“It is well, it is well!” he cried, in a transport of passionate sorrow. “Oh image, why should you stand there when the shamed land has lost her breed of noble blood, and civilization sleeps, and tyranny darkens back upon the world! Well may you lie shattered, for all that is human and holy is shattered too. Why should I keep you in this base city, where all that is noble rests in the grave, or lives a dying life in the forlorn grapple with hell! Fade, fade, large memories of saints and martyrs—drop, statues of heroes—melt, phantoms of old honor from the pictured wall—away, and yield your places to the forms of clowns and knaves! Come, you artists,” he raved, in passionate bitterness—“come, you dilettante bastards—come, you anatomies, whom the ghost of Angelo mocks and scorns—here is work for you. God! the serpentry and maggotry of Power are all before you! Choose from them—choose from them—mould us statues of slavers, paint us pictures of kidnappers, to fill the vacant places! Down with the just and great—up with the small and vile!”
Quivering with the tempest of his agony, he tottered away, and flinging himself into his chair, covered his face with his hands.
A few minutes trailed by in deep stillness. Gradually he became calm, and his hands dropped from his white and sorrowful features.
“I waste my heart in grief,” he mournfully murmured. “It will pass, it will pass. Oh, winter of Slavery you will pass, and the spring-time of Freedom will emerge. It is but a season—only a season. Patience, patience, patience.”
He sat for a little while, then rose, gathered up and laid out of sight the fragments of the statue, bore the pedestal up-stairs, and returning resumed his chair.
The minutes were wearing on in deep silence when a low knock came to the door.
“Enter,” cried Harrington, looking up from his mournful musing.
The door opened and revealed the grotesque and sloven figure of Bagasse. He had on an old swallow-tailed coat, and wore his usual dingy cap, with the visor turned down, under which his swarthy, upturned face, with the mustachioed, lion mouth open in a curious smile, and the nose adorned with the horn-rimmed goggles, pointed with suave inquiry at Harrington, while the hand performed a military salute.
“Why, Bagasse!” cried Harrington, smiling, and rising from his chair to cross over and shake hands—“how are you? Come in. I’m glad to see you.”
“Ah, Missr Harrington,” returned the old soldier, entering and bowing low with a quick motion, over the hand he grasped in his, “I am vair glad to see you. I haf not see you for so long. Zen I fancee you are seek, and I call zoo be vair sure zat it is not zat keep you from ze acadamee. How is you helt? Br-r-r! Sacrebleu! but you haf been seek, eh?” he cried, with a sudden commiseration, expressed by a shrug of his shoulders, a lift of his eyebrows, and a startled grimace of his features, as he noticed the whiteness of Harrington’s countenance. “Mon Dieu! you is vair pale wis you eye circle wis ze dark color! O my fren’ Missr Harrington, was is ze mattair wis you?”