Transcriber's Notes
_Italic_ words in the original text have been marked in this version
with underscores.
In addition to a few minor typographical errors which have been silently
corrected, the following changes were made:
"assymetrical" changed to "asymmetrical" on Page 25.
"destro" changed to "destra" on Page 226.
SCENES AND PORTRAITS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"MATRI CARISSIMAE"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCENES AND
PORTRAITS
BY FREDERIC MANNING
AUTHOR OF "THE VIGIL OF BRUNHILD"
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1909
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
It is a necessity of the human mind to give everything a name, thus
recognising a difference between one thing and another, and recording
it. Science, which is the highest development of this necessity,
recognises, and records systematically, all the facts of experience,
distinguishing one from another, by the most minute analysis. The Maoris
even go so far as bestow on their greenstone clubs, on their _tikis_,
and on almost every separate article, a distinct name, as if recognising
an individuality, much as the old myth-makers spoke of the sword
Excalibur; but the average man is usually very loose in his application
of terms. Renan in his preface to "Dialogues Philosophiques" writes: "La
grande majorité des hommes ... se divise en deux catégories, à égale
distance desquelles il nous semble qu' est la vérité. 'Ce que vous
cherchez est trouvé depuis longtemps,' disent les orthodoxes de toutes
les nuances. 'Ce que vous cherchez n'est pas trouvable,' disent les
positivistes pratiques (les seuls dangereux), les politiques railleurs,
les athées." Having thus differentiated his own position, from that of
either school, one is a little surprised to find Matthew Arnold saying
of him, that "the greatest intellect in France has declared for
materialism." One recognises how pernicious the loose application of
terms may be, and is a little irritated to discover a fine English
critic lapsing into the vice, even in an unguarded moment. Really,
thought, or at least any thought that justifies its existence, is too
subtile and fluid a thing to be settled in this off-hand way; and the
apparently childish custom of the Maoris is more scientific, since, at
least, it recognises individuality.
Turn away from Renan to Euripides, and consider for a moment the present
conflict as to whether "The Bacchae" is a recantation by Euripides of
his supposed rationalistic opinions, or a more aggravated expression of
them. It seems impossible that there should be two suppositions, so far
removed from each other, about an existing book, in a known language, by
an author whose style is singularly lucid. "La chicane s'allonge," as
Montaigne said. We must seek for the truth at an equal distance from
both parties. Those who sustain either of the extreme theories are
equally clear and convincing in their arguments. As each party seems to
have a personal interest in the matter, we may be certain that it will
find what it is looking for, without much trouble; but they both seem to
be striving more often after a reputation for themselves than after the
real thought of their author. One ingenious critic even goes so far as
to assert that Dionysos does not work miracles, but merely hypnotises
the chorus into a belief that he has done so, to the great amusement of
the audience. Perhaps it is some mental disability which prevents me
from enjoying "The Bacchae" as a comedy, but I own I cannot. To Renan
and to Euripides one might apply the term ἀνὴρ δίψυχος. They were both
equally saturated with the scientific spirit of their age, though
inclining to the mystic temperament. They were both quickened by a deep
love and pity for humanity in all its moods and aspirations. They both
delighted keenly in popular legends and the mythology of the
country-side. Both were strongly individual minds, sensitive, reacting
to every contemporary influence, and yet preserving their peculiar
distinction in thought and style. Unbound by any system, moving easily
in all, they sought by the free exercise of reason and a profound irony
to cleanse their ages of much perilous stuff; and though Renan was not a
Christian in the common sense of the word, and though Euripides turned
away from the gods of his own day, yet each tried to save out of the
ruins of their faiths the subtile and elusive spirit which had informed
them; that divine light and inspiration, which is continually expressing
itself in new figures, and cannot be imprisoned in any vessel of human
fashioning. "Anima naturaliter Christiana," we can say of each. There
are in reality only two religions on this little planet, and they
perhaps begin and end with man. They are: the religion of the humble
folk, whose life is a daily communion with natural forces, and a bending
to them; and the religion of men like Protagoras, Lucretius, and
Montaigne, a religion of doubt, of tolerance, of agnosticism. Between
these two poles is nothing but a dreary waste of formalism, Pharisaism,
"perplexed subtleties about Instants, Formalities, Quiddities, and
Relations," all that bewildering of brains which comes from being shut
up in a narrow system, like an invalid in a poisoned and stifling room.
I think that all the world's greatest men have had this quality of
double-mindedness. Take, for example, the curious paradox of
Epicureanism, which counsels a temperate pleasure, and yet condemns the
whole of life as being merely the pursuit of an unattainable desire;
reconciling us to life by the prospect of death, and to death by showing
us the vain efforts and innumerable vexations of life. The same
double-mindedness partly explains for us the difference between the
Socrates of Plato and the Socrates of Xenophon; though we must not
overlook the fundamental difference in the biographers. This elusive and
various quality of greatness has not, I think, been sufficiently
recognised. There is no more suggestive expression of it than the
character of Christ as sketched by Oscar Wilde in "De Profundis," which
may be supplemented by the masterly delineation of M. Loisy in his
prolegomena to "Les Evangiles Synoptiques."
