Chapter III: Part 3

‘“Three days’ ride to the west lies the castle of my father the Earl of Ellaborne. If thou canst, carry to him what is in the mail on my horse. Show him this ring, and repeat the word Truth three times.”

‘And with that he was off like an arrow and he had good cause to ride, for ere I could have counted a hundred, there came a band of riders fierce as wolves, who asked me if I had seen a knight pass that way. Now they had not seen the foundered horse, for they came by another path. And not being minded that they should slay the knight, I delayed them while I could, giving them to drink, and then showed them the wrong road, for between a lie and a die, or a man’s life, there’s short choice.

‘Now when I returned to the horse, I, being somewhat learned in such matters, found him in better case than I deemed. And having poured wine down his throat, and cared for him, and given him rest, he was soon in good case to ride. And there was in the mails much gold, and certain parchments which I had lore enough to discern were great state matters for the king, and I saw that I had come into affairs of life and death for all the land.

‘And minding the proverb: “He must be a thin blade who would slip between great stones,” I went by the loneliest ways, in dark valleys and woodlands wild, till I got to Ellaborne Castle. And there was mourning and all were in dire distress, weeping and heart-sunken, because the old lord had heard his son was slain. But when I arrived with the horse, which was known to all, there was mighty to-do, and great questioning, but I spoke word to none, till I was brought before the great earl, and it was pitiful to see how broken and sorrowful he seemed.

‘“And thou hast come to prove to me that my son was truly slain, hast thou not,” he inquired, “since thou hast brought his horse?”

‘“Nay,” I replied, “by Odin and Frey who brings fortune! I know he escaped alive and well, for when I last saw him he was galloping away on a safe road, mounted on the best steed in Northumbria, with his pursuers on the wrong track.

‘“Man!” cried the earl, “if what thou sayest be sooth, and if thou didst aid him to escape, and saved his life, then, by God’s glory, thou shalt have castle and lands--if thou canst prove it.”

‘“For the proof, O my lord,” I answered, “here are the papers and gold.”

‘“Ah, the papers!” cried the earl. “By the splendour of the Virgin, though I love my son better than my own life, I had liefer he had died than that those papers had been found by the enemy. What is thy name?--Eadward--know that this day thou hast saved England!”

“‘The proof, my lord,” I said, as I gave him the ring, “is this--and the words, _Truth, Truth, Truth_! And know of a truth, for I will swear it in any shrine, that I did not save thy son’s life for gold, or fee, or aught promised or hoped for, save the price of my horse, nor would I have stuck at that to keep a goodly knight from being murdered.”

‘“True as gold art thou,” said the old lord, “and of good blood, for now I know thou art the grandson of Aeolfric, who was noble, but poor as he was learned.”

‘Then he heard the whole tale from me and said:

‘“Thou hast this day built up the fortune of thy house. And if the king do not raise thee to honour, I will.”

‘But the king treated me nobly, and the end thereof was that I am a belted knight, and lord of castles and broad lands, for I went into the war, and fate favoured me, and now I have wealth and fame. And I have wedded a niece of the Earl of Ellaborne, whom I love better for herself than for her possessions. All of which, Master, I owe to thee; and thanks are all I can give to such a mighty master of fate as thou art, but if I could give thee my life I would.’

‘I believe thee, my son,’ replied Flaxius. ‘But what became of the young earl?’

‘He saved himself, and we are now as brothers. Yea,’ he continued with a smile, ‘to him alone have I confided the holy secret of the Miraculous Bottle.’

‘God-a-mercy,’ exclaimed Flaxius; ‘’tis well there’s not a headache in a hogshead of it, else I trow ye had toped yourselves into Hela, or up to Valhall. To fancy two young Norse-Saxons with an unlimited well of wine is terrible!

‘But, let us drink!’

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_--this fable teaches,’ annotated the master, ‘a marked moral lesson, which is greatly needed at this present day, and which no man has as yet taught. It befell about thirty years ago, when people began to doubt the ancient doctrine of so much pudding here on earth for so much piety, always punctually paid, that divers young scape-graces of the press, who wished to appear, as Verdant Greens always do, interestingly wicked and sceptical, began to write _comicas fabulas_ or merry tales, wherein the little good boys all came to grief; as, for instance, how Master Benjamin Benevolence gave his penny to an old nigger and earned a whipping from his mother for so doing.’

These writers left out of sight the great fact, that, because there may not be a Moral Providence which keeps a book account to a farthing with all mortals, it still by no means follows that there is no decency, honour, or honesty, or moral retribution left among mankind, as their immensely funny tales would lead the heedless to believe. For, bad as this world may be, there are still gentlemen extant, in dealing with whom the current moral standards of Mark Lane, Houndsditch, Wall Street, the Stock Exchange, and similar dens of sharps and sharks may well be laid aside. There are still men who reciprocate generosity with generosity, and the ‘devilish shrewd’ fellow is to them a natural object of aversion. Because they know that he who cannot be _done_ will infallibly _do_ his best friend in the long run; and the man who is cheat-proof is a miraculous exception if he be not a cheat himself. In short, that it is more creditable to be taken in than to take others in, the which statement, when made by me to a young lady from Toronto, was received with the astonished remark, ‘Well, that _is_ a new idea!’

