and by-gone lives, was what lay close about him--the grey and mossy
relics of an ancient ville--it may have been a quaint, small town of
well-marked fortalices, or a brave and beautiful little city in Lombard
times--now all abandoned in its solitude. Here and there a run of ivied
wall and a square tower still held themselves up respectably, as if
opposing a stout heart to bad fortune;--a fine thing to see in any
ruin, be it of man or marble. There were hillocks--ruined arches--and
now it was all a home for ghosts and owls, or else some shadowy
night-hag wandering slow.
And as Flaxius considered the masses of ferns and weeds, and saucy
acanthus, and golden blossoms of many kinds, and arrogant asphodels,
which seemed to crowd themselves into the ruins and say: ‘Poor things,
_we_ will protect you and make everything look respectable,’ the sage
reflected:
‘’Tis all, as in every city--where _la génération qui vient se moque de
la noblesse qui va_--golden blossoms or guinea-pigs--flaunting weeds,
rotting while they cover that which is older and nobler!--_avanti!_
Dandelions--_pisciacane_ in Italian--with your flowers like golden
florins, and your dandy-lions of sons, begone!’
As if in answer to him he heard a bell from some church cloister far
away strike twelve, softly and slowly, as if the chimes had been
transfused through the honey-golden summer air which lingered into
night. And with the last note all the weeds and flowers vanished;
the ruins revived, shooting up again into ancient glory; towers
rose from the dust--façades en-niching many a form of forgotten
saints--transfigured and idealised, and over all zig-zagging and
working wildly into life-like, pictured dreams, innumerable arabesques
of old Lombard vines and monsters, warriors fighting dragons whose
tails ended in branching dragon-wort and dogs who were half dog-wood,
chasing wolves who were three-quarters wolfsbane--puns in stone, for
those who can read them.
Stern and unmoved sat the man of many ages, looking at the wondrous
transformation scene, as if at the opera. Like one who has had for
years a season ticket, he keenly looked to see if it were well done,
for he was a member of the Eternal Press which reports history, the
great _Times_ of all time.
And verily he who has mastered the course of the circling ages in
chronicles, and feels their soul, and has learned their lesson, may sit
like Mephistopheles before the Sphinx and put such mocking questions as
he will, with all the might of all that man may dare.
Then, one by one, and two by two, lights began to appear in the
windows, and a great beacon fire, at first all violet, and anon waving
into blended emerald and scarlet flame blazed out on the summit of the
donjon-tower. And soon all the scene was translucent and fluent with
a wondrous glow as if an Aurora had been suddenly born, or the Goddess
of the Four Winds, amid blazing laurel and roses while the fairies sang
a pæan of welcome (as a Romagna legend tells the tale). For with the
out-bursting light, there rose a strange, sweet chorus of unearthly
voices in the long-forgotten, Lombard-Gothic tongue; and Flaxius hummed
softly to the air:
‘Five hundred years have passed by as before:
I am listening to the song once more.’
Then shadowy forms were seen among the shades, as if born from them,
and blending in them, and as the light grew, they too became beings of
light and colour and beauty, lords and ladies of the olden time with
their pages and maidens dressed in the Latin-Lombard style; in which
as in its sculptures, a rude, Northern strength submitted to, and was
blended with, Romano-Greek grace and ornament, even as Hercules was
subdued by Omphalé.
‘Five hundred years,’ hummed Flaxius, ‘that garb once more!’
In step with the music, and as if moving with the waves of coloured
light, gracefully and stately as swans in a dream, there came by a
walking group of gentlemen and ladies, who, seeing Flaxius, paused
while one from the latter said to him in old Italian:
‘Mortal, since thou art here sleeping at midnight and in full
moon-tide, thou hast won the power to behold us, and share our
festivity. Join us and enter the castle.’
Gravely and almost sadly answered the man of the ages in the old
Lombard-Gothic tongue:
‘I am as little mortal as ye are immortal, ye shadows of ghosts of days
long passed away! But what ye offer me in courtesy, I do with thankful
courtesy accept. My lord Agobard of the Amal race, I was by your side
when you routed the Romans at Ravenna, and when you retreated, beaten
yet glorious before the Huns in the Mark of Tuscany. Know that your
name is still to be read in old chronicles. My Lady Chlodoviga, now
Luisa, I am glad to see that your fire-sapphire eyes still flash as
fiercely from under your golden hair as they did when we last met.’
