Three Warnings, or how Death promised a man that he should be signalled
thrice ere called away. So he became lame and deaf and blind--these
were the three.’
‘And when was thy first warning?’
‘When Christ preached unconditional altruism unto
mankind--cosmopolitanism and equality. That lamed me.’
‘And the second?’
‘When a Hindu set up a religion on the word _Sikh_. It means, “seek!”
What goes beyond faith, unbelief, or uncertainty is to inquire and
search and seek for truth. So I was deafened by that awful cry.’
‘And the third?’
‘Aristotle, Friar Bacon, Francis Bacon, Darwin, Induction, Evolution.
That will soon finish me. But the first blow was the worst, and I knew
it. I bore up well, and made a gallant fight, but I am dying. _Vicisti,
Galilæe!_’
As he spoke, the full golden Syrian moon shone o’er their heads in an
unclouded sky, a gentle breeze was wantoning in the palms, yet from
afar there came a jackal’s cry, and then the booming of a lion’s roar.
‘I shall pass away, my Flaxius, but I shall live again in some form;
evil or good, my spirit cannot die. For there is a _good_ in me--a
good of strength--and while matter casts a shadow, or contrasts and
paradoxes exist, I shall be. All in a softened form I well previse. As
the sun which set is followed by yonder moon, so shall I be softer, and
yet as eternal. When God shall assume a higher form, I shall inherit
the old throne and sceptre.’
‘Yes,’ replied Flaxius, ‘it well may be. Shelley and sundry other
inspired lunatics had that idea; ’twas known to the Greeks, not without
thy aid, O Aschmodai! For thou hast always thrown doubt and a fine
frenzy and confusion over all great truths.’
‘_Rectè dixisti_, thou speakest truly,’ answered Aschmodai. ‘Had all
been all at once, nothing had ever been.’ Son Flaxius, thou too art
a moon, and thou art my son; but thou wouldst fain enjoy the paradox
without the pain. As the old hard-griping peasant grows rich, unheeding
of what misery he makes, while his cultured heir grows gentle and
amiable, so wilt thou, and the world which has been enriched by the
past, grow milder. _Le diable est mort--vive le diable!_
* * * * *
‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ penned the sage, ‘that men, with all their
wisdom, do not train their wondrous power of putting numbers together
to make sums, or the faculty of deduction, by means of which stupendous
results of prophecy may be attained. This might be increased to a
degree which would seem to us miraculous. Edgar A. Poe had strange
intuitions of what might be in his theory that he who observes all
antecedents and possible combinations may surely foresee consequences.
‘And, as his name reminds me, Poe mentions that at Palæchosi, in
Sparta, there is existent on a stone an inscription L.A.S.M., which
is probably a part of GELASMA or Laughter, indicating a shrine to the
merry god. Apropos of which M. Marcel Schwob remarks that laughter is
destined to die away with advancing culture. “It is,” he declares,
“a mere _tic_, a gross physical manifestation of the perception of
disharmony in the world, which will vanish before complete scepticism,
absolute science, general pity, or intolerance of suffering and respect
for all things.” This idea should assuredly please Anglo-Americans,
among whom, while a sense of humour increases, the laugh diminishes,
till we generally find in their greatest jesters men who never laugh at
all.
‘But M. Schwob errs in his _Essai de Paradoxe sur le Rire_, when
he declares that this species of contraction of the zygomatic
muscles is peculiar to man, it having been an indication of his
feeble intelligence and the conviction of his own superiority. The
Newfoundland dog laughs at times, and that with an expression which is
completely human. I had heard of this several times before I witnessed
it, and also heard that the expression, though droll, was so uncanny
in a dog as to awaken something like awe, as I, indeed, experienced.
These dogs have a keen sense of humour, entering with intelligence into
the games and romps of boys. But the error of M. Schwob, as well as
that of Matthew Arnold, is to believe that seriousness or mere gravity
is essential to genius. The French writer is of opinion that laughter
expresses only sneers, sarcasms, vanity, and short-witted scepticism.
