was a torn apron of thick, hard leather, such as miners wear, which
Lockman had given them to sew together. The needle often broke under
their bleeding fingers while sewing it. They shared their task freely,
each taking it when the other was tired. One evening, when it was
still far from being finished, Lockman ordered them, with violent
threats, to remain up all night to complete it by the next morning.
They exerted all their strength to accomplish this task, though they
hardly thought it possible, when Hussain, who was sewing, towards
morning, while Ibrahim was sleeping, unluckily thrust the awl so deep
into his hand that he screamed with pain, and in despair threw the hard
leather on the ground. Ibrahim awaking at this, sought his turban to
bind Hussain’s wound. Whilst looking at it he perceived that it was
his son’s, which he had mistaken for his own the last night they spent
together. As he now took off the cloth, the singular talisman which
Ali had concealed met his view. He looked long at it, and discovering
the many precious stones, said: “Our tyrant has a fancy for rare and
precious stones, and these are finer than I have ever seen, I will,
therefore, place this splendid jewel on his bed; he will rejoice on
awaking, and his stern mind will relent, perhaps, even though he may
not find the apron repaired.” With this intention he went into the
cavern where Lockman slept, and placed the talisman on the bare chest
of the sorcerer. He then hastened back, bound his friend’s wound, and
continued sewing as long as he was able.
The sun was now high, but Lockman still slept, contrary to his custom.
Hussain crept in and found him in a profound slumber. Both friends
thanked Providence, which saved them from ill-treatment, and Ibrahim
said: “Perhaps he may sleep the whole day, and we shall gain time to
finish our task.”
They now vied with each other, one sewing while the other rested or
fetched water and bread for refreshment, but the night came, and still
their work was unfinished. Thus they went on for three days and four
nights, their hands bleeding and swollen, their eyes dim with working,
but their courage unabated. Their mutual feelings of friendship and
sympathy and their honest exertion enabled them to accomplish their
work. A secret presentiment told them it was for the happiness of
their future life that they had to restore the hard, rigid, and torn
apron.
When the fourth morning dawned, they put in the last stitch, and with
tears of joy, then embraced each other, exclaiming in rapture, while
they extended their hands towards heaven in gratitude: “It is
finished!” “It is finished!” they heard an harmonious voice repeating.
They raised their eyes, and behold, the damp, dark cavern where they
stood, was changed into a beautiful bright grotto. Before them stood
the lovely Peribanu, with her crown of stars and her emerald sceptre,
saying, with a friendly smile, “It is finished! Look what you have
joined again!” Hussain and Ibrahim looked at the apron they still
held, and behold! it was the splendid gold cloth which Ibrahim once in
anger had torn in the market-place, and with it Hussain’s friendship.
“It had suffered great damage,” said Peribanu, “and it has cost you
labour and trouble to sew it together again; but it is restored. The
threads of early friendship are again united, the flowers of childhood,
which were torn up by the roots, are again planted in the golden ground
of your life.”
Ibrahim recognised in her beautiful features the kindly woman who had
once come to him in the hour of midnight, to beg the gold cloth as a
bridal dress for her daughter. “You must really give it me for a
bridal dress for my daughter,” said Peribanu, “this very day I shall
celebrate her nuptials.” Ibrahim gave it her. Peribanu waved her
sceptre, a curtain was raised, and Ibrahim and Hussain saw their
children crowned with flowers, kneeling at an altar before the sacred
image of the Moon.
“The beaming symbol of the prophet perpetually changes,” said Peribanu,
“bringing joy and sorrow according to the law of eternal fate. On you
it has now bestowed happiness. The life of Ali and Gulhyndi will be
like a fine spring morning, and the old age of Ibrahim and Hussain a
glorious September day.”
When she had said this, she conducted the bridal pair to their parents,
who embraced them with delight, and gave them the paternal blessing.
“Your joy will no more be troubled by the snares of malice,” she said,
“for it is caught in its own trap.” She again waved her sceptre, the
rock burst, and they saw the young king with a crown of rubies on his
head, in a purple mantle, stretched out, pale as death, on a couch,
while the lamp of death was burning over his head. The expression of
cunning and malice was in his countenance even in his death-slumber.
