No matter into what sort of world this planet develops, through howsoever laudable a magic-working of social and mechanical and hygienic improvements, that future also belongs to these inscrutable immortals. Into that world, however handsomely it all be changed by new inventions and fresh fallacies, I think, they will come as conquerors.
First will come Helen. I mean that Helen who was verily at Troy. For the wife of Menelaus, we know, did not ever come to this city: and Philostratus tells us how the whole truth as to the Greeks' crusade, in the high cause of outraged morality, was revealed by Achilles' ghost to Apollonius of Tyana. "For a long time we leaders of the Achæans were deceived and tricked into fighting battles in Helen's behalf, through our belief that she was in Ilium; whereas she really was living in Egypt, in the house of Proteus, whither through the device of Zeus she had been snatched away from Paris. But when we became convinced of this, we continued fighting to win Troy itself and the riches of Troy and the power these riches would give to us, proclaiming that this empire must be destroyed in order that the world might be made safe for democracy." And from Egypt Helen's husband—if that at all matters,—duly retrieved her on his way homeward when the warring was done.
But Hera, it is recorded, gave to Paris that woman's likeness, made of the white mists of night and of dawn's rosy-colored clouds and of the golden clouds of sunset, and shaped in that perfect loveliness with which Hera had before this time betrayed Ixion, leading the King of Thessaly to beget upon this shining phantom a dreadful spawn of twisted and blotched monsters.... And this bright emptiness was what the heroes fought for, in the most famous yet not by any means the most irrational of all the wars that have ever been. And when the warring was done, the leaders shared the spoils with much quarreling, and maimed soldiers knew they had fought for a colored mist, in this war also.
So Troy fell because the appearance of this phantom had beauty without any flaw. And the Trojans died. And the Greeks died. And Menelaus and his wife died too. And in time Queen Hera also died. But the phantom that had been at Troy endured, masterless, purposeless, and immortal.
Wherever men have been, she too, the romantic aver, has passed like a cool flame of marsh-fire, passionlessly, inconceivably bright: and of the beauty of this Helen there are many tales recorded. Yet whosoever has not seen her, it is declared by these poets also, to him beauty remains but one of the words he puts upon paper. They that have seen her, are a wistful folk who go thereafter with dazzled eyes and can write nothing truly. None the less does Helen keep her old complaisance; she, impassionate, denies not anything to the passion of her lovers: and they may still beget upon her loveliness all manner of twisted and blotched monsters, in the fashion of the King of Thessaly. So art endures, and critics and curators are providentially provided for. And Helen grants to her lovers everything except happiness: that they may never hope for; that she has not to give, nor has she ever known of it, who goes as a bright emptiness, without any like or kindred anywhere save in the monsters which are her spawn, as Helen passes from the ruining of one lover to another lover, masterless, purposeless, and immortal....
Yes, Helen will come first, I think. And near to her, no doubt, will follow her servitors from of old, crafty and great-thewed Odysseus, and Faust, in the pulled down cap and the furred robe of a scholar. And Don Juan, and pallid, desperate Tannhäuser, and Ahasuerus, who has put away despairing and hope forever, will come too; with many others.
And for an instant these thronged myths will look smilingly upon the ensorcelled romanticists of that far-off strange future. In that instant all the "new" schools of literature will perish; all the magazines sufficiently "vital" to be in bankruptcy will suspend publication; and—for that single instant,—the youngest of that far day's "realists" will cease from telling about what a devil of a fellow he was at college.
"Now," these immortals will say, "do you leave off this foolishness, and contrive for us fresh adventures."
And the tale-tellers will obey.