It means far more than this to greater minds. As the Schwobian view
is diabolical, so is there, on the other hand, a divine humour, a
sweet and sacred _gelasma_, which we only do not associate with sacred
things and grandeur, simply because we know nothing about their true
inner nature and are not at home there. There is a sweet laughter of
innocence, purity and youth, in which a smile always irradiates the
face, lighting it to higher beauty. Is not a smile divine? Is not
all beauty as the smile of God in nature? And there is also a bitter
smile--a sardonic laugh--the very life of Aschmodai, and the meaning
of this chapter is that this laugh is vanishing in the world, and with
it the brutal bray and idiotic ‘yawp’ and silly snigger of the vulgar
mind; but that the merry musical laugh of the gentle heart, and the
smile divine which thrills the heart of love like wine, will remain to
man, after asinine seriousness shall have vanished for ever.
’Tis a delicate thing to draw the lines which divide the gold from the
dross, and show how the _harsh_ humour will be neglected in Shakespeare
and Rabelais, as theology is dropped from our admiration of Dante, but
all of them will live in so far as the angelic smile beams in them.
Note that had this world been without variableness or the shadow of
turning, darkness and light, or night and day, rise and fall, it had
not been at all; and that, while there shall be change and contrast and
evolution, or nature itself, there will be humour, which is the soul
and life of laughter, and though it has been easily checked in this
priggish _fin de siècle_ (when dolts have well-nigh got the upper hand,
and dismal dulness shadows all the land) yet with the great coming
Renaissance of Nature, which is just beginning to show under the aid
of science, as the morning redness comes with the rising sun, men will
laugh merrily once more, not in bitterness, but in love.
[2] _Epistolæ delict, sive de Magia_, lib. i. cap. 24.
[3] _Scaricabarili_, ‘unloading barrels.’ ‘Ludus est puerilis quil’a
duobus tantum peragitur. Alter enim alteri terga vertunt, brachiisque
mutuo implicatis, se alter alterum vicissim humo tollunt. Unde
significare volentes duos alterum in alterum alicujus peccati culpam
refundere dicimus: _E fanno a scaricabarili_. Inter hoc autem et
illud de quo supra: _Fare a scaricalasino_, ea est differentia quod
hoc significat alterum in alterum culpam suam rejicere; illud verò
simpliciter alicujus criminis culpam a se dimovere.’--_Angeli Monosinii
Floris Italicæ Linguæ Libri Novem_, A.D. 1604.
FLAXIUS IN FLORENCE
OR, THE GOBLIN OF THE TOWER DELLA TRINITÀ, BY THE PORTA SAN NICCOLO.
‘They do not speak as mortals speak, Nor sing as others sing: Their
words are gleams of starry light, Their songs the glow of sunset
bright: Or meteors on the wing.’
THE following story belongs to this book ‘in good faith of all sorts,’
be it salted, pickled or sugared; since it was originally the first
ever recorded of the great and good Flaxius. But as it was of Florence,
Florentiny, so, following the saying, ‘first come, first served,’ and
being engaged on _The Legends of Florence_[4]--in which book the lovers
of romance and the occult will find many a rare treat, showing how all
Florence is a charmingly haunted city--therefore did I first introduce
the sage in it to the world.
And in the introduction I said that the legend is of great antiquity,
since there is a hint of it in an ancient Hebrew work by Rabbi ben
Mozel-toff, or the learned Rev Gedauler Chamar, besides being found
in poetic form in my own great work _The Music Lesson of Confucius_;
also in a marvellous cabalistic manuscript which I bought in sight of
Santa Maria Novella, which describes how the _Bathkol_, or Daughter of
the Voice, may be caused to be heard within our soul, and teach us all
kinds of magic.
