CHAPTER XVIII.

THE HIGHEST RESOURCE.

The wreck being lightened, was sinking more slowly, but none the less

surely.

The hopelessness of their situation was without resource--without

mitigation; they had exhausted their last expedient.

“Is there anything else we can throw overboard?”

The doctor, whom every one had forgotten, rose from the companion, and

said,

“Yes.”

“What?” asked the chief.

The doctor answered, “Our Crime.”

They shuddered, and all cried out,--

“Amen.”

The doctor standing up, pale, raised his hand to heaven, saying,--

“Kneel down.”

They wavered--to waver is the preface to kneeling down.

The doctor went on,--

“Let us throw our crimes into the sea, they weigh us down; it is they

that are sinking the ship. Let us think no more of safety--let us think

of salvation. Our last crime, above all, the crime which we committed,

or rather completed, just now--O wretched beings who are listening to

me--it is that which is overwhelming us. For those who leave intended

murder behind them, it is an impious insolence to tempt the abyss. He

who sins against a child, sins against God. True, we were obliged to put

to sea, but it was certain perdition. The storm, warned by the shadow of

our crime, came on. It is well. Regret nothing, however. There, not far

off in the darkness, are the sands of Vauville and Cape la Hogue. It is

France. There was but one possible shelter for us, which was Spain.

France is no less dangerous to us than England. Our deliverance from the

sea would have led but to the gibbet. Hanged or drowned--we had no

alternative. God has chosen for us; let us give Him thanks. He has

vouchsafed us the grave which cleanses. Brethren, the inevitable hand is

in it. Remember that it was we who just now did our best to send on high

that child, and that at this very moment, now as I speak, there is

perhaps, above our heads, a soul accusing us before a Judge whose eye is

on us. Let us make the best use of this last respite; let us make an

effort, if we still may, to repair, as far as we are able, the evil that

we have wrought. If the child survives us, let us come to his aid; if he

is dead, let us seek his forgiveness. Let us cast our crime from us. Let

us ease our consciences of its weight. Let us strive that our souls be

not swallowed up before God, for that is the awful shipwreck. Bodies go

to the fishes, souls to the devils. Have pity on yourselves. Kneel down,

I tell you. Repentance is the bark which never sinks. You have lost your

compass! You are wrong! You still have prayer.”

The wolves became lambs--such transformations occur in last agonies;

tigers lick the crucifix; when the dark portal opens ajar, belief is

difficult, unbelief impossible. However imperfect may be the different

sketches of religion essayed by man, even when his belief is shapeless,

even when the outline of the dogma is not in harmony with the lineaments

of the eternity he foresees, there comes in his last hour a trembling of

the soul. There is something which will begin when life is over; this

thought impresses the last pang.

A man’s dying agony is the expiration of a term. In that fatal second he

feels weighing on him a diffused responsibility. That which has been

complicates that which is to be. The past returns and enters into the

future. What is known becomes as much an abyss as the unknown. And the

two chasms, the one which is full by his faults, the other of his

anticipations, mingle their reverberations. It is this confusion of the

two gulfs which terrifies the dying man.

They had spent their last grain of hope on the direction of life; hence

they turned in the other. Their only remaining chance was in its dark

shadow. They understood it. It came on them as a lugubrious flash,

followed by the relapse of horror. That which is intelligible to the

dying man is as what is perceived in the lightning. Everything, then

nothing; you see, then all is blindness. After death the eye will

reopen, and that which was a flash will become a sun.

They cried out to the doctor,--

“Thou, thou, there is no one but thee. We will obey thee, what must we

do? Speak.”

The doctor answered,--

“The question is how to pass over the unknown precipice and reach the

other bank of life, which is beyond the tomb. Being the one who knows

the most, my danger is greater than yours. You do well to leave the

choice of the bridge to him whose burden is the heaviest.”

He added,--

“Knowledge is a weight added to conscience.”

He continued,--

“How much time have we still?”

Galdeazun looked at the water-mark, and answered,--

“A little more than a quarter of an hour.”

“Good,” said the doctor.

The low hood of the companion on which he leant his elbows made a sort

of table; the doctor took from his pocket his inkhorn and pen, and his

pocket-book out of which he drew a parchment, the same one on the back

of which he had written, a few hours before, some twenty cramped and

crooked lines.

“A light,” he said.

The snow, falling like the spray of a cataract, had extinguished the

torches one after another; there was but one left. Ave Maria took it out

of the place where it had been stuck, and holding it in his hand, came

and stood by the doctor’s side.

The doctor replaced his pocket-book in his pocket, put down the pen and

inkhorn on the hood of the companion, unfolded the parchment, and

said,--

“Listen.”

Then in the midst of the sea, on the failing bridge (a sort of

shuddering flooring of the tomb), the doctor began a solemn reading, to

which all the shadows seemed to listen. The doomed men bowed their heads

around him. The flaming of the torch intensified their pallor. What the

doctor read was written in English. Now and then, when one of those

woebegone looks seemed to ask an explanation, the doctor would stop, to

repeat--whether in French, or Spanish, Basque, or Italian--the passage

he had just read. Stifled sobs and hollow beatings of the breast were

heard. The wreck was sinking more and more.

The reading over, the doctor placed the parchment flat on the companion,

seized his pen, and on a clear margin which he had carefully left at the

bottom of what he had written, he signed himself, GERNARDUS GEESTEMUNDE:

Doctor.

Then, turning towards the others, he said,--

“Come, and sign.”

The Basque woman approached, took the pen, and signed herself, ASUNCION.

She handed the pen to the Irish woman, who, not knowing how to write,

made a cross.

The doctor, by the side of this cross, wrote, BARBARA FERMOY, _of Tyrrif

Island, in the Hebrides_.

Then he handed the pen to the chief of the band.

The chief signed, GAIZDORRA: _Captal_.

The Genoese signed himself under the chief’s name. GIANGIRATE.

The Languedocian signed, JACQUES QUARTOURZE: _alias, the Narbonnais_.

The Provençal signed, LUC-PIERRE CAPGAROUPE, _of the Galleys of Mahon_.

Under these signatures the doctor added a note:--

“Of the crew of three men, the skipper having been washed overboard by a

sea, but two remain, and they have signed.”

The two sailors affixed their names underneath the note. The northern

Basque signed himself, GALDEAZUN.

The southern Basque signed, AVE MARIA: _Robber_.

Then the doctor said,--

“Capgaroupe.”

“Here,” said the Provençal.

“Have you Hardquanonne’s flask?”

“Yes.”

“Give it me.”

Capgaroupe drank off the last mouthful of brandy, and handed the flask

to the doctor.

The water was rising in the hold; the wreck was sinking deeper and

deeper into the sea. The sloping edges of the ship were covered by a

thin gnawing wave, which was rising. All were crowded on the centre of

the deck.

The doctor dried the ink on the signatures by the heat of the torch, and

folding the parchment into a narrower compass than the diameter of the

neck, put it into the flask. He called for the cork.

“I don’t know where it is,” said Capgaroupe.

“Here is a piece of rope,” said Jacques Quartourze.

The doctor corked the flask with a bit of rope, and asked for some tar.

Galdeazun went forward, extinguished the signal light with a piece of

tow, took the vessel in which it was contained from the stern, and

brought it, half full of burning tar, to the doctor.

The flask holding the parchment which they had all signed was corked and

tarred over.

“It is done,” said the doctor.

And from out all their mouths, vaguely stammered in every language, came

the dismal utterances of the catacombs.

“Ainsi soit-il!”

“Mea culpa!”

“Asi sea!”

“Aro raï!”

“Amen!”

It was as though the sombre voices of Babel were scattered through the

shadows as Heaven uttered its awful refusal to hear them.

The doctor turned away from his companions in crime and distress, and

took a few steps towards the gunwale. Reaching the side, he looked into

space, and said, in a deep voice,--

“Bist du bei mir?”[8]

Perchance he was addressing some phantom.

The wreck was sinking.

Behind the doctor all the others were in a dream. Prayer mastered them

by main force. They did not bow, they were bent. There was something

involuntary in their condition; they wavered as a sail flaps when the

breeze fails. And the haggard group took by degrees, with clasping of

hands and prostration of foreheads, attitudes various, yet of

humiliation. Some strange reflection of the deep seemed to soften their

villainous features.

The doctor returned towards them. Whatever had been his past, the old

man was great in the presence of the catastrophe.

The deep reserve of nature which enveloped him preoccupied without

disconcerting him. He was not one to be taken unawares. Over him was the

calm of a silent horror: on his countenance the majesty of God’s will

comprehended.

This old and thoughtful outlaw unconsciously assumed the air of a

pontiff.

He said,--

“Attend to me.”

He contemplated for a moment the waste of water, and added,--

“Now we are going to die.”

Then he took the torch from the hands of Ave Maria, and waved it.

A spark broke from it and flew into the night.

Then the doctor cast the torch into the sea.

The torch was extinguished: all light disappeared. Nothing left but the

huge, unfathomable shadow. It was like the filling up of the grave.

In the darkness the doctor was heard saying,--

“Let us pray.”

All knelt down.

It was no longer on the snow, but in the water, that they knelt.

They had but a few minutes more.

The doctor alone remained standing.

The flakes of snow falling on him had sprinkled him with white tears,

and made him visible on the background of darkness. He might have been

the speaking statue of the shadow.

The doctor made the sign of the cross and raised his voice, while

beneath his feet he felt that almost imperceptible oscillation which

prefaces the moment in which a wreck is about to founder. He said,--

“Pater noster qui es in coelis.”

The Provençal repeated in French,--

“Notre Père qui êtes aux cieux.”

The Irishwoman repeated in Gaelic, understood by the Basque woman,--

“Ar nathair ata ar neamh.”

The doctor continued,--

“Sanctificetur nomen tuum.”

“Que votre nom soit sanctifié,” said the Provençal.

“Naomhthar hainm,” said the Irishwoman.

“Adveniat regnum tuum,” continued the doctor.

“Que votre règne arrive,” said the Provençal.

“Tigeadh do rioghachd,” said the Irishwoman.

As they knelt, the waters had risen to their shoulders. The doctor went

on,--

“Fiat voluntas tua.”

“Que votre volonté soit faite,” stammered the Provençal.

And the Irishwoman and Basque woman cried,--

“Deuntar do thoil ar an Hhalàmb.”

“Sicut in coelo, sicut in terra,” said the doctor.

No voice answered him.

He looked down. All their heads were under water. They had let

themselves be drowned on their knees.

The doctor took in his right hand the flask which he had placed on the

companion, and raised it above his head.

The wreck was going down. As he sank, the doctor murmured the rest of

the prayer.

For an instant his shoulders were above water, then his head, then

nothing remained but his arm holding up the flask, as if he were showing

it to the Infinite.

His arm disappeared; there was no greater fold on the deep sea than

there would have been on a tun of oil. The snow continued falling.

One thing floated, and was carried by the waves into the darkness. It

was the tarred flask, kept afloat by its osier cover.

BOOK THE THIRD.

_THE CHILD IN THE SHADOW_.

CHAPTER I.

CHESIL.

The storm was no less severe on land than on sea. The same wild

enfranchisement of the elements had taken place around the abandoned

child. The weak and innocent become their sport in the expenditure of

the unreasoning rage of their blind forces. Shadows discern not, and

things inanimate have not the clemency they are supposed to possess.

On the land there was but little wind. There was an inexplicable

dumbness in the cold. There was no hail. The thickness of the falling

snow was fearful.

Hailstones strike, harass, bruise, stun, crush. Snowflakes do worse:

soft and inexorable, the snowflake does its work in silence; touch it,

and it melts. It is pure, even as the hypocrite is candid. It is by

white particles slowly heaped upon each other that the flake becomes an

avalanche and the knave a criminal.