In the following studies, the principal influence is that of Renan;
though I profess I cannot gauge its full extent. The discourse of
Protagoras owes some of its principles to the dialogue "Certitudes"; but
the pivot, upon which the whole question turns, came directly from a
study of the "Theaetetus" and the "Protagoras," so that the debt is
scarcely perceptible. Protagoras himself practically does not exist for
us, we can only evoke a shadowy image of him from Plato, for whose
somewhat reactionary bias full allowance must be made. The result is a
vague reflection with blurred outlines, but gracious, and with neither
the greed nor the vanity of the other sophists. I do not think that
Renan's verdicts have influenced my treatment of St Paul. Renan has a
natural prejudice against _ce laid petit Juif_, with his Rabbinical
pseudo-science, and his blindness to the beauty of the Greek spirit, his
scorn of the "idols," and his misconception of what was meant by "the
unknown God." I do not share this prejudice. I am perfectly willing to
take a thing for what it is, and not to grumble at it for not being
other than it is. The strength of St Paul was like the strength of one
of Michelangelo's unfinished statues; the idea is emerging from the
marble, but it is still veiled, rude, scarred by the chisel, and not yet
quite free of its material.
Machiavelli said that to renew anything we must return to its origins.
It is as true in literature as in life. My aim has been to derive
everything from the original source; but it is difficult to avoid being
touched by contemporary influences. The majority of these, in my case,
have been French. I am indebted for the two characteristic letters of
Innocent III. to Achille Luchaire's admirable history of that Pope,
which he fortunately lived to finish; and to the always fascinating
Gaston Boissier for his various work on Rome. I am under a deep
obligation to Mr L. Arthur Burd, as are all English students of
Machiavelli. Finally, I am indebted, more than I can say, to M. l'Abbé
Houtin for his interest and encouragement, and to Mr Arthur Galton for
his example and conversation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE KING OF URUK 1
II. AT THE HOUSE OF EURIPIDES 55
III. THE FRIEND OF PAUL 99
IV. THE JESTERS OF THE LORD 157
V. AT SAN CASCIANO 197
VI. THE PARADISE OF THE DISILLUSIONED 241
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_TO ARTHUR GALTON_
I
THE KING OF URUK
------------------------------------------------------------------------
SCENES AND PORTRAITS
I
THE KING OF URUK
When Merodach, the King of Uruk, sate down to his meals, he made his
enemies his foot-stool; for beneath his table he kept an hundred kings,
with their thumbs and great toes cut off, as living witnesses of his
power and clemency. When the crumbs fell from the table of Merodach, the
Kings would feed themselves with two fingers; and when Merodach observed
how painful and difficult the operation was, he praised God for having
given thumbs to man.
"It is by the absence of thumbs," he said, "that we are enabled to
discern their use. We invariably learn the importance of what we lack.
If we remove the eyes from a man we deprive him of sight; and
consequently we learn that sight is the function of the eyes."
Thus spake Merodach, for he had a scientific mind, and was curious of
God's handiwork; and when he had finished speaking the courtiers
applauded him.
"Great is the power of the Great King, and most wonderful is his
wisdom," cried the courtiers; and the King shook out his napkin under
the table, shaking the crumbs among his prostrate enemies, for the
applause was pleasant to him; but from beneath the table came a harsh,
sarcastic voice.
"Great is the power of the Great King, and most wonderful is his
wisdom," said the voice; "but neither from his power nor from his wisdom
can he fashion us new thumbs."
Then was Merodach angry, and he bade his courtiers seize the speaker and
draw him from beneath the table; and the man they drew out was
Shalmaneser, who had been a king among the kings of Chaldæa. And at
first Merodach was of a mind to kill Shalmaneser; but, seeing that his
captive sought for death, his heart relented, and he bade his courtiers
restore him to his place beneath the table.
"My power and my wisdom are great," he said; "since I have so afflicted
mine enemies that they fear not to tell me the truth."
And when Merodach had eaten, he rose from the table and went out into
the gardens of the terrace where the nightingales were singing; but the
kings beneath the table smote Shalmaneser sorely upon both cheeks, and
upon his buttocks, and tore out the hair of his beard; for after that he
had spoken, Merodach had shaken out the crumbs from his napkin among
them no more, and they had supped poorly.
Then Merodach wandered about in his garden, listening to the song of the
nightingales who nested there, and smelling the sweet smells of the
flowers that were odorous in the cool of the evening; and behind him,
fifty paces, there followed his guards, for he was afraid for his life.
The dew fell upon the glazed bricks, gleaming in the moonlight, and hung
from the trees and flowers like little trembling stars. Merodach leaned
his arms upon a balustrade and looked over the city which he had builded
on the left bank of the Euphrates, and watched the illuminated barges
that went up and down the river, rowing with music upon the waters; and
he looked toward the high temples looming into the night, and he thought
of his glory and was exceeding sad.
"In a little time I die," he said; "but the city which I have builded
will be a witness for me while man survives on the earth."
And from the barges came the pleasant sound of music, floating through
the night, and Merodach regretted that he would have to die, and in a
little while would walk no more through his garden in the cool of the
evening, listening to the sounds of life, and smelling the sweet breath
of the flowers.
