which Xerxes made in order to afford a short cut for his vessels, and as
I had frequently climbed into the various portions of the mountain in
order to make surveys of the country below, I had obtained a pretty good
knowledge of the neighborhood; and when disaster after disaster began to
hurl themselves upon this unfortunate multitude of invaders, I took
measures for my safety. I did not want to go back to Persia, even if
I could go there, which looked very doubtful after the battle of Salamis,
and as I had come into the country with the Persians, it might have been
unsafe to show myself with the Greeks; so, remembering what I had seen of
the wild regions of Mount Athos, I made my way there, with the intention
of dwelling in its rocky fastnesses until the country should become safe
for the ordinary wayfarer. As there was no opportunity of teaching school
on that desolate mountain--"
"And marrying one of thy scholars," interpolated Mrs. Crowder.
"--I became a sort of hermit," he continued; "but I did not spend my time
after the usual fashion of the conventional hermit, who lives on
water-cresses and reads great books with a skull to keep the pages open.
I built myself a rude cabin under a great rock, and lived somewhat after
the fashion of the other inhabitants of that wild region, mostly robbers
and outlaws. As I had nothing which any one would want to steal, I was
not afraid of them, and I could occasionally be of a little service to
them, especially in the way of rude medical attendance, for which they
were willing to pay me by giving me now and then some food.
"I had laid in a stock of writing-materials before I went up on the
mountain, and I now went to work with great enthusiasm to set down what
I knew of the expedition of Xerxes, and here it was that I made the notes
which were afterward so useful to Herodotus.
"When the country became quieter I went down into the plains, looked over
the battle-fields, and obtained a great deal of information from the
villagers and country people. I stayed here nearly two years, and had a
pretty hard time of it; but when I went away I took with me a very
valuable collection of notes.
"For many years I made no use of these notes; but being in Halicarnassus,
I heard of Herodotus, who was described as a great scholar and traveler,
and engaged in writing history. To him I applied without loss of time, and
I made a regular engagement, working several hours with him every day. For
this he paid me weekly a sum equal to about two dollars and seventy-five
cents of our present money; but it was enough to support me, and I was
very glad to have the opportunity of sending some of my experiences and
observations down into history. It was at this time that the love of
literary work began to arise within me, and in the next three or four
centuries after the death of Herodotus I wrote a number of books on
various subjects and under various names, and some of these, as
I mentioned before, were destroyed with the Alexandrian Library.
"It was in this period that I made the acquaintance of an editor--the
first editor, in fact, of whom I know anything at all. I was in Rhodes,
and there was a learned man there named Andronicus, who was engaged in
editing the works of Aristotle. All the manuscripts and books which that
great philosopher left behind him had been given to a friend, or trustee,
and had passed from this person into the possession of others, so that for
about a hundred years the world knew nothing of them. Then they came into
the hands of Andronicus, who undertook to edit them and get them into
proper shape for publication. I went to Andronicus, and as soon as he
found I was a person qualified for such work, he engaged me as his
assistant editor. I held this position for several years, and two or three
of the books of Aristotle I transcribed entirely with my own hand,
properly shaping sentences and paragraphs, and very often making the
necessary divisions. From my experience with Andronicus, I am sure that
none of the works of Aristotle were given to the world exactly as he wrote
them, for we often found his manuscript copies very rough and disjointed
so far as literary construction is concerned, but I will also say that we
never interfered with his philosophical theories or his scientific
statements and deductions."
"In all that time thee never married?" asked Mrs. Crowder.
Crowder and I could not help laughing.
"I did not say so," said he, "but I will say that, with one exception,
I do not remember any interesting matrimonial alliances which occurred
during the period of my literary labors. I married a young woman of
Rhodes, and gave her a very considerable establishment, which I was able
to do, for Andronicus paid me much better than Herodotus had done; but she
did not prove a very suitable helpmeet, and I believe she married me
simply because I was in fairly good circumstances. She soon showed that
she preferred a young man to an elderly student, the greater part of whose
time was occupied with books and manuscripts, and we had not been married
a year when she ran away with a young goldsmith, and disappeared from
Rhodes, as I discovered, on a vessel bound for Rome. I resigned myself
to my loss, and did not even try to obtain news of her. I was too much
engrossed in my work to be interested in a runaway wife.