The child continued to advance into the mist. The fog presents but a

soft obstacle; hence its danger. It yields, and yet persists. Mist, like

snow, is full of treachery. The child, strange wrestler at war with all

these risks, had succeeded in reaching the bottom of the descent, and

had gained Chesil. Without knowing it he was on an isthmus, with the

ocean on each side; so that he could not lose his way in the fog, in the

snow, or in the darkness, without falling into the deep waters of the

gulf on the right hand, or into the raging billows of the high sea on

the left. He was travelling on, in ignorance, between these two abysses.

The Isthmus of Portland was at this period singularly sharp and rugged.

Nothing remains at this date of its past configuration. Since the idea

of manufacturing Portland stone into Roman cement was first seized, the

whole rock has been subjected to an alteration which has completely

changed its original appearance. Calcareous lias, slate, and trap are

still to be found there, rising from layers of conglomerate, like teeth

from a gum; but the pickaxe has broken up and levelled those bristling,

rugged peaks which were once the fearful perches of the ossifrage. The

summits exist no longer where the labbes and the skua gulls used to

flock together, soaring, like the envious, to sully high places. In vain

might you seek the tall monolith called Godolphin, an old British word,

signifying “white eagle.” In summer you may still gather on those

surfaces, pierced and perforated like a sponge, rosemary, pennyroyal,

wild hyssop, and sea-fennel which when infused makes a good cordial, and

that herb full of knots, which grows in the sand and from which they

make matting; but you no longer find gray amber, or black tin, or that

triple species of slate--one sort green, one blue, and the third the

colour of sage-leaves. The foxes, the badgers, the otters, and the

martens have taken themselves off; on the cliffs of Portland, as well as

at the extremity of Cornwall, where there were at one time chamois, none

remain. They still fish in some inlets for plaice and pilchards; but the

scared salmon no longer ascend the Wey, between Michaelmas and

Christmas, to spawn. No more are seen there, as during the reign of

Elizabeth, those old unknown birds as large as hawks, who could cut an

apple in two, but ate only the pips. You never meet those crows with

yellow beaks, called Cornish choughs in English, _pyrrocorax_ in Latin,

who, in their mischief, would drop burning twigs on thatched roofs. Nor

that magic bird, the fulmar, a wanderer from the Scottish archipelago,

dropping from his bill an oil which the islanders used to burn in their

lamps. Nor do you ever find in the evening, in the plash of the ebbing

tide, that ancient, legendary neitse, with the feet of a hog and the

bleat of a calf. The tide no longer throws up the whiskered seal, with

its curled ears and sharp jaws, dragging itself along on its nailless

paws. On that Portland--nowadays so changed as scarcely to be

recognized--the absence of forests precluded nightingales; but now the

falcon, the swan, and the wild goose have fled. The sheep of Portland,

nowadays, are fat and have fine wool; the few scattered ewes, which

nibbled the salt grass there two centuries ago, were small and tough and

coarse in the fleece, as became Celtic flocks brought there by

garlic-eating shepherds, who lived to a hundred, and who, at the

distance of half a mile, could pierce a cuirass with their yard-long

arrows. Uncultivated land makes coarse wool. The Chesil of to-day

resembles in no particular the Chesil of the past, so much has it been

disturbed by man and by those furious winds which gnaw the very stones.

At present this tongue of land bears a railway, terminating in a pretty

square of houses, called Chesilton, and there is a Portland station.

Railway carriages roll where seals used to crawl.

The Isthmus of Portland two hundred years ago was a back of sand, with a

vertebral spine of rock.

The child’s danger changed its form. What he had had to fear in the

descent was falling to the bottom of the precipice; in the isthmus, it

was falling into the holes. After dealing with the precipice, he must

deal with the pitfalls. Everything on the sea-shore is a trap--the rock

is slippery, the strand is quicksand. Resting-places are but snares. It

is walking on ice which may suddenly crack and yawn with a fissure,

through which you disappear. The ocean has false stages below, like a

well-arranged theatre.

The long backbone of granite, from which fall away both slopes of the

isthmus, is awkward of access. It is difficult to find there what, in

scene-shifters’ language, are termed _practicables_. Man has no

hospitality to hope for from the ocean; from the rock no more than from

the wave. The sea is provident for the bird and the fish alone.

Isthmuses are especially naked and rugged; the wave, which wears and

mines them on either side, reduces them to the simplest form. Everywhere

there were sharp relief ridges, cuttings, frightful fragments of torn

stone, yawning with many points, like the jaws of a shark; breaknecks of

wet moss, rapid slopes of rock ending in the sea. Whosoever undertakes

to pass over an isthmus meets at every step misshapen blocks, as large

as houses, in the forms of shin-bones, shoulder-blades, and

thigh-bones, the hideous anatomy of dismembered rocks. It is not

without reason that these _striæ_ of the sea-shore are called

_côtes_.[9]

The wayfarer must get out as he best can from the confusion of these

ruins. It is like journeying over the bones of an enormous skeleton.

Put a child to this labour of Hercules.

Broad daylight might have aided him. It was night. A guide was

necessary. He was alone. All the vigour of manhood would not have been

too much. He had but the feeble strength of a child. In default of a

guide, a footpath might have aided him; there was none.

By instinct he avoided the sharp ridge of the rocks, and kept to the

strand as much as possible. It was there that he met with the pitfalls.

They were multiplied before him under three forms: the pitfall of water,

the pitfall of snow, and the pitfall of sand. This last is the most

dangerous of all, because the most illusory. To know the peril we face

is alarming; to be ignorant of it is terrible. The child was fighting

against unknown dangers. He was groping his way through something which

might, perhaps, be the grave.

He did not hesitate. He went round the rocks, avoided the crevices,

guessed at the pitfalls, obeyed the twistings and turnings caused by

such obstacles, yet he went on. Though unable to advance in a straight

line, he walked with a firm step. When necessary, he drew back with

energy. He knew how to tear himself in time from the horrid bird-lime of

the quicksands. He shook the snow from about him. He entered the water

more than once up to the knees. Directly that he left it, his wet knees

were frozen by the intense cold of the night. He walked rapidly in his

stiffened garments; yet he took care to keep his sailor’s coat dry and

warm on his chest. He was still tormented by hunger.

The chances of the abyss are illimitable. Everything is possible in it,

even salvation. The issue may be found, though it be invisible. How the

child, wrapped in a smothering winding-sheet of snow, lost on a narrow

elevation between two jaws of an abyss, managed to cross the isthmus is

what he could not himself have explained. He had slipped, climbed,

rolled, searched, walked, persevered, that is all. Such is the secret of

all triumphs. At the end of somewhat less than half an hour he felt

that the ground was rising. He had reached the other shore. Leaving

Chesil, he had gained terra firma.

The bridge which now unites Sandford Castle with Smallmouth Sands did

not then exist. It is probable that in his intelligent groping he had

reascended as far as Wyke Regis, where there was then a tongue of sand,

a natural road crossing East Fleet.

He was saved from the isthmus; but he found himself again face to face

with the tempest, with the cold, with the night.

Before him once more lay the plain, shapeless in the density of

impenetrable shadow. He examined the ground, seeking a footpath.

Suddenly he bent down. He had discovered, in the snow, something which

seemed to him a track.

It was indeed a track--the print of a foot. The print was cut out

clearly in the whiteness of the snow, which rendered it distinctly

visible. He examined it. It was a naked foot; too small for that of a

man, too large for that of a child.

It was probably the foot of a woman. Beyond that mark was another, then

another, then another. The footprints followed each other at the

distance of a step, and struck across the plain to the right. They were

still fresh, and slightly covered with little snow. A woman had just

passed that way.

This woman was walking in the direction in which the child had seen the

smoke. With his eyes fixed on the footprints, he set himself to follow

them.

CHAPTER II.

THE EFFECT OF SNOW.

He journeyed some time along this course. Unfortunately the footprints

were becoming less and less distinct. Dense and fearful was the falling

of the snow. It was the time when the hooker was so distressed by the

snow-storm at sea.

The child, in distress like the vessel, but after another fashion, had,

in the inextricable intersection of shadows which rose up before him, no

resource but the footsteps in the snow, and he held to it as the thread

of a labyrinth.

Suddenly, whether the snow had filled them up or for some other reason,

the footsteps ceased. All became even, level, smooth, without a stain,

without a detail. There was now nothing but a white cloth drawn over the

earth and a black one over the sky. It seemed as if the foot-passenger

had flown away. The child, in despair, bent down and searched; but in

vain.

As he arose he had a sensation of hearing some indistinct sound, but he

could not be sure of it. It resembled a voice, a breath, a shadow. It

was more human than animal; more sepulchral than living. It was a sound,

but the sound of a dream.

He looked, but saw nothing.

Solitude, wide, naked and livid, was before him. He listened. That which

he had thought he heard had faded away. Perhaps it had been but fancy.

He still listened. All was silent.

There was illusion in the mist.

He went on his way again. He walked forward at random, with nothing

henceforth to guide him.

As he moved away the noise began again. This time he could doubt it no

longer. It was a groan, almost a sob.

He turned. He searched the darkness of space with his eyes. He saw

nothing. The sound arose once more. If limbo could cry out, it would cry

in such a tone.

Nothing so penetrating, so piercing, so feeble as the voice--for it was

a voice. It arose from a soul. There was palpitation in the murmur.

Nevertheless, it seemed uttered almost unconsciously. It was an appeal

of suffering, not knowing that it suffered or that it appealed.

The cry--perhaps a first breath, perhaps a last sigh--was equally

distant from the rattle which closes life and the wail with which it

commences. It breathed, it was stifled, it wept, a gloomy supplication

from the depths of night. The child fixed his attention everywhere, far,

near, on high, below. There was no one. There was nothing. He listened.

The voice arose again. He perceived it distinctly. The sound somewhat

resembled the bleating of a lamb.

Then he was frightened, and thought of flight.

The groan again. This was the fourth time. It was strangely miserable

and plaintive. One felt that after that last effort, more mechanical

than voluntary, the cry would probably be extinguished. It was an

expiring exclamation, instinctively appealing to the amount of aid held

in suspense in space. It was some muttering of agony, addressed to a

possible Providence.

The child approached in the direction from whence the sound came.

Still he saw nothing.

He advanced again, watchfully.

The complaint continued. Inarticulate and confused as it was, it had

become clear--almost vibrating. The child was near the voice; but where

was it?

He was close to a complaint. The trembling of a cry passed by his side

into space. A human moan floated away into the darkness. This was what

he had met. Such at least was his impression, dim as the dense mist in

which he was lost.

Whilst he hesitated between an instinct which urged him to fly and an

instinct which commanded him to remain, he perceived in the snow at his

feet, a few steps before him, a sort of undulation of the dimensions of

a human body--a little eminence, low, long, and narrow, like the mould

over a grave--a sepulchre in a white churchyard.

At the same time the voice cried out. It was from beneath the undulation

that it proceeded. The child bent down, crouching before the undulation,

and with both his hands began to clear it away.

Beneath the snow which he removed a form grew under his hands; and

suddenly in the hollow he had made there appeared a pale face.

The cry had not proceeded from that face. Its eyes were shut, and the

mouth open but full of snow.

It remained motionless; it stirred not under the hands of the child. The

child, whose fingers were numbed with frost, shuddered when he touched

its coldness. It was that of a woman. Her dishevelled hair was mingled

with the snow. The woman was dead.

Again the child set himself to sweep away the snow. The neck of the dead

woman appeared; then her shoulders, clothed in rags. Suddenly he felt

something move feebly under his touch. It was something small that was

buried, and which stirred. The child swiftly cleared away the snow,

discovering a wretched little body--thin, wan with cold, still alive,

lying naked on the dead woman’s naked breast.

It was a little girl.

It had been swaddled up, but in rags so scanty that in its struggles it

had freed itself from its tatters. Under it its attenuated limbs, and

above it its breath, had somewhat melted the snow. A nurse would have

said that it was five or six months old, but perhaps it might be a year,

for growth, in poverty, suffers heart-breaking reductions which

sometimes even produce rachitis. When its face was exposed to the air it

gave a cry, the continuation of its sobs of distress. For the mother not

to have heard that sob, proved her irrevocably dead.

