CHAPTER I.

When the King Loses his Head

AND OTHER STORIES

by Leonid Andreyev

TRANSLATED BY

ARCHIBALD J. WOLFE

NEW YORK

INTERNATIONAL BOOK PUBLISHING COMPANY

1920

cover

Contents

Preface

When the King Loses his Head

Judas Iscariot

Lazarus

Life of Father Vassily

Ben-Tobith

The Marseillaise

Dies Irae

Preface.

Leonid Andreyev was born in Orel, the capital of the Russian province

of the same name, on August 21, 1871. He was ten years younger than his

future patron and friend Maxim Gorki. He died on September 12, 1919, in

Finland, an exile from his beloved chaos-ridden fatherland.

His father, a Russian of pure blood, by profession a surveyor, was a

man of extraordinary physical vigor. He died at the early age of 42 as

the result of a brain-stroke. His mother, a woman of much refinement

and culture, was of Polish ancestry.

The earliest years of Andreyev’s life were spent in close affiliation

with the stage, through the personal acquaintance of his parents with

the leading stage folks of the province.

He was a poor scholar and loved to play “hookey,” preferring the great

outdoors to the crowded class-room. His marks were very poor as the

result. But he was a voracious reader of literature. His latter years

in high school (gymnasium) were influenced by Tolstoy’s works on

non-resistance, by Schopenhauer, and by the first works of Maxim Gorki.

The death of his father and the seeds of the pessimistic philosophy

gave the inner life of the budding novelist a morose and pessimistic

direction. In his teens Leonid Andreyev made three unsuccessful

attempts at suicide.

It has been the fate of Leonid Andreyev to live through four distinct

phases of Russian history, each of which has contributed to the shaping

of his art.

In the latter eighties and the early nineties he had passed through one

of the most disheartening periods in the life of the Russian people,

when under the crushing heel of the despotic Tsar Alexander III all

initiative and all aspirations of the mind were ruthlessly stifled. It

was the period of shameful and soulless years, with miserable people,

relentless persecutors, obedient slaves and a few hunted rebels.

The horror of this era of nightmare weighed heavily on the sensitive

soul of young Andreyev and he attempted suicide in 1894 by shooting

himself near the heart. The attempt was unsuccessful, but left behind

an affliction of the heart, of which he died twenty-five years later.

In his student years (Andreyev took up the study of law in the

University of Moscow) he fell under the influence of Tchekhov and of

Gorki. Andreyev did not in his earlier years dream of becoming a

writer. His interest in art led him to painting and his pictures were

exhibited in the independent salons and much praised. His early stories

were printed in the newspapers of Moscow under the nom-de-plume of

James Lynch.

Andreyev’s first story printed under that nom-de-plume in 1898 aroused

the interest of Maxim Gorki, who sought out the future novelist and

aided him greatly with advice and suggestions.

But between the two—between the singer of the people, the singer of

humanity—Gorki, on the one hand, and the artist of individuality, the

painter of thought, Andreyev, there is a vast difference and

divergence. One is the captive of the realities of life, in which he

loses himself, the other is the captive of fancies, of ever new

problems of the soul, which he endeavors to illustrate by abstract

schematism, but which he ultimately fails to solve.

In this phase of Russian history falls the series of Andreyev’s stories

in which he chastises the Russian intelligent hypochondriac and the

follower of Tchekhov. Maxim Gorki is to him the personification of the

joy of life and of the will to battle, which permeates the earlier

writings of Andreyev.

The stormy period of the political convulsion which shook Russia in the

wake of the Japanese war, evoked a number of beautiful stories and

essays from Andreyev’s pen, thrilled and aflame with the love of

budding freedom. But even here the pessimism of Andreyev breaks

through. In his charming story of the French Revolution, with which we

begin this present volume, “When the King Loses His Head,” when liberty

is in danger, when the Twentieth, the symbol of monarchy, is in the

toils of the people, here and there the crowd cries “Long Live the

Twenty-First,” ready to resume the badge of servitude.

In the “Abyss” Andreyev portrays the shameful fall of the young

idealist, but in “The Marseillaise,” the prose-poem with which we

conclude the present volume, written in 1905, Andreyev pictures the

apotheosis of a hero hidden behind the absurd exterior of a physical

weakling. “The Marseillaise” is an overture to the stirring drama of

the brief but glorious epoch of the popular risings after the Japanese

war.

But the monarchic power crushed the spirit of the people. A period of

unparalleled persecutions, executions and repressions followed. “The

Story of the Seven that were Hanged” is characteristic of this terrible

period which preceded the World War. This story is dedicated to

Tolstoy, and its motto might well be “Fear not them that kill the body,

but cannot kill the soul.” Some of the passages of this story are so

stirring that it is impossible to read them without shedding a tear.

After the fall of the Romanovs, a brief period of intoxicating sense of

freedom overwhelmed Russia. It was not the time for literature. It was

the time for action. But all too soon chaos ensued, and the artist

dropped his art to defend outraged humanity. It was away from his

country, with the whole world arrayed against Russia, and with Russia

arrayed against herself, that Leonid Andreyev fell the victim of heart

failure, induced, as the brief despatches from Finland state, by the

shock of a bomb exploding in his vicinity.

The heroes of Andreyev’s stories are “people who stand apart,”

solitary, lonely characters, walking among men like planets among

planets, and a baneful atmosphere surrounds them. The idea of most of

these stories and of most of his dramas is the conflict of the

personality with fate and with the falsehood which man introduces into

his fate.

He has a symbolic story named “The Wall”: it is the barrier which men

cannot pass. The Wall is all bloodstained; at its base crawl lepers;

centuries, nations strive to climb upon it. But the wall is immobile,

while ever new heaps of corpses are piled up alongside.

There are walls between the closest relatives in the stories and dramas

of Andreyev. Frequently the characters depicted by him are insane.

Freedom becomes an illusion, a tragic mockery of mankind.

In the story of “Father Vassili” we are told of an ill-fated parish

priest. Misfortunes fall upon his head with an ominous purposeful

frequency. Finally his only son is drowned. The mother takes to drink

to drown her sorrow. In her insane frenzy she conceives again and bears

an idiot. The new child, a little monster, brings an atmosphere of

horror into the home and dominates the whole household. The drunken

mother accidentally sets the home on fire and dies a victim of the

conflagration. All through these misfortunes Father Vassili believes in

his Maker with the depth and passion of despair. But little by little

this faith and this despair pass into insanity. During a requiem mass

over the body of a villager Father Vassili commands the corpse to

arise. He calls upon God to sustain him and to work a miracle. He is

left alone with the corpse, the worshippers having fled in terror. He

inclines over the body and sees in the coffin the mocking features of

his idiot child. A crash of thunder rends the sky. It seems to Father

Vassili that heaven and earth are crashing into nothingness, he flees

precipitately into the highway and falls dead. The utter solitude of

the man, the monstrous domination of elementary powers arrayed against

him, a moment of consciousness of oneness with the divine and insanity,

these are the constant horrible and tragic features of Andreyev’s art.

In his stories dealing with biblical characters, Judas Iscariot and

Lazarus, we have horror and dreams again. Judas Iscariot and the

Saviour are pictured as twins nailed to the same cross and wearing the

same crown of thorns. The traitor in Andreyev’s story loves Jesus the

Man. There is a dread secret in the terrible eyes of Judas, as there is

a wondrous secret in the beautiful eyes of Jesus. This horrible

proximity of divine beauty and of monstrous hideousness presents a

problem which the artist tries to solve. He makes of Judas a fanatical

revolutionist, the slave of an idea who has resolved to materialize

“horror and dreams” and to bring about the truth. There is in Judas

that same duality which characterizes so many of Andreyev’s heroes. He

has two faces. He lies and dissembles. Throughout the whole story the

dual personality of the Traitor is brought out with wonderful skill. In

“Judas Iscariot” Andreyev contrasts Judas with Jesus. In “Lazarus” he

contrasts the morose Jew, whom Jesus brought back from death into life

after three days and three nights in the darkness of the tomb, with the

life-loving Augustus. If in “Judas Iscariot” Judas, wise, cunning and

evil, overcomes Jesus, naive, meek and trustful, in “Lazarus” it is the

Roman Emperor who causes the eyes of the Jew to be pierced, but is in

the end overcome himself.

“Anathema”—a play of Andreyev which in grandeur of conception equals

Goethe’s Faust, has for its humble hero, David Leiser, trustful,

stupid, guileless, ever obedient to his heart, who reaches immortality

and lives the life of immortality and light. His enemy, Anathema, who

follows the cold dictates of reason, is foiled.

From Andreyev’s pen we have a series of dramatic pictures, “Black

Masks,” “King Hunger,” “Savva,” “To the Stars,” and others, and a

number of stories, some of them in places streaked with a realism that

is almost too revolting for the Anglo-Saxon ideas of propriety. Thus in

“My Memoirs,” he tells of an insane doctor of mathematics, who confined

for life in a prison for a horrible crime sets down his experiences in

a series of hypocritical diary notes, and who expatiates upon the

beauties of nameless vice. In “The Darkness,” the bomb throwing

idealist, who hiding from the police on the eve of his deed, enters a

house of ill-fame and becomes so abashed at the sight of the life of an

inmate that he exclaims “It is a disgrace to be good,” and kisses her

hand, only to have his face slapped because the fallen woman resents

his parading of goodness at her expense.