"It was a little more than half a century after this that I was in Rome
and sitting on the steps of one of the public buildings in the Forum.
I was waiting to meet some one with whom I had business, and while I sat
there an old woman stopped in front of me. She was evidently poor, and
wretchedly dressed; her scanty hair was gray, and her face was wrinkled
and shrunken. I thought, of course, she was a beggar, and was about to
give her something, when she clasped her hands in front of her and
exclaimed, 'How like! How like! How like!' 'Like whom?' said I. 'What are
you talking about?' 'Like your father,' she said, 'like your father! You
are so like him, you resemble him so much in form and feature, in the way
you sit, in everything, that you must be his son!' 'I have no doubt I am
my father's son,' said I, 'and what do you know about him?' 'I married
him,' she said. 'For nearly a year I was his wife, and then I foolishly
ran away and left him. What became of him I know not, nor how long he
lived, but he was a great deal older than I was, and must have passed away
many years ago. But thou art his image. He had the same ruddy face, the
same short white hair, the same broad shoulders, the same way of crossing
his legs as he sat. He must have married soon after I left him. Tell me,
whom did he marry? What was thy mother's name?' I gave her the name of my
real mother, and she shook her head. 'I never heard of her,' she said.
'Did thy father ever speak of me, a wife who ran away from him?' 'Yes; he
has spoken of you--that is, if you are Zalia, the daughter of an
oil-merchant of Rhodes?'
[Illustration: "'HOW LIKE!'"]
"'I am that woman,' she exclaimed, 'I am that woman! And did he mourn my
loss?'
"'Not much, I think, not much.' Then I became a little nervous, for if
this old woman talked to me much longer I was afraid, in spite of the
fact that I was an elderly man when she was a girl, that she would become
convinced that I could not be the son of the man who had once been her
husband, but must be that man himself. So I hastily excused myself on the
plea of business, and after having given her some money I left her."
"And did thee never see her again?" his wife asked, almost with tears in
her eyes.
"No, I never saw her again," said Mr. Crowder; "I was careful not to do
that: but I did not neglect her; I caused good care to be taken of her
until she died."
There was a slight pause here, and then Mrs. Crowder said:
"Thee has known a great deal of poverty; in nearly all thy stories thee is
a poor man."
"There is good reason for that," said Mr. Crowder; "poor people frequently
have more adventures, at least more interesting ones, than those who are
in easy circumstances. Possession of money is apt to make life smoother
and more commonplace; so, in selecting the most interesting events of my
career to tell you, I naturally describe periods of comparative
poverty--and there were some periods in which I was in actual want of the
necessaries of life.
"But you must not suppose that I have always been poor. I have had my
periods of wealth, but, as I explained to you before, it was very
difficult, on account of the frequent necessity of changing my place of
residence, as well as my identity, to carry over my property from one set
of conditions to another. However, I have often been able to do this, and
at one time I was in comfortable circumstances for nearly two hundred
years. But generally, when I found myself obliged to leave a place where
I had been living, for fear of suspicion concerning my age, I had to
leave everything behind me.
"I will tell you a little story about one of my attempts, to provide for
the future. It was toward the end of the fifteenth century, about the time
that Columbus set out on his first voyage of discovery,--and you would be
surprised, considering the important results of his voyage, to know how
little sensation it caused in Europe,--that I devised a scheme by which
I thought I might establish for myself a permanent fortune. I was then
living in Genoa, and was carrying on the same business in which I am now
engaged. I was a broker, a dealer in money and commercial paper. I was
prosperous and well able to carry out the plan I had formed. This plan
was a simple one. I would purchase jewels, things easily carried about or
concealed, and which would be valuable in any country or any age; and with
this idea in my mind I spent many years in collecting valuable stones and
jewels, confining myself generally to rings, for I wished to make the bulk
of my treasures very small when compared with their value.