The child took the infant in his arms. The stiffened body of the mother

was a fearful sight; a spectral light proceeded from her face. The

mouth, apart and without breath, seemed to form in the indistinct

language of shadows her answer to the questions put to the dead by the

invisible. The ghastly reflection of the icy plains was on that

countenance. There was the youthful forehead under the brown hair, the

almost indignant knitting of the eyebrows, the pinched nostrils, the

closed eyelids, the lashes glued together by the rime, and from the

corners of the eyes to the corners of the mouth a deep channel of tears.

The snow lighted up the corpse. Winter and the tomb are not adverse. The

corpse is the icicle of man. The nakedness of her breasts was pathetic.

They had fulfilled their purpose. On them was a sublime blight of the

life infused into one being by another from whom life has fled, and

maternal majesty was there instead of virginal purity. At the point of

one of the nipples was a white pearl. It was a drop of milk frozen.

Let us explain at once. On the plains over which the deserted boy was

passing in his turn a beggar woman, nursing her infant and searching for

a refuge, had lost her way a few hours before. Benumbed with cold she

had sunk under the tempest, and could not rise again. The falling snow

had covered her. So long as she was able she had clasped her little girl

to her bosom, and thus died.

The infant had tried to suck the marble breast. Blind trust, inspired by

nature, for it seems that it is possible for a woman to suckle her child

even after her last sigh.

But the lips of the infant had been unable to find the breast, where the

drop of milk, stolen by death, had frozen, whilst under the snow the

child, more accustomed to the cradle than the tomb, had wailed.

The deserted child had heard the cry of the dying child.

He disinterred it.

He took it in his arms.

When she felt herself in his arms she ceased crying. The faces of the

two children touched each other, and the purple lips of the infant

sought the cheek of the boy, as it had been a breast. The little girl

had nearly reached the moment when the congealed blood stops the action

of the heart. Her mother had touched her with the chill of her own

death--a corpse communicates death; its numbness is infectious. Her

feet, hands, arms, knees, seemed paralyzed by cold. The boy felt the

terrible chill. He had on him a garment dry and warm--his pilot jacket.

He placed the infant on the breast of the corpse, took off his jacket,

wrapped the infant in it, took it up again in his arms, and now, almost

naked, under the blast of the north wind which covered him with eddies

of snow-flakes, carrying the infant, he pursued his journey.

The little one having succeeded in finding the boy’s cheek, again

applied her lips to it, and, soothed by the warmth, she slept. First

kiss of those two souls in the darkness.

The mother lay there, her back to the snow, her face to the night; but

perhaps at the moment when the little boy stripped himself to clothe the

little girl, the mother saw him from the depths of infinity.

CHAPTER III.

A BURDEN MAKES A ROUGH ROAD ROUGHER.

It was little more than four hours since the hooker had sailed from the

creek of Portland, leaving the boy on the shore. During the long hours

since he had been deserted, and had been journeying onwards, he had met

but three persons of that human society into which he was, perchance,

about to enter--a man, the man on the hill; a woman, the woman in the

snow; and the little girl whom he was carrying in his arms.

He was exhausted by fatigue and hunger, yet advanced more resolutely

than ever, with less strength and an added burden. He was now almost

naked. The few rags which remained to him, hardened by the frost, were

sharp as glass, and cut his skin. He became colder, but the infant was

warmer. That which he lost was not thrown away, but was gained by her.

He found out that the poor infant enjoyed the comfort which was to her

the renewal of life. He continued to advance.

From time to time, still holding her securely, he bent down, and taking

a handful of snow he rubbed his feet with it, to prevent their being

frost-bitten. At other times, his throat feeling as if it were on fire,

he put a little snow in his mouth and sucked it; this for a moment

assuaged his thirst, but changed it into fever--a relief which was an

aggravation.

The storm had become shapeless from its violence. Deluges of snow are

possible. This was one. The paroxysm scourged the shore at the same time

that it uptore the depths of ocean. This was, perhaps, the moment when

the distracted hooker was going to pieces in the battle of the breakers.

He travelled under this north wind, still towards the east, over wide

surfaces of snow. He knew not how the hours had passed. For a long time

he had ceased to see the smoke. Such indications are soon effaced in the

night; besides, it was past the hour when fires are put out. Or he had,

perhaps, made a mistake, and it was possible that neither town nor

village existed in the direction in which he was travelling. Doubting,

he yet persevered.

Two or three times the little infant cried. Then he adopted in his gait

a rocking movement, and the child was soothed and silenced. She ended by

falling into a sound sleep. Shivering himself, he felt her warm. He

frequently tightened the folds of the jacket round the babe’s neck, so

that the frost should not get in through any opening, and that no melted

snow should drop between the garment and the child.

The plain was unequal. In the declivities into which it sloped the snow,

driven by the wind into the dips of the ground, was so deep, in

comparison with a child so small, that it almost engulfed him, and he

had to struggle through it half buried. He walked on, working away the

snow with his knees.

Having cleared the ravine, he reached the high lands swept by the winds,

where the snow lay thin. Then he found the surface a sheet of ice. The

little girl’s lukewarm breath, playing on his face, warmed it for a

moment, then lingered, and froze in his hair, stiffening it into

icicles.

He felt the approach of another danger. He could not afford to fall. He

knew that if he did so he should never rise again. He was overcome by

fatigue, and the weight of the darkness would, as with the dead woman,

have held him to the ground, and the ice glued him alive to the earth.

He had tripped upon the slopes of precipices, and had recovered himself;

he had stumbled into holes, and had got out again. Thenceforward the

slightest fall would be death; a false step opened for him a tomb. He

must not slip. He had not strength to rise even to his knees. Now

everything was slippery; everywhere there was rime and frozen snow. The

little creature whom he carried made his progress fearfully difficult.

She was not only a burden, which his weariness and exhaustion made

excessive, but was also an embarrassment. She occupied both his arms,

and to him who walks over ice both arms are a natural and necessary

balancing power.

He was obliged to do without this balance.

He did without it and advanced, bending under his burden, not knowing

what would become of him.

This little infant was the drop causing the cup of distress to overflow.

He advanced, reeling at every step, as if on a spring board, and

accomplishing, without spectators, miracles of equilibrium. Let us

repeat that he was, perhaps, followed on this path of pain by eyes

unsleeping in the distances of the shadows--the eyes of the mother and

the eyes of God. He staggered, slipped, recovered himself, took care of

the infant, and, gathering the jacket about her, he covered up her head;

staggered again, advanced, slipped, then drew himself up. The cowardly

wind drove against him. Apparently, he made much more way than was

necessary. He was, to all appearance, on the plains where Bincleaves

Farm was afterwards established, between what are now called Spring

Gardens and the Parsonage House. Homesteads and cottages occupy the

place of waste lands. Sometimes less than a century separates a steppe

from a city.

Suddenly, a lull having occurred in the icy blast which was blinding

him, he perceived, at a short distance in front of him, a cluster of

gables and of chimneys shown in relief by the snow. The reverse of a

silhouette--a city painted in white on a black horizon, something like

what we call nowadays a negative proof. Roofs--dwellings--shelter! He

had arrived somewhere at last. He felt the ineffable encouragement of

hope. The watch of a ship which has wandered from her course feels some

such emotion when he cries, “Land ho!”

He hurried his steps.

At length, then, he was near mankind. He would soon be amidst living

creatures. There was no longer anything to fear. There glowed within him

that sudden warmth--security; that out of which he was emerging was

over; thenceforward there would no longer be night, nor winter, nor

tempest. It seemed to him that he had left all evil chances behind him.

The infant was no longer a burden. He almost ran.

His eyes were fixed on the roofs. There was life there. He never took

his eyes off them. A dead man might gaze thus on what might appear

through the half-opened lid of his sepulchre. There were the chimneys of

which he had seen the smoke.

No smoke arose from them now. He was not long before he reached the

houses. He came to the outskirts of a town--an open street. At that

period bars to streets were falling into disuse.

The street began by two houses. In those two houses neither candle nor

lamp was to be seen; nor in the whole street; nor in the whole town, so

far as eye could reach. The house to the right was a roof rather than a

house; nothing could be more mean. The walls were of mud, the roof was

of straw, and there was more thatch than wall. A large nettle, springing

from the bottom of the wall, reached the roof. The hovel had but one

door, which was like that of a dog-kennel; and a window, which was but a

hole. All was shut up. At the side an inhabited pig-sty told that the

house was also inhabited.

The house on the left was large, high, built entirely of stone, with a

slated roof. It was also closed. It was the rich man’s home, opposite to

that of the pauper.

The boy did not hesitate. He approached the great mansion. The double

folding-door of massive oak, studded with large nails, was of the kind

that leads one to expect that behind it there is a stout armoury of

bolts and locks. An iron knocker was attached to it. He raised the

knocker with some difficulty, for his benumbed hands were stumps rather

than hands. He knocked once.

No answer.

He struck again, and two knocks.

No movement was heard in the house.

He knocked a third time.

There was no sound. He saw that they were all asleep, and did not care

to get up.

Then he turned to the hovel. He picked up a pebble from the snow, and

knocked against the low door.

There was no answer.

He raised himself on tiptoe, and knocked with his pebble against the

pane too softly to break the glass, but loud enough to be heard.

No voice was heard; no step moved; no candle was lighted.

He saw that there, as well, they did not care to awake.

The house of stone and the thatched hovel were equally deaf to the

wretched.

The boy decided on pushing on further, and penetrating the strait of

houses which stretched away in front of him, so dark that it seemed more

like a gulf between two cliffs than the entrance to a town.

CHAPTER IV.

ANOTHER FORM OF DESERT.

It was Weymouth which he had just entered. Weymouth then was not the

respectable and fine Weymouth of to-day.

Ancient Weymouth did not present, like the present one, an

irreproachable rectangular quay, with an inn and a statue in honour of

George III. This resulted from the fact that George III. had not yet

been born. For the same reason they had not yet designed on the slope of

the green hill towards the east, fashioned flat on the soil by cutting

away the turf and leaving the bare chalk to the view, the white horse,

an acre long, bearing the king upon his back, and always turning, in

honour of George III., his tail to the city. These honours, however,

were deserved. George III., having lost in his old age the intellect he

had never possessed in his youth, was not responsible for the calamities

of his reign. He was an innocent. Why not erect statues to him?

Weymouth, a hundred and eighty years ago, was about as symmetrical as a

game of spillikins in confusion. In legends it is said that Astaroth

travelled over the world, carrying on her back a wallet which contained

everything, even good women in their houses. A pell-mell of sheds thrown

from her devil’s bag would give an idea of that irregular Weymouth--the

good women in the sheds included. The Music Hall remains as a specimen

of those buildings. A confusion of wooden dens, carved and eaten by

worms (which carve in another fashion)--shapeless, overhanging

buildings, some with pillars, leaning one against the other for support

against the sea wind, and leaving between them awkward spaces of narrow

and winding channels, lanes, and passages, often flooded by the

equinoctial tides; a heap of old grandmother houses, crowded round a

grandfather church--such was Weymouth; a sort of old Norman village

thrown up on the coast of England.

The traveller who entered the tavern, now replaced by the hotel, instead

of paying royally his twenty-five francs for a fried sole and a bottle

of wine, had to suffer the humiliation of eating a pennyworth of soup

made of fish--which soup, by-the-bye, was very good. Wretched fare!

The deserted child, carrying the foundling, passed through the first

street, then the second, then the third. He raised his eyes, seeking in

the higher stories and in the roofs a lighted window-pane; but all were

closed and dark. At intervals he knocked at the doors. No one answered.

Nothing makes the heart so like a stone as being warm between sheets.

The noise and the shaking had at length awakened the infant. He knew

this because he felt her suck his cheek. She did not cry, believing him

her mother.

