(From the “De l’Allemagne.”) (1867.)
Neptune is still the monarch of the empire of the seas, and Pluto
(although metamorphosed into the Devil) has retained the throne of
Tartarus. They have both been more lucky than their brother Jupiter, who
had to suffer specially the vicissitudes of fortune. This third son of
Saturn, who after the fall of his sire assumed the sovereignty of the
heavens, reigned for a long series of years on the summit of Olympus,
surrounded by a jovial court of high and of most high gods and demigods,
as well as on high and of most high goddesses and nymphs—their celestial
ladies of the bedchamber and maids of honor, who all led a joyous life,
replete with ambrosia and nectar, despising the clowns attached to the
soil down here, and taking no thought of the morrow. Alas, when the
reign of the Cross, the empire of suffering, was proclaimed, the supreme
Chronide emigrated and disappeared amidst the tumult of the barbarian
tribes which invaded the Roman world. All traces of the ex-God were
lost, and I have questioned in vain old chronicles and old women; no one
has been able to furnish me with any information as to his destiny. I
have burrowed in many a library, where I made them bring me the most
magnificent _codex_ enriched with gold and jewels, veritable odalisques
in the harem of science; and as is the custom, I here render my public
thanks to the erudite eunuchs who, without too much grumbling and
sometimes even with affability, have given me access to these luminous
treasures confided to their care. I am now convinced that the middle
ages have not bequeathed to us any traditions concerning the fate of
Jupiter after the fall of Paganism. All that I have been able to
discover in connection with this subject is the history told me long ago
by my friend Niels Andersen.
I have just mentioned Niels Andersen, and this good figure, at once so
droll and so lovable, emerges all riant in my memory. I must devote a
few lines to him here. For the rest, I like to indicate my authorities
and to show their good or bad qualities, in order that the reader may be
in a position to judge himself how far these authorities deserve to be
trusted.
Niels Andersen, born at Drontheim, in Norway, was one of the most
skilful and intrepid whalers I have ever known. It is to him that I am
indebted for what knowledge I have of the whale fishery. He taught me
all the subtleties of the art; he made me acquainted with all the
stratagems and dodges which the intelligent animal employs to baffle
these subtle snares and make its escape. It was Niels Andersen who
taught me the management of the harpoon; he showed me how you should fix
the knee of the right leg against the gun-whale of the boat when
launching the harpoon, and how with the left leg you launch a vigorous
kick at the imbecile sailor who don’t pay out quickly enough the rope
attached to the harpoon. To him I owe all, and if I have not become a
famous whaler the fault rests neither with Niels Andersen nor with
myself, but with my evil star, which has never allowed me in the course
of my life to encounter any whale with which I might have engaged in
honorable combat. I have only encountered vulgar stockfish and miserable
herrings. Of what use is the best harpoon when you have to deal with a
herring? Now that my limbs are paralysed I must renounce for ever the
hope of pursuing whales. When at Ritzebuttel, near Cuxhaven, I made the
acquaintance of Niels Andersen. He was scarcely more nimble himself, for
off the coast of Senegal a young shark, which no doubt took his right
leg for a stick of barley sugar, had snapped it off with a snap of his
teeth. Since then poor Niels Andersen went limping upon an artificial
leg manufactured from one of the firs of his country, and which he
extolled as a masterpiece of Norwegian carpentry. His greatest pleasure
at this period was to perch himself on the top of a large empty barrel,
on the belly of which he drummed away with his wooden leg. I often
helped him to climb upon this barrel; but sometimes, when he wished to
get down again, I would not give him my help except on the condition
that he told me one of his curious traditions of the Arctic Sea.
As Mahomet-Ebn-Mansour commences all his poems with a eulogy of the
horse, so Niels Andersen prefaced all his narratives with a panegyrical
enumeration of the qualities of the whale. He of course commenced with
such a panegyric the legend we give here.
“The whale,” he said, “is not only the largest, but also the most
magnificent of animals; the two jets of water leaping from his nostrils,
placed at the top of his head, give him the appearance of a fountain,
and produce a magical effect, above all at night, in the moonshine.
