The heaven to which Prometheus and Elenko had ascended was situated in
a sequestered valley of Laconia. A single winding path led into the
glen, which was inhabited only by a few hunters and shepherds, who
still observed the rites of the ancient faith; and sometimes, deeming
but to show kindness to a mortal, refreshed or sheltered a forlorn and
hungry Deity. Saving at the entrance the vale was walled round by steep
cliffs, for the most part waving with trees, but here and there
revealing the naked crag. It was traversed by a silvery stream, in its
windings enclosing Prometheus’s and Elenko’s cottage, almost as in an
island. The cot, buried in laurel and myrtle, had a garden where fig
and mulberry, grape and almond, ripened in their season. A few goats
browsed on the long grass, and yielded their milk to the household.
Bread and wine, and flesh when needed, were easily procured from the
neighbours. Beyond necessary furniture, the cottage contained little
but precious scrolls, obtained by Elenko from Athens and the newly
founded city of Constantine. In these, under her guidance, Prometheus
read of matters that never, while he dwelt on Olympus, entered the
imagination of any God.
It is a chief happiness of lovers that each possesses treasures wholly
their own, which they may yet make fully the possession of the other.
These treasures are of divers kinds, beauty, affection, memory, hope.
But never were such treasures of knowledge shared between lovers as
between Prometheus and Elenko. Each possessed immeasurable stores,
hitherto inaccessible to the other. How trifling seemed the mythical
lore which Elenko had gleaned as the minister of Phœbus to that now
imparted by Prometheus! The Titan had seen all, and been a part of all
that he had seen. He had bowed beneath the sceptre of Uranus, he had
witnessed his fall, and marked the ocean crimson with his blood. He
remembered hoary Saturn a brisk active Deity, pushing his way to the
throne of Heaven, and devouring in a trice the stone that now resists
his fangs for millenniums. He had heard the shields of the Corybantes
clash around the infant Zeus; he described to Elenko how one day the
sea had frothed and boiled, and undraped Aphrodite had ascended from it
in the presence of the gazing and applauding amphitheatre of
cloud-cushioned gods. He could depict the personal appearance of
Cybele, and sketch the character of Enceladus. He had instructed Zeus,
as Chiron had instructed Achilles; he remembered Poseidon afraid of the
water, and Pluto of the dark. He called to mind and expounded ancient
oracles heretofore unintelligible: he had himself been told, and had
disbelieved, that the happiest day of his own life would be that on
which he should feel himself divested of immortality. Of the younger
gods and their doings he knew but little; he inquired with interest
whether Bacchus had returned in safety from his Indian expedition, and
whether Proserpine had a family of divine imps.
Much more, nevertheless, had Elenko to teach Prometheus than she could
learn from him. How trivial seemed the history of the gods to what he
now heard of the history of men! Were these indeed the beings he had
known “like ants in the sunless recesses of caves, dwelling
deep-burrowing in the earth, ignorant of the signs of the seasons,” to
whom he had given fire and whom he had taught memory and number, for
whom he had “brought the horse under the chariot, and invented the
sea-beaten, flaxen-winged chariot of the sailor?” And now, how poorly
showed the gods beside this once wretched brood! What Deity could die
for Olympus, as Leonidas had for Greece? Which of them could, like
Iphigenia, dwell for years beside the melancholy sea, keeping a true
heart for an absent brother? Which of them could raise his fellows
nearer to the source of all Deity, as Socrates and Plato had raised
men? Who could portray himself as Phidias had portrayed Athene? Could
the Muses speak with their own voices as they had spoken by Sappho’s?
He was especially pleased to see his own moral superiority to Zeus so
eloquently enforced by Æschylus, and delighted in criticising the
sentiments which the other poets had put into the mouths of the gods.
Homer, he thought, must have been in Olympus often, and Aristophanes
not seldom. When he read in the Cyclops of Euripides, “Stranger, I
laugh to scorn Zeus’s thunderbolts,” he grew for a moment thoughtful.
“Am I,” he questioned, “ending where Polyphemus began?” But when he
read a little further on:
The wise man’s only Jupiter is this,
To eat and drink during his little day,
And give himself no care—
“No,” he said, “the Zeus that nailed me to the rock is better than this
Zeus. But well for man to be rid of both, if he does not put another in
their place; or, in dropping his idolatry, has not flung away his
religion. Heaven has not departed with Zeus.” And, taking his lyre, he
sang:
What floods of lavish splendour
The lofty sun doth pour!
What else can Heaven render?
What room hath she for more?
Yet shall his course be shortly done,
And after his declining
The skies that held a single Sun
With thousands shall be shining.