Andreyev, because of the cumulative portrayals of the weird and the

horrible, has been called the Russian Edgar Allan Poe. But between Poe

and Andreyev there lies a century of time and a world of space.

Poe’s hero, in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” is the last remnant of

a feudal epoch dying in a crumbling castle, every stone of which speaks

of a series of generations and of external and internal dissolution.

The heroes of Andreyev are solitary men, hiding in their professorial

studies, in the basements of tenement houses, in the caves of Judea.

Death with Poe is mysteriously beautiful, with Andreyev it is a

blighting, baneful curse. The solitude of Poe’s heroes is the tragic

solitude of a superman on a lonely height, the solitude of Andreyev’s

heroes is the solitude of little men, worn out with the futile

vicissitudes of life. But the horror of life and of death makes these

two great artists kin. Of the Russian authors Dostoyevsky is nearest to

Andreyev. The solitude of the curse-stricken man, of the man on the

brink of ruin, the morbid acuteness of his perceptions, the dominion of

intellect over life, the eternal longing to overstep the boundary, the

endless striving with God, the city with its garrets and

basements—these are the favorite themes both of Dostoyevsky and of

Andreyev.

As to style, Leonid Andreyev is a wonderful word painter, but his brush

knows only somber colors. The basic background of his stories and of

his dramas is a dark-grey, sometimes streaked with fiery-red. His

pessimism leads him to look upon the world through dark spectacles.

Duke Lorenzo is held captive by “Black Masks.” He sails in a ship with

“black sails.” At the prow of the vessel is a “young woman in black.”

The stories included in this first volume of Andreyev’s works in the

“Russian Authors’ Library” series are: “When the King Loses his Head,”

“Judas Iscariot,” “Lazarus,” “Life of Father Vassili,” “Ben-Tobith” and

“Dies Irae.”

ARCHIBALD J. WOLFE.

When the King Loses his Head.

PART I.

There stood once in a public place a black tower with massive

fortress-like walls and a few grim bastioned windows. It had been built

by robber barons, but time swept them into the beyond, and the tower

became partly a prison for dangerous criminals and grave offenders, and

partly a residence. In the course of centuries new structures were

added to it, and were buttressed against the massive walls of the tower

and against one another; little by little it assumed the dimensions of

a fair sized town set on a rock, with a broken skyline of chimneys,

turrets and pointed roofs. When the sky gleamed green in the west there

appeared, here and there, lights in the various parts of the tower. The

gloomy pile assumed quaint and fanciful contours, and it somehow seemed

that at its foot there stretched not an ordinary pavement, but the

waves of the sea, the salty and shoreless ocean. And the picture

brought to one’s mind the shapes of the past, long since dead and

forgotten.

An immense ancient clock, which could be seen from afar, was set in the

tower. Its complicated mechanism occupied an entire story of the

structure, and it was under the care of a one-eyed man who could use a

magnifying glass with expert skill. This was the reason why he had

become a clockmaker and had tinkered for years with small timepieces

before he was given charge of the large clock. Here he felt at home and

happy. Often, at odd hours, without apparent need he would enter the

room where the wheels, the gears and the levers moved deliberately, and

where the immense pendulum cleft the air with wide and even sweep.

Having reached the limit of its travel the pendulum said:

“’Twas ever thus.”

Then it sank and rose again to a new elevation and added:

“’Twill ever be, ’twas ever thus, ’twill ever be, ’twas ever thus,

’twill ever be.”

These were the words with which the one-eyed clockmaker was wont to

interpret the monotonous and mysterious language of the pendulum: the

close contact with the large clock had made him a philosopher, as they

used to say in those days.

Over the ancient city where the tower stood, and over the entire land

there ruled one man, the mystic lord of the city and of the land, and

his mysterious sway, the rule of one man over the millions was as

ancient as the city itself. He was called the King and dubbed the

“Twentieth,” according to the number of his predecessors of the same

name, but this fact explained nothing. Just as no one knew of the early

beginnings of the city, no one knew the origin of this strange

dominion, and no matter how far back human memory reached the records

of the hoary past presented the same mysterious picture of one man who

lorded over millions. There was a silent antiquity over which the

memory of man had no power, but it, too, at rare intervals, opened its

lips; it dropped from its jaws a stone, a little slab marked with some

characters, the fragment of a column, a brick from a wall that had

crumbled into ruin—and again the mysterious characters revealed the

same tale of one who had been lord over millions. Titles, names and

soubriquets changed, but the image remained unchanged, as if it were

immortal. The King was born and died like all men, and judging from

appearance, which was that common to all men, he was a man; but when

one took into account the unlimited extent of his power and might, it

was easier to imagine that he was God. Especially as God had been

always imagined to be like a man, and yet suffered no loss of his

peculiar and incomprehensible essence. The Twentieth was the King. This

meant that he had power to make a man happy or unhappy; that he could

take away his fortune, his health, his liberty and his very life; at

his command tens of thousands of men went forth to war, to kill and to

die; in his name were wrought acts just and unjust, cruel and merciful.

And his laws were no less stringent than those of God; this too

enhanced his greatness in that God’s laws are immutable, but he could

change his at will. Distant or near, he always was higher than life; at

his birth man found along with nature, cities and books—his King;

dying—he left with nature, cities and books—the King.

The history of the land, oral and written, showed examples of

magnanimous, just and good Kings, and though there lived people better

than they, still one could understand why they might have ruled. But

more frequently it happened that the King was the worst man on earth,

bare of all virtues, cruel, unjust, even a madman—yet even then he

remained the mysterious one who ruled over millions, and his power

increased with his misdeeds. All the world hated and cursed him, but

he, the one, ruled over those who hated and cursed, and this savage

dominion became an enigma, and the dread of man before man was

increased by the mystic terror of the unfathomable. And because of this

wisdom, virtue and kindness served to weaken Kingcraft and made it a

subject of strife, while tyranny, madness and malice strengthened it.

And because of this the practice of beneficence and goodness was beyond

the ability of even the most powerful of these mysterious lords though

even the weakest of them in destructiveness and evil deeds could

surpass the devil and the fiends of hell. He could not give life, but

he imposed death, that mysterious Anointed one of madness, death and

evil; and his throne rose to greater heights, the more bones had been

laid down for its foundations.

In other neighboring lands there sat also lords upon their thrones, and

the origin of their dominion was lost in hoary antiquity. There were

years and centuries when the mysterious lord disappeared from one of

the Kingdoms, though there never was a time when the whole earth was

wholly without them. Centuries passed and again, no one knows whence,

there appeared in that land a throne, and again there sat thereon some

mysterious one, incomprehensibly combining in himself frailty and

undying power. And this mystery fascinated the people; at all times

there had been among them such as loved him more than themselves, more

than their wives and children, and humbly, as if from the hand of God,

without murmur or pity, they received from him and in his name, death

in most cruel and shameful form.

The Twentieth and his predecessors rarely showed themselves to the

people, and only a few ever saw them; but they loved to scatter abroad

their image, leaving it on coins, hewing it out of stone, impressing it

on myriads of canvases, and adorning and perfecting it through the

skill of artists. One could not take a step without seeing the face,

the same simple and mysterious face, forcing itself on the mind by

sheer ubiquity, conquering the imagination, and acquiring a seeming

omnipresence, just as it had attained immortality. And therefore people

who but faintly remembered the face of their grandfathers and could not

have recognized the features of their great grandfathers, knew well the

faces of their lords of a hundred, two hundred or a thousand years

back. And therefore, too, no matter how plain the face of the one man

who was master of millions may have been, it bore always the imprint of

enigmatic and awe-inspiring mystery. So the face of the dead always

seems mysterious and significant, for through the familiar and well

known features one gazes upon death, the mysterious and powerful.

Thus high above life stood the King. People died, and whole generations

passed from the face of the earth, but he only changed his soubriquet

like a serpent shedding his skin: The Eleventh was followed by the

twelfth, the fifteenth, then again came the first, the fifth, the

second, and in these cold figures sounded an inevitableness like that

of a swinging pendulum which marks the passing of time:

“’Twas ever thus, ’twill ever be.”

PART II.

And it happened that in that great country, the lord of which was the

Twentieth, there occurred a revolution, a rising of the millions, as

mysterious as had been the rule of the one. Something strange happened

to the strong ties which had bound together the King and the people,

and they began to decay noiselessly, unnoticeably, mysteriously, like a

body out of which the life had departed, and in which new forces that

had been in hiding somewhere commenced their work. There was the same

throne, the same palace, and the same Twentieth—but his power had

unaccountably passed away; and no one had noticed the hour of its

passage, and all thought that it merely was ailing. The people simply

lost the habit of obeying and that was all, and all at once, from out

the multitude of separate trifling, unnoticed resistances, there grew

up a stupendous, unconquerable movement. And as soon as the people

ceased to obey, all their ancient sores were opened, and wrathfully

they became conscious of hunger, injustice and oppression. And they

made an uproar. And they demanded justice. And they reared a gigantic

beast bristling with wrath, taking vengeance on its tamer for years of

humiliation and tortures. Just as they had not held counsels to agree

to obedience, they did not confer about rebelling; and straightway,

from all sides there gathered a rising and made its way to the palace.