“Sleep on for ever,” cried the fairy. “Levity will some day again
release me,” he said in a hollow voice, and the vault closed. “For
this cycle, at least, nothing is to be feared,” replied Peribanu.
Hereupon the good fairy celebrated the nuptials of the young couple,
and beautiful Nature, with all her creatures, shared the festival.
They lived long and happily in the bosom of nature, like our first
parents in the beginning of creation, and gave to posterity lovely
children, who became the ancestors of a powerful race in the mountains.
Hussain and Ibrahim died at a great age, and their grandchildren
mourned over them. The good fairy never left Ali and Gulhyndi.
C. A. F.
[1] Both in this and the following song a verse has been omitted, as
unsuitable to the general English reader.
ALAMONTADE.
A TALE OF THE TIMES OF LOUIS XIV., BY HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE.
A small village in Languedoc was my home and birth-place. I lost my
mother very early. My father, a poor farmer, could spend but little
for my education, although he was very saving; and yet he was far from
being the poorest in the village. He was obliged to give for taxes,
besides the tithe on his vineyards, olive plantations, and corn lands,
a fourth of what he earned with great trouble. Our daily food was
porridge, with black bread and turnips.
My father sank under his troubles. This grieved him very sorely.
“Colas,” said he frequently to me, with troubled voice, laying his hand
upon my head, “hope forsakes me. I shall not, in spite of the sweat on
my brow, lay my head down in the coffin without leaving debts behind.
How shall I keep the promise which I made to your mother, with the last
kiss, on her death-bed? I solemnly promised her to send you to school
and make a clergyman of you. You will become a labourer and a servant
to strangers.”
In such moments I comforted the good old man as well as I could. But
childish consolation only made him still more dejected. He became
worse, and felt the approach of his last days. He often looked at me
with concern and care for my future life; and the bitter tear of
hopelessness moistened his eyes. When I saw this I abandoned my
sports; I jumped up to him, for I could not bear to see him weeping; I
clung to his neck, kissed away the tears from his eyelashes, and
exclaimed, sobbing, “Oh! my father, pray do not weep!”
What a happy people might inhabit that country where the fertile soil
yields two harvests yearly to the agriculturist, and olives and grapes
ripen in abundance by the warm rays of the sun! But an oppressed race
of men creeps over this blooming earth. They give the fruits of their
necessity and labour to the gormandising bishops, who promise them, for
the sufferings in this world, the everlasting joys of a future life;
they give their gain to the nobles and princes, who, in return, profess
themselves willing to govern the country with wisdom and goodness. One
banquet at court devours the annual produce of a whole province, wrung
from the lap of the earth with millions of groans, and millions of
drops of sweat.
I had attained my eighteenth year when my father died. It was a serene
evening, and the sun near its setting. My father was sitting before
our cot in the shade of a chesnut tree, he wished once more to enjoy
the sight of a world that had become dear to him amidst all his
sorrows. When I returned home from the fields, I went up to him, and
found him already faint; he clasped me in his arms, and said, “Oh, my
son! I now feel happy. Mine eve is approaching; and I shall go to
rest. But I shall not forget thee. I shall stand before the Almighty
with thy mother; above yonder stars we will pray for thee. Think of
us, and be faithful to virtue even to death! We will pray for thee.
Thou art under the care of the Almighty, therefore weep not. For when
once thou shalt have ended thy day’s work thy evening hour will also
strike. Then thou wilt find us yonder, me and thy mother. Oh, Colas,
with what longing we shall await thee there! What a delight it will be
when the three blessed hearts of the parents and the child will again
palpitate against each other before the throne of God!”
The last ray of the sun grew pale on the distant mountain tops; the
world was plunged in a gray twilight. The spirit of my father had
freed itself from the frail frame of its beloved body, which now lay in
my arms.
