hills the country stretches darkly away all around, with the silver
ribbon of the river still winding through it. The shade is so deep in
the valleys that he has to ride through them slowly. The robe of the
earth now is all of deep gray and silver. The smell of the flowers is
stronger and sweeter than before, the brooks sound louder, and the
sheep bells are silent. The knight's thoughts just now are wandering
away from the princess, and he is thinking of the fame that he hopes to
win as a minstrel, how he will gain this prize and many other prizes,
how kings will send for him to come to their courts, that they may hear
his songs, how he will grow great and rich, and how his name will live
on after he is dead.
"As he thinks of these things, suddenly he sees a strange form before
him in the valley. It is like a woman, wonderfully beautiful,
marvellously, magically beautiful. Something more than the moonlight
seems to rest upon her and to show him her face with its deep eyes and
soft cheeks, her movements, so graceful and gentle that it seems as if
she did not move herself at all, but were just stirred and swayed by
the little breezes. A rosy light shines from her face and around her
dark hair. All about her are nymphs, or fairies, dancing and gliding
and scattering roses for her to walk upon. It seems really quite
needless to do that, for she appears rather to float and move in the
air and to rest on the flower-perfumed wind than to stand or walk upon
the ground. Now a knight who was also a minstrel could not possibly
make any mistake about such a person as this, and he knows at once that
she is the very Goddess of Love and Beauty."
"Is she the one that had the apples?" the little girl asked.
"No, not quite the same. She is one something like her, yet a good deal
different."
"Is she Venus then?"
"Yes, you have guessed just right, and so at last somebody in our story
has a name. But she is not altogether like the Venus that you have
heard about so many times before. Some people used to believe that
after the old gods whom you know so well had lost their rule on Mount
Olympus, they went to live inside the mountains and under the ground,
and that they were not kind to men any more, but always did harm,
whenever they were able to do anything. Now, for myself, I don't quite
see how this could be, because you know we have felt so sure that we
saw some of them up in the sky sometimes. Yet now that I see Venus
here, it does seem to me as if there were something in the story after
all, and I believe it would be better for the knight if he had never
seen her at all. If he were thinking of the princess at the time I do
not believe he would look twice at Venus. No, I am sure he would not
even see her once.
"But since he is not thinking of the princess, but only of what a great
man he would be if he could make his songs seem as wonderful to
everybody else as they seem to himself, it is not surprising that he is
delighted by such a vision, and it is not surprising, either, when the
goddess and her nymphs beckon to him and then glide away as if they
wanted him to follow them, that he gets off his horse and does follow
them. They move along so fast that he cannot keep up with them, and
soon he cannot even see them, but it is still easy for him to follow.
For everywhere they go the strangest flowers spring up under their feet
and make a pathway to lead him. They are huge, bright flowers, cup-
shaped and star-shaped and sun-shaped. Flowers of such wonderful form
and size, and such gorgeous colors the knight never saw before. Some of
them seem to be made of hammered gold, and some of silver; some have
stamens of precious stones, and some look like clear crystal, blood-
red, deep purple, or orange, as if they were cut from solid gems; some
of them have petals like flames, that shimmer and glow and are
reflected by the others; the leaves are all glistening emerald and they
are sprinkled with pearls like drops of evening dew. The stems twine
about like serpents, and they seem to the knight to move and turn about
to show him all their magic splendor. Some of them, with coiling
tendrils, like gold wire, sway toward him as if they would catch him
and hold him, others dance and wave about on their stems and twinkle as
the other stars do, up above the trees, as if they were laughing and
mocking at him, and still others bow and bend away from him and beckon
him on. The whole of the fire is scarcely enough to show me this
strange garden. A pale, ghostly light rises from all the flowers and
hovers over the path. The knight would stop to pick some of them, but
those before him seem always more beautiful than those close at hand,
and, besides, he is eager to follow the goddess. So on he hurries till
he sees before him a way straight into the side of the mountain and
within a great glare of light. If he would only think of the princess
now, for one instant! But he goes straight on into the mountain, and
the way shuts behind him, and outside the magic flowers are gone, and
there is nothing but the soft grass, the whispering trees, the dark
sky, with the stars, and the calm night.