"In a little while the race of man will have perished from off the
earth," he said; "and there will be no memory of me, but the stars will
shine still above my ruined and tenantless palace."
And the night-wind, laden with scents and sounds, shook the dew from the
trembling leaves, and moved his silken raiment; and Merodach was
overcome with a passion for life.
"In a little time," he thought, "even the stars will have vanished."
And from the adjoining gardens of his harem he heard the voices of women
waiting to pleasure their lord; and he went in unto them for he feared
to be alone.
* * * * *
In the garden of Merodach's harem, the Queen Parysatis held a feast in
honour of her daughter, the Princess Candace, who was eleven years old.
The Queen Parysatis lay upon a pile of cushions looking at a tragedy
that was being enacted by a company of eunuchs. The Princess Candace was
standing beside a deep basin of silver, seventy cubits in diameter,
called the Sea of Silver; and she threw sugar-plums to a troop of little
girls, who dived after them, gleaming fish-like in the luminous depths.
When she saw the King, her father, she stopped throwing sugar-plums, and
the little girls came out of the water, and sate upon the silver rim,
their wet, naked limbs glimmering in the moonlight. Then the Princess
Candace did homage before Merodach, bowing down before him and touching
his feet; and he stretched forth his hand to her, and led her to a
couch, because he loved his children, and she was as beautiful as the
new moon before it is a day old.
Now it chanced that at that time the High-priest Bagoas, who was
High-priest of the temple of Bel at Nippur, was in the palace of the
King; and Merodach sent for him, desiring him to speak comfortable
doctrine and words cheering to the heart; and Bagoas came in unto
Merodach, and did homage before him, bowing down before him and touching
his feet; and there was no one in the cities of Babylonia more powerful
than Bagoas, unless it were the King himself.
"As I walked in the garden in the evening," said Merodach, "I became
afflicted with a sense of human transience and of the vanity of
greatness. In a little time, I said, I shall be but a handful of dust.
Then I comforted myself with the thought that I should live in the
memory of man, through my monuments, while man survives upon the earth;
but in a little time man himself disappears, I said, and even the stars
are lost in darkness."
And Bagoas smiled.
"It is true, O King, man cometh upon the earth and rules it for a little
space, like a god. In hollow ships, he sails over the pathless sea; and
he has mapped out the heavens naming the stars; and he follows the
courses of the planets round the sun; and he knoweth the seasons of
reaping and sowing, by the constellations rising or setting in the sky.
His cunning mind has devised screws to draw water up out of the earth,
and pulleys and levers to uplift masses beyond his strength. He is a
master of populous cities, a weaver of delicate textures, a limner of
images in fair colours; he is a tamer of horses, skilled in the
knowledge of flocks and herds; with hooks he draweth fish out of the
sea, and with an arrow transfixes a bird on the wing; he fashions the
metals in fire, beating the gold and stubborn bronze to his will. He
understands the laws of Nature, and has named the force which draws the
earth round the sun, and the moon round the earth; but time is his
master, and he cannot find a remedy against death."
"Nor fashion a thumb for man," said Merodach.
"The fear of death is the greatest incitement to live," continued
Bagoas. "It is the goad which incessantly urges us to action. Our desire
to live, to persist in one form or another, impels us to beget children,
to overpower the imagination of future ages by the splendour of our
monuments and the record of our lives. We seek to stamp our image upon
our time, and influence our generation by every means in our power. But
even this is not enough, so we have built ourselves a little world
beyond the grave, a little haven beyond the waves of time. We believe
that our souls will exist when our bodies have fallen into decay and
escaped into a thousand different forms of new life, to be woven
eternally on the loom of perpetual change. We believe that death is
merely a transition, and that through virtue man is able to scale the
brazen ramparts of the city of the gods."
"If he is very good," said the Princess Candace.
"Little Princess," said Bagoas, smiling, "your beauty is like a bright
rainbow in the sky; the sunlight streaming upon drifting rain. Have you
ever considered the personality of man, O King? Everything that has
existed in the past exists in the soul of man. In its depths are the
primeval monsters, Apsu and Tiamat. In its heights are enthroned the
gods; action in it is heaped upon action to become habit, and habit upon
habit to become character; all that we have seen, all that we have
touched, the experience of the senses, the illusions of the brain, the
desires of the heart, our ancestors, our companions, our country and
occupations, all move and work mysteriously in our being. Each has left
its trace upon the personality of man. Do you seek immortality for
these? You will leave them with the world. Seek for yourself before you
seek for self's immortality. Beneath what you seem to be lies what you
think you are, and beneath that again lies what you are indeed."
"Alas," cried Queen Parysatis, "such an immortality is too
unsubstantial. It is our illusions, our experiences, and our
aspirations, which give a savour to existence. What is the use of
immortality if we leave everything we love?"
"Mankind, O King," answered Bagoas, "loves its imperfections more than
its perfections, and values as nothing an immortality which is devoid of
our human frailties, our pitiful human friendships, our personal
predilections which we obtusely term our principles."