He was about to turn and wander long, perhaps, in the intersections of

the Scrambridge lanes, where there were then more cultivated plots than

dwellings, more thorn hedges than houses; but fortunately he struck into

a passage which exists to this day near Trinity schools. This passage

led him to a water-brink, where there was a roughly built quay with a

parapet, and to the right he made out a bridge. It was the bridge over

the Wey, connecting Weymouth with Melcombe Regis, and under the arches

of which the Backwater joins the harbour.

Weymouth, a hamlet, was then the suburb of Melcombe Regis, a city and

port. Now Melcombe Regis is a parish of Weymouth. The village has

absorbed the city. It was the bridge which did the work. Bridges are

strange vehicles of suction, which inhale the population, and sometimes

swell one river-bank at the expense of its opposite neighbour.

The boy went to the bridge, which at that period was a covered timber

structure. He crossed it. Thanks to its roofing, there was no snow on

the planks. His bare feet had a moment’s comfort as they crossed them.

Having passed over the bridge, he was in Melcombe Regis. There were

fewer wooden houses than stone ones there. He was no longer in the

village; he was in the city.

The bridge opened on a rather fine street called St. Thomas’s Street. He

entered it. Here and there were high carved gables and shop-fronts. He

set to knocking at the doors again: he had no strength left to call or

shout.

At Melcombe Regis, as at Weymouth, no one was stirring. The doors were

all carefully double-locked, The windows were covered by their shutters,

as the eyes by their lids. Every precaution had been taken to avoid

being roused by disagreeable surprises. The little wanderer was

suffering the indefinable depression made by a sleeping town. Its

silence, as of a paralyzed ants’ nest, makes the head swim. All its

lethargies mingle their nightmares, its slumbers are a crowd, and from

its human bodies lying prone there arises a vapour of dreams. Sleep has

gloomy associates beyond this life: the decomposed thoughts of the

sleepers float above them in a mist which is both of death and of life,

and combine with the possible, which has also, perhaps, the power of

thought, as it floats in space. Hence arise entanglements. Dreams, those

clouds, interpose their folds and their transparencies over that star,

the mind. Above those closed eyelids, where vision has taken the place

of sight, a sepulchral disintegration of outlines and appearances

dilates itself into impalpability. Mysterious, diffused existences

amalgamate themselves with life on that border of death, which sleep is.

Those larvæ and souls mingle in the air. Even he who sleeps not feels a

medium press upon him full of sinister life. The surrounding chimera,

in which he suspects a reality, impedes him. The waking man, wending his

way amidst the sleep phantoms of others, unconsciously pushes back

passing shadows, has, or imagines that he has, a vague fear of adverse

contact with the invisible, and feels at every moment the obscure

pressure of a hostile encounter which immediately dissolves. There is

something of the effect of a forest in the nocturnal diffusion of

dreams.

This is what is called being afraid without reason.

What a man feels a child feels still more.

The uneasiness of nocturnal fear, increased by the spectral houses,

increased the weight of the sad burden under which he was struggling.

He entered Conycar Lane, and perceived at the end of that passage the

Backwater, which he took for the ocean. He no longer knew in what

direction the sea lay. He retraced his steps, struck to the left by

Maiden Street, and returned as far as St. Alban’s Row.

There, by chance and without selection, he knocked violently at any

house that he happened to pass. His blows, on which he was expending his

last energies, were jerky and without aim; now ceasing altogether for a

time, now renewed as if in irritation. It was the violence of his fever

striking against the doors.

One voice answered.

That of Time.

Three o’clock tolled slowly behind him from the old belfry of St.

Nicholas.

Then all sank into silence again.

That no inhabitant should have opened a lattice may appear surprising.

Nevertheless that silence is in a great measure to be explained. We must

remember that in January 1790 they were just over a somewhat severe

outbreak of the plague in London, and that the fear of receiving sick

vagabonds caused a diminution of hospitality everywhere. People would

not even open their windows for fear of inhaling the poison.

The child felt the coldness of men more terribly than the coldness of

night. The coldness of men is intentional. He felt a tightening on his

sinking heart which he had not known on the open plains. Now he had

entered into the midst of life, and remained alone. This was the summit

of misery. The pitiless desert he had understood; the unrelenting town

was too much to bear.

The hour, the strokes of which he had just counted, had been another

blow. Nothing is so freezing in certain situations as the voice of the

hour. It is a declaration of indifference. It is Eternity saying, “What

does it matter to me?”

He stopped, and it is not certain that, in that miserable minute, he did

not ask himself whether it would not be easier to lie down there and

die. However, the little infant leaned her head against his shoulder,

and fell asleep again.

This blind confidence set him onwards again. He whom all supports were

failing felt that he was himself a basis of support. Irresistible

summons of duty!

Neither such ideas nor such a situation belonged to his age. It is

probable that he did not understand them. It was a matter of instinct.

He did what he chanced to do.

He set out again in the direction of Johnstone Row. But now he no longer

walked; he dragged himself along. He left St. Mary’s Street to the left,

made zigzags through lanes, and at the end of a winding passage found

himself in a rather wide open space. It was a piece of waste land not

built upon--probably the spot where Chesterfield Place now stands. The

houses ended there. He perceived the sea to the right, and scarcely

anything more of the town to his left.

What was to become of him? Here was the country again. To the east great

inclined planes of snow marked out the wide slopes of Radipole. Should

he continue this journey? Should he advance and re-enter the solitudes?

Should he return and re-enter the streets? What was he to do between

those two silences--the mute plain and the deaf city? Which of the two

refusals should he choose?

There is the anchor of mercy. There is also the look of piteousness. It

was that look which the poor little despairing wanderer threw around

him.

All at once he heard a menace.

CHAPTER V.

MISANTHROPY PLAYS ITS PRANKS.

A strange and alarming grinding of teeth reached him through the

darkness.

It was enough to drive one back: he advanced. To those to whom silence

has become dreadful a howl is comforting.

That fierce growl reassured him; that threat was a promise. There was

there a being alive and awake, though it might be a wild beast. He

advanced in the direction whence came the snarl.

He turned the corner of a wall, and, behind in the vast sepulchral light

made by the reflection of snow and sea, he saw a thing placed as if for

shelter. It was a cart, unless it was a hovel. It had wheels--it was a

carriage. It had a roof--it was a dwelling. From the roof arose a

funnel, and out of the funnel smoke. This smoke was red, and seemed to

imply a good fire in the interior. Behind, projecting hinges indicated a

door, and in the centre of this door a square opening showed a light

inside the caravan. He approached.

Whatever had growled perceived his approach, and became furious. It was

no longer a growl which he had to meet; it was a roar. He heard a sharp

sound, as of a chain violently pulled to its full length, and suddenly,

under the door, between the hind wheels, two rows of sharp white teeth

appeared. At the same time as the mouth between the wheels a head was

put through the window.

“Peace there!” said the head.

The mouth was silent.

The head began again,--

“Is any one there?”

The child answered,--

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I.”

“You? Who are you? whence do you come?”

“I am weary,” said the child.

“What o’clock is it?”

“I am cold.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I am hungry.”

The head replied,--

“Every one cannot be as happy as a lord. Go away.”

The head was withdrawn and the window closed.

The child bowed his forehead, drew the sleeping infant closer in his

arms, and collected his strength to resume his journey. He had taken a

few steps, and was hurrying away.

However, at the same time that the window closed the door had opened; a

step had been let down; the voice which had spoken to the child cried

out angrily from the inside of the van,--

“Well! why do you not enter?”

The child turned back.

“Come in,” resumed the voice. “Who has sent me a fellow like this, who

is hungry and cold, and who does not come in?”

The child, at once repulsed and invited, remained motionless.

The voice continued,--

“You are told to come in, you young rascal.”

He made up his mind, and placed one foot on the lowest step.

There was a great growl under the van. He drew back. The gaping jaws

appeared.

“Peace!” cried the voice of the man.

The jaws retreated, the growling ceased.

“Come up!” continued the man.

The child with difficulty climbed up the three steps. He was impeded by

the infant, so benumbed, rolled up and enveloped in the jacket that

nothing could be distinguished of her, and she was but a little

shapeless mass.

He passed over the three steps; and having reached the threshold,

stopped.

No candle was burning in the caravan, probably from the economy of want.

The hut was lighted only by a red tinge, arising from the opening at the

top of the stove, in which sparkled a peat fire. On the stove were

smoking a porringer and a saucepan, containing to all appearance

something to eat. The savoury odour was perceptible. The hut was

furnished with a chest, a stool, and an unlighted lantern which hung

from the ceiling. Besides, to the partition were attached some boards on

brackets and some hooks, from which hung a variety of things. On the

boards and nails were rows of glasses, coppers, an alembic, a vessel

rather like those used for graining wax, which are called granulators,

and a confusion of strange objects of which the child understood

nothing, and which were utensils for cooking and chemistry. The caravan

was oblong in shape, the stove being in front. It was not even a little

room; it was scarcely a big box. There was more light outside from the

snow than inside from the stove. Everything in the caravan was

indistinct and misty. Nevertheless, a reflection of the fire on the

ceiling enabled the spectator to read in large letters,--

URSUS, PHILOSOPHER.

The child, in fact, was entering the house of Homo and Ursus. The one he

had just heard growling, the other speaking.

The child having reached the threshold, perceived near the stove a man,

tall, smooth, thin and old, dressed in gray, whose head, as he stood,

reached the roof. The man could not have raised himself on tiptoe. The

caravan was just his size.

“Come in!” said the man, who was Ursus.

The child entered.

“Put down your bundle.”

The child placed his burden carefully on the top of the chest, for fear

of awakening and terrifying it.

The man continued,--

“How gently you put it down! You could not be more careful were it a

case of relics. Is it that you are afraid of tearing a hole in your

rags? Worthless vagabond! in the streets at this hour! Who are you?

Answer! But no. I forbid you to answer. There! You are cold. Warm

yourself as quick as you can,” and he shoved him by the shoulders in

front of the fire.

“How wet you are! You’re frozen through! A nice state to come into a

house! Come, take off those rags, you villain!” and as with one hand,

and with feverish haste, he dragged off the boy’s rags which tore into

shreds, with the other he took down from a nail a man’s shirt, and one

of those knitted jackets which are up to this day called kiss-me-quicks.

“Here are clothes.”

He chose out of a heap a woollen rag, and chafed before the fire the

limbs of the exhausted and bewildered child, who at that moment, warm

and naked, felt as if he were seeing and touching heaven. The limbs

having been rubbed, he next wiped the boy’s feet.

“Come, you limb; you have nothing frost-bitten! I was a fool to fancy

you had something frozen, hind legs or fore paws. You will not lose the

use of them this time. Dress yourself!”

The child put on the shirt, and the man slipped the knitted jacket over

it.

“Now....”

The man kicked the stool forward and made the little boy sit down, again

shoving him by the shoulders; then he pointed with his finger to the

porringer which was smoking upon the stove. What the child saw in the

porringer was again heaven to him--namely, a potato and a bit of bacon.

“You are hungry; eat!”

The man took from the shelf a crust of hard bread and an iron fork, and

handed them to the child.

The boy hesitated.

“Perhaps you expect me to lay the cloth,” said the man, and he placed

the porringer on the child’s lap.

“Gobble that up.”

Hunger overcame astonishment. The child began to eat. The poor boy

devoured rather than ate. The glad sound of the crunching of bread filed

the hut. The man grumbled,--

“Not so quick, you horrid glutton! Isn’t he a greedy scoundrel? When

such scum are hungry, they eat in a revolting fashion. You should see a

lord sup. In my time I have seen dukes eat. They don’t eat; that’s

noble. They drink, however. Come, you pig, stuff yourself!”

The absence of ears, which is the concomitant of a hungry stomach,

caused the child to take little heed of these violent epithets, tempered

as they were by charity of action involving a contradiction resulting in

his benefit. For the moment he was absorbed by two exigencies and by two

ecstasies--food and warmth.

