continued Mark. "'Yes, that thou wilt! we shall then be of high
nobility. Do not lose this privilege.' If I lose this privilege, how sad
that will be! But here, in the palace, they think nothing of these
things--instead of hymns they sing the strangest, wildest songs, so
strange and beautiful that I fear and tremble at them as if the sounds
were wicked sounds."
So talking, the Princess and the boy went on through the lovely wood;
at last they left the avenue and passed into the courtyard of a stately
but decayed house. The walls of the courtyard were overgrown with ivy,
and trees were growing up against the house and shading some of the
windows. The Princess passed on without speaking, and entered the hall
by an open door. As they entered, Mark could hear the sound of looms,
and inside were several men and women at different machines employed in
weaving cloth. The Princess spoke to several, and leading Mark onward
she ascended a wide staircase, and reached at last a long gallery at the
back of the house. Here were many looms, and girls and men employed in
weaving. The long range of lofty windows faced the north, and over the
nearer woods could be seen the vast sweep of the great Thuringian
Forest, where Martin Luther had lived and walked. The risen sun was
gilding the distant woods. A sense of indescribable loveliness and peace
seemed to Mark to pervade the place.
"How happy you must be here, gracious Highness!" he exclaimed.
They were standing apart in one of the windows towards the end of the
long room, and the noise of the looms made a continuous murmur that
prevented their voices being heard by the others who were near.
The Princess looked at Mark for some moments without reply.
"I must speak the truth always," she said at last, "but more than ever
to such as thou art. I am not happy."
The boy looked at her as though his heart would break.
"Not happy," he said in a low voice, "and you so good."
"The good are not happy," said the Princess, "and the happy are not
good."
There was a pause; then the Princess went on:
"The people who are with me are good, but they are not happy. They have
left the world and its pleasures, but they regret them; they live in the
perpetual consciousness of this self-denial--this fancy that they are
serving God better than others are; they are in danger of becoming
jealous and hypocritical. I warn you never to join a particular society
which proposes, as its object, to serve God better than others. You are
safer, more in the way of serving God in the palace, even amid the
singing and the music which seems to you so wicked. They are happy; they
are thoughtless, gay, like the birds. They have at least no dark gloomy
thoughts of God, even if they have no thoughts of Him at all. They may
be won to Him, nay, they may be nearer to Him now than some who think
themselves so good. Since I began this way of life I have heard of many
such societies, which have crumbled into the dust with derision, and are
remembered only with reproach."
Mark stood gazing at the distant forest without seeing it. He did not
know what to think.
"I do not know why I have told you this," said the Princess; "I had no
thought of saying such words when I brought you here. I seem to have
spoken them without willing it. Perhaps it was the will of God."
"Why do you go on with this life," said Mark sadly, "if it be not good?
The Prince would be glad if you would come back to the palace. He has
told me so."
It seemed to the boy that life grew more and more sad. It seemed that,
baffled and turned back at every turn, there was no reality, no sincere
walk anywhere possible. The worse seemed everywhere the better, the
children of this world everywhere wiser than the children of light.
"I cannot go back now," said the Princess. "When you are gone I shall
forget this; I shall think otherwise. There is something in your look
that has made me speak like this."
"Then are these people really not happy?" said Mark again.
"Why should they be happy?" said the Princess, with some bitterness in
her voice. "They have given up all that makes life pleasant--fine
clothes, delicate food, cunning harmonies, love, gay devices, and
sports. Why should they be happy? They have dull work, none to amuse or
enliven the long days."
"I was very happy in my village outside the palace gates," said Mark
quietly; "I had none of these things; I only taught the little peasants,
yet I was happy. From morning to night the path was straight before
me,--a bright and easy path; and the end was always light. Now all is
difficult and strange. Since I passed through the gates with the golden
scrolls, which I thought were like the heavenly Jerusalem, all goes
crooked and awry; nothing seems plain and righteous as in the pleasant
old days. I have come into an enchanted palace, the air of which I
cannot breathe and live; I must go back."