‘Knowest thou _me_?’ exclaimed a giant-like and ancient warrior, with a
vast grey beard, yet who had all the fire of youth, and by whom stood
a younger noble who was like the elder in all save age. ‘Am I still
remembered on earth?’
‘Well do I know thee, Master Hildebrand, and not I alone but all men
living, where’er resounds the German tongue and German hymns to God are
sung, for all men who can read it have read the Song of the Father and
the Son, of thee and of my Lord Hahdubrand now by thy side, unto whom I
offer greeting. While the Book of Heroes shall live ye will live in it.’
‘And _thou_, great master, who hast the serpent tongue of Gunlaug?’
‘Ask me not, but I am of the sorcerer race of the God Frey, and was ere
thou wert born.’
So in music and light they all gravely passed into the castle, through
brilliant, buzzing groups, harpers and horn-players and _citharœdi_
making music--threading the mazes of a torch-dance, till my Lord
Hildebrand led Flaxius before a lady seated beneath a canopy on a
double chair like a throne. The canopy was of light-brown silk from
Sicily and on it were heavily embroidered dragons and leafy branches in
black and gold, with many red and gold disks. The throne was of dark
nut wood and ivory.
She who sat on the throne was a queen of beauty, of a beauty long
passed away with the chivalry and romance of the early Gothic time.
For every age, as Flaxius said, has its own beauty, which busts or
portraits never portray to those who come after, though they may have
been perfect likenesses, any more than the dried flower retains its
early perfume. For there was in the woman’s face a nameless, stern,
firm will, an unfamiliarity with little things and small sentiments,
the steady glow of a soul which knew only great aims and was used to
great efforts, and such were all who were leaders in those days, and in
each other they all read their like, which is a noble thing for noble
minds. Yet there was in her eyes a glow and glory of beauty and of
passion which betrayed unearthly blood and immortal longing, and as she
looked with a smile of welcome at Flaxius, there flashed into his mind
a feeling of joy which she little suspected, that he was not one who
could be bewitched or silenced or bullied by any magic:
‘Five hundred years have passed by as before, I gaze upon those eyes
once more.’
‘I present to your princely highness,’ said Lord Hildebrand, ‘a
stranger of great wisdom, whom we found within the domain. Who he may
be, Lady Adelindè, I cannot divine, but I warrant him well worthy a
warm welcome.’
‘It is given with a good will,’ replied Adelindè in a deep, sweet
voice, which was as marvellous and strange as her eyes, and which
seemed like their light changed to sound. ‘And be not alarmed or
astonished, sir stranger, to find yourself in what is doubtless to you
a marvellous scene of enchantment.’
‘I am not,’ answered Flaxius simply, as he gazed at her. ‘There is
nothing here so wonderful as thou art.’
Now be she fairy or sorceress or ghost-devil of a peeress or diabolical
princess, a woman is always a woman, and the Lady Adelindè, who was
something of all of these at once, divined that Flaxius was no common
mortal such as she had been accustomed to catch and cajole now and
then, to turn out of doors that he might find himself Rip van Winkled
or Barbarossa’d or Seven Sleepered and seven years older in the
morning, lying with a rheumatism on a cold stone. The lightly-rosy snow
of her fair cheeks flushed to richer red at the steady glance of the
stern, grey-blue eyes of her grim guest, in whom she at once felt a
power perhaps beyond her own--_chi sa?_--and it was with a tone into
which she infused her very best sorcery--the kind formerly conserved
for kings--that she invited Flaxius to rest himself beside her on the
throne.
‘You will join our banquet?’ she asked with another professional smile.
‘I have had nothing to eat all day,’ replied Flaxius, in true old
Lombardo-Roman tone. (Note that there was a great deal in this manner
and tone, and the princess caught it.) ‘For we all require food,’ added
Flaxius. ‘Mortals or spirits, all eat and drink.’
‘_We!_’ reflected Adelindè. ‘The “mortals _and_ spirits” was an
after-thought! I wonder who or what he is!’