"It is true," said Merodach, "I die; but that which is mortal of me
remains upon earth to be a witness for me in the memory of man."
"The whole of recorded time is but a second, a pulsation, in the ages,"
answered Bagoas, "and the memory of man is the frailest of monuments.
The Temple of Bel at Nippur is not two thousand years old; yet its
bricks are engraven with a dead language, and we know not its builder's
name. So it will be with thy temples and cities, O King!"
"I have said it," answered Merodach.
"Perhaps after thousands of years have lapsed," continued Bagoas, "a
peasant will find a brick with thy name upon it, and cast it aside, or
tread it under foot. But even to-day I have met and spoken with a man in
whose horoscope it was written that his name would be remembered while
man exists upon the earth; yet he is naked, and his house is a cabin of
boughs."
"Was it foreshadowed that he would become King?" enquired Merodach
anxiously.
"No; his inheritance is poverty and pain."
"What is his name?" enquired the King.
"His name is Adam," answered Bagoas.
Then there was a silence in the garden of the King's harem; and Merodach
wondered that the memory of one who went naked, and dwelt in a cabin of
boughs, should outlast the memory of a King before whom the nations
trembled, who went clothed in purple and fine linen, and whose palace
was built of thirty-five million bricks. But he consoled himself with
the thought that eventually even Adam would be forgotten, and the lights
of Sirius and Aldebaran extinguished.
"Tell me of Adam," he said to Bagoas; and the Princess Candace drew
closer to listen.
"Our life, O King, is a series of accidents," said Bagoas. "A little
thing is sufficient to divert the whole course of our progress; it has
even been said by our philosophers that the world itself is an accident,
and that God is chance. I am inclined to believe, being old-fashioned,
in Providence; for chance is merely a cause that is imperceptible, and
if the deflection of atoms falling through space caused the world, that
deflection was the result of some feature peculiar to the atoms
themselves. I believe that, if the world were formed in this way, the
cause was inherent in the atoms, and I believe that the progress of each
man through life is derived from causes inherent in himself. But the
operations of the human mind are so far removed from our experience, and
so elusive in themselves, that we cannot explain them otherwise than by
saying that Bel, by the hands of his angels, puts into man's mind ideas
of good or of evil according to the purpose of his inscrutable wisdom.
The greater part of man's life is purely spontaneous, sensible rather
than reasonable in so far as the majority of our actions do not result
from any reflective process, and hence it is unreasonable to ask a man
to give reasons for all his acts, as it would be to ask you, O King, to
give a reason for your last campaign."
"That was a reason of State," said Merodach simply.
"The reason was the reason of a great King, whose wisdom is as
inscrutable as the wisdom of Bel," answered Bagoas. "It was a lapse of
the mind that led me to Adam; one might say almost an act of Providence,
or to be scientific, chance. This morning at daybreak I had a desire to
ride abroad, for I had not slept during the night, and the sweetness of
the air enticed me into the country. I took a falcon upon my wrist.
Falconry was a delight of my youth. But I had barely proceeded a mile
before I became preoccupied with my own thoughts. The hares passed me
unobserved; the doves were free of the air. I was thinking how often man
has crept up toward civilisation, and then receded from it again, as the
tides creep up and recede from the beach; how the light of the world has
passed from nation to nation, and none have brought it to the goal; how
man forgets the evils which the last generation had abolished, and
rushes back upon them to escape from present evils; and it seemed to me
impossible that our race could attain to perfection in conditions of
such mutability. We sow our wisdom with full hands. We think that it may
increase fifty-fold. Alas! some of our seed falls in marshy places, some
among stones, some is devoured by the birds of the air, some flourishes
exceedingly, and is beaten down by storms of hail, or withered by the
fierce heat; and that which survives and bears fruit is scarcely
sufficient for the sowing of the field again.
"Every night a priest of Bel watches the stars; with optic glasses he
explores the vast abyss, through which the sun and its choir of planets
journey toward their fate; and when his mind is troubled by that
infinity, his eyes seek thy city, O King, and mankind to him is but a
little heap of withered leaves, which a sudden wind whirls in a circling
dance. From his tower, O King, he looks upon thy city, which to us, from
here, is splendid with a multitude of lights, and murmurous with life.
He knows that in the streets the young man is seeking pleasure, that
women are bearing children, that the old are dying. All the wealth and
misery of the world are at his feet; and he turns again to that star
which is destined to burn up the world in a tumultuous kiss. What is the
lust of the young to him; the pangs of child-birth; the bitterness; the
regret; the anguish of approaching death? A little heap of withered
leaves suddenly caught up in a windy dance; a little flame, flickering
ere it goes out into darkness.
"From this spirit of detachment in the philosopher is bred a
corresponding spirit of aloofness in the multitude. They see the towers
of Bel, black against the evening sky, and the watcher to them is but a
man enamoured of the silence, smitten with madness by the stars; a man
whose life is in the future, whose wisdom is but a sure foreknowledge of
death and fate, whose very presence among them is a prophecy of
corruption and change; and they ask, well may they ask! what is his
wisdom worth to us? The days are blue and gold, blue and silver are the
nights; and the birds are clamorous among the dripping boughs; why
should we pause to think of fate? What does his wisdom profit him when
in a little time he dies, and is equal with us in the dust? The flowers
bud, blossom, and seed, without thought for the departing year; the
birds go delightfully upon the ways of the wind, though the arrows which
shall bring them to earth are stored in the quiver. Shall we do
otherwise?