Now it befell the young hero of this tale, or Eadward, to have to deal with only honest or honourable men, and he did exactly what was right under every circumstance, the result being that he was promptly rewarded, showing that virtue is not always punished, as current literature inculcates. And if there were one hundredth part of the pains taken to teach youth the vast superiority of honour to wealth, which there is to stimulate them to acquire the latter, then we should indeed find far more gentlemen in the world, and, in due proportion, due reward for decency. And there is many a millionaire who would give half his money to be a gentleman, a man of true honesty and nobility of soul; but there was never yet one who was truly of the latter who would exchange aught with the former. For whatever the vast multitude of howling cads may think, the gentleman is the superior in that in which he _ought_ to excel; and this superiority or moral mastery is better worth having than carriages, opera-box, and a fashionable family,--who wish you were dead for your money.

And this lesson--that there may be circumstances in life when the sharp game is not the best, and when the very shrewdest would come to grief, unless guided by natural generosity and nobility--deserves to be deeply studied by the world in general, and sharp Americans in particular, to judge by my personal experiences of both.

And I would that the novelist and literary man, and all who write for the public, would teach this thing in spirit and in truth, if they can with real sympathy, and not go on for ever as most--ay, the very utmost of the most do--preaching it in a formal, listless, ‘be virtuous and you will be happy’ way, while they depict the advantages of wealth and the merest mammon varnished with fashion and style, with all the gush and fire and power of art which they possess. But a book written with earnestness, setting forth _genially_ that _honneur passe richesse_, is as yet among the curiosities, yea, the _rariora_ of literature. There is indeed no lack of authors who say this thing, and who think perhaps they mean it; but they do not send it home to the heart, nor prove it, nor illustrate it, so as to awaken in the mind of the reader a deep sympathy for honour as compared to wealth. No, not one, as they should and perhaps could do.

For it does not occur to you, O dearly beloved, that all these infinite scenes of flirtation in Belgravia or Cameliadom, showing how She would, and then wouldn’t, and then was _incomprise_, and anon capricious or top-lofty-minded, or interesting and mysterious-miserable, and how He, _pauvre malheureux_! with his gnawed moustachios and dreadful devotion, are all nothing but the direct results of too much money and its consequent idleness or _ennui_. And the other ways of plot-making, and interesting the reader, are, with few exceptions indeed, all cakes from the same dough. Therefore am I reminded of the French author’s recipe for a novel: ‘_Commencez toujours avec un million_.’

And as it seems to me that literature for the multitude can hardly sink lower than it has done into this swamp of wealth of late years, I have hope that it will ere long begin to rise.

FLAXIUS AND ASMODEUS

Out of mere mischief and mockery grew evil, even as Loki from playing boyish tricks became the devil. To do evil is one thing, to study and understand it is another, but in all ages men have confused the two.

’TWAS on a Syrian summer afternoon, therefore a warm one, that Flaxius sat in the silent solitude of a ruined city of most ancient days, in Midian, a place wherein the satyr has not even yet met the English tourist, nor the Egipani, or demons of the lonely wildnesses, been called to stand and deliver statistics to the German _savant_.

He sat on a wedge-inscripted stone, about a young bird’s flight from what had been of yore a purple-lined palace of sweet sin, but so tremendous in its majesty, even in decay and decency, that the sternest Puritan who ever iconoclasted a cathedral would have thought twice ere ravishing this House of Baal.

‘Beauty,’ said Flaxius, ‘may be its own excuse for being--very naughty--but grandeur, even when touching in its old decay, is more than an excuse; it is a vindication for the sins, however great, of all who are possessed of it. And they were great in glory and splendour! How great the men were who dwelt here in the olden golden time! and how little idea has any man on earth in this age of small things, of what it was to live in greatness, though it were in great delusions.’

As he said this--’twas in the first dimness of twilight--a breeze began to stir the palms and he heard the hoot of an owl, which was re-echoed far and far away by the monotonous and much more unmusical song of some Arab peasant at his plough.

‘I would like to know,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘whether the song of the owl portends the death of that _peasant_ or the song of the peasant the death of the owl? Methinks the owl has the worst of it, for the ploughman hoots fifty per cent. more horribly. Now, of the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine divinations invented by Kai Umarat, the first of the Magi, and first born of Adam, can I not find one here at hand to settle the weighty question?’

As he said this, while idly digging in the sand with his staff, he struck something hard, which shining, seemed to be of bronze. The sage picked it up and found he had unearthed an axe of the richest and deepest green _patina_.