Moreover, this beast is sympathetic. He has a good character and much
taste for conjugal life. It is a touching sight,” he added, “to see a
family of whales grouped around its venerable patriarch, and couched
upon an enormous mass of ice, basking in the sun. Sometimes the young
ones begin to frisk and romp, and at length all plunge into the sea to
play at hide-and-seek among the immense ice-blocks. The purity of
manners and the chastity of the whales should be attributed less to
moral principles than to the iciness of the water wherein they
continually sport. Nor can it, unhappily, be denied,” went on Niels
Anderson, “that they have not any pious sentiment, that they are totally
devoid of religion....”
“I believe this is an error,” I cried, interrupting my friend. “I have
lately read the report of a Dutch missionary, wherein he describes the
magnificence of the creation, which, according to him, reveals itself
even in the polar regions at the hour of sunrise, and when the teams of
day, transfiguring the gigantic rocks of ice, make them resemble those
castles of diamonds we read of in fairy tales. All this beauty of the
creation, in the judgment of the good _dominie_, is a proof of the power
of God which influences every living creature, so that not only man, but
likewise a great brute of a fish, ravished by this spectacle, adores the
Creator and addresses to him its prayers. The _dominie_ assures us that
he has seen with his own eyes a whale which held itself erect against
the wall of a block of ice, and swayed the upper part of its body as men
do in prayer.”
Niels Andersen admitted that he had himself seen whales which, propping
themselves against a cliff of ice, indulged in movements very similar to
those we remark in the oratories of the various religious sects, but he
maintained that devotion has nothing to do with this phænomenon. He
explained it on physiological grounds; he called my attention to the
fact that the whale, this Chimborazo of animals, has beneath its skin
strata of fat of a depth so prodigious that a single whale often
furnishes a hundred to a hundred and fifty barrels of tallow and oil.
These layers of fat are so thick that while the colossus sleeps,
stretched at its full length upon an icefield, hundreds of water rats
can come and settle in it. These _convives_ immensely larger and more
voracious than the rats of the mainland, lead joyous life under the skin
of the whale, where day and night they gorge themselves with the most
delicious fat without being obliged to quit their holes. These banquets
of vermin at length trouble their involuntary host and even cause him
excessive sufferings. Not having hands as we have, who, God be thanked,
can scratch ourselves when we feel an itching, the whale tries to
mitigate his pangs by placing himself against the protruding and sharp
angles of a rock of ice, and by there rasping his back with a real
fervor and with vigorous movements up and down, as we see the dogs
rasping their skin against a bed-post when the fleas bite them overmuch.
Now in these movements the good _dominie_ thought he saw the edifying
act of prayer, and he attributed to devotion the jerkings occasioned by
the orgies of the rats. Enormous as is the quantity of oil in the whale,
it has not the least religious sentiment. It is only among animals of
mediocre stature that we find any religion; the very great, the
creatures gigantic like the whale are not endowed with it. What can be
the reason? Is it that they cannot find a church sufficiently spacious
to afford them entrance into its pale? Nor have the whales any taste for
the prophets, and the one which swallowed Jonah was not able to digest
that great preacher; seized with nausea, it vomited him after three
days. Most certainly that proves the absence of all religious sentiment
in these monsters. The whale, therefore, would never choose an ice-block
for prayer-cushion, and sway itself in attitudes of devotion. It adores
as little the true God who resides above there in heaven, as the false
pagan god who dwells near the arctic pole, in the Isle of the Rabbits,
where the dear beast goes sometimes to pay him a visit.
“What is this _Isle of Rabbits_?” I asked Niels Andersen. Drumming on
the barrel with his wooden leg, he answered, “It is exactly in this isle
that the events took place of which I am going to tell you. I am not
able to give you its precise geographical position. Since its first
discovery no one has been able to visit it again; the enormous mountains
of ice accumulated around it bar the approach. Once only has it been
visited, by the crew of a Russian whaler driven by-tempests into those
northern latitudes, and that was more than a hundred years ago. When
these sailors, reached it with their ship they found it deserted and
uncultivated. Sickly stalks of broom swayed sadly upon the quicksands;
here and there were scattered some dwarf shrubs and stunted firs
crouching on the sterile soil. Rabbits ran about everywhere in great
numbers; and this is the reason the sailors call the islet the _Isle of
Rabbits_. A cabin, the only one they discovered, announced the presence
of a human being. When the mariners had entered the hut they saw an old
man, arrived at the most extreme decrepitude and miserably muffled in
rabbit skins. He was seated upon a stone settle, and warmed his thin
hands and trembling knees at the grate where some brushwood was burning.
