and nights, and see that the master here be not disturbed! And do
ye,’ she added to the Owl and Cat, ‘take care also that no noise be
made hereabouts, and if ye do your work well, ye shall become witch
and wizard in human form. Farewell!’ Saying this she winged her way
heavenward:
‘To the joyous realms afar,
Where the angel dwellers are.’
Now of the four members of that happy family, it would have been
difficult to say who was the most delighted. Flaxius surely, because he
had been sent to hell; the Owl and Cat certainly because they hoped to
rise to the most degraded state of humanity; or Slang assuredly, simply
because he had been spoken to by a queen and charged with a commission.
And the three latter solemnly swore among themselves that if a mouse or
bird so much as ventured to cheep or chirp about the house, they would
rend it limb from limb, and have it served up for supper. According
to the Penal Code of the Goblins. V. CXXXIIIV, _libro alto, capitulo
nullo, folio nigro_.
* * * * *
As all the richest and most artistic or artful adornment of cathedrals
or palaces, diamonded with panes of quaint device, ‘innumerable of
stains and splendid dyes,’ and twilight saints and dim emblazonings,
with half unearthly, holy, elfin shade, is all as trash and
gingerbread, compared to the greenwood with its ineffable beauties of
summer, and golden glory of autumn, so is all earthly music ever played
mere scrannel-piping contrasted with that in which the soul of Flaxius
seemed swept away, as he sank to sleep under the spell of the fairy.
For he always loved music in every form, however made or by what mind
composed; and that which now seemed to be life itself and waft him on,
was what he would have had idealised for him, or that which he would
have wanted had he known how to want it. This fulfilment of ideals
in every form was the introduction to and the great moral lesson of
Inferno. For therein lies such temptation as is mercifully spared to
man on earth.
‘By the glory of the gods!’ said Flaxius, rousing himself to strength,
‘if the devil can bring art like this to bear on common mortals, who
the devil can be saved? Truly it was high time for me to get out of the
ruts of earth for a season, when there are such tremendous paradoxes as
_this_ to solve outside it. And I thought that the problem and puzzle,
and contrast, and anomaly were confined to life--_me stupide_! Verily,
I say unto myself, Flaxius, that I foresee I shall find the very humour
of humour in the mystery of hell, as this music intimates.’
And the music dying away, yet not quite vanishing, for Flaxius while
he was in Inferno always heard it--just as in a garden we scent
perfume of some kind, rising or falling--he found himself on the
summit of a marvellously pleasant hill amid rocks and trees, grass and
wild-flowers, with a mossy bench under an arbour, such a place as of
all others he loved. He sat down on the bench and saw that there was
before him a tremendous, yawning mountain gulf or valley, miles deep,
but what lay beyond he knew not, since it was all covered with a veil
of rolling, purple cloud of richest hue, in which he saw eyes of light
wander like stars....
Then he perceived standing by his side, a very beautiful woman, young
and lithe, holding a flask.
‘Have I not known thee of yore, O sister?’ asked Flaxius in Etruscan.
‘Art thou not of the _Lases_, who receive the spirits of the departed?’
‘I am of the Lases, and I am Alpan, or Alban, the Fairy of the Dawn,
and their chief,’ said the maiden gently, ‘and I am sent by the lord of
this land, whom men know as Pluto, to welcome thee. But first--behold!’
And as the music, sweet beyond dreams, again rose gently--as in a
play or orchestra--the Lasa waved her hand and, the purple cloud
vanishing, revealed to Flaxius such a vision of stupendous and
beautiful palaces--all forming one--as he had never in all the
splendour of the antique world seen the like of. He recalled Babylon,
Memphis, Persepolis, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, the temples of Greece
and of Egypt in all their massive mystery, the marvels of the Buddhist
structures of Cambodia and India, the awful grotesques of America, the
stately Lombard-Norman cathedrals of the West--the Gothic glory of
Europe--and all seemed to be poor and wretched, yea, squalid, beside
the grandeur, magnitude, and elaborate perfection of what was now
before him.
‘This must be,’--he said, but he could speak no more, so overwhelmed
was he at the sight.
‘Yes,’ added Albana, reading his thought. ‘It is--Pandemonium--the
first structure ever erected.’
‘Ay,’ replied Flaxius recovering, of course to make a reflection,
‘and I see that architecture has step by step sunk, as man has risen.
Another paradox! And this,’ he suddenly exclaimed, ‘is hell!’