‘Just the thing,’ thought Flaxius. ‘Thou comest, as Germans say, “unto the call.” It was by Axiomancy or the balanced axe that the ancients were wont to decide a question--halfpence to toss not having been then invented; and I can bear Pliny out in his assertion that the game was extremely fashionable. In neolithic days they drew a circle, bisected it with a line, put the _kelt_ in the middle, and made it spin, inferring from the way it pointed when at rest whether Yes or No had been vouchsafed. The thing still exists as a little game among American Red Indians. They spun on their axes, _unde nomen derivatur_. The Romans hung the hatchet with a cord; and if I remember aright, Francesco della Torre Biana[2] declares that the fall of Jerusalem was thus predicted. I wonder who predicted it?’

Whether it was from the ground, or the tombs, or the ruins, or the great palm-tree was not apparent, but there was heard a hollow sound like no earthly voice, but a sound as of wings. There was a mocking tone in it which said:

‘_I_, with that axe which thou holdest in thy hand.’

‘And who in the name of Desolation art _thou_ who dwellest here in solitude?’ inquired Flaxius.

And the voice replied:

‘Aschmodai.’

‘What! Asmodeus, the Devil on two Sticks! Well, old friend, I was a fool to put the question, for I now remember (and Wierus has said it) that thou art the demon of all games and gambling. I would fain see thee again. What ho, _Chammadai!_ _Sidonai!_ _Aschmodai_, appear! In the name of thy master Am-oimon!’

‘Thou forgettest,’ replied the Voice, more mockingly than before, ‘that according to the _Pseudomonarchia Dæmonum_, he who invokes Asmodeus must stand firmly on his legs and call loudly.’

‘Well,’ replied the Magian, ‘I am seated firmly _sur mon séant_, which will do just as well, _sans cérémonie_ among old friends, and since thou hearest me it is loud enough. Come forth, I say!’

And, lo! there came forth from the doorway of the ruined temple an unearthly form, in appearance awful and appalling, but so strangely mingled with the grotesque, a demon with the laughing nightmare, that the wisdom of this our age, and all its art of pen or pencil would have failed to depict it.

It paused in silence, seeming like a statue, and when the Magian himself spoke, it was not in words but with Thought to the arch-demon of delusion and of mockery:

‘I see thee as thou art, O Spirit, who wert once mighty to impose on man in so many forms, O stupendous scarecrow of the past, and its jester withal, for the day is well-nigh gone by when mankind at large can grasp thy paradoxes! Yea, they are rapidly becoming a vexation, or a bore, or a trifle, as the idol of the past becomes the nursery toy of the present.

‘Truly, there was a time when Dante and Milton and many more were, to every word, living truths for all who read them, and the form was animated with the idea. Now, the Inferno burns no more, Pandemonium and Theism and Satan are all mere senile fables. What remains is the art of the poet--nothing more--a beautiful, petrified figure--very beautiful--but--dead. And thy spirit, O Daemon, in its best meaning, still lives in Aristophanes and Shakespeare and Chaucer, and Rabelais and Villon; but the comprehension of it is dying--dying fast, O Daemon!--and ere long they too will be petrifactions, wearing indeed the outward semblance of what they were, but from them life will be gone. Men think that they still enjoy the poet in spirit and in truth, but what they really enjoy is only their own criticisms and sense of vain intelligence--and with _that_ the signs of death begin. For where intelligence and self-knowledge awaken, feeling for that which is without us ceases. It was never meant that man should enjoy at once the two extremes of pleasure--even as the Catholic moral casuist determined that man could not combine the extreme of passionate love with the holy sweetness of relationship. Yes, the humour and absurdity, and wild contrast which was the deepest problem in human nature, become before criticism a poor shadowy thing. And thus endeth the first lesson. Let me look a while longer into thy eyes, O Daemon, and find a second.’

And yet anon to Flaxius, as he gazed on the form, it was as if he were looking through some wondrous arch into a Vanity fairy-land, and, advancing, saw at every step newer and stranger arches, richly and wildly adorned; through which, as in a marvellous vista, he beheld Infernos, Paradises, Fiddler’s Greens, Edens, Tom Tiddler’s grounds, convents. These he knew were lupanars, witch-burnings at which holy men sang hymns to God, martyrdoms for smoke, or the toss of a farthing, millions killed in battles for quarrels about things which had no existence, men and women tortured to death for not believing in nothing but a farce--ages following ages, all mad with lies against Nature. And busy in it all was the spirit Aschmodai or Asmodeus, whose business it is on earth to turn chance to mischief, to inspire all the manias and follies and delusions which make men fools in every way, and awaken in them vanity and error. And it was no wonder that, as he beheld him, something like a vision or a song swept through the soul of Flaxius. For this was He

‘Who grappled once with mighty Solomon,
And cast him from his throne, and then in turn
Was fettered heavily and made to work
On the great temple of Jerusalem,
To which he gave its last magnificence
Beyond the monarch’s hope, yet jeered at all;
Yea, at his chains as at his victory;
And who, as he was borne in fetters thus,
When all men deemed him sunk in deep despair,
Burst out a-laughing. “Wherefore art thou glad?”
Inquired a sage. He answered, “Lo, I laughed,
Because I saw a conjurer in the street,
Who promised unto all his dupes to tell
Where buried treasure lay, yet never knew
That such a treasure lay beneath his feet,
Even as he spoke during his conjuring.”
He too it was of old who tempted Job:
Nay, there are Rabbis who maintain to-day
’Twas he who as the Serpent tempted Eve,
Not out of evil but from mockery,
Deeming the Tree and all a mighty joke,
The farce primæval, out of which has grown
A thousand-farcèd series which men call
The History of Man--which were indeed
A mighty jest to devils, as the frogs
Were to the boys of old--and might be too
Unto the baratrachians, were not
The pebbles which are cast, so sharp and large,
Yes, in a thousand times ten thousand forms,
As mocking devil, or as god supreme,
Asmodeus is known unto the world.’