[Illustration: "THE STRANGEST FLOWERS SPRING UP UNDER THEIR FEET."]
"Do you see how very wrong it is for the knight to go away after the
goddess into the mountain? When people let themselves be led away like
that by fairies and goddesses it is usually a long time before they get
back. A knight like this one, who is a minstrel as well, ought to know
all about such things, and I dare say he does. He must have heard of
men who went to such places and saw beautiful and wonderful sights, and
feasted and danced till they thought that they had been away from their
homes for a day, or a week, and then, when they went back to them,
found that they had really been gone for years, perhaps for hundreds of
years, and that all their friends were dead. He ought to think of his
friends, the other knights and minstrels, who will be grieved when they
meet and he is not with them. For his own sake he ought to know better
than to run into strange and dangerous places just because they look
pleasant. More than all, he ought to think of the princess. If he does
not care for the prize of his song any more for itself he should care
for her who is to give it. He should remember how much she loves him,
little as he deserves it. She will not forget him as he does her. When
she waits and waits for him and he does not come she will believe that
he is dead, and she will cry her pretty eyes out. She will never think
that he has gone away from her to visit a goddess of love and beauty
who lives in a cave.
"Now I see the cave of the goddess, deep in the mountain. It seems dim
and misty and confused at first, but gradually I can see it clearer.
All around the sides and the top are great pendants of gems, like
icicles, of all sorts of colors, as if the precious stones had once
been liquid and had run down into the cave and then had frozen into
crystal. Here and there are diamonds and rubies and opals and emeralds
as big as your head, set in the roof, and they have some magical way of
shining all by themselves and light up the whole cave like lamps. The
ground is covered with flowers like those that made the path to lead
the knight to the place. A stream of water runs from the cave and is
fed by fountains in the middle. These fountains are wonderful affairs
too. Sometimes they throw jets of liquid silver almost to the roof;
then they fall down and spread out wide in sheets, of the color and the
brightness of melted gold; again the water rises in little streams that
twine and weave themselves together like basket-work, and all of deep,
shining crimson; then the fountains take other fantastic forms and
other colors, purple or green or orange, but always glowing with light,
and so they pass to silver and to gold again.
"This is the cave of Venus. It is filled with the nymphs who attend
her, and they are singing choruses in her praise, and dancing
wonderful, mazy, mad, delirious dances. They whirl about and around
alone, in couples, in lines, in circles, and in crowds, their arms
waving and their hair streaming in the air. Sometimes while they dance
every one is plainly to be seen, and again their garments surround them
like clouds, and they are all one waving, streaming, fluttering mass.
These mists of light robes then are like the fountains, for now they
are shining white, now red or yellow or green or purple, now all the
colors together, mixed and blended like broken and tangled rainbows.
"If you could see all that I see here in the fire I think you would be
delighted with it, for a little while. But how do you suppose the
minstrel knight likes it? He sits beside the goddess and looks at it
wearily. He has seen them all so much that walls of gems and streams of
gold and whirling rainbows do not please him any more. He has been here
in the cave for a whole year. He sees now how wrong it was for him to
come, and he is so tired of it all that he is beginning to feel that he
would rather die than be among these mad pleasures any longer. But he
cannot do that because nobody ever dies here. When he sees these walls
of cold crystal, gleaming with the colored light from the great gems,
he thinks of the broad, lovely country that he once saw, that stretched
away and ended only at the blue mountains, and of the silver river that
never changed to blood, or to green fire, with the clear sunlight
brightening them all.