Wondering at themselves and their deeds, oblivious of the path behind

them, they advanced closer and closer to the throne, fingering already

its gilt carving, peeping into the royal bed-chamber and attempting to

sit upon royal chairs. The King bowed and the Queen smiled, and many of

the people wept with joy as they beheld the Twentieth at close range;

the women stroked with cautious finger the velvet of the royal coat and

the silk of the royal gown, while the men with good-natured severity

amused the royal infant.

The King bowed and the pale Queen smiled, and from under the door of a

neighboring apartment there crept in the black current of the blood of

a nobleman, who had stabbed himself to death; he could not survive the

spectacle of somebody’s dirty fingers touching the royal coat, and

committed suicide. And as they dispersed they shouted:

“Long live the Twentieth.”

Here and there were some who frowned; but it was all so humorous that

they too forgot their annoyance and gaily laughing as if at a carnival

when some motley clown is crowned, they also shouted, “Long live the

Twentieth.” And they laughed. But towards evening there was gloom in

their faces and suspicion in their glances; how could they have faith

in him who for a thousand years with diabolical cunning had been

deceiving his good and confiding people! The palace is dark; its

immense windows gleam insincerely and peer sulkily into the darkness:

some scheme is being concocted there. They are conjuring the powers of

darkness and calling on them for vengeance upon the people. There they

loathingly cleanse the lips from traitorous kisses and bathe the royal

infant who has been defiled by the touch of the people. Perhaps there

is no one there. Perhaps in the immense darkened salons there is only

the suicide nobleman and space—they may have disappeared. One must

shout, one must call for him, if a living being still be there. “Long

live the Twentieth.”

A pale-grey, perplexing sky looks down upon pallid, upturned faces; the

frightened clouds are scurrying over the heavens, and the immense

windows gleam with a mysterious lifeless light. “Long live the

Twentieth!”

The overwhelmed sentinel seems to sway in the surging crowd. He has

lost his gun and is smiling; the lock upon the iron portals clatters

spasmodically and feverishly; clinging to the lofty iron rods of the

gate, like black and misshapen fruit are crouching bodies and

outstretched hands, that look pale on top and dark below. A shaggy mass

of clouds sweeps the sky and gazes down upon the scenes. Shouts.

Someone has lighted a torch, and the palace windows blushed as if

crimson with blood and drew nearer to the crowd. Something seemed to be

creeping upon the walls and disappeared upon the roof. The lock rattled

no longer. The glare of the torch revealed the railing crowded with

people, and now it became again invisible. The people were moving

onward.

“Long live the Twentieth!” A number of dim lights now seem to be

flittering past the windows. Somebody’s ugly features press closely to

the pane and disappear. It is growing lighter. The torches increase in

number, multiply and move up and down, like some curious dance or

procession. Now the torches crowd together and incline as if saluting;

the king and queen appear on the balcony. There is a blaze of light

behind them, but their faces are dark, and the crowd is not sure it is

really they, in person.

“Give us Light! Twentieth! Give us Light! We can not see thee!”

Suddenly several torches flash to the right and to the left of them,

and from a smoky cavern two flushed and trembling countenances come

into view. The people in the back are yelling: “It is not they! The

king has fled!” But those nearest now shout with the joy of relieved

anxiety: “Long live the Twentieth!” The crimson faces are now seen

moving slowly up and down, now bright in the lurid glare, now vanishing

in the shadow; they are bowing to the people. It is the Nineteenth, the

Fourth, the Second who are bowing; bowing in the crimson mist are those

mysterious creatures who had held so much enigmatic, almost divine

power, and behind them are vanishing in the crimson mist of the past,

murders, executions, majesty and dread. Now he must speak; the human

voice is needed; when he is silent and bows with his flaming face he is

terrible to look upon, like a devil conjured up from hell.

“Speak, Twentieth, speak!” A curious motion of the hand, calling for

silence, a strange commanding gesture, as ancient as kingcraft itself,

and a gentle unknown voice is heard dropping those ancient and curious

words: “I am glad to see my good people.” Is that all? And is it not

enough? He is glad! The Twentieth is glad! Be not angry with us

Twentieth. We love thee, Twentieth, love us, too. If you will not love

us we shall come again to see you in your study where you work, in your

dining-room where you eat, in your bed chamber where you sleep, and we

shall compel you to love us.

“Long live the Twentieth! Long live the king! Long live our master!”

Slaves!

Who said slaves? The torches are expiring. They are departing. The dim

lights are moving back into the palace, the windows are dark again, but

they flush with a crimson reflection. Someone is being sought in the

crowd. The crowds are hurrying, casting frightened glances behind. Had

he been here or had it been a mere fancy? They ought to have touched

him, fingered his garments or his face; he ought to have been made to

cry out with terror or pain. They disperse in silence; the shouts of

individuals are drowned in the discordant tramp of many feet; they are

filled with obscure memories, presentiments and terrors. And horrible

visions hover all night long over the city.

PART III.

He had already attempted to flee. He had bewitched some and lulled

others to sleep and had almost gained his diabolical liberty, when a

faithful son of the fatherland recognized him in the disguise of a

shabby domestic. Not trusting to his memory he looked on a coin which

bore his image—and the bells rang out in alarm, the houses belched

forth masses of pale and frightened people; it was he! Now he is in the

tower, in the immense black tower with the massive walls and the small

bastioned windows; and faithful sons of the people are watching him,

impervious to bribery, enchantment and flattery. To drive away fear the

guards drink and laugh and blow clouds of smoke right into his face,

when he essays to take a walk in the prison with his devilish progeny.

To prevent him from enchanting the passersby they had boarded up the

lower portions of the windows and the tower gallery where he was wont

to promenade, and only the wandering clouds in passing look into his

face. But he is strong. He transforms the laughter of a freeman into

servile tears; he sows seeds of disloyalty and treason from behind the

massive walls and they penetrate into the hearts of the people like

black flowers, staining the golden raiment of liberty into the likeness

of a wild beast’s skin. Traitors and enemies abound on all hands.

Descended from their thrones other powerful and mysterious lords gather

at the frontier with hordes of savage and bewitched people, matricides

ready to put to death freedom, their mother. In the houses, on the

streets, in the mysterious wilderness of forests and distant villages,

in the proud mansions of the popular assembly, there hisses the sound

of treason and glides the shadow of treachery. Woe unto the people!

They are betrayed by those who had been the first to raise the banner

of revolt and the traitors’ wretched remains are already cast out of

the dishonored sepulchres and their black blood drenches the earth. Woe

unto the people! They are betrayed by those to whom they had given

their hearts; betrayed by their own elect; whose faces are honest,

whose tongues are uncompromisingly stern and whose pockets are full of

somebody’s gold.

Now the city is to be searched. It was ordered that all should be in

their dwellings at mid-day; and when at the appointed hour the bells

were rung, their ominous sound rolled echoing over the deserted and

silent streets. Since the city’s birth there had never reigned such

stillness; not a soul near the fountains; the stores are closed; on the

streets, from one end to the other, not a pedestrian, not a carriage to

be seen. The alarmed and astonished cats wander in the shadow of the

silent walls; they can not tell whether it be day or night; and so

profound is the silence that it seems as if their velvety footfall were

plainly audible. The measured tones of the bells pass over the streets

like invisible brooms sweeping the city clean. Now the cats, too,

frightened at something, have disappeared. Silence and desolation.

Suddenly on every street there appear simultaneously little bands of

armed people. They converse loudly and freely and stamp their feet, and

although they are not many they seem to cause more noisy commotion than

the whole city when it is crowded with a hundred thousand pedestrians

and vehicles. Each house seems to swallow them up in succession and to

belch them forth again. And as they emerge another or two more are

belched forth with them, pale with malice or red with wrath. And they

walked with their hands in their pockets, for in those curious days no

one feared death, not even the traitors; and they entered into the dark

jaws of the prison houses. Ten thousand traitors were found that day by

the faithful servants of the people; they found ten thousand traitors

and cast them into prison. Now the prisons were pleasant and awful to

look upon; so full they were from top to bottom with disloyalty and

shameful treachery. One wondered that the walls could bear the load

without crumbling into dust.

That night there was a general rejoicing in the city. The houses were

emptied once more and the streets were filled; endless black throngs

engaged in a stupefying dance, a combination of quick and unexpected

gyrations. Dancing was in progress from one end of the city to the

other. Around the lamp-posts like the foaming surf that beats against

the rocks, knots of merrymakers had gathered, clasping hands, their

faces aglow with laughter, and wide-eyed, whirling around, now

vanishing from view and ever changing in expression. From the lamp-post

dangled the corpse of some executed traitor who had not succeeded in

reaching the shelter of his prison. His extended legs seeking the

ground, almost touched the heads of the dancers, and the corpse itself

seemed to dance, yes, it seemed to be the very master of ceremonies and

the ring-leader of the merriment, directing the dance.

Then they walked over to the black tower and craning their necks,

shouted: “Death to the Twentieth! Death!” Cheerful lights gleamed now

in the tower windows; the faithful sons of the people were watching the

tyrant. Calmed and assured that he could not escape, they shouted more

in a jest than seriously: “Death to the Twentieth!” And they departed,

making room for other shouters. But at night horrible dreams again

hovered over the city, and like poison which one has swallowed and

failed to spit out, the black towers and prisons reeking with traitors

and treachery, gnawed at the city’s vitals.