Money is the root of all evil, and Flaxius, who went to the root of
everything, of course wanted it. How he often got it is set forth as
follows:
FLAXIUS AND THE ROSE
Midnight was ringing from the cloister of San Miniato in Florence on
the hill above, and Flaxius sat by the Arno down below, on the bank, by
the square grey tower of other days, known as the Niccolò, or _Torre
della Trinità_ because there are in it three arches....
It was midnight in mid-winter and a full moon poured forth all its
yellow light over Florence as if it would fain preserve it in oil--or
amber--and over the olive groves till they looked in the distance like
moss-agates in topaz.
‘Or I,’ quoth Flaxius, to carry out the simile, ‘like a fly in hock!’
Yes, it was a clear, cold Tuscan night, and as the last peal of bells
went out into Eternity and faded in the Irrevocable, thousands of
spirits of the departed began to appear, thronging like fire-flies in
June, through the streets, visiting their ancient haunts and homes,
shops and shades, greeting, gossiping or arranging their affairs just
as the peasants do on Friday in the great place of the Signoria--as
they have done for centuries.
Flaxius looked at the rolling river which went rushing by at his feet,
and said:
‘_Arno mio!_ you are in a tremendous hurry to get to the sea, and
all the more because you have just had an _accessit_, a remittance,
of rain from the mountain-banks. _Buon pro vi faccia_, much good may
it do you! So every mortal fain would rise and run. So every shopman
hurries to become a great merchant when he gets some money, and every
farmer a signore, and every signore a great lord, and every great lord
a ruler at court and over all the land--_prorsum et sursum_. And when
they _get there_, or when you get to the sea, then ye are all swallowed
up in greater lives, interests and actions; and so the rivers run for
ever on--longer yet ever seeming less unto yourselves. And so--_ad
altiora tendunt omnes sic_--all to the Higher ever doth aspire, the
flower-edged torrent and the Florentine.’....
When he suddenly heard above his head a spirit-voice, clear, sweet and
strange, singing not in words, or on the ear, but by tones of unearthly
music, of which languages there are many among the unearthlies, each
unto its ‘chaos,’ all being wordless songs or airs suggesting speech
and yet conveying ideas more rapidly. It was the Goblin of the Tower to
him of the tower next beyond on the further hill, and he said:
‘How many ghosts there are abroad to-night!’
‘Yes; it is a fine night for ghosting. Moonlight is mid-summer for
them, poor souls! But I say, brother, who is yonder _Frate_, the dark
monk-spectre, who always haunts your tower, lingering here and there
about it? What is the spell upon that _spirito_?’
‘He is one to be pitied,’ replied the goblin of the _Trinità_. ‘He was
a good fellow while he lived, but a little too fond of money. He was
afflicted with what the doctors called in Rome, when I was young, the
_amor sceleratus_, or _sal aeratus habendi_. So it came to pass that he
died, leaving a treasure, _mille aureos_, or a thousand gold crowns,
buried in my tower, unknown to any one, and for that he must walk the
earth until some one living wins the money. For money is as life to all
men, and he who destroys it is, in a way, a murderer.’
Flaxius pricked up his ears. He understood all that the goblins said,
but they had no idea that the man in a scholar’s robe who sat below
knew Goblinese.
‘What must a mortal do to get the gold?’ inquired the second goblin.
‘Truly he must do what is well-nigh impossible,’ replied the Elf of the
Tower, ‘for he must, without the aid of magic--note that--bring to me
here, in this month of January, a fresh, full-blown rose.’
The voices were silent; a cloud passed over the face of the moon; the
river rushed and roared on; Flaxius sat in a Vandyke-brown study,
thinking how he could obtain peace and repose for the ghostly monk, and
also get the _solatium_ or reward.