"No, not so," said the Princess, "you are wanted here. Where you were
you were of little good. There were at least others who could do your
work. Here none can do it but you. They never saw any one like you
before. They know it and speak of it. All are changed somewhat since you
came; you might, it is true, come to me, but I should not wish it. The
air of this house would be worse for you even than that of the palace
which you fear so much. Besides, the Prince would not be pleased with
me."
Mark looked sadly before him for some moments before he said:
"Even if it be true what you say, still I must go. It is killing me. I
wish to do right and good to all; but what good shall I do if it takes
all my strength and life? I shall ask the Prince to let me go back."
"No," said the Princess, "not that--never that. It is impossible, you
cannot go back!"
"Cannot go back!" cried Mark. "Why? The Prince is very kind. He will not
keep me here to die."
"Yes, the Prince is very kind, but he cannot do that; what is passed can
never happen again. It is the children's phrase, 'Do it again.' It can
never be done again. You have passed, as you say, the golden gates into
an enchanted world; you have known good and evil; you have tasted of the
fruit of the so-called Tree of Life; you cannot go back to the village.
Think."
Mark was silent for a longer space this time. His eyes were dim, but he
seemed to see afar off.
"No," he said at last, "it is true, I cannot go back. The village, and
the school, and the children have passed away. I should not find them
there, as they were before. If I cannot come to you, there is nothing
for me but to die."
"The Pagans," said the Princess, "the old Pagans, that knew their gods
but dimly, used to say--"The God-beloved die young." It has been said
since by Christian men.--Do not be afraid to die. Instead of your form
and voice there will be remembrance and remorse; instead of indifference
and sarcasm there will be contrition; in place of thoughtless kindliness
a tender love. Do not be afraid to die. The charm is working now; it
will increase when sight is changed for memory, and the changeful
irritation of time for changeless recollection and regret. The body of
the sown grain is transfigured into the flower of a spiritual life, and
from the dust is raised a mystic presence which can never fade. Do not
be afraid to die."
Mark walked slowly back to the palace. He could not think; he was
stunned and bewildered. He wished the Princess Isoline would have let
him come to her. Then he thought all might yet be well. When he reached
the palace he found everything in confusion. The Princess and her friend
the _servente_ had suddenly arrived.
VI.
LATER on in the day Mark was told that the Princess wished to see him,
and that he must wait upon her in her own apartment. He was taken to a
part of the palace into which he had hitherto never been; in which a
luxurious suite of rooms was reserved for the Princess when she
condescended to occupy them. The most easterly of the suite was a
morning sitting-room, which opened upon a balcony or trellised verandah,
shaded with jasmine. The room was furnished in a very different style
from the rest of the palace. The other rooms, though rich, were rather
bare of garniture, after the Italian manner--their ornaments consisting
of cabinets of inlaid wood and pictures on the walls, with the centre of
the room left clear. These rooms on the contrary, were full of small
gilt furniture, after the fashion of the French court. Curious screens,
depicting strange birds of gaudy plumage, embarrassed Mark as he entered
the room.
The Prince was seated near a lady who was reclining in the window, and
opposite to them was a stranger whom Mark knew must be the Count. The
lady was beautiful, but with a kind of beauty strange to the boy, and
her dress was more wonderful than any he had yet seen, though it was a
mere morning robe. She looked curiously at him as he entered the room.
"This, then," she said, "is the clown who is to educate my children."
At this not very encouraging address the boy stopped, and stood silently
contemplating the group.
The Count was the first who came to his assistance.
"The youth is not so bad, Princess," he said. "He has an air of society
about him, in spite of his youth."
The Prince looked at the Count with a pleased expression.
"Do not fear for the children, Adelaide," he said; "they will fare very
well. Their manners are improved already. When they come to Vienna you
will see how fine their breeding will be thought to be. Leave them to
me. You do not care for them; leave them to me and to the Herr Tutor."
Mark was looking at the Count. This was another strange study for the
boy. He was older than the Prince--a man of about forty; more firmly
built, and with well-cut but massive features. He wore a peruke of very
short, curled hair; his dress was rich, but very simple; and his whole
appearance and manner suggested curiously that of a man who carried no
more weight than he could possibly help, who encumbered himself with
nothing that he could throw aside, who offered in every action, speech,
and gesture the least possible resistance to the atmosphere, moral,
social, or physical, in which he found himself. His manner to the Prince
was deferential, without being marked, and he evidently wished to
propitiate him.