‘Yes, Flaxius,’ replied the fairy with a sad smile, ‘and be thankful
that thou comest here as an immortal who will depart as soon as thou
shalt have learned the mystery, for verily with thy love and knowledge
of the beautiful in art it had also gone hard with thee.’
‘Another paradox!’ thought Flaxius. ‘So, _tout lasse, tout passe, tout
casse. En avant!_’
‘And now,’ said Albana, ‘for new sights! But wait! Drink from this
flask! All who enter this realm must do so!’
‘I know it of old,’ said Flaxius. ‘It was the draught of the mysteries
given me by the Fairy when I was made immortal. I drink to thee,’ he
said, ‘O terrible ruler of this wondrous world! Yes, to thy realm and
to thy mystic spouse! and with them to the angel of my dreams! and also
thee, my fair, angelic guide!’
As he said this, there came from the depth below an ebony car or boat,
exquisitely inlaid with gold in richest profusion, which rose slowly,
quivering with the music, to their feet. Then there was a far, soft
sound as of melodious chimes of a thousand bells.
‘Enter with me,’ said Albana. And having entered, they floated slowly
over the gulf: they saw the city palace in new forms, while far beyond
a landscape of marvellous beauty also developed itself, and in it
too were other palaces, towns, towers, burgs, and villes or villas,
castles, and immense ranges of crenellated, arched walls with glorious
gates, and over the walls grew or hung masses of trees or clustering
vines, bright with a mystic beauty of their own.
They landed at the edge of an immense marble precipice, which was
however richly carved far adown with quaint devices, the more beautiful
for moss and grey lichen. There appeared to be nothing freshly new, yet
nothing ruined in the whole land; all spoke of an old time for ever
young.
‘You see no escort,’ said Albana. ‘You are too great a visitor to be
received with a cortège, or a procession, as we welcome the small great
men of earth. It is long indeed since any one was received with such
honour as this. You are deemed to be above ceremony.’
‘Charming!’ thought Flaxius, ‘the greatest mark of attention which
I ever received in my life is the most devoid of all semblance of
politeness. Another paradox, but this I understand.’
‘I think, beautiful Albana,’ he remarked, ‘that your company alone is
here considered the highest compliment which can be paid to a guest.’
‘His majesty the king has said so,’ replied Albana simply. Meanwhile
they had been passing along streets and scenes of surpassing
magnificence or beauty, and after traversing a garden of the gods came
to an immense open portal which they entered. And so on and ever on
through stupendous colonnaded corridors, and cloistered squares with
innumerable groups of statuary and fountains like vast rivers trained
to play, great as the Nile when freshets fill its flood, leaping on
high a mile, then roaring down through arches strange and high, falling
over thundering waterfalls, broad and deep as Niagara, by towers like
that of glorious Babylon which met the clouds; and above and beyond and
higher yet again, like stairs of mountains beyond mountains growing
dim, were walls of citadels like snowy marble, with a coral blush in
the sunset, and domes like diamond, and pearly spires, glinting with
gold in every form of grace.
When at last passing along a turquoise-walled and opal-paved arcade,
to which unbroken divans of lapis lazuli, inlaid with silver, seemed
more beautiful for inexhaustible masses of all shades and kinds of blue
flowers hanging from vines, growing in vases of sapphire, so that the
very air seemed to be of a dreamy azure hue, they came to a door and
passed into a hall.
Wherein sat, not on a throne, but in a throne-like, ebony, high chair,
at a table, a man of god-like mien and marvellous dignity.
So far beyond anything human in his awful beauty was he, that Flaxius
was more deeply impressed by him than by all the wonders which he had
thus far beheld. And truly, as Flaxius reflected, when a man has passed
some scores of centuries in forming ideals of the beautiful and finds
his ideal outdone, ’tis time to look about for _new powers_!
The Olympian Jove with a shade of Lucifer, the Spirit of the serene
heaven mingled with the darker yet still beautiful earth below, the two
united as by a spirit in the eternal yet ever intermingling ocean of
the eye. Such he appeared, and Flaxius recalled Goethe:
‘The soul of man
Is like the water.
From heaven it cometh
To heaven it riseth,
And thence at once
It must back to earth
For ever changing.’
Moreover there was in the wonderfully grand face something
sympathetically human, and humanly chevaleresque, even touching in
genial moods on the ‘devilish handsome fellow.’ ‘I have heard,’ thought
Flaxius, ‘of a town in Western America, wherein appeared a married
lady of such irresistible beauty that all the male inhabitants of
the place, even unto the deacons, gave up the commandments, or more
especially one of them, as a bad job. A few like his majesty, turned
loose on London society, would convert Mayfair into a divorce court.’