"If he tries to rest his eyes upon the great, glowing, magic flowers
that cover the ground, they only make him think of the red poppies that
shone out from the fields of ripening grain, and of the blue of the
corn-flowers, and then he tries to think of the perfume from the
flowers that filled the air after it grew still at evening. There are
odors here, too, but they are so heavy and sweet that after a time it
is almost a pain to smell them. He hears the rush and the dash of the
fountains, and he longs for the low, merry little sound of the brook
that ran along beside his road. The air here is full of music, the rich
harmonies of many instruments and the voices of the nymphs who sing
their choruses to Venus, but his ears are tired of the sounds, and he
wishes that he might hear only the sleepy tinkle of the sheep-bells,
chiming with the voice of the brook. But more than everything else he
thinks of the princess. He remembers now how kind and true she was, and
how much truer he ought to have been in return than he really was. He
wonders if she still remembers him, if she thinks him dead, and then
his heart stops, as he wonders if she herself is dead. Oh, it is a fine
time now to think of these things! If he had only remembered the
princess once before, instead of thinking what a great minstrel he was,
he would never have followed Venus into her cave. Now he can only think
of that great wrong he did and long for the fresh fields and woods, for
the air, the sunlight--and the princess.
"Venus, sitting by his side, sees that he is troubled and asks him why.
He tells her how much he wishes that he might see again the world he
used to know, and live the life he used to live, and he begs her to let
him go. She is angry at first. Has she not brought him to live here
among such delights as no man before ever knew, and is he tired of them
now, and does he want to escape from them? He can only say that he will
never forget her or the beautiful things he has seen here, but he can
never be happy here again, and if she will only let him he must go. At
last she tells him that he may go. 'But you will not be happy,' she
says; 'your old friends will scorn you when they know where you have
been. They will never forgive you for coming here. You will find no
rest, no help, no hope. Then, when you learn that you can have peace
nowhere else, come back to me and stay with me forever.'
"All at once the cave, with everything in it, is gone. The knight knows
how or where it went no more than I. As for him, he does not know that
he has moved from his place, and as for me, the fire is burning just as
it did before. Yet now I see him lying on the soft grass of a beautiful
valley. Above him are the sky and the nodding branches of the trees;
around are the hills. He sees and he smells the flowers that were lost
to him so long. The low tinkle of the sheep-bells comes again drowsily
to his ears. A little way up the hill a shepherd is playing softly on
his pipe. He picks a flower and smells it, to be sure that it is all
real. Then the tears come to his eyes as he thinks of all the beauty
and sweetness of the life that he lost and has found again.
"But now a band of pious pilgrims passes, on the way to Rome. They are
going to ask the Pope to forgive their sins. The sight of them brings a
new thought to the knight. It is the thought of his own sin. Now that
he sees again the sweet loveliness of the world, he feels at last fully
how wicked it was for him to leave it and all his own duties and his
friends in it. He is in despair when he thinks that he is no longer
worthy of the princess, if indeed he ever were. He dares not see her
again; he dares not ask his friends to be his friends longer; he throws
himself upon the ground and feels that he has no more a place in this
happy world.
"At this very moment comes a company of huntsmen riding past. Their
leader is the prince himself and the rest are the friends of the
minstrel knight, the very ones with whom he should have sung for the
prize a year ago. Very glad they are to find him, after thinking him
dead so long, and they insist that he must come with them and be one of
them again. He will not go with them. He feels that he is not like them
any more. His wrong has been so great that he dares not be with brave,
good men. They urge him, but it is useless. But there is one among
them, a knight and a minstrel too, who also loves the princess. She
does not love him, but his own love is so deep and true that he will do
anything to make her happy. When he finds that nothing else can move
the stubborn knight he tells him that the princess still loves him,
that she has grieved for him all the time that he has been lost, and
that he must come back to them for her sake. He is touched at last. He
had not dared to ask of her, and now he knows that he may see her
again, that she could never forget like him, that she will love him and
forgive him. He cannot resist. He will go.
"They are all in the hall of the prince's castle now. They are to sing
again for a prize and again the princess is to give it. The prince
tells them that they must all sing of love. The knight who loves the
princess hopelessly begins. He sings of his own love, how it is fixed
upon one who does not love him in return, and how still his love for
her is all the joy he has, and he would gladly lose the last blood of
his heart for her. They all cry out that he has sung nobly, except the
knight from the cave of Venus. He thinks this is a very weak, silly
kind of love; he sings in a very different way, and he tells them that
if they want to know what love really is they must go and learn of the
Goddess of Love.
