“‘You, Mr Wiseman, stand forth if you please. Believe me, sir, a trip back again to earth will be one of the wisest steps you ever took, and really more to the honour of your wisdom than any you have hitherto taken. On the other side, nothing could be simpler than to endeavour at Elysium; for who but a fool would carry a commodity, which is of such infinite value in one place, into another where it is of none? But, without attempting to offend your gravity with a jest, you must return to the place from whence you came, for Elysium was never designed for those who are too wise to be happy.’
“This sentence confounded me greatly, especially as it seemed to threaten me with carrying my wisdom back again to earth. I told the judge, though he would not admit me at the gate, I hoped I had committed no crime while alive which merited my being wise any longer. He answered me, I must take my chance as to that matter, and immediately we turned our backs to each other.”
Chapter xvii.
Julian enters into the person of a king.
“I WAS now born at Oviedo in Spain. My father’s name was Veremond, and I was adopted by my uncle king Alphonso the chaste. I don’t recollect in all the pilgrimages I have made on earth that I ever past a more miserable infancy than now; being under the utmost confinement and restraint, and surrounded with physicians who were ever dosing me, and tutors who were continually plaguing me with their instructions; even those hours of leisure which my inclination would have spent in play were allotted to tedious pomp and ceremony, which, at an age wherein I had no ambition to enjoy the servility of courtiers, enslaved me more than it could the meanest of them. However, as I advanced towards manhood, my condition made me some amends; for the most beautiful women of their own accord threw out lures for me, and I had the happiness, which no man in an inferior degree can arrive at, of enjoying the most delicious creatures, without the previous and tiresome ceremonies of courtship, unless with the most simple, young, and unexperienced. As for the court ladies, they regarded me rather as men do the most lovely of the other sex; and, though they outwardly retained some appearance of modesty, they in reality rather considered themselves as receiving than conferring favours.
“Another happiness I enjoyed was in conferring favours of another sort; for, as I was extremely good-natured and generous, so I had daily opportunities of satisfying those passions. Besides my own princely allowance, which was very bountiful, and with which I did many liberal and good actions, I recommended numberless persons of merit in distress to the king’s notice, most of whom were provided for. Indeed, had I sufficiently known my blest situation at this time, I should have grieved at nothing more than the death of Alphonso, by which the burden of government devolved upon me; but, so blindly fond is ambition, and such charms doth it fancy in the power and pomp and splendour of a crown, that, though I vehemently loved that king, and had the greatest obligations to him, the thoughts of succeeding him obliterated my regret at his loss, and the wish for my approaching coronation dried my eyes at his funeral.
“But my fondness for the name of king did not make me forgetful of those over whom I was to reign. I considered them in the light in which a tender father regards his children, as persons whose wellbeing God had intrusted to my care; and again, in that in which a prudent lord respects his tenants, as those on whose wealth and grandeur he is to build his own. Both these considerations inspired me with the greatest care for their welfare, and their good was my first and ultimate concern.
“The usurper Mauregas had impiously obliged himself and his successors to pay to the Moors every year an infamous tribute of an hundred young virgins: from this cruel and scandalous imposition I resolved to relieve my country. Accordingly, when their emperor Abderames the second had the audaciousness to make this demand of me, instead of complying with it I ordered his ambassadors to be driven away with all imaginable ignominy, and would have condemned them to death, could I have done it without a manifest violation of the law of nations.
“I now raised an immense army; at the levying of which I made a speech from my throne, acquainting my subjects with the necessity and the reasons of the war in which I was going to engage: which I convinced them I had undertaken for their ease and safety, and not for satisfying any wanton ambition, or revenging any private pique of my own. They all declared unanimously that they would venture their lives and everything dear to them in my defence, and in the support of the honour of my crown. Accordingly, my levies were instantly complete, sufficient numbers being only left to till the land; churchmen, even bishops themselves, enlisting themselves under my banners.