Ursus continued his imprecations, muttering to himself,--

“I have seen King James supping _in propriâ personâ_ in the Banqueting

House, where are to be admired the paintings of the famous Rubens. His

Majesty touched nothing. This beggar here browses: browses, a word

derived from brute. What put it into my head to come to this Weymouth

seven times devoted to the infernal deities? I have sold nothing since

morning I have harangued the snow. I have played the flute to the

hurricane. I have not pocketed a farthing; and now, to-night, beggars

drop in. Horrid place! There is battle, struggle, competition between

the fools in the street and myself. They try to give me nothing but

farthings. I try to give them nothing but drugs. Well, to-day I’ve made

nothing. Not an idiot on the highway, not a penny in the till. Eat away,

hell-born boy! Tear and crunch! We have fallen on times when nothing can

equal the cynicism of spongers. Fatten at my expense, parasite! This

wretched boy is more than hungry; he is mad. It is not appetite, it is

ferocity. He is carried away by a rabid virus. Perhaps he has the

plague. Have you the plague, you thief? Suppose he were to give it to

Homo! No, never! Let the populace die, but not my wolf. But by-the-bye I

am hungry myself. I declare that this is all very disagreeable. I have

worked far into the night. There are seasons in a man’s life when he is

hard pressed. I was to-night, by hunger. I was alone. I made a fire. I

had but one potato, one crust of bread, a mouthful of bacon, and a drop

of milk, and I put it to warm. I said to myself, ‘Good.’ I think I am

going to eat, and bang! this crocodile falls upon me at the very moment.

He installs himself clean between my food and myself. Behold, how my

larder is devastated! Eat, pike, eat! You shark! how many teeth have you

in your jaws? Guzzle, wolf-cub; no, I withdraw that word. I respect

wolves. Swallow up my food, boa. I have worked all day, and far into the

night, on an empty stomach; my throat is sore, my pancreas in distress,

my entrails torn; and my reward is to see another eat. ’Tis all one,

though! We will divide. He shall have the bread, the potato, and the

bacon; but I will have the milk.”

Just then a wail, touching and prolonged, arose in the hut. The man

listened.

“You cry, sycophant! Why do you cry?”

The boy turned towards him. It was evident that it was not he who cried.

He had his mouth full.

The cry continued.

The man went to the chest.

“So it is your bundle that wails! Vale of Jehoshaphat! Behold a

vociferating parcel! What the devil has your bundle got to croak about?”

He unrolled the jacket. An infant’s head appeared, the mouth open and

crying.

“Well, who goes there?” said the man. “Here is another of them. When is

this to end? Who is there? To arms! Corporal, call out the guard!

Another bang! What have you brought me, thief! Don’t you see it is

thirsty? Come! the little one must have a drink. So now I shall not have

even the milk!”

He took down from the things lying in disorder on the shelf a bandage of

linen, a sponge and a phial, muttering savagely, “What an infernal

place!”

Then he looked at the little infant. “’Tis a girl! one can tell that by

her scream, and she is drenched as well.” He dragged away, as he had

done from the boy, the tatters in which she was knotted up rather than

dressed, and swathed her in a rag, which, though of coarse linen, was

clean and dry. This rough and sudden dressing made the infant angry.

“She mews relentlessly,” said he.

He bit off a long piece of sponge, tore from the roll a square piece of

linen, drew from it a bit of thread, took the saucepan containing the

milk from the stove, filled the phial with milk, drove down the sponge

halfway into its neck, covered the sponge with linen, tied this cork in

with the thread, applied his cheeks to the phial to be sure that it was

not too hot, and seized under his left arm the bewildered bundle which

was still crying. “Come! take your supper, creature! Let me suckle you,”

and he put the neck of the bottle to its mouth.

The little infant drank greedily.

He held the phial at the necessary incline, grumbling, “They are all the

same, the cowards! When they have all they want they are silent.”

The child had drunk so ravenously, and had seized so eagerly this breast

offered by a cross-grained providence, that she was taken with a fit of

coughing.

“You are going to choke!” growled Ursus. “A fine gobbler this one, too!”

He drew away the sponge which she was sucking, allowed the cough to

subside, and then replaced the phial to her lips, saying, “Suck, you

little wretch!”

In the meantime the boy had laid down his fork. Seeing the infant drink

had made him forget to eat. The moment before, while he ate, the

expression in his face was satisfaction; now it was gratitude. He

watched the infant’s renewal of life; the completion of the resurrection

begun by himself filled his eyes with an ineffable brilliancy. Ursus

went on muttering angry words between his teeth. The little boy now and

then lifted towards Ursus his eyes moist with the unspeakable emotion

which the poor little being felt, but was unable to express. Ursus

addressed him furiously.

“Well, will you eat?”

“And you?” said the child, trembling all over, and with tears in his

eyes. “You will have nothing!”

“Will you be kind enough to eat it all up, you cub? There is not too

much for you, since there was not enough for me.”

The child took up his fork, but did not eat.

“Eat,” shouted Ursus. “What has it got to do with me? Who speaks of me?

Wretched little barefooted clerk of Penniless Parish, I tell you, eat it

all up! You are here to eat, drink, and sleep--eat, or I will kick you

out, both of you.”

The boy, under this menace, began to eat again. He had not much trouble

in finishing what was left in the porringer. Ursus muttered, “This

building is badly joined. The cold comes in by the window pane.” A pane

had indeed been broken in front, either by a jolt of the caravan or by a

stone thrown by some mischievous boy. Ursus had placed a star of paper

over the fracture, which had become unpasted. The blast entered there.

He was half seated on the chest. The infant in his arms, and at the same

time on his lap, was sucking rapturously at the bottle, in the happy

somnolency of cherubim before their Creator, and infants at their

mothers’ breast.

“She is drunk,” said Ursus; and he continued, “After this, preach

sermons on temperance!”

The wind tore from the pane the plaster of paper, which flew across the

hut; but this was nothing to the children, who were entering life anew.

Whilst the little girl drank, and the little boy ate, Ursus grumbled,--

“Drunkenness begins in the infant in swaddling clothes. What useful

trouble Bishop Tillotson gives himself, thundering against excessive

drinking. What an odious draught of wind! And then my stove is old. It

allows puffs of smoke to escape enough to give you trichiasis. One has

the inconvenience of cold, and the inconvenience of fire. One cannot see

clearly. That being over there abuses my hospitality. Well, I have not

been able to distinguish the animal’s face yet. Comfort is wanting

here. By Jove! I am a great admirer of exquisite banquets in well closed

rooms. I have missed my vocation. I was born to be a sensualist. The

greatest of stoics was Philoxenus, who wished to possess the neck of a

crane, so as to be longer in tasting the pleasures of the table.

Receipts to-day, naught. Nothing sold all day. Inhabitants, servants,

and tradesmen, here is the doctor, here are the drugs. You are losing

your time, old friend. Pack up your physic. Every one is well down here.

It’s a cursed town, where every one is well! The skies alone have

diarrhoea--what snow! Anaxagoras taught that the snow was black; and he

was right, cold being blackness. Ice is night. What a hurricane! I can

fancy the delight of those at sea. The hurricane is the passage of

demons. It is the row of the tempest fiends galloping and rolling head

over heels above our bone-boxes. In the cloud this one has a tail, that

one has horns, another a flame for a tongue, another claws to its wings,

another a lord chancellor’s paunch, another an academician’s pate. You

may observe a form in every sound. To every fresh wind a fresh demon.

The ear hears, the eye sees, the crash is a face. Zounds! There are

folks at sea--that is certain. My friends, get through the storm as best

you can. I have enough to do to get through life. Come now, do I keep an

inn, or do I not? Why should I trade with these travellers? The

universal distress sends its spatterings even as far as my poverty. Into

my cabin fall hideous drops of the far-spreading mud of mankind. I am

given up to the voracity of travellers. I am a prey--the prey of those

dying of hunger. Winter, night, a pasteboard hut, an unfortunate friend

below and without, the storm, a potato, a fire as big as my fist,

parasites, the wind penetrating through every cranny, not a halfpenny,

and bundles which set to howling. I open them and find beggars inside.

Is this fair? Besides, the laws are violated. Ah! vagabond with your

vagabond child! Mischievous pick-pocket, evil-minded abortion, so you

walk the streets after curfew? If our good king only knew it, would he

not have you thrown into the bottom of a ditch, just to teach you

better? My gentleman walks out at night with my lady, and with the glass

at fifteen degrees of frost, bare-headed and bare-footed. Understand

that such things are forbidden. There are rules and regulations, you

lawless wretches. Vagabonds are punished, honest folks who have houses

are guarded and protected. Kings are the fathers of their people. I have

my own house. You would have been whipped in the public street had you

chanced to have been met, and quite right, too. There must be order in

an established city. For my own part, I did wrong not to denounce you to

the constable. But I am such a fool! I understand what is right and do

what is wrong. O the ruffian! to come here in such a state! I did not

see the snow upon them when they came in; it had melted, and here’s my

whole house swamped. I have an inundation in my home. I shall have to

burn an incredible amount of coals to dry up this lake--coals at twelve

farthings the miners’ standard! How am I going to manage to fit three

into this caravan? Now it is over; I enter the nursery; I am going to

have in my house the weaning of the future beggardom of England. I shall

have for employment, office, and function, to fashion the miscarried

fortunes of that colossal prostitute, Misery, to bring to perfection

future gallows’ birds, and to give young thieves the forms of

philosophy. The tongue of the wolf is the warning of God. And to think

that if I had not been eaten up by creatures of this kind for the last

thirty years, I should be rich; Homo would be fat; I should have a

medicine-chest full of rarities; as many surgical instruments as Doctor

Linacre, surgeon to King Henry VIII.; divers animals of all kinds;

Egyptian mummies, and similar curiosities; I should be a member of the

College of Physicians, and have the right of using the library, built in

1652 by the celebrated Hervey, and of studying in the lantern of that

dome, whence you can see the whole of London. I could continue my

observations of solar obfuscation, and prove that a caligenous vapour

arises from the planet. Such was the opinion of John Kepler, who was

born the year before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and who was

mathematician to the emperor. The sun is a chimney which sometimes

smokes; so does my stove. My stove is no better than the sun. Yes, I

should have made my fortune; my part would have been a different one--I

should not be the insignificant fellow I am. I should not degrade

science in the highways, for the crowd is not worthy of the doctrine,

the crowd being nothing better than a confused mixture of all sorts of

ages, sexes, humours, and conditions, that wise men of all periods have

not hesitated to despise, and whose extravagance and passion the most

moderate men in their justice detest. Oh, I am weary of existence! After

all, one does not live long! The human life is soon done with. But

no--it is long. At intervals, that we should not become too discouraged,

that we may have the stupidity to consent to bear our being, and not

profit by the magnificent opportunities to hang ourselves which cords

and nails afford, nature puts on an air of taking a little care of

man--not to-night, though. The rogue causes the wheat to spring up,

ripens the grape, gives her song to the nightingale. From time to time a

ray of morning or a glass of gin, and that is what we call happiness! It

is a narrow border of good round a huge winding-sheet of evil. We have a

destiny of which the devil has woven the stuff and God has sewn the hem.

In the meantime, you have eaten my supper, you thief!”

In the meantime the infant whom he was holding all the time in his arms

very tenderly whilst he was vituperating, shut its eyes languidly; a

sign of repletion. Ursus examined the phial, and grumbled,--

“She has drunk it all up, the impudent creature!”

He arose, and sustaining the infant with his left arm, with his right he

raised the lid of the chest and drew from beneath it a bear-skin--the

one he called, as will be remembered, his real skin. Whilst he was doing

this he heard the other child eating, and looked at him sideways.

“It will be something to do if, henceforth, I have to feed that growing

glutton. It will be a worm gnawing at the vitals of my industry.”

He spread out, still with one arm, the bear-skin on the chest, working

his elbow and managing his movements so as not to disturb the sleep into

which the infant was just sinking.