At his right hand stood a monstrously large bird, which seemed to be an
eagle; but the moulting of time had so cruelly stripped it that only the
great stiff main-plumes of its wings were left, so that the aspect of
this naked animal was at once ludicrous and horribly ugly. On the left
of the old man was couched upon the ground an aged bald-skinned she-got,
yet with a gentle look, and which, in spite of its great age, had the
dugs swollen with milk and the teats fresh and rosy.
“Among the sailors who had landed on the Isle of Rabbits there were some
Greeks, and one of these, thinking that the man of the hut could not
understand his tongue, said to his comrades in Greek, ‘This queer old
fellow must be either a ghost or an evil spirit.’ At these words the old
man trembled and rose suddenly from his seat, and the sailors, to their
great astonishment, saw a lofty and imposing figure, which, with
imperious and even majestic dignity, held itself erect in spite of the
weight of years, so that the head reached the rafters of the roof. His
lineaments, though worn and ravaged, conserved traces of beauty; they
were noble and perfectly regular. Thin locks of silver hair fell upon
the forehead wrinkled by pride and by age; his eyes, though glazed and
lustreless, darted keen regards, and his finely-curved lips pronounced
in the Greek language, mingled with many archaisms, these words resonant
and harmonious:—‘You are mistaken, young man, I am neither a spectre nor
an evil spirit; I am an unfortunate who has seen better days. But
you—what are you.’
“At this demand the seamen acquainted their host with the accident which
had driven them out of their course, and they begged him to tell them
all about the isle. But the old man could give them but scant
information. He told them that from immemorial times he had dwelt in
this isle, of which the ramparts of ice offered him a sure refuge
against his implacable enemies, who had usurped his legitimate rights;
that his main subsistence was derived from the rabbits with which the
isle abounded; that every year, at the season when the floating
ice-blocks formed a compact mass, troops of savages in sledges visited
him, who, in exchange for his rabbit skins, gave him all sorts of
articles most necessary to life. The whales, he said, which now and then
approached his isle, were his favorite society. Nevertheless, he added
that he felt much pleasure at this moment in speaking his native
language, being Greek by birth. He begged his compatriots to inform him
as to the then state of Greece. He learnt with a malicious joy, badly
dissimulated, that the Cross once surmounting the towers of the Hellenic
cities had been shattered; he showed less satisfaction when they told
him that this Christian symbol had been replaced by the Crescent. The
most singular thing was that none of the seamen knew the names of the
towns concerning which he questioned them, and which, according to him,
had been flourishing cities in his time. On the other hand, the names by
which the seamen designated the towns and villages of modern Greece were
completely unknown to him; and the old man shook his head often, as if
quite overwhelmed, and the sailors looked at each other with wonder.
They saw well that he knew perfectly the localities of the country, even
to the minutest details; for he described clearly and exactly the gulfs,
the peninsulas, the capes, often even, the most insignificant hills and
isolated groups of rocks. His ignorance of the commonest typographical
names, therefore astonished them all the more.