"About the middle of the sixteenth century I went to Rome, and took my
jewels with me. They were then a wonderfully fine collection of gems, some
of them of great antiquity and value; for, in gradually gathering them
together, the enthusiasm of the collector had possessed me, and I often
traveled far to possess myself of a valuable jewel of which I had heard.
I remained in Rome as long as I dared do so, and then prepared to set out
for Egypt, which I had not visited for a long time, and where I expected
to find interesting though depressing changes. I concluded, naturally
enough, that it would be dangerous for me to take my treasures with me,
and I could conceive of no place where it would be better to leave them
than in the Eternal City. Rome was central and comparatively easy of
access from any part of the world, and, moreover, was less liable to
changes than any other place; so I determined to leave my treasures in
Rome, and to put them somewhere where they were not likely to be
disturbed by the march of improvement, by the desolations of war and
conquest, or to become lost to me by the action of nature. I decided to
bury them in the catacombs. With these ancient excavations I was familiar,
and I believed that in their dark and mysterious recesses I could conceal
my jewels, and that I could find them again when I wanted them.
"I procured a small box made of thick bronze, and in this I put all my
rings and gems, and with them I inclosed several sheets of parchment,
on which I had written, with the fine ink the monks used in engrossing
their manuscripts, a detailed description, and frequently a history, of
every one of these valuable objects. Having securely fastened up the box,
I concealed it in my clothing and then made my way to the catacombs.
"It was a dark and rainy evening, and as the entrances to the catacombs
were not guarded in those days, it was not difficult for me to make my
way unseen into their interior. I had brought with me a tinder-box and
several rushlights, and as soon as I felt secure from observation from
the outside I struck a light and began my operations. Then, according to
a plan I had previously made, I slowly walked along the solemn passageway
which I had entered.
"My plan of procedure was a very simple one, and I had purposely made it
so in order that it might be more easily remembered. I was well acquainted
with the position of the opening by which I had entered. For several days
I had studied carefully its relation to other points in the surrounding
country. Starting from this opening, my plan was to proceed inward through
the long corridor until I came to a transverse passage; to pass this until
I reached another; to pass this also, and to go on until I came to a
third; then I would turn to my left and proceed until I had passed two
other transverse passages and reached a third; then I would again turn
to my left and count the open tombs on my left hand. When I reached the
third tomb I would stop. Thus there would be a series of three threes,
and it was scarcely possible that I could forget that.
"At this period a great many of the tombs were open, having been despoiled
even of the few bones they contained. The opening at which I stopped was
quite a large one, and when I put my light inside I found it was entirely
empty.
"Lighting another rush-candle, I stuck it in the bottom of the tomb, which
was about four feet above the floor of the passage, and drawing my large
dagger, I proceeded to dig a hole in the left-hand corner nearest the
front. The earth was dry and free from stones, and I soon made a hole two
feet deep, at the bottom of which I placed my box. Then I covered it up,
pressing the earth firmly down into the hole. When this was entirely
filled, I smoothed away the rest of the earth I had taken out, and after
I finished my work, the floor of the tomb did not look as if it had been
disturbed. Then I went away, reached the passage three tombs from me,
turned to the right, went on until I reached the third transverse passage,
then went on until I came to the entrance. It was raining heavily, but
I was glad to get out into the storm."
[Illustration: "'I PROCEEDED TO DIG A HOLE.'"]
"Now, please hurry on," said Mrs. Crowder. "When did thee get them again?"
"A great many things happened in Egypt," said Mr. Crowder, "some pleasant
and some unpleasant, and they kept me there a long time. After that I went
to Constantinople, and subsequently resided in Greece and in Venice.
I lived very comfortably during the greater part of this period, and
therefore there was no particular reason why I should go after my jewels.
So it happened that, for one cause or another, I did not go back to Rome
until early in the nineteenth century, and I need not assure you that
almost the first place I visited was the catacombs.