V
It was not long ere the gods began to find their way to Prometheus’s
earthly paradise, and who came once came again. The first was
Epimetheus, who had probably suffered least of all from the general
upset, having in truth little to lose since his ill-starred union with
Pandora. He had indeed reason for thankfulness in his practical divorce
from his spouse, who had settled in Caucasia, and gave Greek lessons to
the Princess Miriam. Would Prometheus lend him half a talent? a
quarter? a tenth? a hundredth? Thanks, thanks. Prometheus might rely
upon it that his residence should not be divulged on any account.
Notwithstanding which assurance, the cottage was visited next day by
eleven gods and demigods, mostly Titans. Elenko found it trying, and
was really alarmed when by and by the Furies, having made over their
functions to the Devil, strolled up to take the air, and dropped in for
a chat, bringing Cerberus. But they behaved exceedingly well, and took
back a message from Elenko to Eurydice. Ere long she was on most
intimate terms with all the dethroned divinities, celestial, infernal,
and marine.
Beautiful and blessed beyond most things is youthful enthusiasm,
looking up to something it feels or deems above itself. Beautiful, too,
as autumn sunshine is maturity looking down with gentleness on the
ideal it has surpassed, and reverencing it still for old ideas and
associations. The thought of beholding a Deity would once have thrilled
Elenko with rapture, if this had not been checked by awe at her own
presumption. The idea that a Deity, other than some disgraced offender
like Prometheus, could be the object of her compassion, would never
have entered her mind. And now she pitied the whole Olympian cohort
most sincerely, not so much for having fallen as for having deserved to
fall. She could not conceal from herself how grievously they were one
and all behind the age. It was impossible to make Zeus comprehend how
an idea could be a match for a thunderbolt. Apollo spoke handsomely of
Homer, yet evidently esteemed the Iliad and Odyssey but lightly in
comparison with the blind bard’s hymn to himself. Ceres candidly
admitted that her mind was a complete blank on the subject of the
Eleusinian mysteries. Aphrodite’s dress was admirable for summer, but
in winter seemed obstinate conservatism; and why should Pallas make
herself a fright with her Gorgon helmet, now that it no longer
frightened anybody? Where Elenko would fain have adored she found
herself tolerating, excusing, condescending. How many Elenkos are even
now tenderly nursing ancient creeds, whose main virtue is the virtue of
their professors!
One autumn night all the principal gods were assembled under
Prometheus’s roof, doing justice to the figs and mulberries, and wine
cooled with Taygetan snow. The guests were more than usually
despondent. Prometheus was moody and abstracted, his breast seemed
labouring with thought. “So looked my Pythoness,” whispered Apollo to
his neighbour, “when about to deliver an oracle.”
And the oracle came—in lyric verse, not to infringe any patent of
Apollo’s—
When o’er the towers of Constantine
An Orient Moon begins to shine,
Waning nor waxing aught, and bright
In daytide as in deep of night:
Then, though the fane be brought
To wreck, the God shall find,
Enthroned in human thought,
A temple in the mind.
“And what becomes of us while this prodigious moonshine is concocting?”
demanded Zeus, who had become the most sceptical of any of the gods.
“Go to Elysium,” suggested Prometheus.
“There’s an idea!” cried Zeus and Pallas together.
“To Elysium! to Elysium!” exclaimed the other gods, and all rose
tumultuously, saving two.
“I go not,” said Eros, “for where Love is, there is Elysium. And yonder
rising moon tells me that my hour is come.” And he flitted forth.
“Neither go I,” said an old blind god, “for where Plutus is, Elysium is
not. Moreover, mankind would follow after me. But I too must away.
Strange that I should have abode so long under the roof of a pair of
perfect virtue.” And he tottered out.
But the other gods swept forth into the moonlight, and were seen no
more. And Prometheus picked up the forsaken sandals of Hermes, and
bound them on his own feet, and grasped Elenko, and they rose up by a
dizzy flight to empty heaven. All was silent in those immense courts,
vacant of everything save here and there some rusty thunderbolt or
mouldering crumb of ambrosia. Above, around, below, beyond sight,
beyond thought, stretched the still deeps of æther, blazing with
innumerable worlds. Eye could rove nowhither without beholding a star,
nor could star be beheld from which the Gods’ hall, with all its
vastness, would not have been utterly invisible. Elenko leaned over the
battlements, and watched the racing meteors. Prometheus stood by her,
and pointed out in the immeasurable distance the little speck of
shining dust from which they had flown.
“There? or here?” he asked.
“There!” said Elenko.