‘Do not forget,’ said Asmodeus, ‘my last--albeit my weakest and most stagey and shallow incarnation--the Mephistopheles of Goethe. Yet he made me say one good thing, when I call myself, “_der Geist der stets verneint_.” Do you know what _verneint_ means?--for if you do, you know more than most folk.’

‘I opine,’ said Flaxius, ‘that it means “denies.”’

‘That, and something more,’ laughed Asmodeus. ‘_Verneinen_ meant, of yore, also to enchant, conjure, bewitch, or humbug. _C’est mon métier_, I cast a spell on every work of man, and make thereof in time a mockery--all mockery is denial in the end--denial is the bringing all to naught.’

‘Truly, from thy point of view thou hast seen rare jests in thy time, Aschmodai,’ said Flaxius. ‘A history of the world, written by thee, with comments, would be amusing reading--as would the review thereof in the _Presbyterian_--and I could find it in my heart to wish a plague on ye both, did I not know that there are some grains of truth between ye.’

‘Ay, I should catch it hot beyond a doubt,’ replied Asmodeus, ‘for the less intellect a man has the more he believes in it, and is therefore the more furious with those who mock the sublime wisdom in whose army he is a corporal. But what thinkest thou, Flaxius, of Thought?’

‘I read not long ago,’ replied the Sage, ‘an essay by a she-philosopher, who said that as we ever deeper go into the subtlest mystery of things, the more impossible it still becomes _not_ to perceive an action as of mind, working co-relative with natural law. The good girl left out of sight the small fact that thought and natural law may be one in Nirvana. It is a marvellous, apparent law that man is not allowed to solve the problem as yet; could he do so he would settle down into superstition or atheism--both unprogressive.’

‘Ay,’ quoth Asmodeus, ‘thought and natural law now carry one another alternately. See the boys in Florence when they play at _scaricabarile_. One boy, back to back with a rival, locks arms with him, and so they lift each other up and down.[3] ’Tis a game much resembling polemics, because in it both of the combatants--whether lifting or lifted--appear by turns ridiculous.’

‘Ah, well,’ replied Flaxius, ‘it is a vigorous game, and developes muscle, as does all struggling. Out of peaceful parthenogenesis and idleness, starvation, and the struggle for life, evolve energy and male strength, intellect, and will. But, Aschmodai, what thinkest thou more of Thought.’

‘Though I was one of the very first thoughts ever thought, if not the first itself, as many think,’ replied the Spirit, ‘the answer to that question is still unto me a mystery. Yet as we see that in life the crystal precedes the flower, or organic growth, monsters come before man, Egyptian pyramids before Greek and Gothic grace, barbarism before enlightenment, so do I deem that natural law preceded thought and involuntary action will, which was first, creatingness or a creator. With the first motion in matter came the first act, in the unorganic the organic was born;--but how this was it knew not, nor do we know, O my Flaxius, for truly there is an immense amount of things which it would be better for man to look after before he afflicts his small soul with the problem of the egg and the hen. But so long as man shall make a fool of himself, either as atheist, theist, or agnostic waiting to see how the fight will turn, so that he, the Mugwump of faith, may join the conqueror--even so long shall I, Aschmodai, live in glory and triumph. This trinity has been my very life, even as alchemy drew from the spirit of the three its _elixir vitæ_. And mighty have been the mockeries and many the jests which I have drawn from it, nor is the merriment as yet quite o’er--albeit I know that I am perishing--and passing with the Triad fast away. Oh, it was glorious to behold the Jew--the original inventor of man’s vilest vanity, Chauvinism or national pride, who first created religious oppression, and believed with Rabbi Jochanan that, “as the best of serpents deserves to have its head crushed, so the best of Gentiles ought to be killed”--’tis sweet, I say, to live to hear him raise the martyr’s cry, even as the Pope is now raising it--“the po-oo-r Pope”--as a prisoner in the Vatican! Then were the discoverers of the art of Martyrdom avenged by seeing the humblest among them made the gods of the oppressors; and so Men all rolled on into time, burning and torturing millions, especially old women, for the love of Him whose one great doctrine was mercy, charity, love, and sweetness. Then there were revolts of the oppressed, and peasants’ wars and gladiators’ revolts, and French Revolutions--alternate black and white--and in it all hell throve, and I laughed.’

‘But thou art dying.’