"They are all filled with horror. They know now where he has been. He
has left the princess for Venus; he has learned to scorn their knightly
love; worse than all, it seems to them, he, a Christian man, has passed
a whole year in the home of a heathen goddess. They declare that he has
betrayed them in daring to come among them like an honest knight. They
forget that he refused to come, that he told them he was unworthy of
them and was too wicked to be one of them, and they almost compelled
him. So their swords are out to kill him. But the princess, whom he has
injured a thousand times as much as all of them put together, commands
them to spare him. He may yet be forgiven, she says, and it is not for
them to judge. She will pray for him as long as she lives, and God may
pardon him. At her word they draw back and put up their swords, yet
they think his guilt too great ever to be forgiven. There can be but
one only hope for him, says the prince; some of the pilgrims on their
way to Rome are still in the valley; he must go with them and pray for
pardon from the Pope.
"Never another pilgrim toiled along the road to Rome feeling such a
heavy weight of sin to be forgiven as the minstrel knight. He does not
talk with the others or lighten the way as they do with holy songs. He
knows not how to suffer enough for his guilt, and to seek out
punishments for himself is his only content. Some of the pilgrims walk
where the grass is soft and cool; he chooses the paths that are full of
stones and thorns. They drink at the springs of cold water; he thirsts
more than they, but he turns away and lets the noon sun blaze down upon
his bare head. They find shelter and rest for the night; he lies upon
the snow of the mountain and sleeps there, if he sleeps at all. When he
comes near to Italy he fears that the sight of that lovely land will be
pleasing to his eyes, and so he has himself led blindfold on to Rome.
"The Pope sits upon his throne, and before him come all who seek for
pardon. He forgives them, blesses them, and sends them away. At last
comes the minstrel knight. He throws himself on the stones before the
feet of the Pope and tells the story of all the wrong that he has done.
The Pope listens and is filled with horror, as the prince and the
knights were before, and there is no princess here to say one word of
love or mercy. 'There is no hope for you,' he answers, 'no pardon, no
hope. Your guilt is too deep and black. As soon shall this naked staff
I hold bear flowers and leaves as one like you find forgiveness or
mercy.'
"And so the minstrel knight shrinks away. He knows not where to turn.
All places are alike to him, alike full of darkness and despair. The
pilgrims are returning home. He follows them, as a dog that had been
struck and wounded might crawl after men who had been his friends.
"I see the beautiful valley again. The princess is kneeling before a
little cross. She is praying that the knight whom she loves may be
forgiven. Back in the rising shadows of the evening stands the knight
who loves her hopelessly, watching her as she prays. The pilgrims are
coming from Rome. They are singing songs of mercy and peace. The
princess looks eagerly among them. The minstrel knight is not there.
'He will never come back,' she sighs, and she turns away and slowly
climbs the hill toward her father's castle, where she may pray for him
again.
"And now a dark figure comes slowly, fearfully on, by the way that the
pilgrims have passed. He sees his friend, standing where he stood while
the princess prayed. He calls to him to stand back; he is too guilty
for any good man to touch or come near him. He tells him how he went to
Rome and what the Pope said. Then he tells the awful thought that is
now in his mind. The Goddess of Love and Beauty bade him when all hope
should be lost to come to her again and stay with her forever. He is
seeking her mountain now. He calls to her to guide him. Now at the very
back of the fire I see a rising red glow. The goddess is there and she
calls to him to hasten to her. 'You are mad,' cries his friend; 'stay;
be brave; bear it all, and you may yet be forgiven.'
"Suddenly there comes to the knight another thought--the best thought
he has ever had--the princess. Instantly the red glow is gone and the
goddess is hidden from him forever. His friend knows his thought. 'She
is up there,' he says, 'praying for you still.'