Our faithful servant--whose name has escaped my memory--being directed,
by the last wish of my father, to take me to my uncle, on my mother’s
side, Etienne, held me by the hand when we were pacing through the dark
and narrow streets of the city of Nismes. I trembled. An involuntary
shudder seized upon my mind. “You are trembling, Colas,” said the
servant; “you look pale and anxious; are you not well?”
“Alas!” exclaimed I, “do not bring me to this dark, stony labyrinth. I
am as terrified as if I were going to die here. Let me be a common
labourer in my verdant native village. Look only at these walls, they
stand here like those of a dungeon; and those men look as confused and
troubled as though they were criminals.”
“Your uncle, the miller,” replied he, “does not live in this city; his
house stands outside the Carmelite-gate in the open green fields.”
Men are apt to believe that the soul possesses a secret faculty for
anticipating its future fate. When I became a fellow-sufferer in that
horrible misfortune, the history of which has filled with shuddering
every sensible heart of the civilised world, I remembered the first
apprehensive anxiety which I felt in the streets of the gloomy Nismes,
on entering the city, and which I then took for an omen. Even the most
enlightened man cannot entirely divest himself of a superstitious fear
when his despairing hope gropes about in vain for help in darkness.
The impression that Nismes had made upon me remained permanent within
me. This was natural. Accustomed to live in and with nature, solitary
and simple, the stirring crowd of the busy town had a terrifying effect
upon me. My mother had rocked me under the branches of the olive
trees, and my childhood I had dreamed away in the green, cheerful shade
of chesnut groves. How could I bear living within the narrow, damp,
walls, where only the thirst for money brings men together? In
solitude the passions die away, and the heart assumes the tranquillity
of rural nature. The first sight, therefore, of so many faces, in
which anger and care, pride and avarice, debauchery and envy, had left
behind their traces, and which were no more perceived by him who saw
them daily, made me tremble.
Outside the Carmelite-gate was the house of my uncle, and by the side
of it his mill. The servant pointed with his hand to the fine
building, and said, “M. Etienne is a wealthy man, but alas--”
“And what then--alas?”
“A Calvinist, as people say.”
I did not understand him. We entered the beautiful building, and my
anxiety vanished. A tranquil, kind spirit spoke to me, as it were,
from every thing I beheld, and I felt as happy as if I were in my
native place.
In a neat room, marked by simplicity and order, the mother was sitting
at the table, surrounded by three blooming daughters, busy with
domestic work. A boy of two years’ old sat playing in his mother’s
lap. Kindness and tranquillity were on every countenance. All were
silent, and directed their looks to me. My uncle stood at the window
and was reading. His locks were already gray, but a youthful serenity
beamed from his looks. His air was that of piety. The servant said to
him, “This is your nephew, Colas, M. Etienne. His father, your
brother-in-law, died in poverty. He ordered me, therefore, to bring
his son to you, that you might be a father to him.”
“My welcome and blessing to you, Colas!” said M. Etienne, laying his
hand upon my head; “I will be your father.”
Then arose Mdme. Etienne, who offered me her hand, and said, “I will be
your mother.”
My heart was much moved by this kindness. I wept, and kissed the hands
of my new parents, without being able to utter a word. Now their three
daughters surrounded me, and said, “Do not weep, Colas, we will be your
sisters.” From this hour I was as much accustomed to my new home as if
I had never been a stranger to it. I fancied myself living in a family
of quiet angels, of whom my father had often told me. I became as
pious as they all were, and yet I never could surpass them in piety.
I was sent to school. After the lapse of half-a-year, M. Etienne told
me one day, with a very kind look, “Colas, you are poor, but God has
blessed you with superior talents; your masters praise your industry,
and say how wonderfully you surpass all your fellow-scholars in
learning. I therefore have come to the resolution that you shall
devote yourself to study. When you have completed your term at Nismes,
I will send you to the academy of Montpellier. You shall study the
law, which will enable you to become a defender of our oppressed
church. I behold in you an instrument of God for our salvation, and
for the protection of the Protestant faith against the cruelty and
violence of the Papists.”