‘Well, my Flaxius, I have had a call. Thou rememberest the tale of the Three Warnings, or how Death promised a man that he should be signalled thrice ere called away. So he became lame and deaf and blind--these were the three.’

‘And when was thy first warning?’

‘When Christ preached unconditional altruism unto mankind--cosmopolitanism and equality. That lamed me.’

‘And the second?’

‘When a Hindu set up a religion on the word _Sikh_. It means, “seek!” What goes beyond faith, unbelief, or uncertainty is to inquire and search and seek for truth. So I was deafened by that awful cry.’

‘And the third?’

‘Aristotle, Friar Bacon, Francis Bacon, Darwin, Induction, Evolution. That will soon finish me. But the first blow was the worst, and I knew it. I bore up well, and made a gallant fight, but I am dying. _Vicisti, Galilæe!_’

As he spoke, the full golden Syrian moon shone o’er their heads in an unclouded sky, a gentle breeze was wantoning in the palms, yet from afar there came a jackal’s cry, and then the booming of a lion’s roar.

‘I shall pass away, my Flaxius, but I shall live again in some form; evil or good, my spirit cannot die. For there is a _good_ in me--a good of strength--and while matter casts a shadow, or contrasts and paradoxes exist, I shall be. All in a softened form I well previse. As the sun which set is followed by yonder moon, so shall I be softer, and yet as eternal. When God shall assume a higher form, I shall inherit the old throne and sceptre.’

‘Yes,’ replied Flaxius, ‘it well may be. Shelley and sundry other inspired lunatics had that idea; ’twas known to the Greeks, not without thy aid, O Aschmodai! For thou hast always thrown doubt and a fine frenzy and confusion over all great truths.’

‘_Rectè dixisti_, thou speakest truly,’ answered Aschmodai. ‘Had all been all at once, nothing had ever been.’ Son Flaxius, thou too art a moon, and thou art my son; but thou wouldst fain enjoy the paradox without the pain. As the old hard-griping peasant grows rich, unheeding of what misery he makes, while his cultured heir grows gentle and amiable, so wilt thou, and the world which has been enriched by the past, grow milder. _Le diable est mort--vive le diable!_

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ penned the sage, ‘that men, with all their wisdom, do not train their wondrous power of putting numbers together to make sums, or the faculty of deduction, by means of which stupendous results of prophecy may be attained. This might be increased to a degree which would seem to us miraculous. Edgar A. Poe had strange intuitions of what might be in his theory that he who observes all antecedents and possible combinations may surely foresee consequences.

‘And, as his name reminds me, Poe mentions that at Palæchosi, in Sparta, there is existent on a stone an inscription L.A.S.M., which is probably a part of GELASMA or Laughter, indicating a shrine to the merry god. Apropos of which M. Marcel Schwob remarks that laughter is destined to die away with advancing culture. “It is,” he declares, “a mere _tic_, a gross physical manifestation of the perception of disharmony in the world, which will vanish before complete scepticism, absolute science, general pity, or intolerance of suffering and respect for all things.” This idea should assuredly please Anglo-Americans, among whom, while a sense of humour increases, the laugh diminishes, till we generally find in their greatest jesters men who never laugh at all.

‘But M. Schwob errs in his _Essai de Paradoxe sur le Rire_, when he declares that this species of contraction of the zygomatic muscles is peculiar to man, it having been an indication of his feeble intelligence and the conviction of his own superiority. The Newfoundland dog laughs at times, and that with an expression which is completely human. I had heard of this several times before I witnessed it, and also heard that the expression, though droll, was so uncanny in a dog as to awaken something like awe, as I, indeed, experienced. These dogs have a keen sense of humour, entering with intelligence into the games and romps of boys. But the error of M. Schwob, as well as that of Matthew Arnold, is to believe that seriousness or mere gravity is essential to genius. The French writer is of opinion that laughter expresses only sneers, sarcasms, vanity, and short-witted scepticism. It means far more than this to greater minds. As the Schwobian view is diabolical, so is there, on the other hand, a divine humour, a sweet and sacred _gelasma_, which we only do not associate with sacred things and grandeur, simply because we know nothing about their true inner nature and are not at home there. There is a sweet laughter of innocence, purity and youth, in which a smile always irradiates the face, lighting it to higher beauty. Is not a smile divine? Is not all beauty as the smile of God in nature? And there is also a bitter smile--a sardonic laugh--the very life of Aschmodai, and the meaning of this chapter is that this laugh is vanishing in the world, and with it the brutal bray and idiotic ‘yawp’ and silly snigger of the vulgar mind; but that the merry musical laugh of the gentle heart, and the smile divine which thrills the heart of love like wine, will remain to man, after asinine seriousness shall have vanished for ever.

’Tis a delicate thing to draw the lines which divide the gold from the dross, and show how the _harsh_ humour will be neglected in Shakespeare and Rabelais, as theology is dropped from our admiration of Dante, but all of them will live in so far as the angelic smile beams in them.

