"'Cease dreaming,' said Hesperina—the beautiful Hesperina, the Genius of the Garden and the Star—'cease thy dream of Perpetual Peace, and live to actualize it on thy way through the World! Cease dreaming, but awaken not. Remember the counsel of Otanethi, the radiant, Lord of the Temple, the Spirit of the Hour; and when thou wakest, TRY to be a nobler and a better man. Waken not yet, O frail and weak! but still sleep—sweetly, soundly sleep, yet awhile, and only wake to be a full, true, loving man, forgiving and forgiven!' And then the peerless being waved her hand over the prostrate woman, and, lo! her movements gave token that the strange and mighty magic was felt, and that she was swiftly passing the mystic Threshold of that sphere of new and marvellous activities where the Dream Fay reigns supreme."
At this point of the story, a lady, Mrs. V., invoked the narrator's attention, saying: "Thus far, sir, your story is an excellent one, and its moral is all that could be desired; yet how comes it that you, who so strongly deprecate all human hatreds and unkindness, are yet, in a measure, amenable to the very thing you decry? In the proem to the remarkable story you have been reciting, you have admitted that there was one man toward whom your soul felt bitter. Is this right? Is it just to yourself, your foe, the world, or God? Answer me!"
The Rosicrucian studied awhile, and then replied: "It is not right or just, and yet it is very hard to forgive, much less to forget, a cool, deliberate injury, such as I suffered at the pen, and hand, and tongue of the man alluded to. It is hard to forget"——
"And still harder to forgive," said one of our company, a rather young-looking man, who had been one of the speaker's most attentive auditors. He spoke with much passion.
Said the Stranger: "It is hard to forgive or forget. Few people in the world are capable of long-continued love in a single direction, unless self-trained; fewer still of deliberate, long-continued hatred, and fewer still are competent to full, free, unqualified forgiveness. I am not. In all my experience, I never knew but one man in whom unqualified Hatred was a paramount King-passion, over-riding and surviving all others whatsoever. I will tell you that man's story as he told it to me, for he was a friend of mine whom I dearly loved, and who loved me in return. One day I asked him to open his heart to me, which, after a while, he did as follows, saying: 'Listen, while I briefly sketch the story of my life. There was a man who, because I differed with him on questions of Philosophy—for he claimed to be Nature's private secretary, which claim all sensible people laughed at, and only weaklings listened to and believed—he, this man, for this cause, called in question, not only my own, but the fair fame of the mother who bore me—that mother being already dead; and for this I hate him, as roses hate the foul malarious swamps of earth. The blazoned motto of that man was—Let no man call God his Father, who calls not man his brother. I rose in the world, and he hated me for the talent God gave me. Envy! I was in a sense his rival, and as such, this man, snake-like, used his very utmost influence and power, by tongue and pen, to injure me—and did—for he took the bread from my children by depriving me of employment. I wrote a pamphlet, under a nom de plume, and he joyfully exposed my secret. Jealousy! He attacked me personally, grossly in his paper, misrepresented well known facts—LIED! Robbing me of fair fame, as he had my dead mother before me. It is impossible for A to forgive B for a crime against C. I hated him for the dead one's sake; that hate I once thought would survive my death, and be the thing next my heart through all the Eternities. Perhaps it will not. He crushed me for a time, but "Je renais de mes cendres!" We two are yet in the World. He will not forget it! Will I? Never!—for the sake of my dead mother. I can overlook his crimes toward me, but before the Bar I hold him ever accountable for the injury to her—and to my little ones, who nearly starved, while this fiend of hell, in the garb of heaven, triumphed in my misery, and gloated over their wrongs. I am the watchful proxy—the rightful Nemesis, of the living and the Dead! I put forth books to the world. This demon in saint's garb, and his minions, howled them down as blood-hounds do the panting slave. More bread lost to my hungry ones, more stern calling for reprisals. All men have foes. I had; and this man—this impostor, this conscienceless outrager of the dead and starver of little children, listened gladly, and covertly published their statements—and that when he morally knew them to be as false as his own black, polygamous, scoundrel heart. More wrong done, more little pale hands reaching vainly forth for bread; and more hatred laid up for him and his minions at the bottom of my heart of hearts, the core and centre of my soul!'