Now they were putting the traitors to death. They had sharpened their

sabres, axes and scythes; they had gathered blocks of wood and heavy

stones and for forty-eight hours they worked in the prisons until they

collapsed from fatigue. They slept anywhere near their bloody work,

they ate and drank there. The earth refused to absorb the streams of

sluggish blood; they had to cover it with heaps of straw, but that

covering too was drenched and transformed into brownish refuse. Seven

thousand traitors were put to death that day. Seven thousand traitors

had bitten the dust in order to cleanse the city and furnish life to

the newborn freedom. They marched again to see the Twentieth and held

up to his view the chopped off heads and the torn out hearts of the

traitors. And he saw them. Then confusion and consternation reigned in

the popular assembly. They sought him who had given the order to slay

and could not detect him. But someone must have given the order to

slay. Was it you? Or you? Or you? But who had dared to give orders

where the popular assembly alone had the right to command? Some are

smiling—they seem to know something.

“Murderers!”

“No! But we have compassion with our native land, while you express

pity with traitors!”

Still peace is afar off, and treachery is growing apace and

multiplying; insidiously it finds its way into the very hearts of the

people. Oh! the sufferings, and Oh! the bloodshed—and all in vain!

Through the massive walls that mysterious sovereign still sows the

seeds of treachery and enchantment. Alas for freedom! From the West

comes the news of terrible dissensions, of battles, of a crazed portion

of the people who had seceded and risen in arms against their mother,

the Freedom. Threats are heard from the south, and from the east and

the north other mysterious lords who had descended from their thrones

are closing in upon the land with their savage hordes. No matter whence

they come the clouds are imbued with the breath of foes and of

traitors. No matter whence they blow from the north and the south, from

the west and the east, the winds waft mutterings of threats and of

wrath, and strike joyfully on the ear of him who is imprisoned in the

tower, while they sound a funeral knell in the ears of citizens. Alas

for the people! Alas for liberty! At night the moon is bright and

radiant as if shining above ruins, but the sun even is lost in the mist

and the black concourse of clouds, deformed, monstrous and ugly, which

seem to strangle it. They attack it and strangle it and a mingled

shagginess of crimson, they crash into the abyss of the west. Once for

an instant the sun broke through the clouds—and how sad, awesome and

frightened was that ray of light. Hurriedly tender it seemed to caress

the tops of the trees, the roofs of the houses, the spires of the

churches.

But in the tower the one-eyed clockmaker, who could so conveniently use

the magnifying glass, walking amid his wheels and gears, his levers and

ropes, and bending his head to one side watches the swinging of the

mighty pendulum. “’Twas ever thus—’twill ever be. ’Twas ever

thus—’twill ever be!”

Once when he was very young the clock got out of order and stopped for

the space of two days. And it was such a terrifying experience, as if

all time had slipped into an abyss. But after the clock had been

repaired, all was well again, and now time seems to flow between one’s

fingers, to ooze drop by drop, to split into little pieces, falling an

inch at a time. The immense brazen disc of the pendulum lights up

faintly as it moves and seems to swing like a ball of gold if one looks

at it with half-closed eyes. A pigeon is heard cooing softly among the

rafters. “’Twas ever thus—’twill ever be!” “’Twas ever thus—’twill ever

be!”

PART IV.

The thousand-year-old monarchy was at last overthrown. There was no

need of the plebiscite; every man in the popular assembly had risen to

his feet, and from top to bottom it became filled with standing men.

Even that sick deputy who had been brought in an armchair rose to his

feet; supported by his friends he straightened his limbs, crushed with

paralysis, and stood erect like a tall withered stump supported by two

young and slender trees.

“The republic is accepted unanimously,” someone announced with a

sonorous voice, vainly attempting to conceal its triumphant tone.

But they all remained standing. A minute passed, then another; already

upon the public square, which was thronged with expectant people, there

had burst forth a thunderous manifestation of joy, but in the hall

there reigned a solemn stillness as in a cathedral, and stern,

majestically serious people, grown rigid in the attitude of proud

homage. Before whom are they standing? They no longer own a King, even

God, that tyrant and king of heaven, had long since been overthrown

from His celestial seat. They are paying homage to Liberty. The aged

deputy whose head had been shaking for years with senile palsy now

holds it up erect and proud. There, with an easy gesture of his hand,

he has pushed aside his friends; he is standing alone; liberty has

accomplished a miracle. These men who had long since forgotten the art

of weeping, living amid tempests, riots and bloodshed, are weeping now.

The cruel eyes of eagles which gazed calm and unmoved on the

blood-reeking sun of the Revolution can not withstand the gentle

radiance of Liberty, and they shed tears.

Silence reigns in the hall; but a tumultuous uproar is heard outside;

growing in volume and intensity it loses its sharpness; it is uniform

and mighty and brings to mind the roar of the limitless ocean. They are

all freemen now. Free are the dying, free are those coming into the

world, free are the living. The mysterious dominion of One which had

held the millions in its clutches is overthrown, the black vaults of

prisons have crumbled into dust—and overhead shines the cloudless and

radiant sky.

“Liberty”—someone whispers softly and tenderly like the name of a

sweetheart. “Liberty!” exclaims another, breathless with unutterable

joy, his face aglow with intense eagerness and lofty inspiration.

“Liberty!” is heard in the clanging of the iron. “Liberty!” sing the

stringed instruments. “Liberty!” roars the many-voiced ocean. He is

dead, the old deputy. His heart could not contain the infinite joy and

it stopped, its last beat being—Liberty! The most blessed of mortals;

into the mysterious shadow of the grave he will carry away an endless

vision of Newborn Freedom.

They had been awaiting frenzied excesses in the city, but none took

place. The breath of liberty ennobled the people, and they grew gentle

and tender and chaste in their demonstrations of joy. They only gazed

at one another, they caressed one another with a cautious touch of the

hand; it is so sweet to caress a free creature and to look into his

eyes. And no one was hanged. There was found a madman who shouted in

the crowd: “Long live the Twentieth!” twirled his mustache and prepared

himself for the brief struggle and the lengthy agony in the clutches of

a maddened throng. And some frowned, while others, the large majority,

merely wonderingly and curiously regarding the hair-brained fellow, as

a crowd of sightseers might gape at some curious simian from Brazil.

And they let him go.

It was late at night when they remembered the Twentieth. A crowd of

citizens who refused to part with the great day decided to roam around

until daybreak. By chance they bethought themselves of the Twentieth

and wended their way to the tower. That black structure merged into the

darkness of the sky and at the moment when the citizens approached

seemed to be in the act of swallowing a little star. Some stray bright

little star came close to it, flashed for a moment and disappeared in

the darkness. Very close to the ground, in a lower tier of the tower,

two lighted windows shone out into the darkness. There the faithful

custodians kept their unceasing vigil. The clock struck the hour of

two.

“Does he or does he not know?” inquired one of the visitors vainly

attempting to make out with his glance the contours of the pile, as if

endeavoring to solve its secrets. A dark silhouette now detached itself

from the wall, and a dull, weary voice responded:

“He is asleep, citizen.”

“Who are you, citizen? You startled me. You walk as softly as a cat!”

Other dark silhouettes now approached from various quarters and mutely

confronted the newcomers.

“Why don’t you answer? If you are a specter, please vanish without

delay; the assembly has abolished specters.”

But the stranger wearily replied: “We watch the tyrant.”

“Did the commune appoint you?”

“No. We appointed ourselves. There are thirty-six of us. There had been

thirty-seven, but one died; we watch the tyrant. We have lived near

this wall for two months or longer. We are very weary.”

“The nation thanks you. Do you know what happened to-day?”

“Yes, we heard something. We watch the tyrant.”

“Have you heard that we are a republic now? That we have liberty?”

“Yes, but we watch the tyrant and we are weary.”

“Let us embrace, brothers!”

Cold lips wearily touch the burning lips of the visitors.

“We are weary. He is so cunning and dangerous. Day and night we watch

the doors and the windows. I watch that window; you could hardly

distinguish it. So you say we have liberty? Very good. But we must go

back to our posts. Be calm, citizens. He is asleep. We receive reports

every half hour. He is sleeping now.”

The silhouettes moved, separated themselves and vanished as if they had

gone right through the walls. The gloomy old tower seemed to have grown

taller, and from one of the battlements there stretched over the city a

dark and shapeless cloud. It seemed as if the tower had grown out of

all proportion and was stretching its hand over the city. A light

flashed from the dense blackness of the wall and suddenly vanished,

like a signal. The cloud now covered the whole city and reflected with

a yellowish gleam the lurid glare of many fires. A drizzling rain

suddenly commenced to descend. All was silent and all was restless.

Was he really sleeping?

PART V.

A few more days passed in the new and delicious sensations of freedom,

and again new threads of distrust and fear appeared like dark veins

running through white marble. The tyrant received the news of his

overthrow with suspicious calmness. How can a man be calm when deprived

of a kingdom, unless he be planning something terrible? And how can the

people be calm, when in their midst there lives a mysterious one having

the gift of pernicious enchantment? Overthrown, he continues to be

terrible; imprisoned he demonstrates at will his diabolical power which

grows with distance. Thus the earth, black at close range, appears like

a shining star when seen from the depths of azure space. And in his

immediate surroundings his sufferings move to tears. A woman was seen

to kiss the hand of the queen. A guard was observed drying his tears.