"Truly the worshipper of wisdom is a lonely man. The results which he
obtains are never the possession of the many. They may excite the
curiosity of the few, they may become an affectation with the amateur,
but they do not touch the multitude, for to this last that only is good
which is good in its immediate effect. Miserable indeed, the race of man
seemed to me, O King; content that their mortal ambition should be
bounded by the limits of a day; seeking only fat pastures and pleasant
waters; and careless of the lot of their progeny, whose fate it is to
cover the whole earth with populous cities, and stream like a river of
fire, impetuous and consuming, into hidden and desolate places, which
only the eyes of the gods have seen as yet. The treasure of wisdom is a
treasure which is continually being lost, rediscovered, and lost again.
It is like the gold of the miser, hidden in the ground; his son does not
inherit it, but after many years some labourer turns it up with his
deep-driven ploughshare, and the coins ring against the stones, and lie
with tarnished brightness on the loose earth of the furrow.
"A confused murmuring distracted my thought. I seemed to swim back to
reality out of a world of dreams. At first I thought that I had
approached a hive of wild bees; but the humming murmuring noise seemed
sweeter, more bird-like, until I saw that it came indeed from a
parliament of birds, which had congregated in the boughs of an
apple-tree, warbling there, and rising every now and then into the air,
with a great rushing of wings, to wheel above the tree and descend upon
it again in a thick cloud. I had strayed into a pleasant valley, where
the Euphrates flows between level meadows of wild wheat, enclosed, like
an amphitheatre, by well-wooded hills, which had already taken on the
tawny and golden tints of autumn.
"On the lower slopes grew mulberries and oranges; above them, threaded
with opulent colouring, plane-trees and sycamores, yellowing oaks, and
the beautiful level boughs of dusky cedars, while from all sides came
the sound of falling water, chiming and tinkling into little hollows, or
thundering in cataracts, with a more imperious music, down precipitous
and rocky glens. The sunlit fields of ripe wheat swayed in the wind like
an undulating sea; the river gleamed like silver, and many coloured
lilies grew beside the brimming water, filling the air with a delicate
perfume. I looked about me in delight. It seemed a place sacred from the
profaning feet of man. At the same time, I had a curious sense of being
watched; and presently a young man rose out of the wild wheat before me,
and stood watching me, with an expression of curiosity qualified with
distrust."
A languid interest was apparent in the faces of his audience.
"It was Adam," said Merodach.
"At last," said Queen Parysatis.
"It was Adam," answered Bagoas, smiling. "I have attempted, O King, to
give you some notion of the thoughts which preoccupied me at my meeting
with him. My outlook upon things is historical, and therefore
necessarily pessimistic. Adam broke in upon my thoughts as a prophecy, a
promise. He was in his first manhood, almost still a boy, and
represented, in consequence, an earlier stage of evolution. He seemed in
fact half child, and half animal. He had the stature of a man; he was
well built, muscular, giving one the impression of an immense but
graceful strength, of easy movements. His features were handsome, but
unlike those usual in our country; the nose was a little rapacious, the
mouth cruel, but his eyes were full of dreams. It was the face of one
who looks towards distant horizons, having the immense calm of the
desert, and full of a sleeping energy. Youth softened it, and lent it a
delicate charm; but in age it will be terrible. And suddenly I heard a
sullen voice saying: 'This is my garden.'
"I have noticed in all nomadic peoples, and in small scattered
communities, that however terse the language, and however limited the
vocabulary, the words are capable of innumerable shades of meaning.
Gesture and modulation lend force and precision to what is said. Perhaps
this is why the art of the theatre is always, at its best, the art of a
naïve and unsophisticated people. Life in town tends to the production
of a type, and individuality is suppressed; but life in the country,
where the conventions are few and simple, tends to the formation of
character. The theatric art, among town-dwellers, loses its broad
simplicity and that directness of purpose which show man in immediate
collision with facts, and is frittered away in mean motives and
intangible temperaments, substituting for the play of circumstances the
play of ideas. It is for the same reason that great empires always
perish at the heart first; because dwellers in towns become uniform, and
being surrounded by artificial circumstances are seldom brought into
direct conflict with facts, but learn to cheat themselves with fine
phrases and immaterial ideas."
"The good Bagoas is really a little prolix," whispered Parysatis to
Merodach.
Bagoas heard the interruption and continued tranquilly:
"'This is my garden,' said Adam; and his words implied not only that I
was an intruder, and that he was a proprietor, but also that the garden
was beautiful, and that he was proud of it. I explained that I had lost
my way, that I was hungry, that I was tired; and even as I spoke a young
woman rose up out of the wheat and looked at me curiously.
"'We have little,' said Adam.