"Thou art very pious, I hear," said the Princess, addressing Mark in a
tone of unmitigated contempt.
The boy only bowed.
"Is he dumb?" said the Princess, still with undisguised disdain.
"No," said the Prince quietly. "He can speak when he thinks that what he
says will be well received."
"He is wise," said the Count.
"Well," said the Princess sharply, "my wishes count for nothing; of that
we are well aware. But I do not want my children to be infected with the
superstitions of the past, which still linger among the coarse and
ignorant peasantry. I suppose, now, this peasant schoolmaster believes
in a God and a hell, and in a heaven for such as he?" and she threw
herself back with a light laugh.
"No, surely," said the Count blandly, "that were too gross, even for a
peasant priest."
"Tell me, Herr Tutor," said the Princess; and now she threw a nameless
charm into her manner as she addressed the boy, from whom she wished an
answer; "tell me, dost thou believe in a heaven?"
"Yes, gracious Highness," said Mark.
"It has always struck me," said the Prince, with a philosophic air,
"that we might leave the poor their distant heaven. Its existence cannot
injure us. I have sometimes fancied that they might retort upon me: 'You
have everything here that life can wish: we have nothing. You have
dainty food, and fine clothes, and learning, and music, and all the
fruition that your fastidious fancy craves: we are cold and hungry, and
ignorant and miserable. Leave us our heaven! At least, if you do not
believe in it, keep silence before us. Our belief does not trouble you;
it takes nothing from the least of your pleasures; it is all we have.'"
"When the Prince begins to preach," said the Princess, with scarcely
less contempt than she had shown for Mark, "I always leave the room."
The Count immediately rose and opened a small door leading to a boudoir.
The Prince rose and bowed. The Princess swept to the ground before him
in an elaborate curtsey, and, looking contemptuously, yet with a certain
amused interest, at Mark, left the room.
The Prince resumed his seat, and, leaning back, looked from one to the
other of his companions. He was really thinking with amusement what a
so strangely-assorted couple might be likely to say to each other; but
the Count, misled by his desire to please the Prince, misunderstood him.
He supposed that he wished that the conversation which the Princess had
interrupted should be continued, and, sitting down, he began again.
"I suppose, Herr Tutor," he said, "you propose to train your pupils so
that they shall be best fitted to mingle with the world in which they
will be called upon to play an important part?"
The Prince motioned to Mark to sit, which he did, upon the edge of an
embroidered couch.
"If the serene Highness," he said, "had wished for one to teach his
children who knew the great world and the cities he would not have sent
for me."
"What do you teach them, then?"
"I tell them beautiful histories," said Mark, "of good people, and of
love, and of God."
"It has been proved," said the Count, "that there is no God."
"Then there is still love," said the boy.
"Yes, there is still love," said the Count, with an amused glance at the
Prince; "all the more that we have got rid of a cruel God."
The boy's face flushed.
"How can you dare say that?" he said.
"Why," said the Count, with a simulated warmth, "what is the God of you
pious people but a cruel God? He who condemns the weak and the
ignorant--the weak whom He has Himself made weak, and the ignorant whom
He keeps in darkness--to an eternity of torture for a trivial and
temporary, if not an unconscious, fault? What is that God but cruel who
will not forgive till He has gratified His revenge upon His own Son?
What is that God but cruel---- But I need not go on. The whole thing is
nothing but a figment and a dream, hatched in the diseased fancies of
half-starved monks dying by inches in caves and deserts, terrified by
the ghastly visions of a ruined body and a disordered mind--men so
stupid and so wicked that they could not discern the nature of the man
whom they professed to take for their God--a man, apparently, one of
those rare natures, in advance of their time, whom friends and enemies
alike misconceive and thwart; and who die, as He died, helpless and
defeated, with a despairing cry to a heedless or visionary God in whom
they have believed in vain."