For he had at times a smile, a laugh which went like an electric
flash of champagne to the heart of your heart, which is the reason
why the inhabitants of a certain American State, with the exquisite
poetry peculiar to their refined natures, call apple brandy ‘Jersey
lightning,’ it being so potent that a taste thereof goes flashing and
coruscating through the soul, suggesting Etna in full play on the great
fourth of July Day of Judgment, when the _sæculum_, or _fin de siècle_,
or the age, is to be dissolved in sparks, since having gone up like a
rocket it is to come down--like the stick! This glance had Pluto, and
Flaxius found it useful, because by means of it his majesty rendered
clear, or, as one may say, coloured, like an artist, the outlines of
his spoken arguments.
‘You are truly welcome, Flaxius!’ said the Lord of the Underworld, ‘as
are all immortal mortals who have raised themselves as types of ideas
to such a power that they can pass my realm as tourists between heaven
and earth without becoming mine. Ah! that is a very vulgar error on
earth that I pass my time in trying to catch souls! Did men but know
how I pass all my life in painful effort to get rid of them! Well, I
have seen here in days of yore, each for his three days, Adonis--ah,
_he_ stayed six months, by request of my wife! Orpheus--music--poor
fellow!... Socrates, Buddha, Dante--you know the list--and so on down
to Emanuel Swedenborg. And every one of them saw hell after his own
fashion--and then raised it after his peculiar style to earth, and no
one interfered with the seeing thereof....
‘But, my Flaxius,’ resumed Pluto, with a genial smile, ‘is there any
reason why we should not drink, although we are in hell?’
‘_Raison de plus_, most men would surely think,’ replied Flaxius.
And at the word there were before them two goblets creaming and
streaming over; and Flaxius noticed that the infernal care of details
was exquisitely carried out in this, that the _drops_ which are
generally a great drawback to the over-brimming beaker, did not fall on
his clothes and wet or stain them, but, becoming diamonds or pearls,
rebounded dry.
And the draught was transcendental--so cool, so piquant, so enlivening!
Pluto smiled.
‘Confess, Flaxius,’ he said, ‘that hell is not, as you find it, exactly
what man imagines it to be?’
‘True,’ said Flaxius emptying his goblet, which refilled itself; ‘and
yet I imagine that I am as far as ever from knowing what it is!’
‘And that distance,’ replied the monarch, drawing his own glass, ‘I
will diminish for thee, O thou Sage of Sublime Common Sense, for thou
shalt have a nearer perception of the truth and what Inferno is than
any of thy predecessors.’
Now, Flaxius, comfortably seated in a high-backed chair, with the
towering, Jacqueline can, or goblet, foaming before him, listened,
_arrectis auribus_, graving every word which he heard on the tablet of
his soul, even as Alba seated on a Greek tabouret at a little distance
was doing on a leaf of ivory with her stylus. [And here notes Flaxius
in the margin: ‘It is a curious fact that Alban is depicted in Etruscan
vases as holding a stylus or pen, and that the witches of Tuscany, who
still know her as Bellaria, declare that she is the spirit of the Pen,
and is the one to be invoked by all who would write, _i.e._ compose
well. _Aurora Musis amica._]
‘Know, my Flaxius,’ began his majesty, ‘that earth and all its trials,
troubles, and torments, diseases, and miseries, ceases even for the
worst and wickedest when they come here. We begin with them all _de
novo_, on an entirely new system--the old body is gone and we are done
with it. Physical torment ceases with the old life, for even the most
earthly. Only ideas and earthly ideals remain, and to these is given
full scope and free play. All begin here with unlimited freedom and
indulgence.’
‘If I may interrupt your majesty,’ said Flaxius, ‘I would remark
that many people would suppose that you are, by inadvertent error,
describing heaven.’
‘Yes,’ replied Pluto, ‘that is indeed the heaven of every fool. But
it is the surest way to come to grief in the long run. The ultimate
extreme of hell or of punishment is for every man to be left utterly
to himself, to have his own way, to follow his own fancies, to rule as
he lists, and do uncontrolled just what he likes. Few and far between
have those mortals ever been who, gifted with power, would not damn
themselves on earth if left without guidance or control.
‘Now this is _hell_, and if thou wouldst know what the word really
means, I reply, “a place where every one can do just what he pleases,
and have all that he wants.” Every one entering here is supplied
with such a world as he desires, with corresponding scenes and
companions--he himself unconsciously drawing them all from memory and
imagination. But note--for it is an important point--that they believe
it all to be real, and in a certain sense it is so, for they have given
to them the power, which science will some day give to man on earth, of
perfect synthesis by volition--that is of drawing out the elements by
_will_ from the _prima materia_ or _materialising_ unseen elements, or
conceptions.’