“The old man asked, with the most lively interest, and even with a
certain anxiety, about an ancient temple, which, he said, had been of
old the grandest in all Greece. None of his hearers recognised the
name,, which he pronounced with tender emotion. At last,, when he had
minutely described the place where this, monument stood, a young seaman
suddenly recognised the spot. ‘The village where I was born,’ he
exclaimed, ‘is situated precisely there. During my childhood I have long
watched there the pigs of my father. On this site there are, in fact,
the ruins of very ancient constructions, which must have been incredibly
magnificent. Here and there you see some columns still erect; they are
isolated or connected by fragments of roofing, whence hang tendrils of
honeysuckle and red bind-weeds. Other columns, some of them red marble,
lie fractured on the grass. The ivy has invaded their superb capitals,
formed of flowers and foliage delicately chiselled. Great slabs of
marble, squared fragments of wall and triangular pieces of roofing, are
scattered about, half-buried in the earth. I have often, continued the
young man, ‘passed hours at a time in examining the combats and the
games, the dances and the processions, the beautiful and ludicrous
figures which are sculptured there. Unfortunately these sculptures are
much injured by time, and are covered with moss and creepers. My father,
whom I once asked what these ruins were, told me that they were the
remnants of an ancient temple, of old inhabited by a Pagan God, who not
only indulged in the most gross debaucheries, but who was, moreover,
guilty of incest and other infamous vices; that in their blindness the
idolators had, nevertheless, immolated oxen, often by hundreds, at the
foot of his altar. My father assured me that we still saw the marble
basin wherein they had gathered the blood of the victims, and that it
was precisely the trough to which I frequently led my swine to drink the
rain-water, and in which I also preserved the refuse which my animals
devoured with so much appetite.’
“When the young sailor had thus spoken, the old man gave a deep sigh of
the most bitter anguish; he sank nerveless upon the stone seat, and
hiding his visage in his hands, wept like a child. The bird at his side
emitted terrible cries, spread its enormous wings, and menaced the
strangers with talons and beak. The she-goat moaned and licked the hands
of her master, whose sorrows she seemed trying to comfort by her humble
caresses. At this sight a strange trouble swelled in the hearts of the
seamen; they hastily quitted the hut, and did not feel at ease until
they could no more hear the sobbings of the old man, the croakings of
the hideous bird, and the bleatings of the goat. When they got on board
their vessel again they related their adventures. Among the crew there
chanced to be a scholar, who declared that it was an event of the
highest importance. Applying with a sagacious air his right forefinger
to his nose, he assured the seamen that the old man of the Isle of
Rabbits was beyond all doubt the ancient god Jupiter, son of Saturn and
Rhea, once sovereign lord of the gods; that the bird which they had seen
at his side was evidently the famous eagle which used to bear the
thunderbolts in its talons; and that, in all probability, the goat was
the old nurse Amalthea, which had of old suckled the god in the isle of
Crete, and which now continued to nourish him with its milk in the Isle
of Rabbits.”
Such was the history of Niels Andersen, and it made my heart bleed. I
will not dissemble; already his revelations concerning the secret
sufferings of the whale had profoundly saddened me. Poor animal! against
this vile mob of rats, which house themselves in your body and gnaw you
incessantly, no remedy avails, and you carry them about with you to the
end of your days; rush as you will to the north and to the south, rasp
yourself against the ice-rocks of the two poles, you can never get rid
of these villainous rats? But pained as I had been by the outrage
wreaked upon the poor whales, my soul was infinitely more troubled by
the tragical fate of this old man who, according to the mythological
theory of the learned Russian, was the heretofore King of the gods,
Jupiter the _Chronide_. Yes, he, even he, was subject to the fatality of
Destiny, from which not the immortals themselves can escape; and the
spectacle of such calamities horrifies us, in filling us with pity and
indignation. Be Jupiter, be the sovereign lord of the world, the frown
of whose brows made tremble the universe! be chanted by Homer, and
sculptured by Phidias in gold and ivory; be adored by a hundred nations
during long centuries; be the lover of Semele, of Danae, of Europa, of
Alcmena, of Io, of Leda, of Calisto! and after all, nothing will remain
at the end but a decrepit old man, who to gain his miserable livelihood
has to turn dealer in rabbit skins, like any poor Savoyard. Such a
spectacle will no doubt give pleasure to the vile multitude, which
insults to-day that which it adored yesterday. Perhaps among these
worthy people are to be found some of the descendants of those unlucky
bulls which were of old immolated in hecatombs upon the altar of
Jupiter; let such rejoice in his fall, and mock him at their ease, in
revenge for the blood of their ancestors, victims of idolatry; as for
me, my soul is singularly moved, and I am seized with dolorous
commiseration at the view of this august misfortune.