‘Here is,’ he thought, ‘_aliquid laborare_, something to be worked
out. Now is the time, and here is the chance, _ingirlandisi di lauro_,
to win the laurel wreath. A rose in January! What a pity it is not
four hundred years later, when people will have green-houses, and
blue-nosed vagabonds will be selling red roses all the winter long in
the Tornabuoni! Faith! it is sometimes inconvenient to be behind, or in
advance of the age!
‘_Eureka!_ I have it!’ he at last exclaimed, ‘have it by the neck and
tail! I will _spogliar la tesoria_, rob the treasury and spoil the
Egyptian. _Si non in errore versatus sum_, unless I am stupendously
mistaken, monk, thy weird will soon be dreed, thy penance prophesied
will soon be o’er!’
Saying this he went into the city. And there the next day, going to a
fair lady of his acquaintance who excelled all in Italy in ingenious
needlework, he had made of silk a rose; and so deftly was it done, that
had it been put on a bush you would have sworn that a nightingale would
have sung to it, or a bee sought to ravish it.
Then going to a Venetian perfumer’s in the Via Vacchereccia close by
the Signoria, the wise Flaxius had his flower well scented with best
attar of roses from Constantinople, and when midnight struck he was at
the tower once more, where he called to the goblin.
‘_Che vuoi!_ What dost thou seek?’ cried the elf.
‘The treasure of the monk.’
‘_Bene!_ Give me a rose?’
‘_Ecco!_ There it is!’ replied Flaxius extending it.
‘_Non facit_--it won’t do,’ answered the goblin in Latin, thinking
Flaxius to be a monk. ‘It is a sham rose of silk, artificially
coloured--_murice tincta est_.’
‘Smell it,’ replied Flaxius calmly.
‘The _smell_ is all right and sweet, I admit,’ answered the guardian of
the gold. ‘The perfume is delicious’--here he sniffed at it seriously,
being like all of his kind enraptured with perfume--‘and that much of
it is, I grant, the real thing.’
‘Then tell me truly,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and swear by thy great
ancestress Diana, the mother of the Spirits of the Night, and her
sister-daughter Herodias, and her Nine Cats, by the Moon and her
eternal shadow Endamone, and the word which Bergoia whispered into
the ear of the Ox, and the Nails of Nortia, and the Lamia whom thou
lovest!--what is it makes a man? Is it his soul or his body?’
‘Man of mystery and master of the old Etruscan hidden lore!’ replied
the awe-struck goblin, ‘it is his soul.’
‘And is not the perfume of the rose its _soul_, that which breathes its
life, in which it speaks to fairies or to men? Is not the voice in song
or sweetened words the perfume of the spirit ever true? Is not----’
‘I give it up,’ replied the goblin. ‘The priest may turn in now for a
long, long nap. Here, take his gold, and may you have a merry time with
it; there is a great deal of good drinking in a thousand crowns, to
say nothing of the eating! Do you ever play at dice, old man, _ludere
latrunculis_? When you do, I promise you three sixes. By the way, I’ll
just keep this rose to remember you by. _Addio, a rivederla!_ Good-bye
and _au revoir_!’
So the bedesman slept among his ashes cold, and Flaxius, who was
a stout carl for the nonce, with a broad back and a great beard,
returned, bearing a mighty sack of ancient gold, which stood him in
good stead for many a day. And the goblin is still there in the tower.
* * * * *
‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius, as he revised the proof with a red
pencil for which he had paid a penny at Ancora’s ancient stationery
shop in the Via Condotti, ‘this tale teaches that in this life there
is naught which hath not its ideal side or idol inner-soul, which may
raise us to high reflection or great profit if we will but seek it.
‘The lower the man the less he sees, and the lower he looks, but it is
all to his loss.
‘Now every chapter in this book, or in that of thy life, O my son, or
daughter! may seem to thee to be only a rose of silk, yet do not stop
at that, but try to find therein its perfume.