‘I understand,’ said Flaxius. ‘Gods in a small way. Demiurguses. Make
things!’
‘They think so,’ laughed Pluto. ‘All here believe for a long time--as
they believed like fools on earth--that all which they saw on earth or
see here is real. What is real is unchangeable and eternal. Who lives
in Evolution, as all do on earth or in matter, lives in the Transient.
It is when they realise by mere satiety the unreality of things that
their punishment comes--that of despair. Then after a season they begin
to exert themselves to seek higher ideals or something new, which
being attained, there comes again satiety, and then renewed effort,
every new stage becoming easier, until at last man rises to the gods
or God. The best experience disappointment and rebuffs; but they go
on. The wise who on earth have shaped better ideals, the altruists and
benevolent philosophers or Christians, and people who have not meddled
with others, or lived entirely in the eyes and opinions of others, or
revelled in notoriety, or been selfish and tyrannical in the small
or great relations of life, these do not remain long in our world of
shams. The honest poet or artist or man of letters is let off very
easily, as indeed are all who have been kinder to mankind than mankind
has been unto them.
‘The world is ever advancing,’ continued Pluto, ‘and to satisfy the
soul with what is for the time around it on earth, or to think of
carrying it on for ever into the future, as _all_ creeds do’ added his
majesty significantly, ‘is _to stop_. (Flaxius, my son, be thou not
like to them, but keep that holy emblem the Cup going.’) They both
drained, and the Lord of Hades resumed:
‘The selfish nature thus gratified and satisfied with temporary forms
does not lift its mind to, or progress with--Evolution.’
‘Ha!’ quoth Flaxius, ‘light is coming fast; I do begin to feel I
have indeed immortal longings in me! This then is the faith so long
foretold--which is neither Buddhist nor Christian, nor Material.’
‘Ay, Flaxius, it is the very truth, as it seems to me every one might
surmise from the very infinity of creative forms in nature, from the
ideals which they declare and the inexhaustibility of matter and force.
All goes on, slowly it seems, but there is eternity to work in, and its
great law is progress.
‘Now Evolution is the creation of new laws from old, of new types
from others exhausted, of new ideals, as new patterns are created _ad
infinitum_ by a revolving kaleidoscope, a continual out-blossoming and
ripening of flowers which were once small, wild blossoms and are now
hundred-leaved _grandifloræ_. And these again will be raised to newer
and more magnificent forms. And you need not ask what is to become of
Man in all this, for, rely upon it, where all is progressing, all is
well. He who is magnanimous, and who can grasp in its fulness all this
scheme, will not be afraid to cast himself headlong into the foaming
flood and trust to its bearing him safely on. Fortune favours the bold,
and he who _is_ afraid, whimpering “What is to become of poor little
_Me_?” will be carried away in time all the same. But that man never
loved the beautiful or nature who feared death.
‘Now we may consider all mankind on earth as a single man in
hell--living in Evolution, yet ignorant of it, opposing it with his
self-formed, conservative ideas--an old woman sweeping out the sea with
a broom--and you have the key to the whole.’
‘It appears to me,’ observed Flaxius, who had listened to these remarks
with evident approbation--if the taking a drink ever and anon and
sighing with content could be interpreted as ‘Hear! Hear!’ or ‘fervent
applause’--‘that there is a marvellous spirit of romance and poetry
and wild adventure in Evolution as you set it forth, and exquisite
inspiration to a higher devotion, and a purer and far more vigorous
religion than man has ever before dreamed of. For this faith in nature
with her ever-unfolding ideals, and that of self, in “_What_ I know
not, but in the best, _that_ I know!” is so bold and knightly that
before it all that was ever presented to man seems poor and weak and
dim. The Church and conventional cant, or modern life, have well-nigh
crushed out in man every trace of daring or chivalry, and this religion
has in it that which will revive such qualities on a far higher scale
than was found in the Middle Ages.’
‘Saving this, Flaxius,’ added his majesty, ‘that Evolution asks man
to understand pure science as a basis and accept its deductions as to
evolving ideals, and not rely entirely on tradition which is well-nigh
folk-lore. And when the simple truth of anything has once been studied
or accepted, the poetry and romance soon follow. _Crede experto
Roberto!_’
‘Ay, by the Father of the Fathers of Faith!’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘your
majesty has had some experience. May I venture to inquire,’ he added,
‘what part this ever “freshly fresh and newly new,” as the Hindus sing
it, this ever-beautiful and good young lady whom I see here has in your
tremendous _pension_, or boarding-school for eternity?’