Note that had this world been without variableness or the shadow of turning, darkness and light, or night and day, rise and fall, it had not been at all; and that, while there shall be change and contrast and evolution, or nature itself, there will be humour, which is the soul and life of laughter, and though it has been easily checked in this priggish _fin de siècle_ (when dolts have well-nigh got the upper hand, and dismal dulness shadows all the land) yet with the great coming Renaissance of Nature, which is just beginning to show under the aid of science, as the morning redness comes with the rising sun, men will laugh merrily once more, not in bitterness, but in love.

[2] _Epistolæ delict, sive de Magia_, lib. i. cap. 24.

[3] _Scaricabarili_, ‘unloading barrels.’ ‘Ludus est puerilis quil’a duobus tantum peragitur. Alter enim alteri terga vertunt, brachiisque mutuo implicatis, se alter alterum vicissim humo tollunt. Unde significare volentes duos alterum in alterum alicujus peccati culpam refundere dicimus: _E fanno a scaricabarili_. Inter hoc autem et illud de quo supra: _Fare a scaricalasino_, ea est differentia quod hoc significat alterum in alterum culpam suam rejicere; illud verò simpliciter alicujus criminis culpam a se dimovere.’--_Angeli Monosinii Floris Italicæ Linguæ Libri Novem_, A.D. 1604.

FLAXIUS IN FLORENCE

OR, THE GOBLIN OF THE TOWER DELLA TRINITÀ, BY THE PORTA SAN NICCOLO.

‘They do not speak as mortals speak, Nor sing as others sing: Their words are gleams of starry light, Their songs the glow of sunset bright: Or meteors on the wing.’

THE following story belongs to this book ‘in good faith of all sorts,’ be it salted, pickled or sugared; since it was originally the first ever recorded of the great and good Flaxius. But as it was of Florence, Florentiny, so, following the saying, ‘first come, first served,’ and being engaged on _The Legends of Florence_[4]--in which book the lovers of romance and the occult will find many a rare treat, showing how all Florence is a charmingly haunted city--therefore did I first introduce the sage in it to the world.

And in the introduction I said that the legend is of great antiquity, since there is a hint of it in an ancient Hebrew work by Rabbi ben Mozel-toff, or the learned Rev Gedauler Chamar, besides being found in poetic form in my own great work _The Music Lesson of Confucius_; also in a marvellous cabalistic manuscript which I bought in sight of Santa Maria Novella, which describes how the _Bathkol_, or Daughter of the Voice, may be caused to be heard within our soul, and teach us all kinds of magic.

Money is the root of all evil, and Flaxius, who went to the root of everything, of course wanted it. How he often got it is set forth as follows:

FLAXIUS AND THE ROSE

Midnight was ringing from the cloister of San Miniato in Florence on the hill above, and Flaxius sat by the Arno down below, on the bank, by the square grey tower of other days, known as the Niccolò, or _Torre della Trinità_ because there are in it three arches....

It was midnight in mid-winter and a full moon poured forth all its yellow light over Florence as if it would fain preserve it in oil--or amber--and over the olive groves till they looked in the distance like moss-agates in topaz.

‘Or I,’ quoth Flaxius, to carry out the simile, ‘like a fly in hock!’

Yes, it was a clear, cold Tuscan night, and as the last peal of bells went out into Eternity and faded in the Irrevocable, thousands of spirits of the departed began to appear, thronging like fire-flies in June, through the streets, visiting their ancient haunts and homes, shops and shades, greeting, gossiping or arranging their affairs just as the peasants do on Friday in the great place of the Signoria--as they have done for centuries.

Flaxius looked at the rolling river which went rushing by at his feet, and said:

‘_Arno mio!_ you are in a tremendous hurry to get to the sea, and all the more because you have just had an _accessit_, a remittance, of rain from the mountain-banks. _Buon pro vi faccia_, much good may it do you! So every mortal fain would rise and run. So every shopman hurries to become a great merchant when he gets some money, and every farmer a signore, and every signore a great lord, and every great lord a ruler at court and over all the land--_prorsum et sursum_. And when they _get there_, or when you get to the sea, then ye are all swallowed up in greater lives, interests and actions; and so the rivers run for ever on--longer yet ever seeming less unto yourselves. And so--_ad altiora tendunt omnes sic_--all to the Higher ever doth aspire, the flower-edged torrent and the Florentine.’....

When he suddenly heard above his head a spirit-voice, clear, sweet and strange, singing not in words, or on the ear, but by tones of unearthly music, of which languages there are many among the unearthlies, each unto its ‘chaos,’ all being wordless songs or airs suggesting speech and yet conveying ideas more rapidly. It was the Goblin of the Tower to him of the tower next beyond on the further hill, and he said:

‘How many ghosts there are abroad to-night!’

‘Yes; it is a fine night for ghosting. Moonlight is mid-summer for them, poor souls! But I say, brother, who is yonder _Frate_, the dark monk-spectre, who always haunts your tower, lingering here and there about it? What is the spell upon that _spirito_?’