M. Etienne was secretly a Protestant, as also were several thousands in
Nismes, and in the places surrounding it. He initiated me into the
doctrines of his faith. The Protestants were laborious, quiet, and
benevolent citizens; but the hatred of the people and the fury of the
priests persecuted these unfortunate individuals even to the interior
of their homes. They lived in continual fear; yet this kept up the
ardour of piety more alive in the hearts of all. By compulsion, and
for the sake of appearance, we frequented the churches of the
Catholics, celebrated their holy days, and kept the images of their
saints in our rooms. But neither this compliance, nor the practical
piety of the persecuted, could appease the hatred of the persecutors.
Wavering between two different persuasions, to one of which I belonged
publicly, to the other secretly, a daily witness of the bitter quarrels
of both parties; and how much more pride, hatred, and selfishness, than
conviction and piety, flocked to the standards of the belligerent
churches, I became, without knowing it, a hypocrite and a disbeliever
to both. The grounds upon which each attacked the contested doctrinal
points of the other, were better weighed, more subtle and effective
than those upon which, the value of that, which was thus attacked, was
defended. This raised within me a distrust against all tenets; only
those that never had been attacked retained a lasting sway in my eyes.
Yet I concealed my inward thoughts from all, that I might not be an
abomination to all.
Thus my mind isolated itself early. God and His creation were, in my
leisure hours, the objects of my contemplation. I had a horror for the
frensy of men, with which they persecuted one another on account of a
changing opinion, a tract of country, or a title of princes. Early I
felt the hardness of my fate in living among beings who, in every
thing, judged differently from myself. I saw myself surrounded by
barbarians or half-savages, not yet much more humanised than those, at
whose sacrifices of men we are struck with horror. If the ancient
Celts, or the Brahmins, or the savages of the wilds of America butcher
human beings at the altars of their gods, were they in this more
monstrous than the modern Europeans, who, at the altars of their gods
(since opinions are the gods of mortals) butcher, in their pious zeal,
thousands of their brethren? I lamented over the atrocities of the age
I lived in, and saw no means that could remove the general ferocity of
nations. The animal nature of man is everywhere the prevailing one.
Food, concupiscence, and greediness for power are, as in every species
of animals, the most powerful provocatives to activity; they are the
sources of harmony as well as of discord, of the rise and fall of
nations. Disinterested virtue, eternal right, and incontrovertible
truth, are more felt than recognised and encouraged. Their names are
proclaimed in the schools, while their essence does not, at all times,
pervade the teachers themselves. And whoever should, with a pious
zeal, profess them, would soon become the laughing-stock of those
surrounding him, and the victim of the general frensy.
The present time was too gloomy for me, I longed for things nobler and
more perfect. In the period of a blooming imagination, I could not but
create a more beautiful world, in which virtue, justice, and truth,
embraced each other, and where the senses diffused the tenderest
feelings. I turned poet, and lamented the fall of Rome and Greece,
which gave hopes of a more delightful existence of mankind, and
bitterly disappointed their expectations.
The ruins of the vast amphitheatre at Nismes, that ancient splendid
monument of Roman greatness, became my favourite haunt. When walking
through the lofty arcades between the gray pillasters, or looking down
over the magnificent ruins from the Attica, I felt as if the spirit of
that majestic antiquity embraced me, and, lamenting, pressed me to its
breast.
Here I lingered with pleasure, but never without a feeling of sadness.
The remains of long-departed human generations became to me books of
history. The hands of several nations have been patching up this work
of Roman magnificence. The two half-decayed towers of the Attica,
solitary masses of stone piled up without taste and sense of art, were
reared by the Goths, the conquerors of the Romans. And the huts of
wood in the arena beneath, are the dwellings of poor labourers and
workmen of modern days. What a change of times, and of the men that
lived in them!
The shriek of a female under the vaults startled me one evening out of
my dreams. Darkness had already crept into the halls. I hastened down
the steps from the second story, and perceived a well-dressed woman in
the power of a common man. The sound of my steps frightened the
villain, and he disappeared among the columns. A young girl with
dishevelled hair sat on a block of marble, trembling, and almost beside
herself with fright.
“Have you sustained any harm?” I asked her.