‘Eternity!’ said Pluto, with a smile. ‘Nay, you have not yet heard the
last word. But as for Albana----’ Here he gave a glance of ineffably
respectful, fond kindness at the subject of their discourse. ‘You have
seen in life in many lands noble women who, as Sisters of Charity
or slummers--go anywhere to do good. Albana ranges through hell,
earth, and heaven. The pure soul is everywhere at home, and love hath
no bounds. We are not so cruel in our punishment as to leave souls
entirely to themselves in the task of rehabilitation. She and her
sisters--love and love alone--suggest to the despairing new ideals of
life.’
‘Ay,’ cried Flaxius, ‘hell is the gate to heaven, that I see. A lesson
which I should have learned on earth. Yet man has been there longer
than I without learning it. It must be so--“Pluto, thou reasonest
well,”’ he added. (And to himself, ‘I suppose the reviewers will light
on _that_ as a typographical error.’)
‘And now,’ said his majesty, ‘the lecture is over for to-day. Go with
Albana as a Beatrice through my realm and visit the condemned in their
homes.’
‘And the _last word_ to which you alluded?’ inquired Flaxius.
‘It is,’ said Pluto, with a smile, ‘that all which you have seen, or
shall see here in Hades, as I have indeed plainly said already, is, to
speak Sanscritically, only Maya, or Illusion. All smoke, but it rises
from a real fire. _Ite!--missa est!_’
* * * * *
‘And what did you think of the Lower World?’ inquired the Fairy of
Flaxius.
‘That it is misnamed, O Soul of the Violets!’ replied the Etruscan,
‘since it appeared to me as being one degree higher than this. For in
it the average Philistine and guinea-pig and sinful gossip are gently
led or induced to find out that they are fools or evil-doers, and that
he who gives himself most earnestly to life goes deepest into death.
Now man is destined to slowly learn this lesson through the ages, and
as he progresses in it, Science will, step by step, overcome death.
So that as we become idealists, so shall we also advance into earthly
immortality. That, your Fairyness, is what I conclude from what I
beheld. In fact I am so smitten with admiration at the beautiful
humanity of hell as I saw it, that I can only declare that if there is
really no such place there _ought_ to be one!’
‘It will do just as well if you write and publish an account of it,’
replied the fairy. ‘The main thing is to teach mankind the great
lesson that most men left to mere commonplace and earthly ideals must
inevitably damn themselves.’
‘Beyond this, O Loveliness,’ resumed Flaxius, ‘I was induced to
reflect, that to avoid hell, satiety, and despair, it is necessary to
have an iron _will_, and one formed on the strictest moral lines. And
he who can make a perfect will unto himself, so as to make his whole
soul or intellect obey his spirit or conscience or God-within, has won
all that he needs in time or eternity. This, O Life of Endless Light!
is the great lesson of Orcus.’
‘It would have been well worth going there to learn that,’ said the
fairy, ‘had it even been all fire and suffering. But haste and write it
down, for many there be who need the lesson, which is the highest of
all in true wisdom.
‘He to whom the devil grants
All he wishes, all he wants,
However gaily time be passed
Will catch the devil at the last.’
FLAXIUS AND ADELINDÈ
A LEGEND OF THE EARLY LOMBARD DAYS, BEING ONE OF THE VISIONS WHICH
FLAXIUS HAD WHILE IN HELL
‘Said Chider the immortal, the ever young:
“I passed by a city, a man stood near
Plucking fruit that in a fair garden hung.
I asked, “How long has the city been here?”
He said, as the clustering fruit he caught,
“There was always a city in this spot,
And so there will be till time is not.”
Five hundred years passed by as before:
I was standing upon that spot once more.”’
WHILE the learned Flaxius repeated these lines with strange feeling,
as if recalling to him missing memories, he looked intently at every
object round as if he would wring from it some buried mystery or
long-hidden secret. It was twilight-tide in the last golden-brown of
a Carpoccio sky. Broad and wide in the rapidly dimming distance were
undulating hills covered with vineyards and olives, like a waving sea
topped with green foam; here and there were hamlets of white houses,
and above them stately towered castles, like shepherds watching flocks
of sheep at eve; long lines of stone walls, flowing with maiden-hair or
helmeted with cactus--all softly fair and far away!