‘He is one to be pitied,’ replied the goblin of the _Trinità_. ‘He was a good fellow while he lived, but a little too fond of money. He was afflicted with what the doctors called in Rome, when I was young, the _amor sceleratus_, or _sal aeratus habendi_. So it came to pass that he died, leaving a treasure, _mille aureos_, or a thousand gold crowns, buried in my tower, unknown to any one, and for that he must walk the earth until some one living wins the money. For money is as life to all men, and he who destroys it is, in a way, a murderer.’

Flaxius pricked up his ears. He understood all that the goblins said, but they had no idea that the man in a scholar’s robe who sat below knew Goblinese.

‘What must a mortal do to get the gold?’ inquired the second goblin.

‘Truly he must do what is well-nigh impossible,’ replied the Elf of the Tower, ‘for he must, without the aid of magic--note that--bring to me here, in this month of January, a fresh, full-blown rose.’

The voices were silent; a cloud passed over the face of the moon; the river rushed and roared on; Flaxius sat in a Vandyke-brown study, thinking how he could obtain peace and repose for the ghostly monk, and also get the _solatium_ or reward.

‘Here is,’ he thought, ‘_aliquid laborare_, something to be worked out. Now is the time, and here is the chance, _ingirlandisi di lauro_, to win the laurel wreath. A rose in January! What a pity it is not four hundred years later, when people will have green-houses, and blue-nosed vagabonds will be selling red roses all the winter long in the Tornabuoni! Faith! it is sometimes inconvenient to be behind, or in advance of the age!

‘_Eureka!_ I have it!’ he at last exclaimed, ‘have it by the neck and tail! I will _spogliar la tesoria_, rob the treasury and spoil the Egyptian. _Si non in errore versatus sum_, unless I am stupendously mistaken, monk, thy weird will soon be dreed, thy penance prophesied will soon be o’er!’

Saying this he went into the city. And there the next day, going to a fair lady of his acquaintance who excelled all in Italy in ingenious needlework, he had made of silk a rose; and so deftly was it done, that had it been put on a bush you would have sworn that a nightingale would have sung to it, or a bee sought to ravish it.

Then going to a Venetian perfumer’s in the Via Vacchereccia close by the Signoria, the wise Flaxius had his flower well scented with best attar of roses from Constantinople, and when midnight struck he was at the tower once more, where he called to the goblin.

‘_Che vuoi!_ What dost thou seek?’ cried the elf.

‘The treasure of the monk.’

‘_Bene!_ Give me a rose?’

‘_Ecco!_ There it is!’ replied Flaxius extending it.

‘_Non facit_--it won’t do,’ answered the goblin in Latin, thinking Flaxius to be a monk. ‘It is a sham rose of silk, artificially coloured--_murice tincta est_.’

‘Smell it,’ replied Flaxius calmly.

‘The _smell_ is all right and sweet, I admit,’ answered the guardian of the gold. ‘The perfume is delicious’--here he sniffed at it seriously, being like all of his kind enraptured with perfume--‘and that much of it is, I grant, the real thing.’

‘Then tell me truly,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and swear by thy great ancestress Diana, the mother of the Spirits of the Night, and her sister-daughter Herodias, and her Nine Cats, by the Moon and her eternal shadow Endamone, and the word which Bergoia whispered into the ear of the Ox, and the Nails of Nortia, and the Lamia whom thou lovest!--what is it makes a man? Is it his soul or his body?’

‘Man of mystery and master of the old Etruscan hidden lore!’ replied the awe-struck goblin, ‘it is his soul.’

‘And is not the perfume of the rose its _soul_, that which breathes its life, in which it speaks to fairies or to men? Is not the voice in song or sweetened words the perfume of the spirit ever true? Is not----’

‘I give it up,’ replied the goblin. ‘The priest may turn in now for a long, long nap. Here, take his gold, and may you have a merry time with it; there is a great deal of good drinking in a thousand crowns, to say nothing of the eating! Do you ever play at dice, old man, _ludere latrunculis_? When you do, I promise you three sixes. By the way, I’ll just keep this rose to remember you by. _Addio, a rivederla!_ Good-bye and _au revoir_!’

So the bedesman slept among his ashes cold, and Flaxius, who was a stout carl for the nonce, with a broad back and a great beard, returned, bearing a mighty sack of ancient gold, which stood him in good stead for many a day. And the goblin is still there in the tower.

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius, as he revised the proof with a red pencil for which he had paid a penny at Ancora’s ancient stationery shop in the Via Condotti, ‘this tale teaches that in this life there is naught which hath not its ideal side or idol inner-soul, which may raise us to high reflection or great profit if we will but seek it.

‘The lower the man the less he sees, and the lower he looks, but it is all to his loss.

‘Now every chapter in this book, or in that of thy life, O my son, or daughter! may seem to thee to be only a rose of silk, yet do not stop at that, but try to find therein its perfume.

‘For thou art thyself, I doubt not, such a rose, even if thy threads, as in most of us, be somewhat worn or torn or faded; and yet thou _hast_ a soul far better than many deem who see thee only from a distance. And this my book is written for the perfume, not the silk of my reader. And there is no person who is better in any way than what the world deems him or her to be who will not find in it comfort.’