"Thus he spake, and the man's eyes flashed fire as the words escaped him, proving that they were not the impulsive utterances of temper, but the deep and cherished results of long and bitter years of feeling. Said I: 'And does this feeling demand a physical atonement?' With a look of ineffable scorn, he replied: 'Not for an empire's sceptre would I harm a single hair of that man's head. Were his wife in a burning building, I would rescue her, or perish in the trial; were his children—but, thank God, he cannot propagate his species—Monsters never do!—but had he such, and they were hungry, I would work till I fell from exhaustion, in the effort to procure them bread: were the man himself in want or danger, I would joyously risk my life to save or serve him. Why? Because my revenge is one that could not be appeased by blood. It is too vast—too deep—and I will wreak it in other worlds, a myriad ages from now. To this I pledge my very soul; and when hereafter I point him to what I am, and what he has brought me to, I will thunder, in the ears of his spirit, in the very presence of the Judge, "Thou art the Man!" Wherever he may be, in the Vault, or in the Space, there will I be also. Nor can this feeling die before he shall undo his doing, and—no matter what. At length this feeling of mine grew strong. I loved. It drowned all love. I was ambitious, and ambition paled before it. I had wealth within my reach, and turned from the shining gold to the superior brilliance of the pole star of my passion against the soul of this man, not against his body. And then I said:—I will rise from my ashes. I will win fame and name. I, the Angular Character, will rise, and in my dealings with this fiend will be as remorseless and bitter as the quintessence of Hate; I will suffer patiently, and mount the steeps of fame, and I will ring the bells at the door of the world till all the peoples wake, and then, then will I launch him down the tide of time in his own true colors—stripped to the centre, and show him to the Ages for the monster that he is. This is a revenge worthy of an immortal being; one that merely extends to the physical person is such as brutes enjoy, but is not full, broad, deep and enduring enough for a man. As for his minions they are too contemptible to engage my attention for a moment; but in their master's soul will I fix my talons so deep, that an eternity shall not witness their extraction; and henceforth I dedicate all my life to the one purpose of avenging the dead!'
"Five years rolled by after this recital, when again, in a foreign land, we met each other. In the meantime he had grown grey. His foe still attacked him; he had never once replied, but his hatred had crystallized in the centre of his soul, and, said he, 'I can wait a million years; but revenged I will be yet, by the Life of God!' That is my story; I believe my friend will keep his oath," said the young man as he turned from the company on the quarter-deck, and slowly walked toward the bow of the steamer.
The words he had spoken were bitter ones, and they were expressed with such a verve—such a vehemence of vigor, intensity and passion, that not one man or woman on the quarter-deck of the steamer doubted for an instant that himself was the injured one, himself the vehement hater, notwithstanding his implied disclaimer. We saw that he fully, deeply, felt all he gave utterance to; and never, until that moment, did I comprehend the awful depths and capacity of the human soul for either love or hatred; nor had any of us, even the Rosicrucian, the faintest idea but that every word of his awful threat came from his heart; nor the slightest doubt that if there were a possibility of wreaking his revenge in the World to come, that he would find that possibility, and remorselessly execute it. Said the Rosicrucian, as the man finished his terrible recital: "This episode comes in quite apropos to my own story's moral. It is well to beware, lest we, by some act or word of ours, so deeply plant the germ of hatred, that in after years it spring up to annoy us, and mar our peace of mind. Now, I have some knowledge of the soul, and am firmly convinced that the man who has just left us means all that he says; nor would I incur so dreadful a penalty as that man's hatred, for all the diadems on the terraqueous globe. His passion is not merely external, else he would, by an assault, or by slander, seek its satisfaction. But his feeling is the offspring of a sense of outraged justice. I have not the least doubt that the object of his spleen laughs at the man. But Revenge will outlive laughter, wealth, position, influence—all things, when of the nature of the present case. Thus, Madame, your question, I hope, has been answered to your satisfaction. Of course, I deprecate hatred, but demand justice.
"But see, the sun is setting again, and the conclusion of our story must be deferred until after supper, when, if you will again assemble here upon the quarter-deck, you shall learn what befell Mr. Thomas W., and what other events transpired in the little chamber with a window at the foot of the bed, whose upper sash was down."