‘For thou art thyself, I doubt not, such a rose, even if thy threads,
as in most of us, be somewhat worn or torn or faded; and yet thou
_hast_ a soul far better than many deem who see thee only from a
distance. And this my book is written for the perfume, not the silk of
my reader. And there is no person who is better in any way than what
the world deems him or her to be who will not find in it comfort.’
But, friend, how was it that it came to pass that I found out this
veritably and authentically ancient legend of the Tower of the Triple
Arches, which, when I wrote, rose opposite my window over the Arno? My
dear reader, it was written down for me by a witch, in very truth, who
had learned it of her strange kind and with it many more, which you
might have collected as well as I, if you could have kept such company
and wandered in such paths as I did. And know that the Sleepy Hollow
of the Hudson is not more haunted by marvellous spirits of a bygone
age, or more strangely shaded with legends of goblins and fair, quaint
mysteries of the golden time than is this city which is named from
Flowers, or it may be from Flora, _la belle Romaine_, the beautiful
sorceress who bewitched all with love. Villon asked what became of her:
‘Where is there left on earth a trace
Of Flora once the Roman fair?
Or Archipiada and Thais,
That bright and ever queenly pair?
Echo will fling the question back
O’er silent lake and streamlet lone,
All earthly beauty fades away,
Where have the snows of winter gone?’
Here the old Roman enchantress yet lives as much as she ever did in
fact in Rome,--for she was there only a world-old Indian myth of
pleasure and beauty,--in the city of the Lily. And here indeed there
is, according to legend, a goblin by every bridge, an elf in every
tower and old palazzo, a fairy of the ancient Roman kind in form,
changed to a later hue in colour, a witch _aura_ lingering in many a
darkling corridor and chamber, a something between sweet perfume and
the conjurer’s fumigations to raise spirits. I have learned that in my
barber’s shop opposite the great column of Cosimo, San Zenobio once
wrought a miracle, and in my café, a fair maid was bewitched into a cow.
‘All over doth this modern life
An ancient life enfold.’
These things you may read in full in many a story, as set forth in
_The_ (aforesaid) _Legends of Florence_, which grew out of the first
draft of the sketch of Flaxius.
[4] _Legends of Florence_, 2 vols.: London, D. Nutt.
FLAXIUS AND THE EMPEROR JULIAN
‘The Emperor Julian in his _Cæsars_ gives the preference to Marcus
Aurelius, who having been greatly honoured for his merits, replied
modestly “that it had always been his care to imitate the gods.”’--_The
Spectator_, No. 635.
‘I SHOULD really like,’ said Flaxius to his attendant pocket-imp,
Puttuli, ‘to see this grand young man, our Emperor Julian.’
[‘_Grand jeune homme_’ was a term applied in later days to Mr. James G.
Bennett, of the _New York Herald_ by the _Figaro_, but Flaxius was the
inventor of it.’]
‘Nothing easier,’ replied the goblin. ‘You give the _atriensis_, or
janitor, a hundred _nummos_ or _sestertios_, or a ring, or any trifle,
and so you may be admitted to a private-public view. For a _sestertium_
he will manage an opportunity to speak to Cæsar. But you can have
a good street view for nothing, and I think,’ added Puttuli as he
critically eyed his master, ‘if he saw you he might speak to you; he
isn’t at all particular as to his company.’
‘_Gratias tibi ago_, thank you for the compliment,’ replied the sage,
‘but as it concerns an emperor, we may as well do things genteelly.
Assume a respectable form, if you know how----’
(‘_Gratias tibi_, or _not_ tibi _ago_,’ murmured the imp.)
‘----and hire a place _dans la première loge_. For a _sestertium_.’
‘Would your excellency like to carry a _bouquet_?’ inquired Puttuli
impudently.
‘A good idea! Yes, order me one of rue, concordia and verbena.’
‘Well, of all the nosegays that ever were nosed, that is the queerest,’
answered the servant. ‘But, _fiat voluntas tua_, my lord’s will be
done! A great deal of rue with plenty of concordia, and most of all
verbena. I will go to the pretty herb-seller in the Suburra. She has
the vegetables.’