An orator was heard appealing for mercy. As if even now he were not

happier than thousands of people who had never seen the light? Who

could warrant that on the morrow the land would not return to its

ancient madness, crawling in the dust before him, begging his pardon

and rearing anew his throne which it cost so much labor and pain to

overthrow!

Bristling with frenzy and terror the millions are listening to the

speeches in the popular assembly. Curious speeches. Terrifying words.

They speak of his inviolability; they say he is sacro-sanct, that he

may not be judged like others are judged, that he may not be punished

like others are punished, that he may not be put to death, for he is

the King. Consequently Kings still exist! And these words are spoken by

those who have sworn to love the people and liberty; the words are

uttered by men of tried honesty, by sworn foes of tyranny, by the sons

of the people who came forth from the loins of those that were scarred

by the merciless and sacrilegious rule of the Kings. Ominous blindness!

Already the majority is inclining in favor of the overthrown one; as if

a dense yellow fog issuing forth from that tower had forced its way

into the holy mansions of the people’s mind, blinding their bright eyes

strangling their newly gained freedom; thus a bride adorned with white

blossoms might meet death in the hour of her bridal triumph. Dull

despair creeps into the heart, and many hands convulsively stroke the

trusted blade; it is better to die with Brutus than to live with

Octavianus.

Final remonstrances full of deadly indignation.

“Do you wish to have one man in the land and thirty-five million

animals?”

Yes, they wish it. They stand silent with downcast eyes. They are weary

of fighting, weary of exercising their will, and in their lassitude, in

their yawning and stretching, in their colorless cold words which,

however, have a magic effect, one almost fancies the contour of a

throne. Scattered exclamations, dull speeches, and the blind silence of

unanimous treachery. Liberty is perishing, the luckless bride adorned

with white blossoms, who has met her doom in the hour of her bridal

triumph.

But hark! The sound of marching. They are coming; like the sound of

dozens of gigantic drums beating a wild tattoo. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!

They come from the suburbs. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! They march in defense

of liberty. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Woe unto traitors! Tramp! Tramp!

Tramp! Traitors, beware!

“The People ask permission to march past the assembly.”

But who could stop an avalanche? Who would dare tell an earthquake, “So

far and no further shalt thou go!”

The doors are thrown open. There they come from the suburbs. Their

faces are the color of the earth. Their breasts are bared. An endless

kaleidoscope of motley rags that serve for raiment. A triumph of

impulsive, uncontrolled movements. An ominous harmony of disorder. A

marching chaos. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! Eyes flashing fire! Prongs,

scythes, tridents, fenceposts. Men, women and children. Tramp! Tramp!

Tramp!

“Long live the representatives of the people! Long live liberty! Death

to traitors!”

The deputies smile, frown, bow amiably. They grow dizzy watching the

motley procession that seems to have no end. It looks like a torrential

stream rushing through a cavern. All faces begin to look alike. All

shouts merge into one uniform and solid roar. The tramp of the feet

resembles the patter of raindrops upon the roof, a sporific,

will-subduing sound which dominates consciousness. A gigantic roof,

gigantic raindrops.

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! One hour passes, then two, then three, and still

they are filing past. The torches burn with a crimson glare and emit

smoke. Both openings, the one through which the people enter and the

one through which they file out are like yawning jaws; and it is as if

some black ribbon, gleaming with copper and iron, stretched from one

door and through the other. Fanciful pictures now present themselves to

the weary eye. Now it is an endless belt, now a titanic, swollen and

hairy worm. Those sitting above the doors imagine themselves standing

on a bridge and feel like floating away. Now and then the clear and

unusually vivid realization comes to one’s mind: it is the people. And

pride, and consciousness of the power and the thirst for great freedom

such as has never been known before. A free people, what happiness!

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! They have been marching for eight hours and still

the end is not yet. From both sides, where the people enter and where

they file out, rode the thunderous notes of the song of the revolution.

The words can be hardly heard. Only the time, the cadences and the

notes are plainly distinguished. Momentary stillness and threating

shouts. “To arms, citizens! Gather into battalions! Let us go! Let us

go!”

They go.

No need of a vote. Liberty is safe once more.

PART VI.

Then came the fateful day of the royal judgment. The mysterious power,

ancient as the world, was called upon to answer for its misdeeds to the

very people it had so long held in bondage. It was called upon to

answer to the world which it dishonored by the triumph of its

absurdity. Stripped of its cap and bells, deprived of its gaudy throne,

of its high-sounding titles and of all those queer symbols of dominion,

naked it will stand before the people and will tell by whose right and

authority it had exercised its rule over millions, vesting in the

person of one being the power to do wrong with impunity, to rob men of

their freedom, to inflict punishment and death. But the Twentieth has

been judged already by the conscience of the people. No mercy will be

shown him. Yet, ere he goes to his doom, let him unbosom himself, let

him acquaint the people, not with his deeds, they are sufficiently well

known to them, but with the thoughts, the motives and the feelings of a

king. That mythical dragon who devours children and virgins, who has

held the world in thrall, is now securely fettered and bound with heavy

chains. He will be taken to the public square and soon the people will

see his scaly trunk, his venomous fangs and the cruel jaws that exhale

fierce flames.

Some plot was feared. All night long troops had marched through the

tranquil streets, filling the squares and passages, fencing in the

route of the royal procession with rows of gleaming bayonets,

surrounding it with a wall of somber and sternly solemn faces. Above

the black silhouettes of buildings and churches, that loomed sharp,

square-shaped and strangely indistinct in the twilight of the early

dawn, there appeared the first faint gleam of the yellow and cloudy

sky, the cold sky of the city, looking as aged as the houses and, like

them, covered with soot and rust. It resembled some painting hanging in

a dark hall of an ancient baronial castle.

The city slept in anxious anticipation of the great and portentous day,

while on the streets the citizen-soldiers moved quietly in well-formed

ranks, striving to muffle the sounds of their heavy footsteps. The

low-browed cannon, almost grazing the ground with their chins, rattled

insolently over the roadways with the ruddy glare of a fuse on each

piece of ordnance.

Orders were given in a subdued tone, almost in a whisper, as if the

commanders feared to waken some light and suspicious sleeper. Whether

they feared for the king and his safety, or whether they feared the

king himself, no one knew. But everybody knew that there was need of

preparation, need of summoning the entire strength of the people.

The morning would dawn, but slowly; massive yellow clouds, bushy and

grimy as if they had been rubbed with a filthy cloth, hung over the

church spires, and only as the king emerged from the tower the sun

burst into radiance through a rift in the clouds. Happy augury for the

people, ominous warning for the tyrant!

And thus was he taken from prison; through a narrow lane formed by two

solid lines of troops there moved companies of armed soldiers—one, two,

ten, you could not have counted their number. Then came the guns,

rattling, rattling, rattling. Then gripped in the vice-like embrace of

rifles, sabers and bayonets came the carriage, scarcely able to

proceed. And again fresh guns and companies of soldiers. And all

through that journey of many miles silence preceded the carriage, and

was behind it and all around it. At one point in the public square

there were heard a few tentative shouts, “Death to the Twentieth!” But

finding no support in the crowd, the shouts subsided. Thus in the chase

of a wild boar only the inexperienced dogs are heard barking, but those

who will maim and be maimed are silent, gathering wrath and strength.

In the assembly there reigns an excitedly subdued hubbub of

conversation. They have been expecting for some hours the coming of the

tyrant, who approaches with snail-like pace; the deputies walk about

the corridors in agitation, every moment changing their positions,

laughing without apparent cause and animatedly gossiping about any

trivial thing. But many are sitting motionless, like statues of stone,

and their expression is also stone-like. Their faces are young, but the

furrows thereon are deep and old, as if hewn by an ax, and their hair

is rough; their eyes either ominously hidden in the cavernous depths of

the skull or intently drawn forward, wide and comprehensive, as if not

shaded by eyebrows, like torches burning in the gloomy recesses of a

prison. There is no terror on earth which these eyes could not gaze on

without a tremor. There is no cruelty, no sorrow, no spectral horror

before which this glance would flinch, hardened as they had been in the

furnace of the revolution. Those who were the first to launch the great

movement have long since died and their ashes have been scattered

abroad; they are forgotten, forgotten are their ideas, aspirations and

yearnings. The onetime thunder of their speeches is like the rattle in

the hands of a babe; the great freedom of which they dreamt now seems

like the crib of a child with a canopy to protect it from flies and the

glare of daylight. But these have grown up amid the storms and live in

the tempest; they are the darling children of tumultuous days, of

blood-reeking heads borne aloft on lances like pumpkins, of massive and

mighty hearts made to give forth blood; of titanic orations, where a

word is sharper than the dagger and an idea more pitiless than

gunpowder. Obedient only to the will of the people they have summoned

the specter of imperious power, and now, cold and passionless, like

surgeons dissecting a corpse, like judges, like executioners, they will

analyze its ghostly bluish effulgence which so awes the ignorant and

the superstitious, they will dissect its spectral members, they will

discover the black venom of tyranny, and they will let it pass to its

doom.

Now the hubbub outside grows faint, and stillness profound and black as

the heavens at night ensues; now the rattle of approaching cannon.