"At last the knight is humbled, overcome, subdued. He falls upon his
face and prays for pardon, as the princess is praying for him up there
in the castle. And now all at once there is a glad shout, a song of
happiness and peace. Another band of pilgrims has come from Rome. They
are bringing the staff of the Pope, and all in a night it has borne
flowers and leaves. The smell of lilies fills the air. They are
carrying the staff through the land to tell the knight and all other
men like him, if, indeed, there are others, that they are forgiven. The
minstrel knight has found pardon and he may rest."
"And what became of the princess?" the little girl asked.
"The fire is too low," I said; "I cannot see any more. What do you
think became of her?"
"I don't know," she answered, "but I think she must be very happy that
the knight is forgiven."
"I think they are both very happy," I said.
THE KING OF THE GRAIL
It was the last evening of the year. In honor of the occasion the
little girl was allowed to sit up rather later than usual--not till
midnight, of course, so that she could see how different the whole
world would look after the clock had struck, but long enough to make
her feel that she was doing something very pleasant, because something
that it was not good for her to do very often. Our friends down by the
sea had sent us a strange Christmas present, but they knew what we
wanted. It was a big box of driftwood, almost a wagon-load. We resolved
that it should not be used except on great occasions, and of course New
Year's eve was a great occasion. Here in the city we could not listen
in the evening stillness and catch the low murmur of the restless
water, but the fire burned with the same strange and lovely colors as
if it had been kindled on the beach. Tonight it was not likely that we
should see any storms or any ghostly ships, yet the little girl knew
well enough that there were wonderful things to be seen in that fire.
"What can you see in it?" I asked her.
"I don't want to see things myself," she said. "I want you to see them.
Just think; this is the last time we can have any stories about the
fire this year."
"But the new year will begin to-morrow," I said, "and it will be just
as good as the old one, will it not?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose so," she said, "but this has been such a nice year
that I don't like to have it go. But now tell me what is in the fire."
"There are so many strange things in it that I scarcely know how to
begin to tell you about them. I am very much afraid that I shall not
make you understand all that I see in the fire to-night, and I am the
more afraid of it because I am not at all sure that I can quite
understand it all myself. But first the reddest and brightest spot in
the whole fire begins to grow redder and brighter and to take a new
shape. It is the shape of a goblet. It is of clear crystal and its
sharp angles and edges sparkle with many colors, but within it that
strange, deep red glows and shines and grows brighter still, till it
beats and throbs as if it were alive. And all around it, too, there is
a circle of soft rays of light, like a halo.
"Perhaps you know what this is, but I am afraid you don't Do you
remember what I told you once about the Holy Grail? This is the Holy
Grail--the cup from which the Saviour drank at the Last Supper, and in
which afterwards His blood was caught as He hung upon the cross. It is
that blood in the cup which is still alive and glows and beats and
throbs. This Holy Grail, as I told you before, is guarded by a band of
knights in a beautiful temple, which nobody can find except those whom
the Grail itself has chosen and allowed to come. I can see the temple
now. It has a high, light, graceful dome, which rests on tall pillars
of marble that is like snow. The whole temple may be of something like
snow, too, for it melts away so that I cannot see it and comes again,
then half of it is gone and then the other half, so that I scarcely
know whether I see it at all. Perhaps it is the smoke of the fire that
makes it seem so. But I can see that the dome is all covered with
figures and traceries of gold, which bloom out bright like flowers
whenever the whole dome looks plainest, and then fade again. But when
the smoke comes across the whole picture and darkens it for a moment,
then the lines upon the dome show through it like fire, and they change
and waver, and then the whole temple is gone again.
"You remember something about the Grail's knights. The Knight of the
Swan was one of them. They live here in the temple, except when they
are sent away on some journey, to help some one who is in trouble, to
do some act of justice, to fight for the right, or to punish the wrong.
And whether they stay here or go as far away as they can, they never
need any food except what the Grail gives them. The Grail chooses them
at first, feeds them afterwards, and gives them their commands, for
sometimes, in that halo that shines around it, there appear letters and
words to tell the knights what they should know. And once a year, on
Good Friday, a white dove flies into the temple and rests upon the Holy
Grail, to give it more of these powers for the coming year.