‘I must choose a lucky day,’ said Flaxius.
‘To-morrow,’ answered Puttuli, ‘is the three hundred and sixty-fifth
day of the year three hundred and sixty-five A.D.’
So it came to pass that, twenty-four hours after, Flaxius stood in the
grand hall of the imperial palace amid the row of suitors and courtiers
and other great or wise, or otherwise, folk who awaited audience of
Julian. He looked at the emperor with approbation.
‘I knew the first Julian,’ he reflected; ‘the man who bought the
empire at auction and resigned in sixty-six days. He was indeed a
_caducus_,--a word which will live in later days as _cad_--an imperial
snob. This is a horse of another colour.’
Meanwhile the emperor who had the keenest eye in Rome for observing
all sorts and conditions of men, and who, after sitting an hour in
the amphitheatre, could describe the appearance of everybody present
who was anybody, had not failed to note the tall and stately form of
the philosopher, and his grandly flowing beard. Now Julian, having a
very fine beard of his own, was deeply interested in this subject, as
appears from his great work _Misopogon_, meaning ‘Enemy of the Beard,’
that is to say of wisdom, to say nothing of his ‘Letters.’ And as
Flaxius had a very beard of beards flowing and curling in indescribable
magnificence, and as he wore the purely white, long-flowing robe which
indicated the professional philosopher, a being dearer to the emperor
than the prettiest woman living, he gazed at Flaxius with what became
absolute approval or admiration.
‘By Esculapius and Jupiter!’ he exclaimed, ‘that is a good-looking man.
Something in my line, I think! Who is he?’
‘Cæsar!’ replied Puttuli, who had assumed the form and voice of
Bumbulbulus, the court factotum, ‘that is the great Flaxius, a sage
who has travelled all over the world, and who is reported to know
everything from the works of Moloch the Pismirist, up to those of God.’
‘That is a large order,’ replied the emperor reflectively, ‘_magnum
postulatum est_. But bring him here that I may measure him.’
‘That will take more time, O Cæsar, than it would for him to measure
you!’ thought Puttuli, as he departed. ‘He needs a long line who would
sound such a sea as the Master. Come now! I think we are as good as
established at court.’
Now the emperor had for many years been devoted to magic and _occulta_,
and observing the herb-bouquet which Flaxius bore, grasped its hidden
meaning with great pleasure.
‘_Salve_, Cæsar!’ said the sage.
‘_Salve, adepte!_’ replied the monarch. ‘So thou hast mastered the lore
of the Etruscan, as I read by the _Concordia_, “_Janus adorandus cum
quo Concordia mitis_,” as Ovid saith; of Egypt, as the rue proclaims;
“_cingebat rutæ quæ coma multicomæ_’; and of Persia, I see by the
verbena, _Verbenasque adole pinguis et mascula thura_. Hem! Virgil!’
‘I have heard, even in the remotest region of the earth,’ replied
Flaxius, ‘that what Cæsar could not do in the way of apt quotation was
not worth doing.’
‘_Um!_ I flatter myself that I know a thing or two,’ replied the
emperor--the very phrase occurs in his _Epistolæ_--‘but like Apicius
with the British oysters, I am always ready for a few more. And I read
it in thee, O Flaxius,’ he added, suddenly changing his whole mien
and manner, and looking through his tangled locks with that strange,
unearthly glare which so impressed his contemporary familiars, as if he
had become another man, ‘that thou canst teach me much which I do _not_
know, therefore I ask thee to sup with me to-night.’
The emperor said this, turning away so abruptly, that all present
who did not know his ways inwardly thanked God, according to their
heathen or Christian faith, that they did not stand in the shoes of
that philosopher with the flowing beard. But those who knew him better
looked gravely, and said, ‘Cæsar hath found a new friend!’