‘Even mortals,’ continued Flaxius, ‘require scent and taste in their
food, else it would not nourish them. Mere spiritual beings live simply
on taste and scent, while the still more refined, or divine, exist on
perfume alone. You, fairest Adelindè, have, I doubt not, very often
dined on a daisy, had the scent of a pink for an _entrée_, and a sniff
of a rose for dessert, but that much you absolutely required. There
were even mortal queens of yore who were thus refined. Chrimhilde was
one. The chronicle does not mention it, but it is true that when our
old friend Hildebrand, with hero Hagen, ravished her rose-garden, they
destroyed her larder.’
‘No, he is not a common mortal,’ flashed Adelindè through her mind, for
she always thought in sheet-lightning ere she spoke. (And I pray you
note that this metaphor is truthful enough, for a later Latin writer
tells us that the voices of all unearthly beings are like thunder,
there being even in their softest, dulcet tones--_si symphonia canere
vel ad tibiam versus fundere_--even when they sing their sweetest
in symphonies or pour forth their souls unto the witching flute, a
softly murmuring undertone, or strange, dark suspicion of the grandeur
of the Voice of God as it speaks in the stars.) And the spiritual
sheet-lightning of Adelindè’s thought was materialised in her glances.
Meanwhile the banquet, or revel, grew wild and bold. Flaxius ate
like a mortal, or like three--(‘Decidedly he is only human,’ thought
Adelindè)--and drank like four, five, or six. But there was no change
in the grey-blue eyes, or in his voice.
‘No, he is in-human,’ reflected the lady. ‘Mortal man could never drink
like _that_!’
Yet she had seen stout drinkers in her time, in the old
Roman-Longobardi days. Yes, they drank like bricks, for, as ye know,
a dry brick will absorb its own equivalent of fluid. Which the Latins
rendered, _Ranas superat bibendo_, and the old Italians ‘like a German’
or a cardinal--cardinal virtues being, alack, more like carnal vices in
those days.
Wilder pealed the music, louder laughed and roared the company. From
a revel which would have maddened a mortal, it became a Sabbath of
sorcerers and witches, a Pandemonium of passions, an Inferno broken
loose. Even the figures in the marvellous mosaics on the vaulted
ceiling above--saints and kings and queens and warriors brave, such
as we still see at Ravenna--became animated and danced or embraced,
trailing after them gorgeous and jewelled robes, so that as there had
been over much decay and silence and death before in the ruin, even so
there now seemed to be as much excess of life and tumult.... A reverend
bishop reeled and tumbled down ... while saints too fondly fondled
saintesses--a rosy wine-light seemed to tinge the air, as if the very
hall itself were drunk, and all were swimming in a ruby sea. _Quasi
vinis Græcis Neptunus suffudit mare!_
The princess, wild as a mænad, wanton as a faun, had cast herself on
the heart of her guest, while she seemed joyous as a mad panther,--the
maddest of all things when gay,[5]--but she still realised to her
unbounded awe, that she in all _deliria_ of delight had never for an
instant cast a charm or fascination over her mystic guest.
But what was to her astounding, well-nigh petrifying, a thing new
to her since a thousand years, the princess felt a mighty thrilling
influence in her heart, a new-born spirit speaking in her soul, that
she herself was at last being won, instead of being the winner! But why
this should have so fearfully struck and startled her, not without a
joyous after-glow of hope, will appear anon.
‘Great and marvellous man,’ she at length exclaimed, recovering her
breath--then bursting into her true self and life,--’twas like a pale
moon exploding into a noonday sun--‘tell me who or what art thou, now
speaking our long-forgotten Lombard tongue, knowing all my court and
me, inaccessible to my power, and oh, that I should ever dare to think
and dream it! perhaps mastering me!’
‘Dost thou desire it?’ asked Flaxius calmly.
‘Does the lost soul desire to be freed from hell?’ cried the princess,
in a long, wailing tone of a spirit in despair. ‘Does the prisoner
on the rack wish the torture to cease? Man of mystery!’ she suddenly
cried, ‘dost thou know my life and my doom?’
‘Well do I know it,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and now look me well in the
eyes, thou daughter of the old Lombard line of kings, and yet a
spirit’s child, for thy fated hour has come at last. Yet ere I tell
thee more, answer me, great soul, what has this life which thou didst
take of thy own free choice--when thou hadst liberty to choose among
all--what has this life become, which was, as thou didst once declare,
the only heaven thou couldst understand?’