"They led me to their cabin of boughs, and brought me food; and they
were naked and were not ashamed. They were strangers to the use of fire,
and my meal consisted of nuts and honey, goat's milk and dates, such
food as, our poets say, nourished the people of the golden age. In front
of their cabin was an apple-tree, similar to the one upon which the
birds had congregated, only with golden instead of ruddy fruit. I asked
Adam if he would give me an apple from it.
"'The tree is dedicated,' he said; 'and we may not eat of the fruit; it
is forbidden to us.'
"'We may not even touch it with our hands,' said the woman, who was
called Eve; and she looked at the fruit covetously.
"'To what god is it dedicated?' I enquired of them.
"'It is dedicated to God,' replied Adam simply.
"And I was surprised that this man, who had so many needs, should have
only one god; but very soon I found that his monotheism was but a rude
crystallisation of the spiritual forces of earth and air, a kind of
shamanism, though with the many considered as one. His god was the god
of fertility, who had caused the earth to put forth grass, and the trees
to bear fruit, and all things to bring forth after their kind; a god
whose voice was heard on the wind of the day, and who breathed into man
the breath of life. In his loneliness Adam had told himself stories as
children do, and, as with children, his imagination had laid hold with
such intensity of vision upon these fanciful adventures of his mind that
he seemed to live in a little world of his own creating, a land of
enchantment and of dreams. The wind, the waters, the leaves of the never
silent trees, the birds and the beasts of the field, all spoke in what
was to him an intelligible voice; and his god was a being not far
removed from himself, enjoying, even as Adam himself did, the cool of
the day, the blithe air, and the breath of the sweet flowers.
"'How came it that this particular tree should be forbidden to you?' I
enquired of them, for I was curious of the spiritual workings of their
minds.
"'In the day that we came into this garden,' answered Adam, 'I had a
desire to eat of the fruit, and I stretched my hand toward the tree when
I heard a voice upon the wind, saying: "In the day that ye eat thereof
ye shall surely die."'
"'It is curious,' I murmured. 'The fruit is wholesome, one would think
that to eat thereof would give life rather than death.'
"'If we ate of the fruit would we not die?' enquired Eve.
"'If ye ate of it you would know,' I answered, smiling at the simplicity
of the question; and then I spoke to Adam of other things. I love the
conversation of the young, O King. It brings back to me the time when I,
too, had illusions, hopes, and ideals. The sole illusions remaining to
mine old age are the illusion of life, and the hope that where we have
failed our children may succeed. Adam believes that all men are
naturally good, and that it is society which makes them evil; he does
not see that society cannot be different from what it is since it is a
purely natural development, and that its laws were not made by men, but
are merely a recognition of certain instincts peculiar to mankind, and
of the effects which the exercise of these instincts invariably
produces. His point of view is that of the individual; and the egoism of
the individual is always in conflict with the collective egoism of the
state. He believes that men are born equal, and that society loads them
with chains. He cannot grasp the seeming paradox that what he imagines
to be the natural man is really artificial, and that what he imagines to
be an artificial society is really the expression of natural laws. Adam
himself is not natural, he is kindly and hospitable to strangers, he is
gentle, and loves his wife, he is practically a monotheist.
"Every individual is like Adam in this. We are all idealists. All of us
have excellent intentions; but the world is so constituted that we can
never carry them out. Adam has never been in a great city, but he has
seen from afar the huge towers of Uruk looming into the night, and they
are to him in their proud invasion of the sky a symbol of man's
rebellion against the decrees of God, who fashioned him to be a feeble
creature, scratching about upon the surface of the earth, and to draw
his whole being from that shallow deposit of productive soil which he
cultivates laboriously. He considers our temples to be the work of some
demonic agency, for he does not think it possible that beings similar to
himself should uplift these gigantic masses into the air. Our works of
pride are, therefore, evil to him, since they differ from the works of
his native humility; to live like Adam is to live virtuously; and that
which is different from his mode of life is evil."
Here Merodach and the Queen Parysatis laughed at the simplicity of Adam,
and the Princess Candace also laughed because she did not understand why
they were amused. Bagoas looked at his audience with a faint tolerant
smile.
"You find Adam's standard of good and evil laughable," he said. "It is
in fact a little comic, but human, quite human, and quite logical. He
says in effect: 'I, Adam, am good; those who differ from me, differ from
what is good, and are consequently evil.' This position, which we find
so laughable in others, is really common to us all; only, unfortunately,
a sense of humour is a sense which we never apply to ourselves. Who will
deny that Adam is wise in limiting his desires to such things as lie
easily within his reach, if happiness be the end of wisdom? The earth
gives him of her fulness, the climate of his valley is mild and
temperate, snow does not fall there nor is it vexed by winds; the misery
of his fellows is hidden from him, he is without care for the morrow; in
limiting his desires he has extended the possibilities of delight, and
joy comes to him unexpectedly as if it were a miracle wrought by God."
"A charming life!" exclaimed the Queen. "Your barbarians are like
children."