Then he laid her down on the fur, on the side next the fire. Having done

so, he placed the phial on the stove, and exclaimed,--

“I’m thirsty, if you like!”

He looked into the pot. There were a few good mouthfuls of milk left in

it; he raised it to his lips. Just as he was about to drink, his eye

fell on the little girl. He replaced the pot on the stove, took the

phial, uncorked it, poured into it all the milk that remained, which was

just sufficient to fill it, replaced the sponge and the linen rag over

it, and tied it round the neck of the bottle.

“All the same, I’m hungry and thirsty,” he observed.

And he added,--

“When one cannot eat bread, one must drink water.”

Behind the stove there was a jug with the spout off. He took it and

handed it to the boy.

“Will you drink?”

The child drank, and then went on eating.

Ursus seized the pitcher again, and conveyed it to his mouth. The

temperature of the water which it contained had been unequally modified

by the proximity of the stove.

He swallowed some mouthfuls and made a grimace.

“Water! pretending to be pure, thou resemblest false friends. Thou art

warm at the top and cold at bottom.”

In the meantime the boy had finished his supper. The porringer was more

than empty; it was cleaned out. He picked up and ate pensively a few

crumbs caught in the folds of the knitted jacket on his lap.

Ursus turned towards him.

“That is not all. Now, a word with you. The mouth is not made only for

eating; it is made for speaking. Now that you are warmed and stuffed,

you beast, take care of yourself. You are going to answer my questions.

Whence do you come?”

The child replied,--

“I do not know.”

“How do you mean? you don’t know?”

“I was abandoned this evening on the sea-shore.”

“You little scamp! what’s your name? He is so good for nothing that his

relations desert him.”

“I have no relations.”

“Give in a little to my tastes, and observe that I do not like those who

sing to a tune of fibs. Thou must have relatives since you have a

sister.”

“It is not my sister.”

“It is not your sister?”

“No.”

“Who is it then?”

“It is a baby that I found.”

“Found?”

“Yes.”

“What! did you pick her up?”

“Yes.”

“Where? If you lie I will exterminate you.”

“On the breast of a woman who was dead in the snow.”

“When?”

“An hour ago.”

“Where?”

“A league from here.”

The arched brow of Ursus knitted and took that pointed shape which

characterizes emotion on the brow of a philosopher.

“Dead! Lucky for her! We must leave her in the snow. She is well off

there. In which direction?”

“In the direction of the sea.”

“Did you cross the bridge?”

“Yes.”

Ursus opened the window at the back and examined the view.

The weather had not improved. The snow was falling thickly and

mournfully.

He shut the window.

He went to the broken glass; he filled the hole with a rag; he heaped

the stove with peat; he spread out as far as he could the bear-skin on

the chest; took a large book which he had in a corner, placed it under

the skin for a pillow, and laid the head of the sleeping infant on it.

Then he turned to the boy.

“Lie down there.”

The boy obeyed, and stretched himself at full length by the side of the

infant.

Ursus rolled the bear-skin over the two children, and tucked it under

their feet.

He took down from a shelf, and tied round his waist, a linen belt with a

large pocket containing, no doubt, a case of instruments and bottles of

restoratives.

Then he took the lantern from where it hung to the ceiling and lighted

it. It was a dark lantern. When lighted it still left the children in

shadow.

Ursus half opened the door, and said,--

“I am going out; do not be afraid. I shall return. Go to sleep.”

Then letting down the steps, he called Homo. He was answered by a

loving growl.

Ursus, holding the lantern in his hand, descended. The steps were

replaced, the door was reclosed. The children remained alone.

From without, a voice, the voice of Ursus, said,--

“You, boy, who have just eaten up my supper, are you already asleep?”

“No,” replied the child.

“Well, if she cries, give her the rest of the milk.”

The clinking of a chain being undone was heard, and the sound of a man’s

footsteps, mingled with that of the pads of an animal, died off in the

distance. A few minutes after, both children slept profoundly.

The little boy and girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through

the silent hours, in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows; such

dreams as were possible to their age floated from one to the other;

beneath their closed eyelids there shone, perhaps, a starlight; if the

word marriage were not inappropriate to the situation, they were husband

and wife after the fashion of the angels. Such innocence in such

darkness, such purity in such an embrace; such foretastes of heaven are

possible only to childhood, and no immensity approaches the greatness of

little children. Of all gulfs this is the deepest. The fearful

perpetuity of the dead chained beyond life, the mighty animosity of the

ocean to a wreck, the whiteness of the snow over buried bodies, do not

equal in pathos two children’s mouths meeting divinely in sleep,[10] and

the meeting of which is not even a kiss. A betrothal perchance,

perchance a catastrophe. The unknown weighs down upon their

juxtaposition. It charms, it terrifies; who knows which? It stays the

pulse. Innocence is higher than virtue. Innocence is holy ignorance.

They slept. They were in peace. They were warm. The nakedness of their

bodies, embraced each in each, amalgamated with the virginity of their

souls. They were there as in the nest of the abyss.

CHAPTER VI.

THE AWAKING.

The beginning of day is sinister. A sad pale light penetrated the hut.

It was the frozen dawn. That wan light which throws into relief the

mournful reality of objects which are blurred into spectral forms by the

night, did not awake the children, so soundly were they sleeping. The

caravan was warm. Their breathings alternated like two peaceful waves.

There was no longer a hurricane without. The light of dawn was slowly

taking possession of the horizon. The constellations were being

extinguished, like candles blown out one after the other. Only a few

large stars resisted. The deep-toned song of the Infinite was coming

from the sea.

The fire in the stove was not quite out. The twilight broke, little by

little, into daylight. The boy slept less heavily than the girl. At

length, a ray brighter than the others broke through the pane, and he

opened his eyes. The sleep of childhood ends in forgetfulness. He lay in

a state of semi-stupor, without knowing where he was or what was near

him, without making an effort to remember, gazing at the ceiling, and

setting himself an aimless task as he gazed dreamily at the letters of

the inscription--“Ursus, Philosopher”--which, being unable to read, he

examined without the power of deciphering.

The sound of the key turning in the lock caused him to turn his head.

The door turned on its hinges, the steps were let down. Ursus was

returning. He ascended the steps, his extinguished lantern in his hand.

At the same time the pattering of four paws fell upon the steps. It was

Homo, following Ursus, who had also returned to his home.

The boy awoke with somewhat of a start. The wolf, having probably an

appetite, gave him a morning yawn, showing two rows of very white teeth.

He stopped when he had got halfway up the steps, and placed both

forepaws within the caravan, leaning on the threshold, like a preacher

with his elbows on the edge of the pulpit. He sniffed the chest from

afar, not being in the habit of finding it occupied as it then was. His

wolfine form, framed by the doorway, was designed in black against the

light of morning. He made up his mind, and entered. The boy, seeing the

wolf in the caravan, got out of the bear-skin, and, standing up, placed

himself in front of the little infant, who was sleeping more soundly

than ever.

Ursus had just hung the lantern up on a nail in the ceiling. Silently,

and with mechanical deliberation, he unbuckled the belt in which was his

case, and replaced it on the shelf. He looked at nothing, and seemed to

see nothing. His eyes were glassy. Something was moving him deeply in

his mind. His thoughts at length found breath, as usual, in a rapid

outflow of words. He exclaimed,--

“Happy, doubtless! Dead! stone dead!”

He bent down, and put a shovelful of turf mould into the stove; and as

he poked the peat he growled out,--

“I had a deal of trouble to find her. The mischief of the unknown had

buried her under two feet of snow. Had it not been for Homo, who sees as

clearly with his nose as Christopher Columbus did with his mind, I

should be still there, scratching at the avalanche, and playing hide and

seek with Death. Diogenes took his lantern and sought for a man; I took

my lantern and sought for a woman. He found a sarcasm, and I found

mourning. How cold she was! I touched her hand--a stone! What silence in

her eyes! How can any one be such a fool as to die and leave a child

behind? It will not be convenient to pack three into this box. A pretty

family I have now! A boy and a girl!”

Whilst Ursus was speaking, Homo sidled up close to the stove. The hand

of the sleeping infant was hanging down between the stove and the chest.

The wolf set to licking it. He licked it so softly that he did not awake

the little infant.

Ursus turned round.

“Well done, Homo. I shall be father, and you shall be uncle.”

Then he betook himself again to arranging the fire with philosophical

care, without interrupting his aside.

“Adoption! It is settled; Homo is willing.”

He drew himself up.

“I should like to know who is responsible for that woman’s death? Is it

man? or....”

He raised his eyes, but looked beyond the ceiling, and his lips

murmured,--

“Is it Thou?”

Then his brow dropped, as if under a burden, and he continued,--

“The night took the trouble to kill the woman.”

Raising his eyes, they met those of the boy, just awakened, who was

listening. Ursus addressed him abruptly,--

“What are you laughing about?”

The boy answered,--

“I am not laughing.”

Ursus felt a kind of shock, looked at him fixedly for a few minutes, and

said,--

“Then you are frightful.”

The interior of the caravan, on the previous night, had been so dark

that Ursus had not yet seen the boy’s face. The broad daylight revealed

it. He placed the palms of his hands on the two shoulders of the boy,

and, examining his countenance more and more piercingly, exclaimed,--

“Do not laugh any more!”

“I am not laughing,” said the child.

Ursus was seized with a shudder from head to foot.

“You do laugh, I tell you.”

Then seizing the child with a grasp which would have been one of fury

had it not been one of pity, he asked him: roughly,--

“Who did that to you?”

The child replied,--

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“How long have you had that laugh?”

“I have always been thus,” said the child.

Ursus turned towards the chest, saying in a low voice,--

“I thought that work was out of date.”

He took from the top of it, very softly, so as not to awaken the infant,

the book which he had placed there for a pillow.

“Let us see Conquest,” he murmured.

It was a bundle of paper in folio, bound in soft parchment. He turned

the pages with his thumb, stopped at a certain one, opened the book wide

on the stove, and read,--

“‘_De Denasatis_,’ it is here.”

And he continued,--

“_Bucca fissa usque ad aures, genezivis denudatis, nasoque murdridato,

masca eris, et ridebis semper_.”

“There it is for certain.”

Then he replaced the book on one of the shelves, growling.

“It might not be wholesome to inquire too deeply into a case of the

kind. We will remain on the surface. Laugh away, my boy!”

Just then the little girl awoke. Her good-day was a cry.

“Come, nurse, give her the breast,” said Ursus.

The infant sat up. Ursus taking the phial from the stove gave it to her

to suck.

Then the sun arose. He was level with the horizon. His red rays gleamed

through the glass, and struck against the face of the infant, which was

turned towards him. Her eyeballs, fixed on the sun, reflected his purple

orbit like two mirrors. The eyeballs were immovable, the eyelids also.

“See!” said Ursus. “She is blind.”

PART II.

BOOK THE FIRST.

_THE EVERLASTING PRESENCE OF THE

PAST: MAN REFLECTS MAN_.

CHAPTER I.

LORD CLANCHARLIE.

I.

There was, in those days, an old tradition.

That tradition was Lord Linnæus Clancharlie.

Linnæus Baron Clancharlie, a contemporary of Cromwell, was one of the

peers of England--few in number, be it said--who accepted the republic.

The reason of his acceptance of it might, indeed, for want of a better,

be found in the fact that for the time being the republic was

triumphant. It was a matter of course that Lord Clancharlie should

adhere to the republic, as long as the republic had the upper hand; but

after the close of the revolution and the fall of the parliamentary

government, Lord Clancharlie had persisted in his fidelity to it. It

would have been easy for the noble patrician to re-enter the

reconstituted upper house, repentance being ever well received on

restorations, and Charles II. being a kind prince enough to those who

returned to their allegiance to him; but Lord Clancharlie had failed to

understand what was due to events. While the nation overwhelmed with

acclamation the king come to retake possession of England, while

unanimity was recording its verdict, while the people were bowing their

salutation to the monarchy, while the dynasty was rising anew amidst a

glorious and triumphant recantation, at the moment when the past was

becoming the future, and the future becoming the past, that nobleman

remained refractory. He turned his head away from all that joy, and

voluntarily exiled himself. While he could have been a peer, he

preferred being an outlaw. Years had thus passed away. He had grown old

in his fidelity to the dead republic, and was therefore crowned with the

ridicule which is the natural reward of such folly.