‘It has become a hell,’ replied Adelindè, with an immortal shudder;
‘a hell of weary, worn-out, oft-repeated imagery of splendour, a
tiresomeness of idle power, with the real torment of the conscience
that I was--a fool!’
‘He or she is a long way advanced towards freedom or wisdom,’ quoth
Flaxius, ‘who has found out that he--or she--is a fool. Well, lady,
thus it was that centuries ago there lived on earth a beautiful
princess of the Lombard line, who had a sorceress mother, and a fairy
Amal-Alruna ancestress, and who, having been trained to all the
mysteries and magic of the North, as well as of Rome, and of many
races, attained to such power as had rarely been given to woman. Yet
through it all she retained beauty and the love of power and pleasure,
of magnificence, and the keen, fierce delight of preying on the hearts
and lives of men, and of living, even as thou livest here now, Adelindè!
‘And having gained great power, and on one occasion by mighty worship
and great services to _Tinia_--the great ruling spirit of the Tuscan
land--obtained full and free choice as to her future life for ever, she
said: “What that life for saints may be I know not, but this I know,
that the life which I now lead is all that heart can desire, and I
would fain live it so long as a single fibre of my soul remains as it
is.”
‘Near and dear to her in those days was one who had lived in the
ages, and been her teacher, and more, and had tried to win her from
her worldly wont, and all in vain. So they went their ways, she to
splendour and pageantry in life and after life, and he to study and
observe in existences beyond her ken. And in her gaiety and luxury the
ages rolled on, and as they rolled, there wore away the happiness of
her elfin life, and torment set in, the torment ordained to every one
on earth who succeeds in having to satiety and excess his own will.’
‘Man, thou speakest true,’ wailed the princess, as the voices of
revelry sank lower, and the figures fading began to pass away, and the
lights grew dim. The music became softer in its modulations, and the
mind of Flaxius ran insensibly into unspoken song, in accompaniment
with the line:
‘Five hundred years have passed by as before.’
‘One by one,’ he resumed, ‘the enchanted princess lost her passions and
longings. She had delirious desires, keen appetites, an immortal and
beautiful thirst, an exquisite appreciation of all that is beautiful,
dainty caprices, delicate and true. Wit, humour, whim, wild-will, and
Attic salt were as life to her; she revelled in music and song and
letters--as thou dost in this life, or as thou didst when in the body.’
The poor princess grew tearful; the marble pallor of her fading cheek
might have made sorrow in the hardest heart.
‘Yes, it all wore into triteness and commonplace, even the being hungry
and eating, desiring and realising the same things over and over
again, for _she_ had a soul, and every soul is damned, as soon as it
is clogged and stops working, like a bee that has wished itself into
eternal honey.’
Adelindè cried on.
‘But one thing survived--it generally _is_ about the last thing to die
out of any woman’s heart--and that was the desire to fascinate men, to
win them, to impose on them, and to have her own way. She felt it in
her head and heart like a curse; she knew it was the poison of her
soul; everything else grew stale, but that kept fresh.
‘And it had been decreed that if she could ever meet a man who could
resist and conquer her, the spell would end; but, alas, she had wished
for and won such a stupendous stock of enchanting charms that she was
perfectly _irresistible_ and simply distracting, which is a thing that
stands between many a woman and her salvation, in all ages. For it has
kept more souls in the dark, and made more ugly fools, who might have
become spiritually beautiful, than any cause on earth. So from such
mothers many men are fools: an Agrippina has always a Nero for a son.’
Crushed to naught, fair Adelindè wept, till, lifting her eyes to those
of the guest, a sudden, tremendous convulsion, one of transcendent
rapture, mingled with strangest amazement, thrilled over her. She bent
on him a glance which might have split a stone.
The music played on ever more softly, more sweetly to their words in
perfect time.
‘Now I know thee, Flaxius,’ she cried. ‘_Vicisti_, thou hast conquered!
The last link of the chain which bound me for centuries to earth is
broken. And even in the hour in which we meet, beloved master, and in
the instant of our love, because it is our love, and I am conquered,
I leave thee for the better life beyond! But, ah! to have remained
with thee, I would have gladly endured this ghostly existence, which
had become a torment. All this is ended. Now these walls will know
me no more; the peasant benighted will no longer see strange lights
flickering over the ancient ruin; the enchantment has departed, and
the spell of golden glory and glamour will no longer shine at midnight
in these halls. The wanderer may now safely sleep here; he will behold
no longer the elfin array, or my Lombard lords and ladies of the olden
times, nor be enchanted by their queen. Sound for the last time my
fairy music--your sweet strains will never more be heard in the court
of Adelindè! Farewell, O master, we shall meet again soon, and full
often in a better life--such as thou hast chosen--a life not clogged by
earthly desires or petty worldly aims.’
