multitude, for to this last that only is good which is good in its immediate effect. Miserable indeed, the race of man seemed to me, O King; content that their mortal ambition should be bounded by the limits of a day; seeking only fat pastures and pleasant waters; and careless of the lot of their progeny, whose fate it is to cover the whole earth with populous cities, and stream like a river of fire, impetuous and consuming, into hidden and desolate places, which only the eyes of the gods have seen as yet. The treasure of wisdom is a treasure which is continually being lost, rediscovered, and lost again. It is like the gold of the miser, hidden in the ground; his son does not inherit it, but after many years some labourer turns it up with his deep-driven ploughshare, and the coins ring against the stones, and lie with tarnished brightness on the loose earth of the furrow.

"A confused murmuring distracted my thought. I seemed to swim back to reality out of a world of dreams. At first I thought that I had approached a hive of wild bees; but the humming murmuring noise seemed sweeter, more bird-like, until I saw that it came indeed from a parliament of birds, which had congregated in the boughs of an apple-tree, warbling there, and rising every now and then into the air, with a great rushing of wings, to wheel above the tree and descend upon it again in a thick cloud. I had strayed into a pleasant valley, where the Euphrates flows between level meadows of wild wheat, enclosed, like an amphitheatre, by well-wooded hills, which had already taken on the tawny and golden tints of autumn.

"On the lower slopes grew mulberries and oranges; above them, threaded with opulent colouring, plane-trees and sycamores, yellowing oaks, and the beautiful level boughs of dusky cedars, while from all sides came the sound of falling water, chiming and tinkling into little hollows, or thundering in cataracts, with a more imperious music, down precipitous and rocky glens. The sunlit fields of ripe wheat swayed in the wind like an undulating sea; the river gleamed like silver, and many coloured lilies grew beside the brimming water, filling the air with a delicate perfume. I looked about me in delight. It seemed a place sacred from the profaning feet of man. At the same time, I had a curious sense of being watched; and presently a young man rose out of the wild wheat before me, and stood watching me, with an expression of curiosity qualified with distrust."

A languid interest was apparent in the faces of his audience.

"It was Adam," said Merodach.