"Yes; they are like children," answered Bagoas. "In fact they still are
children, and so I have treated them. I cast Adam's horoscope, and read
therein the wonderful things which the stars ordain for him. In this
horoscope I read that Adam is to be the father of a race which shall
revolutionise the world; a little obstinate people inhabiting a country
in the west toward the sea; a people of slaves, outraged and despised,
yet leavening all the peoples among whom they dwell. It is this race of
slaves that will pass on the light and wisdom of Chaldæa to nations as
yet unborn. While thy monuments, O King, are sleeping beneath the
drifted sands of the desert, the name of Adam will pass from tongue to
tongue, and distant peoples will come to think of him as the father of
the whole human race. The arts and sciences of Uruk will be forgotten,
and the world will be duped by a record of events which never happened,
myths and legends stolen from surrounding nations and woven into a
curious asymmetrical whole, full of contradictions and puerilities.
"Truly in Adam's horoscope everything is a contradiction. From being the
happiest man, he will become the most miserable; after a life spent in
obscurity he will achieve almost an eternity of fame, and his children,
a race of slaves, will impose their law upon the world for nearly two
thousand years. It is incredible. Surely my meditation as I rode toward
him was not without cause. Our wisdom, the science of Chaldæa, is the
miser's gold which shall be lost in the earth, and whatever of us
survives in the memory of man will survive through the children of Adam.
I told him nothing of this, but prophesied that he would be a wanderer
until his death, at which he smiled.
"'That may not be,' he said; 'because God has put me into this garden to
dress it and keep it.'
"Then the woman filled a bowl with milk and took it over toward the
tree, and a great bronze serpent came out from the roots of the tree and
drank the milk which she offered him; wherefore, in spite of their
monotheism, I think that they are of the people who worship snakes and
trees, and that the tree was taboo because of the serpent which dwelt in
its roots."
* * * * *
"It may well be as you say," said Merodach, after a silence. "Still it
is curious that a monotheist should worship snakes and trees. Perhaps
his god is the local djinn; as with the nomadic tribes, the action of
the gods is limited to certain territories, and the wandering herds, in
changing their pastures, change their gods also. In effect the King is
the god. He rules by divine right, he represents the aspirations of his
people, and is the visible symbol without which all religions are but
inarticulate yearnings. You would naturally be interested, as a priest,
in the religion of Adam; but I am more interested in the fact that a
nomad should inhabit a garden. It interests me, as a statesman, because
it represents the beginnings of society. A nomad wanders for two
reasons; to change his hunting grounds, and to seek fresh pastures. Some
nomads, especially in countries where the fertility of the soil is
easily exhausted, plough, sow, reap the harvest, and then depart into a
new place; but when fruit-trees are planted the owner remains beside
them. Their roots have bound him to the soil. All existing civilisations
have arisen through the fact that man gathers the fruit of a tree, and
not the tree itself."
Bagoas smiled, and discreetly said nothing.
"To-morrow I shall visit Adam," said Merodach; "from the unsophisticated
there is always much to learn."
"You may be disappointed," said Bagoas gently. "I like the lowly and
humble people, and I may have prejudiced you, unwittingly, in Adam's
favour. His sincerity may seem to you rude."
"Simplicity of manner is charming," answered Merodach. "I believe that
all our courtly graces, everything which is implied by the word good
breeding, have their roots in the natural instincts of man. Of course,
the simple people move more awkwardly in the conventional restraints;
and good manners, which we wear like jewellery, are with them heavy
fetters; but I place implicit trust in Adam's natural good taste."
"I should love to see Adam," said the Queen Parysatis.
"But he is naked," objected the Princess Candace.
"We shall bring him some leopard-skins, such as my guards wear," said
Merodach. "Come to supper."
They moved through a grove of orange-trees towards a great pavilion
where supper was being served. Bagoas left them; and, leaning on a
balustrade, he looked over Uruk.
"Certainly Adam is unfortunate," he said.
II
Merodach went forth unto Eden, and with him there went his wives and his
concubines, his poets and his pastry-cooks, his falconers, his
flute-players, and his players upon the viol, his bow-men and his
spearmen; and the number of those who followed him were ten thousand and
ten, without counting the mule-drivers, and the camel-drivers, and the
drivers of elephants. And the noise of their going filled the whole
land, and a great cloud of dust went up from their feet. Bagoas rode
with Merodach upon the King's elephant, whose tusks were studded with
precious stones, and who had jewels in his ears, and Bagoas spoke wisely
unto the King.
"Man is naturally vain," said Bagoas. "He believes always that he has
finally explained the universe, and that nothing remains for him but a
life of virtue, and the approbation of a God, who shall exalt him above
his fellows. But it seems to me, O King, that all human systems of
religion and philosophy have the same nature as the system of a fakir
whom I once met in the desert. He told me that the world was supported
by a pillar of adamant, which was borne by an elephant, who stood upon
the back of a tortoise."
"And what supported the tortoise?" enquired Merodach curiously.
"When I asked him that question, O King, he answered that it was a holy
mystery, that the question was blasphemous in itself, and that all
answers were equally heretical."
The Queen Parysatis rode with the court poet upon another elephant, and
the poet, whose name was Mekerah, made delicate songs for her.
"The old look upon the stars," sang the poet, "they seek wisdom in the
heavens; but I look into the eyes of my beloved. What stars are like her
eyes? What wisdom can compare with the wisdom of love?"