This, too, subsides. A slight commotion near the entrance. Everybody is

seated; they must be sitting when the tyrant enters. They strive to

look unconcerned. Heavy tramping of troops placed in various stations

about the building and a subdued clanging of arms. The last of the

cannon outside conclude their noisy peregrination. Like a ring of steel

they surround the buildings, their jaws pointing outward, facing the

whole world—the west and the east, the north and the south. Something

looking quite insignificant entered the hall. Seen from the more

distant benches higher up it appeared to be a fat, undersized manikin

with swift uncertain movements. Observed at close range it was seen to

be a stout man of medium height, with a prominent nose that was crimson

with the cold, baggy cheeks and dull little eyes, an expressive mixture

of good nature, insignificance and stupidity. He turns his head, not

knowing whether to bow or not, and then nods lightly; he stands in

indecision, with feet spread apart, not knowing whether he may sit down

or not. Not a word is heard, but there is a chair behind him, evidently

intended for him, and he sits down, first unobtrusively, then more

firmly, and finally assumes a majestic posture. He has evidently a

severe cold, for he draws from his pocket a handkerchief and uses it

with apparent enjoyment, emitting a loud and trumpet-like sound. Then

he pulls himself together, pockets his handkerchief and grows

majestically rigid. He is ready. Such is the Twentieth.

PART VII.

They had been expecting a King, but there appeared before them a clown.

They had been expecting a dragon, but there came a big-nosed bourgeois

with a handkerchief and a bad cold. It was funny, and curious and a

little uncanny. Had not someone substituted a pretender in his place?

“It is I, the King,” says the Twentieth.

Yes, it is he, indeed. How funny he is! Think of him for a King! The

people smiled, shrugged their shoulders and could hardly refrain from

laughter. They exchanged mocking smiles and salutes and seemed to

inquire in the language of signs: “Well, what do you think of Him?” The

deputies were very serious and pale. Undoubtedly the feeling of

responsibility oppressed them. But the people were merry in a quiet

way. How had they managed to make their way into the assembly hall? How

does water trickle through a hole? They had penetrated through some

broken windows, they had almost slipped through the keyholes. Hundreds

of ragged and phantastically attired but extremely courteous and

affable strangers. Crowding a deputy they solicitously inquired: “Hope

I am not in your way, citizen?” They were very polite. Like quaint

birds, they clung in dark rows to the window sills, obstructing the

light and seemed to be signalling something to the people in the square

outside. It was apparently something funny.

But the deputies are serious, very serious and even pale. They fix

their eager eyes like magnifying lenses upon the Twentieth, gazing upon

him long and intently, and turn away frowning. Some have closed their

eyes altogether. They loathe the sight of the tyrant. “Citizen deputy,”

exclaims with delighted awe one of the courteous strangers; “see how

the tyrant’s eyes are glowing.” Without raising his drooping eyelids

the deputy replies, “Yes!”

“How well nourished he looks.”

“Yes.”

“But you are not very talkative, citizen!”

Silence again. There below the Twentieth is already mumbling his

speech. He can not understand of what he could be accused. He had

always loved the people and the people loved him; and he still loved

the people in spite of all insults. If the people think a Republic

would suit them better, let them have a republic. He has nothing

against it.

“But why then did you summon other tyrants?”

“I did not summon them; they came of their own accord.”

This answer is false. Documents had been found in a secret drawer

establishing the fact of the negotiations. But he insists, clumsily and

stupidly, like any ordinary rascal caught cheating. He even looks

offended. As a matter of fact he has always had the best interests of

the people at heart. No, he has not been cruel; he always pardoned

whomever he could pardon. No, he has not ruined the land by his

extravagance, he only used for himself as much as an ordinary plain

citizen might. He had never been a profligate or a wastrel. He is a

lover of Greek and Latin classical literature and of cabinet making.

All the furniture in his study is the work of his hands. So much is

correct. To look at him, he certainly had the appearance of a plain

citizen; there are multitudes of stout fellows like him with noses that

emit trumpet-like sounds; they may be met a-plenty on the riverside of

a holiday, fishing. Insignificant funny men with big noses. But he had

been a King! What could it mean? Then anybody could be a King!

A gorilla might become an absolute ruler over men! And a golden throne

might be reared for it to sit on! And divine honor might be paid to it,

and it might lay dawn the laws of life for the people. A hoary gorilla,

a pitiful survival of the forest!

The brief autumn day is drawing to a close, and the people begin to

express impatience. Why bother so long with the tyrant? What, is there

some new treachery being hatched? In the twilight of an ante-chamber

two deputies meet. They scrutinize one another and exchange a glance of

mutual recognition. Then they walk together, for some reason avoiding

contact with their bodies.

“But where is the tyrant?” suddenly exclaims one of them and grasps the

shoulder of his companion, “Tell me, where is the tyrant?”

“I don’t know. I feel too ashamed to enter the hall.”

“Horrible thought! Is insignificance the secret of tyranny? Are

nonentities our real tyrants?”

“I don’t know, but I am ashamed.”

The little ante-chamber was quiet, but from all sides, from the

assembly hall and from the public square outside, there was heard a

dull roaring. Each individual perhaps spoke in low tones, but

altogether the result was an elemental turmoil like the roaring of the

distant ocean. A ruddy glare seemed to be flitting over the walls,

evidently men outside were lighting their torches. Then not afar off

was heard the measured tramping of feet and the subdued rattle of arms.

They were relieving the watches. Whom are they watching? What is the

use?

“Drive him out of the country!” “No. The people will not permit it. He

must be killed.” “But that would be another wrong.”

The ruddy spots seem now climbing up and down along the walls, and

spectral shadows make their appearance, now creeping, now leaping; as

if the bloody days of the past and of the present were passing in

review in an endless procession through the visions of a dreamer. The

turmoil outside grows more boisterous; one can almost discern

individual shouts. “For the first time in my life, to-day a feeling of

dread has seized my heart.”

“Likewise of despair, and of shame.”

“Yes, and of despair! Let me have your hand, brother. How cold it is.

Here in the face of unknown perils and in the hour of a great

humiliation, let us swear that we will not betray freedom. We shall

perish. I felt it to-day. But perishing let us shout, “Liberty,

liberty, brothers!” Let us shout it so loud that a world of slaves

shall quake with fear. Clasp my hand tighter, brother.”

It was still now; here and there crimson spots flared up along the

walls, while the misty shadows moved with swiftness, but the abyss

below roared and thundered with increasing fury, as if a dreadful and

mighty hurricane had come sweeping onward from the north and the south,

from the west and the east, and had stirred the multitude with its

terror. Fragments of songs and howls and one word as if sketched in

stupendous jagged black outlines in the chaos of sounds:

“Death! Death to the Tyrant!”

The two deputies were standing lost in a reverie. Time passed on, but

still they stood there, unmoved in the maddened chase of shadow shapes

and smoke, and it seemed as if they had been standing there for ages.

Thousands of spectral years surrounded them with the mighty and

majestic silence of eternity, while the shadows whirled on frenziedly,

and the shouts rose and fell beating against the window like windswept

breakers. At times the weird and mysterious rhythm of the surf could be

discerned in the turmoil and the thunderous roar of the breaking waves.

“Death! Death to the tyrant!” At last they stirred from the spot.

“Well let us go in there!” “Let us go in! Fool that I was! I had

thought that this day would end the fight with tyranny.” “The fight is

just commencing. Let us go in!”

They passed through dark corridors and dawn marble stairways, through

chilly and silent halls that are as damp as cellars. Suddenly a gleam

of light, a wave of heated air like the breath of a furnace, a hubbub

of voices like a hundred caged parrots talking against time. Then

another doorway and at their feet there opens an immense chasm,

littered with heads, semi-dark and filled with smoke. Reddish tongues

of candles stifling for want of fresh air. Someone is speaking

somewhere. Thunderous applause. The speech is apparently ended. At the

very bottom of the abyss, between two flickering lights is the small

figure of the Twentieth. He is wiping the perspiration from his

forehead with a handkerchief, bends low over the table and reads

something with an indistinct mumbling voice. He is reading his speech

of defense. How hot he feels! Ho, Twentieth! Remember that you are

king. Raise your voice ennoble the ax and the executioner! No! He

mumbles on, tragically serious in his stupidity.

PART VIII.

Many watched the execution of the king from the roofs, but even the

roofs were not sufficient to accommodate the sight-seers and many did

not succeed after all in seeing how kings are executed. But the high

and narrow houses, with the queer coiffure of mobile creatures instead

of roofs seemed to have become endowed with life, and their opened

windows resembled black, winking eyes. Behind the houses rose church

spires and towers, some pointed and others blunt, and at first glance

they looked the same as usual, but on closer observation they appeared

to be dotted with dark transverse lines which seemed to be swaying to

and fro; they, too, were crowded with people. Nothing could be seen

from so great a height, but they looked on just the same. Seen from the

roofs of houses the scaffold seemed as small as a child’s plaything,

something like a toy barrow with broken handles. The few persons who

stood apart from the sight-seers and in the immediate neighborhood of

the scaffold, the only few persons who stood by themselves (the rest of

the people having been merged into a dense mass of black), those few

persons standing by themselves oddly resembled tiny black ants walking

erect. Everything seemed to be on a level, and yet they laboriously and

slowly ascended invisible steps. And it seemed strange that right

beside one, upon the neighboring roofs, there stood people with large

heads, mouths and noses. The drums beat loudly. A little black coach

drove up to the scaffold. For quite a little while nothing could be

discerned. Then a little group separated itself from the mass and very

slowly ascended some invisible steps. Then the group dispersed, leaving

in the center a tiny looking individual. The drums beat again and one’s

heart stood still. Suddenly the tattoo came to an end hoarsely and

brokenly. All was still. The tiny lone figure raised its hand, dropped

it and raised it again. It is evidently speaking, but not a word is

heard. What is it saying? What is it saying? Suddenly the drums broke

into a tattoo, scattering abroad their martial beats, and rending the

air into myriads of particles which hindered one from seeing. Commotion

on the scaffold. The little figure has vanished. He is being executed.