"After three hundred years of absence I found the entrance, but if I had
not so well noted its position in relation to certain ruins and natural
objects I should not have recognized it. It was not now a wide opening
through which a man might walk; it was a little hole scarcely big enough
for a fox to crawl through; in fact, I do not believe there would have
been any opening there at all if it had not been for the small animals
living in the catacombs, which had maintained this opening for the purpose
of going in and out. It was broad daylight when I found this entrance. Of
course I did not attempt to do anything then, but in the night, when there
was no moon, I came with a spade. I enlarged the hole, crawled through,
and after a time found myself in a passageway, which was unobstructed."
"Now, hurry on," said Mrs. Crowder.
"I brought no rushlights with me this time," said Mr. Crowder. "I had a
good lantern, and I walked steadily on until I came to the third
transverse passage; I turned to the left, counted three more passages;
I turned to the left, I walked on slowly, I examined the left-hand wall,
and apparently there were no open tombs. This startled me, but I soon
found that I had been mistaken. I saw some tombs which were not open, but
which had been opened and were now nearly filled with the dust of ages.
I stopped before the first of these; then I went on and clearly made out
the position of another; then I came to the third: that was really open,
although the aperture was much smaller than it had been. It did not look
as I remembered it, but without hesitation I took a trowel which I had
brought with me, and began to dig in the nearest left-hand corner.
"I dug and I dug until I had gone down more than two feet; then I dug on
and on until, standing in the passage as I was, I could not reach down any
deeper into the hole I had made. So I crawled into the tomb, crouched down
on my breast, and dug down and down as far as I could reach.
"Then," said Mr. Crowder, looking at us as he spoke, "I found the box."
A great sigh of relief came from Mrs. Crowder.
"I was so afraid," said she--"I was so afraid it had sunk out of reach."
"No," said he; "its weight had probably made it settle down, and then the
dust of ages, as I remarked before, had accumulated over it. That sort
of thing is going on in Rome all the time. But I found my box, and, after
hours and hours of wandering, I got out of the catacombs."
"How was that?" we both asked.
"I was so excited at the recovery of my treasures after the lapse of three
centuries that when I turned into the first passage I forgot to count
those which crossed it, and my mind became so thoroughly mixed up in
regard to this labyrinth that I don't know when I would have found my way
out if I had not heard a little animal--I don't know what it was
--scurrying away in front of me. I followed it, and eventually saw a
little speck of light. That proved to be the hole through which I had come
in."
"What did thee do with the jewels?" asked Mrs. Crowder.
Her husband looked at his watch, and then held it with the face toward
her.
She gave a cry of surprise, and we all went up-stairs to bed.
V
"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Crowder, the moment we had finished dinner on the
next evening, "I want thee to tell us immediately what thee did with the
jewels. I have been thinking about that all day; and I believe, if I had
been with thee, I could have given thee some good advice, so that the
money thee received for these treasures would have lasted thee a long
time."
"I have thought on that subject many times," said Mr. Crowder, "not only
in regard to this case, but others, and have formed hundreds of plans for
carrying my possessions into another set of social conditions; but the
fact of being obliged to change my identity always made it impossible
for me to avail myself of the advantages of commercial paper, legal deeds,
and all titles to property."
"Thee might have put thy wealth into solid gold--great bars and lumps.
Those would be available in any country and in any age, and they
wouldn't have had anything to do with thy identity," said his wife.
"It was always difficult for me to carry about or even conceal such golden
treasures, but I have sometimes done it. However, as you are in such a
hurry to hear about the jewels, I will let all other subjects drop. When
I reached my lodgings in Rome, I opened the box, and found everything
perfect; the writing on the sheets of parchment was still black and
perfectly legible, and the jewels looked just as they did when I put them
into the box."
"I cannot imagine," interrupted Mrs. Crowder, "how thee remembered what
they looked like after the lapse of three hundred years."
Mr. Crowder smiled. "You forget," he said, "that since I first reached
the age of fifty-three there has been no radical change in me,
physical or mental. My memory is just as good now as it was when I reached
my fifty-third birthday, in the days of Abraham. It is impossible for me
to forget anything of importance, and I remembered perfectly the
appearance of those gems. But my knowledge of such things had been greatly
improved by time and experience, and after I had spent an hour or two
looking over my treasures, I felt sure that they were far more valuable
than they were when they came into my possession. In fact, it was a
remarkable collection of precious stones, considering it in regard to its
historic as well as its intrinsic value.
