The Gilded Chair: A Novel

by Melville Davisson Post

"Dear Marchesa," she said, "what do you mean?"

The Marchesa Soderrelli looked down at the table. She put up her hand and flecked away particles of invisible dust.

"I do not mean anything," she answered. "I am merely a foolish old woman."

But the girl went on speaking low and softly. "Do you mean that we ought not to believe what older persons say? That one ought to follow what one feels? That all the excellent reasons which the Duke of Dorset repeated are to persuade us to accept the commonplace—to be contented with the reality, to abandon our hopes, our aspirations, our dreams? Do you mean to show me how it fares with the poor little mite of a girl, when she is persuaded that happiness is an illusion, and is made to give up the dream of it? How it would have gone with little Cinderella if she had been persuaded to believe there was no fairy godmother, and no prince coming to make her queen. And how, if she had believed it and married the chimney sweep she would have missed it all?" Her voice sank. "My dear Marchesa, is this the warning of the woman on the wall?"

"You forget the parable," replied the Marchesa. "The woman on the wall was dumb." The girl arose, went over to the Marchesa and put her hand on her shoulder.

"If I had been that other traveler," she said, "I would have gone into the city of Zeus, I would have found the woman who was dumb, and I would have taken her with me to the city of Dreams."

"My dear," replied the Marchesa, "you will not remember the story. That other woman could never enter the blessed city; she was maimed."

"Then, Marchesa," said the girl, "do you think the traveler should have gone on alone?"

The Marchesa took both of the girl's hands, and looked up into her face.

"I will tell you something else," she said. "In the city of the Awakened, there was a maker of images, old and wise; and sometimes the woman went into his shop, and because she was dumb she wrote in the dust on the floor, with her finger, and she asked him about the city of Dreams, and how one reached it. And he said: 'Not the travelers only who pass by the city of Zeus win their way to the city of Dreams; our fathers have gone there also, but not often, and very long ago, and the direction and the distance and the landmarks of the way our fathers have forgot, but this thing our fathers have remembered, that no man ever found his way to the city of Dreams who set out on that quest alone.'"