As the Count went on, a new and terrible phase of experience was passing
through Mark's mind. As the brain consists of two parts, so the mind
seems dual also. Thought seems at different times to consist of
different phases, each of which can only see itself--of a faith that can
see no doubt--of a doubt that can conceive of no certainty; one week
exalted to the highest heaven, the next plunged into the lowest hell.
For the first time in his life this latter phase was passing through
Mark's mind. What had always looked to him as certain as the hills and
fields, seemed, on a sudden, shrunken and vanished away. His mind felt
emptied and vacant; he could not even think of God. It appeared even
marvellous to him that anything could have filled this vast fathomless
void, much less such a lovely and populous world as that which now
seemed vanished as a morning mist. He tried to rouse his energies, to
grasp at and to recover his accustomed thoughts, but he seemed
fascinated; the eyes of the Count rested on him, as he thought, with an
evil glance. He turned faint.
But the Prince came to his aid. He was looking across at the Count with
a sort of lazy dislike; as one looks at a stuffed reptile or at a foul
but caged bird.
"Thou art soon put down, little one," he said, with his kindly, lofty
air. "Tell him all this is nothing to thee! That disease and
distraction never created anything. That nothing lives without a germ of
life. Tell the Count that thou art not careful to answer him--that it
may be as he says. Tell him that even were it so--that He of whom he
speaks died broken-hearted in that despairing cry to the Father who He
thought had deserted Him--tell the Count thou art still with Him! Tell
him that if His mission was misconceived and perverted, it was because
His spirit and method was Divine! Tell the Count that in spite of
failure and despair, nay, perchance--who knows?--because even of that
despair, He has drawn all men to Him from that cross of His as He said.
Tell the Count that He has ascended to His Father and to thy Father,
and, alone among the personalities of the world's story, sits at the
right hand of God! Tell him this, he will have nothing to reply."
And, as if to render reply impossible, the Prince rose and, calling to
his spaniel, who came at his gesture from the sunshine in the window, he
struck a small Indian gong upon the table, and the pages drawing back
the curtains of the antechamber, he left the room.
The Count looked at the boy with a smile. Mark's face was flushed, his
eyes sparkling and full of tears.
"Well, Herr Tutor," said the Count not unkindly, "dost thou say all
that?"
"Yes," said the boy, "God helping me, I say all that!"
"Thou might'st do worse, Tutor," said the Count, "than follow the
Prince."
And he too left the room.
VII.
THE arrival of the Princess very much increased the gaiety and activity
of life within the palace. Every one became impressed with the idea that
the one thing necessary was to entertain her. The actors set to work to
prepare new plays, new spectacles; the musicians to compose new
combinations of quaint notes; the poets new sonnets on strange and, if
possible, new conceits. As the Princess was very difficult to please,
and as it was almost impossible to conceive anything which appeared new
to her jaded intellect, the difficulty of the task caused any idea that
promised novelty to be seized upon with a desperate determination. The
most favourite one still continued to be the proposition that Mark
should be induced, by fair means or foul, to take a part upon the stage.
His own character--the _role_ which he instinctively played--was so
absolutely original and fresh that the universal opinion was confident
of the success of such a performance.
"By some means or other," said old Carricchio, "he must be got to act."
"You may do what you will with him," said the Signorina sadly; "he will
die. He is too good to live. Like my little brother and the poor canary,
he will die."
In pursuit, then, of this ingenious plan, the Princess was requested to
honour with her presence a performance of a hitherto unknown character,
to be given in the palace gardens. She at first declined, saying that
she had seen everything that could be performed so often that she was
sick of such things, and that each of their vaunted and promised
novelties proved more stale and dull than its precursor. It was
therefore necessary to let her know something of what was proposed; and
no sooner did she understand that Mark was to be the centre round which
the play turned, than she entered into the plot with the greatest zeal.
It is, perhaps, not strange that to such a woman Mark's character and
personality offered a singular novelty and even charm. The thought of
triumphing over this child-like innocence, of contrasting it with the
licence and riot which the play would offer, struck her jaded curiosity
with a sense of delicious freshness, and she took an eager delight in
the arrangement and contrivance of the scenes.