She raised her hand to her head, and said: “It was a robber, sir, who
had torn off my head-dress, consisting of some pins of value;--nothing
further. I entreat you to afford me your protection, as I am a
stranger in this place. It was from curiosity I left my mother and
sister who are waiting without. This man was to guide me back from
this extensive labyrinth, and he led me to this remote spot.”
I offered her my arm; we stepped out to the daylight. Oh! my
Clementine! ....
She was sixteen years of age, delicately and beautifully formed. She
floats at my side, like an aërial being; I did not perceive her steps.
The sweetness, freshness, and intellectual expression of her
countenance were angelic, and her look, full of innocence and love,
penetrated my inmost soul.
I sank into a pleasant confusion. I had never before known such a
sensation of confidence and admiration, of inexpressible affection and
profound respect. I had grown up to the age of twenty-one, I knew love
only from the pictures of the ancient poets, and I called it a
passionate friendship, unworthy a man. Alas! it was, indeed, something
very different. Love is the poetry of human nature. The sensation we
experience in contemplating beauty, ennobles rude sensuality, and
elevates it to a point of contact with the spiritual, so that the
virtuous, independent spirit unites itself, under the magic influence
of grace, with the earthly. Thus it is true that love deifies the
mortal clay, and draws down upon earth what is heavenly.
Thus I went on, and I had lost all my recollection, till we arrived at
the Carmelite-gate, where, suddenly, I came to myself again.
“You are a stranger?” I asked, in a faltering voice.
“Yes,” she replied; “but it is in vain that we seek my mother and
sister. Do you know the house of M. Albertas? It is there we live.”
“I will bring you to it.”
We turned round towards the street where M. Albertas resided. What a
change! The narrow dark streets seemed no longer to me like damp
dungeon walls, but like splendid clouds through which men were passing
like shadows.
We did not speak. We came to the house. The door was joyfully opened.
The whole family pressed forward to welcome the beloved lost child, for
whom servants had been sent out, who were still in search of her. It
was then that I heard, amidst a thousand caresses towards her, the
name, “Clementine.” She thanked me in a few words, not without
blushing. All the rest did the same; but I was unable to reply. They
asked my name; I told it them, bowed, and left the company.
I was often afterwards in the amphitheatre, and my way led me
frequently through the street in which M. Albertas lived. Her I did
not see again; but her image was constantly hovering before me, in my
waking hours as well as in my dreams. The hope of beholding the
beautiful vision again forsook me; but not so my longing after her.
Now, for the first time, I felt that I stood alone in the world, and
that I could not cling to a being akin to myself. I was without a
mother and father, without a sister or brother. Beloved by the family
of my uncle, I still looked upon myself amidst them, only as a
fortunate orphan; and upon all who loaded me with their kindness, I
looked as upon beings elevated above myself.
The time approached when I was to be sent to the academy of
Montpellier. M. Etienne repeated to me his wishes, and conjured me not
to disappoint his expectations. In the excess of his confidence in my
youthful faculties, he saw in me the future protecting angel of the
Protestant church in France. He gave me his blessing, whilst the whole
family stood weeping round me as I took my farewell. I promised to
come to Nismes in all my vacations, and went away overpowered with
grief.
The distance from Montpellier to Nismes is full eight leagues. I
walked in the shade of mulberry-trees, between the golden fields of
corn, and along the vineyards on the chain of hills, overtopped by the
gray Sevennes. But the air was glowing, and the ground beneath my feet
burning. After three hours’ walk, I sank fatigued on the banks of the
Vidourle, in the shade of a neat villa and its chesnut trees.
I reflected on my past and future life. I computed the time I had
lived, and the space of time still remaining, according to the general
measure, for my sphere of action. I found I had still forty years,
and, for the first time, I shuddered at the shortness of our life. The
oak on the mountains wants one century for its development, and stands
for another in its full vigour, while man’s existence is so transitory!
And wherefore is it thus? How shall he employ his faculties? Not a
long life, but a life of variety, is given to mortal man by nature.
This thought quiets me. Well, then, I said to myself, forty years
more, and I shall stand perfected where my father is.