The drums beat again and all of a sudden, hoarsely and brokenly, cease

from their tumult. On the spot where the Twentieth had stood just a

moment before there is a new little figure with extended hand. And in

that hand there is seen something tiny, that is light on one side and

dark on the other, like a pin head dyed in two colors. It is the head

of the King. At last! The coffin, with the body and the head of the

King, was rushed off somewhere, and the conveyance that bore it away

drove off at a breakneck speed, crushing the people in its path. It was

feared that the frenzied populace would not spare even the remains of

the tyrant. But the people were terrible indeed. Imbued with the

ancient slavish fear they could not bring themselves to believe that it

had really taken place, that the inviolable sacrosanct and potent

sovereign had placed his head under the ax of the executioner:

desperately and blindly they besieged the scaffold; eyes very often

play tricks on one and the ears deceive. They must touch the scaffold

with their hands, they must breathe in the odor of royal blood, steep

their arms in it up to the elbows. They fought, scrambled, fell and

screamed. There something soft, like a bundle of rags, rolls under the

feet of the crowd. It is the body of one crushed to death. Then another

and another. Having fought their way to the heap of ruins which

remained of the scaffold, with feverish hands they broke off fragments

of it, scraping them off with their nails; they demolished the scaffold

greedily, blindly grabbing heavy beams, and after a step or two fell

under the burden. And the crowd closed in over the heads of the fallen

while the beams rose to the surface, floated along as if borne on some

current, and diving again it showed for a moment its jagged edge and

then disappeared. Some found a little pool of blood that the thirsting

ground had not yet drained and that had not yet been trampled under

foot, and they dipped into it their handkerchiefs and their raiment.

Many smeared the blood on their lips and imprinted some mysterious

signs on their foreheads, anointing themselves with the blood of the

King to the new reign of freedom. They were intoxicated with savage

delight. Unaccompanied by song or speech they whirled in a breathless

dance; ran about raising aloft their bloodstained rags, and scattered

over the city, shouting, roaring and laughing incontinently and

strangely. Some attempted to sing, but songs were too slow, too

harmonious and rhythmical, and they again resumed their wild laughing

and shouting. They started toward the national assembly intending to

thank the deputies for ridding the land of the tyrant, but on the way

they were deflected from their goal by the pursuit of a traitor who

shouted: “The King is dead, long live the King! Long live the

Twenty-first!” And then they dispersed—after having hanged someone.

Many of those who secretly continued to be loyal to the King could not

bear the thought of his execution and lost their minds; many others,

though they were cowards, committed suicide. Until the very last moment

they waited for something, hoped for something, and had faith in the

efficacy of their prayers. But when the execution had taken place they

were seized with despair. Some grimly and sullenly, others in

sacrilegious frenzy pierced their hearts with daggers. And there were

some who ran out into the street with a savage thirst for martyrdom,

and facing the avalanche of the people shouted madly, “Long live the

Twenty-first!” and they perished.

The day was drawing to a close and the night was breaking upon the

city, the stern and truthful night which has no eyes for that which is

visible. The city was yet bright with the glare of street lights, but

the river under the bridge was as black as liquid soot, and only in the

distance, where it curved, and where the last pale cold gleams of

sunset were dying away, it shone dimly like the cold reflection of

polished metal. Two men stood on the bridge, leaning against its

masonry, and peered into the dark and mysterious depth of the river.

“Do you believe that freedom really came to-day?” asked one of the

twain in a low tone of voice, for the city was yet bright with many

lights, while the river below stretched away, wrapped in blackness.

“Look, a corpse is floating there,” exclaimed the other, and he spoke

in a low tone of voice, for the corpse was very near and its broad blue

face was turned upward.

“There are many of them floating in the river these days. They are

floating down to the sea.”

“I have not much faith in their liberty. They are too happy over the

death of the Insignificant One.”

From the city where the lights were yet burning the breeze wafted

sounds of voices, of laughter and of songs. Merrymaking was still in

progress.

“Dominion must be destroyed yet,” said the first.

“The slaves must be destroyed. There is no such thing as dominion;

slavery alone exists. There goes another corpse. And still another. How

many there are of them. Where do they come from? They appear so

suddenly from under the bridge!”

“But the people love liberty.”

“No. They merely fear the whip. When they shall learn to love liberty

they will become free.”

“Let us go hence. The sight of these corpses nauseates me.”

And as they turned to depart, while the lights were yet shining in the

city and the river was as black as liquid soot, they beheld something

massive and somber, that seemed begotten of darkness and light. From

the east, where the river lost itself in the maze of gloom-enveloped

meadows, and where the darkness was a stir like a thing of life, there

rose something immense, shapeless and blind. It rose and stopped

motionless, and though it had no eyes it looked, and though it had no

hands, it extended them over the city, and though it was a dead thing,

it lived and breathed. The sight was awe inspiring.

“That is the fog rising over the river,” said the first.

“No, that is a cloud,” said the second.

It was both a fog and a cloud.

“It seems to be looking.” It was.

“It seems to be listening.” It was.

“It is coming toward us.” No, it remained motionless. It remained

motionless, immense, shapeless and blind; upon its weird excrescences

shone with a ruddy glow the reflected gleaming of the city’s lights,

and below, at its foot, the black river lost itself in the embrace of

gloom enveloped meadows, and the darkness was a stir like a thing of

life. Swaying sullenly upon the waves corpses floated into the darkness

and lost themselves in the gloom, and new corpses took their places,

swaying dumbly and sullenly and disappeared—countless corpses, silent,

thinking their own thoughts, black and cold as the water that was

carrying them hence. And in that lofty tower from where early that

morning the King had been taken to his doom, the one-eyed clockmaker

was fast asleep right under the great pendulum. That day he had been

very pleased with the stillness that reigned in his tower. He even had

burst into song, that one-eyed clockmaker. Yes, he had been singing;

and he walked about affectionately among his wheels and levers until

dark. He felt the guy ropes, sat on the rungs of his ladders, swinging

his feet and purring, and would not look at the pendulum, pretending

that he was cross. But then he looked at it sideways and laughed out

loudly, and the pendulum answered him with joyous peals. It kept on

swinging, smiling all over its brazen face and roaring; “’Twas ever

thus! ’Twill ever be! ’Twas ever thus! ’Twill ever be!”

“Come now! Come now!” urged the one-eyed clockmaker, splitting his

sides with laughter. “’Twas ever thus! ’Twill ever be!” And when it had

grown quite dark the one-eyed hermit sought rest beneath the swinging

pendulum and was soon asleep. But the pendulum did not sleep, and kept

on swinging all night long above his head, wafting strange dreams to

the sleeper.

(The End.)

Judas Iscariot.

CHAPTER I.

Jesus Christ had been frequently warned that Judas of Kerioth was a man

of ill repute, a man against whom one should be on guard. Some of the

disciples of Jesus who had been to Judea knew him well personally,

others had heard a great deal of him, and there was none to say a good

word concerning him. And if the good condemned him saying that Judas

was covetous, treacherous, given to hypocrisy and falsehood, evil men

also, when questioned about him, denounced him in the most opprobrious

terms. “He always sows dissensions among us” they would say spitting

contemptuously at the mere mention of his name; “he has thoughts of his

own, and creeps into a house softly like a scorpion, but goes out with

noise.” Even thieves have friends, robbers have comrades, and liars

have wives to whom they speak the truth, but Judas mocks alike the

thieves and the honest, though he is a skillful thief himself, and in

appearance he is the most ill-favored among the inhabitants of Judea.

“No, he is not of us this Judas of Kerioth”, the evil would say to the

surprise of those good people who saw but little difference between

them and other vicious men in Judea.

It was rumored also that Judas had years back forsaken his wife, and

that the poor woman, hungry and wretched, was vainly striving to eke

out her sustenance from the three rocks that formed the patrimony of

Judas, while he wandered aimlessly for many years among the nations,

reaching in his travels the sea, and even another sea that was further

still, lying, cutting apish grimaces and keenly searching for something

with his thievish eye, only to depart suddenly, leaving in his wake

unpleasantness and dissension,—curious, cunning and wicked like a

one-eyed demon. He had no children, and this again showed that Judas

was an evil man, and that God desired no progeny from him.

None of the disciples had noticed the occasion on which this red-haired

and repulsive Judean first came near the Christ. But he had been going

their way for some time already, unabashed, mingling in their

conversations, rendering them small services, bowing, smiling,

ingratiating himself. There were moments when he seemed to fit into the

general scheme, deceiving the wearied scrutiny, but often he obtruded

himself on the eye and the ear, offending both as something incredibly

repulsive, false and loathsome. Then they would drive him away with

stern rebuke, and for a time he would be lost somewhere on the road,

merely to reappear unobserved, servile, flattering and cunning like a

one-eyed demon. And there was no doubt to some of His disciples that in

his desire to come near Jesus there was hidden some mysterious object,

some evil and calculating design.