He had retired into Switzerland, and dwelt in a sort of lofty ruin on

the banks of the Lake of Geneva. He had chosen his dwelling in the most

rugged nook of the lake, between Chillon, where is the dungeon of

Bonnivard, and Vevay, where is Ludlow’s tomb. The rugged Alps, filled

with twilight, winds, and clouds, were around him; and he lived there,

hidden in the great shadows that fall from the mountains. He was rarely

met by any passer-by. The man was out of his country, almost out of his

century. At that time, to those who understood and were posted in the

affairs of the period, no resistance to established things was

justifiable. England was happy; a restoration is as the reconciliation

of husband and wife, prince and nation return to each other, no state

can be more graceful or more pleasant. Great Britain beamed with joy; to

have a king at all was a good deal--but furthermore, the king was a

charming one. Charles II. was amiable--a man of pleasure, yet able to

govern; and great, if not after the fashion of Louis XIV. He was

essentially a gentleman. Charles II. was admired by his subjects. He had

made war in Hanover for reasons best known to himself; at least, no one

else knew them. He had sold Dunkirk to France, a manoeuvre of state

policy. The Whig peers, concerning whom Chamberlain says, “The cursed

republic infected with its stinking breath several of the high

nobility,” had had the good sense to bow to the inevitable, to conform

to the times, and to resume their seats in the House of Lords. To do so,

it sufficed that they should take the oath of allegiance to the king.

When these facts were considered--the glorious reign, the excellent

king, august princes given back by divine mercy to the people’s love;

when it was remembered that persons of such consideration as Monk, and,

later on, Jeffreys, had rallied round the throne; that they had been

properly rewarded for their loyalty and zeal by the most splendid

appointments and the most lucrative offices; that Lord Clancharlie could

not be ignorant of this, and that it only depended on himself to be

seated by their side, glorious in his honours; that England had, thanks

to her king, risen again to the summit of prosperity; that London was

all banquets and carousals; that everybody was rich and enthusiastic,

that the court was gallant, gay, and magnificent;--if by chance, far

from these splendours, in some melancholy, indescribable half-light,

like nightfall, that old man, clad in the same garb as the common

people, was observed pale, absent-minded, bent towards the grave,

standing on the shore of the lake, scarce heeding the storm and the

winter, walking as though at random, his eye fixed, his white hair

tossed by the wind of the shadow, silent, pensive, solitary, who could

forbear to smile?

It was the sketch of a madman.

Thinking of Lord Clancharlie, of what he might have been and what he

was, a smile was indulgent; some laughed out aloud, others could not

restrain their anger. It is easy to understand that men of sense were

much shocked by the insolence implied by his isolation.

One extenuating circumstance: Lord Clancharlie had never had any brains.

Every one agreed on that point.

II.

It is disagreeable to see one’s fellows practise obstinacy. Imitations

of Regulus are not popular, and public opinion holds them in some

derision. Stubborn people are like reproaches, and we have a right to

laugh at them.

Besides, to sum up, are these perversities, these rugged notches,

virtues? Is there not in these excessive advertisements of

self-abnegation and of honour a good deal of ostentation? It is all

parade more than anything else. Why such exaggeration of solitude and

exile? to carry nothing to extremes is the wise man’s maxim. Be in

opposition if you choose, blame if you will, but decently, and crying

out all the while “Long live the King.” The true virtue is common

sense--what falls ought to fall, what succeeds ought to succeed.

Providence acts advisedly, it crowns him who deserves the crown; do you

pretend to know better than Providence? When matters are settled--when

one rule has replaced another--when success is the scale in which truth

and falsehood are weighed, in one side the catastrophe, in the other

the triumph; then doubt is no longer possible, the honest man rallies to

the winning side, and although it may happen to serve his fortune and

his family, he does not allow himself to be influenced by that

consideration, but thinking only of the public weal, holds out his hand

heartily to the conqueror.

What would become of the state if no one consented to serve it? Would

not everything come to a standstill? To keep his place is the duty of a

good citizen. Learn to sacrifice your secret preferences. Appointments

must be filled, and some one must necessarily sacrifice himself. To be

faithful to public functions is true fidelity. The retirement of public

officials would paralyse the state. What! banish yourself!--how weak! As

an example?--what vanity! As a defiance?--what audacity! What do you set

yourself up to be, I wonder? Learn that we are just as good as you. If

we chose we too could be intractable and untameable and do worse things

than you; but we prefer to be sensible people. Because I am a

Trimalcion, you think that I could not be a Cato! What nonsense!

III.

Never was a situation more clearly defined or more decisive than that of

1660. Never had a course of conduct been more plainly indicated to a

well-ordered mind. England was out of Cromwell’s grasp. Under the

republic many irregularities had been committed. British preponderance

had been created. With the aid of the Thirty Years’ War, Germany had

been overcome; with the aid of the Fronde, France had been humiliated;

with the aid of the Duke of Braganza, the power of Spain had been

lessened. Cromwell had tamed Mazarin; in signing treaties the Protector

of England wrote his name above that of the King of France. The United

Provinces had been put under a fine of eight millions; Algiers and Tunis

had been attacked; Jamaica conquered; Lisbon humbled; French rivalry

encouraged in Barcelona, and Masaniello in Naples; Portugal had been

made fast to England; the seas had been swept of Barbary pirates from

Gibraltar to Crete; maritime domination had been founded under two

forms, Victory and Commerce. On the 10th of August, 1653, the man of

thirty-three victories, the old admiral who called himself the sailors’

grandfather, Martin Happertz van Tromp, who had beaten the Spanish, had

been destroyed by the English fleet. The Atlantic had been cleared of

the Spanish navy, the Pacific of the Dutch, the Mediterranean of the

Venetian, and by the patent of navigation, England had taken possession

of the sea-coast of the world. By the ocean she commanded the world; at

sea the Dutch flag humbly saluted the British flag. France, in the

person of the Ambassador Mancini, bent the knee to Oliver Cromwell; and

Cromwell played with Calais and Dunkirk as with two shuttlecocks on a

battledore. The Continent had been taught to tremble, peace had been

dictated, war declared, the British Ensign raised on every pinnacle. By

itself the Protector’s regiment of Ironsides weighed in the fears of

Europe against an army. Cromwell used to say, “_I wish the Republic of

England to be respected, as was respected the Republic of Rome_.” No

longer were delusions held sacred; speech was free, the press was free.

In the public street men said what they listed; they printed what they

pleased without control or censorship. The equilibrium of thrones had

been destroyed. The whole order of European monarchy, in which the

Stuarts formed a link, had been overturned. But at last England had

emerged from this odious order of things, and had won its pardon.

The indulgent Charles II. had granted the declaration of Breda. He had

conceded to England oblivion of the period in which the son of the

Huntingdon brewer placed his foot on the neck of Louis XIV. England said

its mea culpa, and breathed again. The cup of joy was, as we have just

said, full; gibbets for the regicides adding to the universal delight. A

restoration is a smile; but a few gibbets are not out of place, and

satisfaction is due to the conscience of the public. To be good subjects

was thenceforth the people’s sole ambition. The spirit of lawlessness

had been expelled. Royalty was reconstituted. Men had recovered from the

follies of politics. They mocked at revolution, they jeered at the

republic, and as to those times when such strange words as _Right,

Liberty, Progress_, had been in the mouth--why, they laughed at such

bombast! Admirable was the return to common sense. England had been in a

dream. What joy to be quit of such errors! Was ever anything so mad?

Where should we be if every one had his rights? Fancy every one’s

having a hand in the government? Can you imagine a city ruled by its

citizens? Why, the citizens are the team, and the team cannot be driver.

To put to the vote is to throw to the winds. Would you have states

driven like clouds? Disorder cannot build up order. With chaos for an

architect, the edifice would be a Babel. And, besides, what tyranny is

this pretended liberty! As for me, I wish to enjoy myself; not to

govern. It is a bore to have to vote; I want to dance. A prince is a

providence, and takes care of us all. Truly the king is generous to take

so much trouble for our sakes. Besides, he is to the manner born. He

knows what it is. It’s his business. Peace, War, Legislation,

Finance--what have the people to do with such things? Of course the

people have to pay; of course the people have to serve; but that should

suffice them. They have a place in policy; from them come two essential

things, the army and the budget. To be liable to contribute, and to be

liable to serve; is not that enough? What more should they want? They

are the military and the financial arm. A magnificent _rôle_. The king

reigns for them, and they must reward him accordingly. Taxation and the

civil list are the salaries paid by the peoples and earned by the

prince. The people give their blood and their money, in return for which

they are led. To wish to lead themselves! what an absurd idea! They

require a guide; being ignorant, they are blind. Has not the blind man

his dog? Only the people have a lion, the king, who consents to act the

dog. How kind of him! But why are the people ignorant? because it is

good for them. Ignorance is the guardian of Virtue. Where there is no

perspective there is no ambition. The ignorant man is in useful

darkness, which, suppressing sight, suppresses covetousness: whence

innocence. He who reads, thinks; who thinks, reasons. But not to reason

is duty; and happiness as well. These truths are incontestable; society

is based on them.

Thus had sound social doctrines been re-established in England; thus had

the nation been reinstated. At the same time a correct taste in

literature was reviving. Shakespeare was despised, Dryden admired.

“_Dryden is the greatest poet of England, and of the century_,” said

Atterbury, the translator of “Achitophel.” It was about the time when M.

Huet, Bishop of Avranches, wrote to Saumaise, who had done the author

of “Paradise Lost” the honour to refute and abuse him, “_How can you

trouble yourself about so mean a thing as that Milton?_” Everything was

falling into its proper place: Dryden above, Shakespeare below; Charles

II. on the throne, Cromwell on the gibbet. England was raising herself

out of the shame and the excesses of the past. It is a great happiness

for nations to be led back by monarchy to good order in the state and

good taste in letters.

That such benefits should be misunderstood is difficult to believe. To

turn the cold shoulder to Charles II., to reward with ingratitude the

magnanimity which he displayed in ascending the throne--was not such

conduct abominable? Lord Linnæus Clancharlie had inflicted this vexation

upon honest men. To sulk at his country’s happiness, alack, what

aberration!

We know that in 1650 Parliament had drawn up this form of declaration:

“_I promise to remain faithful to the republic, without king, sovereign,

or lord_.” Under pretext of having taken this monstrous oath, Lord

Clancharlie was living out of the kingdom, and, in the face of the

general joy, thought that he had the right to be sad. He had a morose

esteem for that which was no more, and was absurdly attached to things

which had been.

To excuse him was impossible. The kindest-hearted abandoned him; his

friends had long done him the honour to believe that he had entered the

republican ranks only to observe the more closely the flaws in the

republican armour, and to smite it the more surely, when the day should

come, for the sacred cause of the king. These lurkings in ambush for the

convenient hour to strike the enemy a death-blow in the back are

attributes to loyalty. Such a line of conduct had been expected of Lord

Clancharlie, so strong was the wish to judge him favourably; but, in the

face of his strange persistence in republicanism, people were obliged to

lower their estimate. Evidently Lord Clancharlie was confirmed in his

convictions--that is to say, an idiot!

The explanation given by the indulgent, wavered between puerile

stubbornness and senile obstinacy.

The severe and the just went further; they blighted the name of the

renegade. Folly has its rights, but it has also its limits. A man may be

a brute, but he has no right to be a rebel. And, after all, what was

this Lord Clancharlie? A deserter. He had fled his camp, the

aristocracy, for that of the enemy, the people. This faithful man was a

traitor. It is true that he was a traitor to the stronger, and faithful

to the weaker; it is true that the camp repudiated by him was the

conquering camp, and the camp adopted by him, the conquered; it is true

that by his treason he lost everything--his political privileges and his

domestic hearth, his title and his country. He gained nothing but

ridicule, he attained no benefit but exile. But what does all this

prove?--that he was a fool. Granted.