In expansion of the idea suggested by some of the wonderful theatres in
Italy, where the open-air stage extended into real avenues and thickets,
it was decided that the entire play should be represented in the palace
gardens: and that, in fact, the audience should take part in the action
of the drama. This, where the whole household was theatrical, and where
the actors were trained in the Italian comedy, which left so much to the
_improvisatore_--to the individual taste and skill of the actor--was a
scheme not difficult to realise.
The palace garden, which was very large, was disposed in terraces and
hedges; it was planted with numerous thickets and groves, and, wherever
the inequalities of the ground allowed it, with lofty banks of thick
shrubs crowned with young trees, beneath which were arranged statues and
fountains in the Italian manner. The hedges were cut into arcades and
arches, giving free access to the retired lawns and shady nooks; and
these arcades, and the lofty groves and terraces, gave a constant sense
of mystery and expectation to the scene. The ample lawns and open spaces
afforded more than one suitable stage, upon which the most important
scenes of a play might be performed.
Beneath one of the highest and most important banks, which stretched in
a perfectly straight line across the garden, planted thickly with
flowering shrubs and fringed at the top with a long line of young trees,
whose delicate foliage was distinct against the sky, was placed the
largest of the fountains. It was copied from that in the Piazza Santa
Maria in Transtevere in Rome, and was ornamented with great shells,
fish, and Tritons. On either side of the fountain, and leading to the
terrace at the back, were flights of marble steps, with wide-stretching
stone bases upon either side towering above the grass. In front of the
fountain and of the steps, beyond a belt of greensward, were long hedges
planted in parallel rows, and connected in arches and arcades, crossing
and re-crossing each other in an intricate maze, so that a large
company, wandering through their paths, might suddenly appear and
disappear. Beyond the hedges the lawn stretched out again, broken by
flowerbeds and statues, and fringed by masses of foliage and lofty
limes. A sound of falling water was heard on all sides; and, by
mysterious contrivance of concealed mechanism, flute and harp music
sounded from the depths of the bosky groves.
+ + + + +
Mark knew little of what was going on. He occupied himself mostly with
his young pupils; but the conversation he had had with the Princess
Isoline had troubled his mind, and a sense of perplexity and of
approaching evil weighed upon his spirits and affected his health. He,
who had never known sickness in his peasant life, now, when confined to
a life so unnatural and artificial, so out of harmony with his mind and
soul, became listless and weak in body, and haunted by fitful terrors
and failings of consciousness. He knew that some extraordinary
preparations were being made; but he was not spoken to upon the subject,
and paid little attention to what was going on. Indeed, had he been in
the least of a suspicious nature, the entire absence of solicitation or
interference might have led him to suspect some secret machination
against his simplicity and peace, some contrived treachery at work; but
no such idea crossed his mind, he occupied himself with his own
melancholy thoughts and with the histories and parables which he related
to his pupils.
On the morning of the day fixed for the performance, then, things being
in this condition, Mark rose early. He had been informed that it was
necessary that he should wear his best court-suit, which we have seen
was of black silk with white bands and ruffles. He gave his pupils a
short lesson, but their thoughts were so much occupied by the
expectation of the coming festivity that he soon released them and
wandered out into the gardens alone. The performance of the play had
been fixed for noon.
The day was bright and serene. The gardens were brilliant with colour
and sweet with the perfume of flowers and herbs. Strains of mysterious
harmony from secret music startled the wanderer along the paths.
Mark strayed listlessly through the more distant groves. He was
distressed and dissatisfied with himself. His spirit seemed to have lost
its happy elasticity, his mind its active joyousness. The things which
formerly delighted him no longer seemed to please, even the loveliness
of nature was unable to arouse him. He found himself envying those
others who took so much real delight, or seemed to him to do so, in
fantastic and frivolous music and jest and comic sport. He began to
wonder what this new surprising play--these elaborately prepared
harmonies--these swells and runs and shakes--might prove to be. Then he
hated himself for this envy--for this curiosity. He wished to return to
his old innocence--his old simplicity.