"You have said the same thing a hundred times," complained the Queen.
But the Princess Candace rode upon a white elephant caparisoned with
cloth of silver embroidered with pearls. No one rode with her but the
driver of the elephant, and she sat under a canopy of silk which was
shot with the colours that are in the shell of the pearl, and before her
elephant on a white mule rode her juggler. He rode with his face to the
tail, and juggled with oranges and a sword; the sword meeting the
oranges in the air divided them neatly into halves, and then again into
quarters. He was a dwarf, incredibly ugly, hunch-backed, with long
spidery arms; but the little Princess loved him.
"Look at me!" he shrilled in a falsetto voice. "Look at me, little
Princess! Who will say that jugglery is not the supreme art? Verily, it
is the art of arts! The poet does but juggle with words, yet he does not
preserve so perfect a rhythm. Mekerah's verses are lame, but mine
oranges do not halt; they dance in the air with the grace of a little
Princess who dances in silver slippers before the throne of her father.
The High-priest Bagoas juggles with theories; the Great King juggles
with the fears and passions of his subjects; the gods juggle with our
poor world, but I juggle with mine oranges. It is the same thing. Look
at me, little Princess, look at me!"
He swallowed the fragments of oranges as they descended, and then the
sword.
"Uzal, you will make yourself sick," said Candace, "and my maids will
have to tend you."
The juggler stood on his head and juggled with his feet.
"Truly, my lord," said Bagoas, "the juggler of the Princess has good
reason for what he says: in a sense we are all jugglers."
But the King was thinking of other things, and after a moment lifted his
head.
"Have you considered the Princess Candace, how she grows?" he enquired
of the High-priest.
"She is like a flower," answered Bagoas. "She is like a silver lily
opening its petals to the sun. She grows like a flower that the dew
falls upon, and her dreams are like dew."
"A few days ago she was a child, a few days more and she will be a
woman. It is time that she were married; but that man whom she marries
will be King after that I am dead, and I do not wish to hasten my
death."
"She is young to go down into the cave of Ishtar," said Bagoas; "she
would tremble when the last torch was extinguished; she would cry aloud
when her husband came to her out of that darkness. Have you considered
one worthy to be her husband, O King?"
"There is no one," answered Merodach. "The children of my wives are all
girls, and the sons of my slaves are brawlers; men whose words are
wind."
"Have you considered the son of thy cousin, Na'amah? He is sixteen years
old, and has the heart of a lion. He is like a young lion in his first
strength. I have been the governor of his childhood, and in his heart
there is no guile."
"We shall consider him," said Merodach. "Beyond are the hills of Eden."
"If we follow the course of the river we shall come to Adam's garden."
* * * * *
It was mid-day in Eden. The great snake hung in the branches of the
apple-tree, watching Adam and Eve, with dull, malignant eyes
half-closed. He had shed his skin which hung from one of the branches,
swaying idly in the wind, like a piece of grey ravelled lace; and the
great snake coiled about the trunk shone with renewed splendour, like a
bronze in which the colours of olive and red are graduated so as to mix
and flow into each other through imperceptible shades of difference. The
shadow of some domestic quarrel hung over Adam and Eve; he was moved by
an ungracious solicitude for her comfort, and she received his
attentions in offended humility. The snake watched the comedy with
narrow eyes; subtilty of enjoyment increasing the malign persistence of
his stare.
"I am unhappy," said Eve.
"It is because we have done wrong," said Adam.
"Let us go out into the desert. I do not like this place. The water is
not good; the air is heavy; it is a morass; the home of frogs and the
abode of scorpions. At night I lie awake, looking through the door of
our cabin, and I see the moonlight lying upon the water, and I hear a
chorus of frogs; all night I hear the croaking of the frogs. It will
make me mad."
"Last night you crept into my arms and slept like a child," said Adam.
"You did not stir all night; but I lay awake looking at the moonlight
and listening to the frogs. They chanted a spell to fill my soul with
terror, and the moon also was full of evil. Then the whole earth
dissolved like a dream, and the stars vanished as things that slip
through water; and I seemed to be falling, falling through an endless
sea of moonlight, falling towards the moon, and beyond the moon there
was nothing; but I felt you in mine arms, and I did not dare to move,
lest you, too, should vanish with the world. This vision was sent to me
by God that I might learn how unsubstantial is the world, as if it were
but the shadow of His thought, a dream within a dream."
"Do not let us talk of it," said Eve, trembling. "Perhaps if I had not
been here you would have fallen into nothing. It was because you held me
that you did not fall. This place will make me mad. Why are the leaves
falling from the trees?"
"I do not know."
"The palm-trees in the desert do not lose their leaves. My heart is sick
for the palm-trees in the desert with the little slender moon shining
above them, and shining at the bottom of the deep wells. My heart is
sick for the song of the nightingales. Why have the tops of the
mountains turned white?"
"I do not know," answered Adam; "but once I saw from the desert a range
of mountains, and their tops were white. They also had trees; but the
leaves of the trees did not fall. These trees must be dead. Some great
unhappiness is come upon the world. Last night I was cold."
"The sand of the desert is always warm," said Eve.