"I shall not attempt to describe my various plans for disposing of my
treasures; but I soon found that it would not be wise for me to try to
sell them in Rome. I had picked out one of the least valuable engraved
stones, and had taken it to a lapidary, who readily bought it at his
own valuation, and paid me with great promptness; but after he had secured
it he asked me so many questions about it, particularly how I had come
into possession of it, that I was very sure that he had made a wonderful
bargain, and was also convinced that it would not do for me to take any
more of my gems to him. Those Roman experts knew too much about antique
jewels.
"I went to Naples, where I had a similar experience. Then I found it would
be well for me, if I did not wish to be arrested as a thief who had robbed
a museum, to endeavor to sell my collection as a whole in some other
country. As a professional dealer in gems from a foreign land I would be
less liable to suspicion than if I endeavored to peddle my jewels one at a
time. So I determined to go to Madrid and try to sell my collection there.
"When I reached Spain I found the country in a great turmoil. This was in
1808, when Napoleon was on the point of invading Spain; but as
politicians, statesmen, and military men were not in the habit of buying
ancient gems, I still hoped that I might be able to transact the business
which had brought me to the country. My collection would be as valuable to
a museum then as at any time; for it was not supposed that the French were
coming into the country to ravage and destroy the great institutions of
learning and art. I made acquaintances in Madrid, and before long I had an
opportunity of exhibiting my collection to a well-known dealer and
connoisseur, who was well acquainted with the officers of the Royal
Museum. I thought it would be well to sell them through his agency, even
though I paid him a high commission.
"If I should say that this man was astounded as well as delighted when he
saw my collection, I should be using very feeble expressions; for, carried
away by his enthusiasm, he did not hesitate to say to me that it was the
most valuable collection he had ever seen. Even if the stones had been
worthless in themselves, their historic value was very great. Of course he
wanted to know where I had obtained these treasures, and I informed him
truthfully that I had traveled far and wide in order to gather them
together. I told him the history of many of them, but entirely omitted
mentioning anything which would give a clue to the times and periods when
I had come into possession of them.
"This dealer undertook the sale of my jewels. We arranged them in a
handsome box lined with velvet and divided into compartments, and I made
a catalogue of them, copied from my ancient parchments--which would have
ruined me had I inadvertently allowed them to be seen. He put himself into
communication with the officers of the museum, and I left the matter
entirely in his hands.
"In less than a week I became aware that I was an object of suspicion.
I called on the dealer, but he was not to be seen. I found that I was
shadowed by officers of the law. I wrote to the dealer, but received no
answer. One evening, when I returned to my lodgings, I found that they had
been thoroughly searched. I became alarmed, and the conviction forced
itself upon me that the sooner I should escape from Madrid, the better for
me."
"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Crowder, "and leave thy jewels behind? Thee
certainly did not do that!"
"Ah, my dear," replied her husband, "you do not comprehend the situation.
It was very plain that the authorities of the museum did not believe that
a private individual, a stranger, was likely to be the legitimate owner of
these treasures. Had my case been an ordinary one I should have courted
investigation; but how could I prove that I had been an honest man three
hundred years before? A legal examination, not so much on account of the
jewels, but because of the necessary assertion of my age, would have been
a terrible ordeal.
"I hurried to the dealer's shop, but found it closed. Inquiring of a woman
in a neighboring door-step, I was informed that the dealer had been
arrested. I asked no more. I did not return to my lodgings, and that night
I left Madrid."
I could not repress an exclamation of distress, and Mrs. Crowder cried:
"Did thee really go away and leave thy jewels? Such a thing is too
dreadful to think of. But perhaps thee got them again?"
"No," said Mr. Crowder; "I never saw them again, nor ever heard of them.
But now that it is impossible for any one to be living who might recognize
me, I hope to go to Madrid and see those gems. I have no doubt that they
are in the museum."
"And I," exclaimed Mrs. Crowder--"I shall go with thee; I shall see them."