As she said this, the princess cast herself in a last passionate
embrace on the breast of Flaxius, and as she did so, he felt that her
life and form were passing away to a purer, more idealised existence.
The figure faded, the features, the face, last of all the ineffable
splendour of the Sorceress’s eyes, in which there was the radiance of a
divine, parting smile: she spoke no more, the music died away.
‘O love, in thy glory go!’ said Flaxius. ‘Never yet passed into life
eternal a sweeter soul, never yet was a fairer goblet of the ancient
time remelted into a nobler form. O love, in thy glory go! Lovelier
form did never fade, brighter rose was never broken. ’Tis but a brief
minute since thou wert in thy inferno of despair, and now by one
instant’s flash of love and humility, thy beautiful soul is passing
through the golden-pearled portals, and through the halls of the
heavenly unknown. Even I cannot tell, not in this short space, what
sphere contains the fairy soul that hath forsook her mansion in this
earthly nook. O love, in thy glory go!’
Silent and alone sat Flaxius as the shades vanished one by one. Last of
all there stood before him the giant forms of Hildebrand and his son
Hahdubrand. The warrior pressed his hand and spoke no word, but Flaxius
read in his eyes deep and full feeling--the knowledge of all that had
passed, and a farewell.
‘Yes, farewell, my brave old companion of ancient days,’ said Flaxius.
‘Thou, too, mayst pass away to lands beyond. Thou didst battle for
glory and fame, and hast learned from me that it has been truly won.
_Du kannst zu Land ausreiten_--so, warrior, fare thee well!’
So he sat there till all had passed away, the glitter and glamour of
chivalry and a fairy court; till the high towers had become a low, grey
ruin, and the spiders’ webs hung again in the palace halls, and there
were vines on crumbling walls, and the stones, themselves to ruin grown
like him, seemed death-like old. Then, as in waves, the weeds grew
again up to where he sat; and as the rising sun cast its first ray on
him, he started as if from a dream.
‘_Comedia luget, scena est deserta_,’ he murmured. ‘Now if I wished
to preach a new faith to mankind, Adelindè has given me the text. For
I now see that hell _is_ the place where every mortal can have to his
heart’s content his own desire, as Pluto declared. And this hell may be
on earth, in life, and all may know it in their very hearts.
* * * * *
‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius on the revise, ‘two or three
morals not mentioned in the conclusion. _Item_, the Spirit that is in
the trees, the Being in green leaves among the groves, the rocks and
waters, or the wanton weeds, reveals unto the poet wondrous things
which, being written, are as real in truth, in beauty, and in goodness
for the world, as aught that ever happened in the past. He who has
mastered this in every sense lives in a fairyland while here on earth,
yet they are few who ever master it.
‘And yet again that great prosperity gives birth to a vanity which is
often an intermittent weakness in men, and a steady madness in women,
as may be clearly discerned in the memoirs or lives of all who have
flourished in the atmosphere of courts, wherein, as in a hot-house,
things worth no more than weeds in nature or in their proper state,
are as exotics, nursed up into such condition by prosperity, that they
despise every flower or plant which grows in the open air. For who,
indeed, has not known some feeble-minded man or woman whose head has
been so turned by having everything he or she wanted, that either is
fain to scream as at some great inhuman injustice when a miracle is
not wrought in some dire need--as in the want of “diamonds like the
duke’s”!’
‘Now it was in the instant when her vanity was humiliated for ever,
and she realised that there was, indeed, a man who was too much for
her, that Adelindè first saw herself in very truth as she was, like
Hawthorne’s Man of Straw, and grasped the tremendous truth of Christian
humility. Which is enough time for a great mind to be saved, just as
one handful of powder will in an instant overthrow a lordly tower,
while it may require a ton thereof, and a long time, to destroy a
mud-bank.
‘But every mortal, be he who he may, has learned a great lesson, and
taken his first step to divinity, when he has learned in very truth
that he is not a god.