But Jesus did not heed their counsel; their voice of warning did not

touch His ear. With that spirit of radiant contradiction which

irrepressibly drew Him to the rejected and the unloved, He resolutely

received Judas and included him even in the circle of His chosen ones.

The disciples were agitated and murmured among themselves, but He sat

still, His face turned to the setting sun, and listened

pensively,—perhaps to them and perhaps to something entirely different.

For ten days not a breath of wind had stirred the atmosphere, and the

same diaphanous air, stationary, immobile, keen of scent and perception

hung over the earth. And it seemed as though it had preserved in its

diaphanous depth all that had been shouted and sung during these days

by man, beast or bird,—the tears, the sobs and the merry songs, the

prayers and the curses; and these glassy transfixed sounds seemed to

burden and satiate it with invisible life. And once more the sun was

setting. Its flaming orb was heavily rolling down the firmament,

setting it ablaze with its dying radiance, and all on earth that was

turned toward it: the swarthy face of Jesus, the walls of houses and

the foliage of trees reflected obediently that distant and weirdly

pensive light. The white wall was no longer white now, nor did the

crimson city on the crimson hill appear white to the eye.

And now came Judas.

He came humbly bowing, bending his back, cautiously and anxiously

stretching out his misshapen large head, and looking just like those

who knew had pictured him. He was gaunt, well built, in stature almost

as tall as Jesus, who was slightly bent from the habit of thinking

while He walked. And he seemed to be sufficiently vigorous, though for

some reason he pretended to be ailing and frail, and his voice was

changeable: now manly and strong, now shrill like the voice of an old

woman scolding her husband, thin and grating on the ear. And often the

listener wished to draw the words of Judas out of his ears like some

vile insect. His stubbly red hair failed to conceal the strange and

unusual form of his skull: it seemed cleft from the back by a double

blow of the sword and patched together. It was plainly divided into

four parts, and its appearance inspired mistrust and even awe. Such a

skull does not bode peace and concord; such a skull leaves in its wake

the noise of bloody and cruel conflicts. The face of Judas, too, was

double: one side, with its black, keen, observing eye was living,

mobile, ready to gather into a multitude of irregular wrinkles. The

other side was free from wrinkles, deathly smooth, flat and rigid; and

though in size it was equal to the other, it seemed immense because of

the wide-open, sightless eye. Covered with an opaque film it never

closed night or day, facing alike the light and the darkness; but its

vigilant and cunning mate was so close that one was loth to credit its

entire blindness. When in fear or excitement Judas happened to close

his seeing eye and shake his head, it rolled with the motion of the

head and gazed silently and intently. Even altogether unobserving

persons realized when they looked on the Iscariot that such a man could

bring no good; but Jesus took him up and even seated him at His side,

at His very side!

John, the beloved disciple, moved away loathingly, while the others,

loving their Teacher, looked on the ground with disapproval. But Judas

sat down, and, moving his head to the left and to the right,

immediately commenced to complain with a thin voice of various

ailments, how his breast pained at night, how he was apt to lose breath

when walking uphill or grow dizzy at the edge of the precipice, hardly

restraining a stupid desire to cast himself into the abyss. And many

other things he invented impiously, evidently failing to grasp that

sickness comes to man not by chance but is born from a failure to shape

his acts in accord with the commands of the Eternal. He rubbed his

chest with his palm and coughed hypocritically, this Judas of Kerioth,

amid general silence and downcast glances.

John, avoiding the Teacher’s glance, whispered to Simon Peter:—“Art

thou not tired of this falsehood? I cannot bear it longer and I shall

go hence.”

Peter looked at Jesus, and meeting His glance, swiftly rose to his

feet. “Wait!” he said to his friend.

Once more he glanced at Jesus and then, impetuously, like a rock

dislodged from the mountain side, he gained the side of Judas Iscariot

and loudly greeted him with a wide and unmistakable cordiality:—“Now

you are with us, Judas!” Then he amiably slapped the newcomer’s curved

back, and not seeing the Teacher, though feeling His glance, he added

with that loud voice of his which dispelled all objections as water

displaces air:

“Your bad looks do not matter. We get uglier creatures into our nets

and they turn out the best to eat. And it is not for us, fishers for

the Lord, to throw away our haul because the fish is ugly and one-eyed.

I saw once in Tyre an octopus caught by the fishermen there and was

scared enough to run. They laughed at me, who am a fisherman from

Tiberias, and gave me a taste of it. And I asked for another helping,

it was so fine. Dost Thou remember, Teacher, I told Thee of it and Thou

didst laugh? And thou, too, Judas, resemblest an octopus, at least one

half of thee does.”

And he laughed loudly, pleased with his jest. When Peter spoke, his

words sounded firm and solid as though he were nailing them down with a

hammer. When Peter moved or did anything he made a noise that was heard

afar off and evoked a response from the dullest objects: the stone

floor groaned under his feet, the doors trembled and banged, and the

very air was thrilled. In the mountain fastnesses his voice woke an

angry echo, and in the morning, while they fished, it rolled sonorously

over the somnolently glistening waters and beguiled the first timid

rays of the sun into a responsive smile. And perhaps that was why they

loved Peter so: while upon the faces of others there rested yet the

shadows of the night, his massive head and bare bosom and freely

swinging arms glowed already in the radiance of the rising sun.

The words of Peter, approved by the Teacher, dispelled the

embarrassment of the disciples. But some of them, who had been to the

seashore and had seen the octopus, were disquieted by the simile which

Peter had so frivolously applied to the new disciple. They remembered

the monster’s immense eyes, the multitude of its greedy tentacles, its

pretended calm at the very moment it was ready to embrace and to crush

the victim and to suck out its life, without a single wink of its great

big eyes.

What was that? Jesus was silent, Jesus smiled; He was watching them

with a kindly smile while Peter spoke of the octopus,—and one after the

other the confused disciples approached Judas, addressing him

cordially, but they walked away quickly and in embarrassment.

And only John, the Son of Zebedee, remained obstinately silent; and

Thomas too was ruminating over the incident and apparently could not

make up his mind to say anything. He intently watched Christ and Judas

who were seated together, and this strange proximity of divine beauty

and monstrous hideousness, of the Man with the gentle glance and the

Octopus with the immense, immobile lack-lustre, greedy eyes—oppressed

his mind like an unfathomable mystery. He strained and wrinkled his

straight and smooth forehead, half closing his eyes in an effort to see

better, but his exertion had only the effect of making it appear that

Judas had really eight restlessly shuffling tentacles. But that was an

error. Thomas realized this and gazed again with obstinate effort.

But Judas little by little grew bolder: he stretched out his arms,

which he had held cramped at the elbows, relaxed the muscles that had

kept his jaws in a state of rigidity and cautiously proceeded to

exhibit his redhaired skull. It was in the plain view of all, but it

seemed to Judas that it had been deeply and impenetrably hidden from

sight by some invisible, opaque and cunningly devised film. And as one

emerging from the grave, he first felt the rays of light touching his

strangely shaped skull and then his sight met the eyes of the

onlookers. He paused and suddenly revealed his entire face. But nothing

happened. Peter had gone somewhere on an errand. Jesus sat musing and

leaned His head upon His arm, softly swinging His sunburnt foot. The

disciples were conversing quietly and only Thomas was attentively and

seriously scrutinizing him like a conscientious tailor taking his

customer’s measure. Judas smiled, but Thomas did not respond, though he

apparently took the smile into account, like everything else, and

continued his scrutiny. But a disquieting sensation annoyed the left

side of Judas’ face and he turned around: from a dark corner John was

looking upon him with his cold and beautiful eyes, handsome, pure,

without a spot on his snowwhite conscience. Walking apparently like

other people, but with the inward feeling of slinking away like a

chastised dog, Judas approached him and said:

“Why art thou silent, John? Thy words are like golden fruit in

transparent silver vessels. Give some of it unto Judas who is so poor.”

John gazed at the immobile and wide-open eye and did not utter a word.

And he saw Judas creep away, linger an instant irresolutely and

disappear in the darkness of the open doorway.

It was the time of the full moon and many took the opportunity for a

walk. Jesus, too, went forth with the others, and Judas watched the

departing figures from the low roof on which he had spread his bed. In

the moonlight each figure had on airy and deliberate aspect and seemed

to float, with its black shadow in the rear. Suddenly the man would

vanish in the gloom and then his voice would be heard. But when the

people emerged again into the moonlight, they seemed silent like the

white walls, like the black shadows, like that transparently hazy and

moonlit night.

Most people were sleeping already when Judas heard the gentle voice of

the homecoming Christ. And all had grown still in the house and about

him. The cock crew; somewhere an ass, disturbed in his slumber, brayed

in a loud and injured tone, and ungraciously stopped again after a few

protests. But Judas slept not; he was listening intently from his

hiding place. The moon illumined one half of his face and its radiance

cast a queer reflection in the large and open eye, as if mirroring

itself on a lake of ice.

Suddenly, as if remembering something, he coughed several times in

quick succession, and rubbed with his palm his hairy and vigorous

breast: someone might be awake and listening to the thoughts of Judas.