Plainly a dupe and traitor in one. Let a man be as great a fool as he

likes, so that he does not set a bad example. Fools need only be civil,

and in consideration thereof they may aim at being the basis of

monarchies. The narrowness of Clancharlie’s mind was incomprehensible.

His eyes were still dazzled by the phantasmagoria of the revolution. He

had allowed himself to be taken in by the republic--yes; and cast out.

He was an affront to his country. The attitude he assumed was downright

felony. Absence was an insult. He held aloof from the public joy as from

the plague. In his voluntary banishment he found some indescribable

refuge from the national rejoicing. He treated loyalty as a contagion;

over the widespread gladness at the revival of the monarchy, denounced

by him as a lazaretto, he was the black flag. What! could he look thus

askance at order reconstituted, a nation exalted, and a religion

restored? Over such serenity why cast his shadow? Take umbrage at

England’s contentment! Must he be the one blot in the clear blue sky! Be

as a threat! Protest against a nation’s will! refuse his Yes to the

universal consent! It would be disgusting, if it were not the part of a

fool. Clancharlie could not have taken into account the fact that it did

not matter if one had taken the wrong turn with Cromwell, as long as one

found one’s way back into the right path with Monk.

Take Monk’s case. He commands the republican army. Charles II., having

been informed of his honesty, writes to him. Monk, who combines virtue

with tact, dissimulates at first, then suddenly at the head of his

troops dissolves the rebel parliament, and re-establishes the king on

the throne. Monk is created Duke of Albemarle, has the honour of having

saved society, becomes very rich, sheds a glory over his own time, is

created Knight of the Garter, and has the prospect of being buried in

Westminster Abbey. Such glory is the reward of British fidelity!

Lord Clancharlie could never rise to a sense of duty thus carried out.

He had the infatuation and obstinacy of an exile. He contented himself

with hollow phrases. He was tongue-tied by pride. The words conscience

and dignity are but words, after all. One must penetrate to the depths.

These depths Lord Clancharlie had not reached. His “eye was single,” and

before committing an act he wished to observe it so closely as to be

able to judge it by more senses than one. Hence arose absurd disgust to

the facts examined. No man can be a statesman who gives way to such

overstrained delicacy. Excess of conscientiousness degenerates into

infirmity. Scruple is one-handed when a sceptre is to be seized, and a

eunuch when fortune is to be wedded. Distrust scruples; they drag you

too far. Unreasonable fidelity is like a ladder leading into a

cavern--one step down, another, then another, and there you are in the

dark. The clever reascend; fools remain in it. Conscience must not be

allowed to practise such austerity. If it be, it will fall until, from

transition to transition, it at length reaches the deep gloom of

political prudery. Then one is lost. Thus it was with Lord Clancharlie.

Principles terminate in a precipice.

He was walking, his hands behind him, along the shores of the Lake of

Geneva. A fine way of getting on!

In London they sometimes spoke of the exile. He was accused before the

tribunal of public opinion. They pleaded for and against him. The cause

having been heard, he was acquitted on the ground of stupidity.

Many zealous friends of the former republic had given their adherence to

the Stuarts. For this they deserve praise. They naturally calumniated

him a little. The obstinate are repulsive to the compliant. Men of

sense, in favour and good places at Court, weary of his disagreeable

attitude, took pleasure in saying, “_If he has not rallied to the

throne, it is because he has not been sufficiently paid_,” _etc_. “_He

wanted the chancellorship which the king has given to Hyde_.” One of his

old friends went so far as to whisper, “_He told me so himself_.” Remote

as was the solitude of Linnæus Clancharlie, something of this talk

would reach him through the outlaws he met, such as old regicides like

Andrew Broughton, who lived at Lausanne. Clancharlie confined himself to

an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders, a sign of profound

deterioration. On one occasion he added to the shrug these few words,

murmured in a low voice, “I pity those who believe such things.”

IV.

Charles II., good man! despised him. The happiness of England under

Charles II. was more than happiness, it was enchantment. A restoration

is like an old oil painting, blackened by time, and revarnished. All the

past reappeared, good old manners returned, beautiful women reigned and

governed. Evelyn notices it. We read in his journal, “Luxury,

profaneness, contempt of God. I saw the king on Sunday evening with his

courtesans, Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mazarin, and two or three others, all

nearly naked, in the gaming-room.” We feel that there is ill-nature in

this description, for Evelyn was a grumbling Puritan, tainted with

republican reveries. He did not appreciate the profitable example given

by kings in those grand Babylonian gaieties, which, after all, maintain

luxury. He did not understand the utility of vice. Here is a maxim: Do

not extirpate vice, if you want to have charming women; if you do you

are like idiots who destroy the chrysalis whilst they delight in the

butterfly.

Charles II., as we have said, scarcely remembered that a rebel called

Clancharlie existed; but James II. was more heedful. Charles II.

governed gently, it was his way; we may add, that he did not govern the

worse on that account. A sailor sometimes makes on a rope intended to

baffle the wind, a slack knot which he leaves to the wind to tighten.

Such is the stupidity of the storm and of the people.

The slack knot very soon becomes a tight one. So did the government of

Charles II.

Under James II. the throttling began; a necessary throttling of what

remained of the revolution. James II. had a laudable ambition to be an

efficient king. The reign of Charles II. was, in his opinion, but a

sketch of restoration. James wished for a still more complete return to

order. He had, in 1660, deplored that they had confined themselves to

the hanging of ten regicides. He was a more genuine reconstructor of

authority. He infused vigour into serious principles. He installed true

justice, which is superior to sentimental declamations, and attends,

above all things, to the interests of society. In his protecting

severities we recognize the father of the state. He entrusted the hand

of justice to Jeffreys, and its sword to Kirke. That useful Colonel, one

day, hung and rehung the same man, a republican, asking him each time,

“Will you renounce the republic?” The villain, having each time said

“No,” was dispatched. “_I hanged him four times_,” said Kirke, with

satisfaction. The renewal of executions is a great sign of power in the

executive authority. Lady Lisle, who, though she had sent her son to

fight against Monmouth, had concealed two rebels in her house, was

executed; another rebel, having been honourable enough to declare that

an Anabaptist female had given him shelter, was pardoned, and the woman

was burned alive. Kirke, on another occasion, gave a town to understand

that he knew its principles to be republican, by hanging nineteen

burgesses. These reprisals were certainly legitimate, for it must be

remembered that, under Cromwell, they cut off the noses and ears of the

stone saints in the churches. James II., who had had the sense to choose

Jeffreys and Kirke, was a prince imbued with true religion; he practised

mortification in the ugliness of his mistresses; he listened to le Père

la Colombière, a preacher almost as unctuous as le Père Cheminais, but

with more fire, who had the glory of being, during the first part of his

life, the counsellor of James II., and, during the latter, the inspirer

of Mary Alcock. It was, thanks to this strong religious nourishment,

that, later on, James II. was enabled to bear exile with dignity, and to

exhibit, in his retirement at Saint Germain, the spectacle of a king

rising superior to adversity, calmly touching for king’s evil, and

conversing with Jesuits.

It will be readily understood that such a king would trouble himself to

a certain extent about such a rebel as Lord Linnæus Clancharlie.

Hereditary peerages have a certain hold on the future, and it was

evident that if any precautions were necessary with regard to that lord,

James II. was not the man to hesitate.

CHAPTER II.

LORD DAVID DIRRY-MOIR.

I.

Lord Linnæus Clancharlie had not always been old and proscribed; he had

had his phase of youth and passion. We know from Harrison and Pride that

Cromwell, when young, loved women and pleasure, a taste which, at times

(another reading of the text “Woman”), betrays a seditious man. Distrust

the loosely-clasped girdle. _Male proecinctam juvenem cavete_. Lord

Clancharlie, like Cromwell, had had his wild hours and his

irregularities. He was known to have had a natural child, a son. This

son was born in England in the last days of the republic, just as his

father was going into exile. Hence he had never seen his father. This

bastard of Lord Clancharlie had grown up as page at the court of Charles

II. He was styled Lord David Dirry-Moir: he was a lord by courtesy, his

mother being a woman of quality. The mother, while Lord Clancharlie was

becoming an owl in Switzerland, made up her mind, being a beauty, to

give over sulking, and was forgiven that Goth, her first lover, by one

undeniably polished and at the same time a royalist, for it was the king

himself.

She had been but a short time the mistress of Charles II., sufficiently

long however to have made his Majesty--who was delighted to have won so

pretty a woman from the republic--bestow on the little Lord David, the

son of his conquest, the office of keeper of the stick, which made that

bastard officer, boarded at the king’s expense, by a natural revulsion

of feeling, an ardent adherent of the Stuarts. Lord David was for some

time one of the hundred and seventy wearing the great sword, while

afterwards, entering the corps of pensioners, he became one of the forty

who bear the gilded halberd. He had, besides being one of the noble

company instituted by Henry VIII. as a bodyguard, the privilege of

laying the dishes on the king’s table. Thus it was that whilst his

father was growing gray in exile, Lord David prospered under Charles II.

After which he prospered under James II.

The king is dead. Long live the king! It is the _non deficit alter,

aureus_.

It was on the accession of the Duke of York that he obtained permission

to call himself Lord David Dirry-Moir, from an estate which his mother,

who had just died, had left him, in that great forest of Scotland, where

is found the krag, a bird which scoops out a nest with its beak in the

trunk of the oak.

II.

James II. was a king, and affected to be a general. He loved to surround

himself with young officers. He showed himself frequently in public on

horseback, in a helmet and cuirass, with a huge projecting wig hanging

below the helmet and over the cuirass--a sort of equestrian statue of

imbecile war. He took a fancy to the graceful mien of the young Lord

David. He liked the royalist for being the son of a republican. The

repudiation of a father does not damage the foundation of a court

fortune. The king made Lord David gentleman of the bedchamber, at a

salary of a thousand a year.

It was a fine promotion. A gentleman of the bedchamber sleeps near the

king every night, on a bed which is made up for him. There are twelve

gentlemen who relieve each other.

Lord David, whilst he held that post, was also head of the king’s

granary, giving out corn for the horses and receiving a salary of £260.

Under him were the five coachmen of the king, the five postilions of the

king, the five grooms of the king, the twelve footmen of the king, and

the four chair-bearers of the king. He had the management of the

race-horses which the king kept at Newmarket, and which cost his

Majesty £600 a year. He worked his will on the king’s wardrobe, from

which the Knights of the Garter are furnished with their robes of

ceremony. He was saluted to the ground by the usher of the Black Rod,

who belongs to the king. That usher, under James II., was the knight of

Duppa. Mr. Baker, who was clerk of the crown, and Mr. Brown, who was

clerk of the Parliament, kotowed to Lord David. The court of England,

which is magnificent, is a model of hospitality. Lord David presided, as

one of the twelve, at banquets and receptions. He had the glory of

standing behind the king on offertory days, when the king give to the

church the golden _byzantium_; on collar-days, when the king wears the

collar of his order; on communion days, when no one takes the sacrament

excepting the king and the princes. It was he who, on Holy Thursday,

introduced into his Majesty’s presence the twelve poor men to whom the

king gives as many silver pence as the years of his age, and as many

shillings as the years of his reign. The duty devolved on him when the

king was ill, to call to the assistance of his Majesty the two grooms of

the almonry, who are priests, and to prevent the approach of doctors

without permission from the council of state. Besides, he was

lieutenant-colonel of the Scotch regiment of Guards, the one which plays

the Scottish march. As such, he made several campaigns, and with glory,

for he was a gallant soldier. He was a brave lord, well-made, handsome,

generous, and majestic in look and in manner. His person was like his

quality. He was tall in stature as well as high in birth.