But, friend, how was it that it came to pass that I found out this veritably and authentically ancient legend of the Tower of the Triple Arches, which, when I wrote, rose opposite my window over the Arno? My dear reader, it was written down for me by a witch, in very truth, who had learned it of her strange kind and with it many more, which you might have collected as well as I, if you could have kept such company and wandered in such paths as I did. And know that the Sleepy Hollow of the Hudson is not more haunted by marvellous spirits of a bygone age, or more strangely shaded with legends of goblins and fair, quaint mysteries of the golden time than is this city which is named from Flowers, or it may be from Flora, _la belle Romaine_, the beautiful sorceress who bewitched all with love. Villon asked what became of her:

‘Where is there left on earth a trace
Of Flora once the Roman fair?
Or Archipiada and Thais,
That bright and ever queenly pair?
Echo will fling the question back
O’er silent lake and streamlet lone,
All earthly beauty fades away,
Where have the snows of winter gone?’

Here the old Roman enchantress yet lives as much as she ever did in fact in Rome,--for she was there only a world-old Indian myth of pleasure and beauty,--in the city of the Lily. And here indeed there is, according to legend, a goblin by every bridge, an elf in every tower and old palazzo, a fairy of the ancient Roman kind in form, changed to a later hue in colour, a witch _aura_ lingering in many a darkling corridor and chamber, a something between sweet perfume and the conjurer’s fumigations to raise spirits. I have learned that in my barber’s shop opposite the great column of Cosimo, San Zenobio once wrought a miracle, and in my café, a fair maid was bewitched into a cow.

‘All over doth this modern life
An ancient life enfold.’

These things you may read in full in many a story, as set forth in _The_ (aforesaid) _Legends of Florence_, which grew out of the first draft of the sketch of Flaxius.

[4] _Legends of Florence_, 2 vols.: London, D. Nutt.

FLAXIUS AND THE EMPEROR JULIAN

‘The Emperor Julian in his _Cæsars_ gives the preference to Marcus Aurelius, who having been greatly honoured for his merits, replied modestly “that it had always been his care to imitate the gods.”’--_The Spectator_, No. 635.

‘I SHOULD really like,’ said Flaxius to his attendant pocket-imp, Puttuli, ‘to see this grand young man, our Emperor Julian.’

[‘_Grand jeune homme_’ was a term applied in later days to Mr. James G. Bennett, of the _New York Herald_ by the _Figaro_, but Flaxius was the inventor of it.’]

‘Nothing easier,’ replied the goblin. ‘You give the _atriensis_, or janitor, a hundred _nummos_ or _sestertios_, or a ring, or any trifle, and so you may be admitted to a private-public view. For a _sestertium_ he will manage an opportunity to speak to Cæsar. But you can have a good street view for nothing, and I think,’ added Puttuli as he critically eyed his master, ‘if he saw you he might speak to you; he isn’t at all particular as to his company.’

‘_Gratias tibi ago_, thank you for the compliment,’ replied the sage, ‘but as it concerns an emperor, we may as well do things genteelly. Assume a respectable form, if you know how----’

(‘_Gratias tibi_, or _not_ tibi _ago_,’ murmured the imp.)

‘----and hire a place _dans la première loge_. For a _sestertium_.’

‘Would your excellency like to carry a _bouquet_?’ inquired Puttuli impudently.

‘A good idea! Yes, order me one of rue, concordia and verbena.’

‘Well, of all the nosegays that ever were nosed, that is the queerest,’ answered the servant. ‘But, _fiat voluntas tua_, my lord’s will be done! A great deal of rue with plenty of concordia, and most of all verbena. I will go to the pretty herb-seller in the Suburra. She has the vegetables.’

‘I must choose a lucky day,’ said Flaxius.

‘To-morrow,’ answered Puttuli, ‘is the three hundred and sixty-fifth day of the year three hundred and sixty-five A.D.’

So it came to pass that, twenty-four hours after, Flaxius stood in the grand hall of the imperial palace amid the row of suitors and courtiers and other great or wise, or otherwise, folk who awaited audience of Julian. He looked at the emperor with approbation.

‘I knew the first Julian,’ he reflected; ‘the man who bought the empire at auction and resigned in sixty-six days. He was indeed a _caducus_,--a word which will live in later days as _cad_--an imperial snob. This is a horse of another colour.’

Meanwhile the emperor who had the keenest eye in Rome for observing all sorts and conditions of men, and who, after sitting an hour in the amphitheatre, could describe the appearance of everybody present who was anybody, had not failed to note the tall and stately form of the philosopher, and his grandly flowing beard. Now Julian, having a very fine beard of his own, was deeply interested in this subject, as appears from his great work _Misopogon_, meaning ‘Enemy of the Beard,’ that is to say of wisdom, to say nothing of his ‘Letters.’ And as Flaxius had a very beard of beards flowing and curling in indescribable magnificence, and as he wore the purely white, long-flowing robe which indicated the professional philosopher, a being dearer to the emperor than the prettiest woman living, he gazed at Flaxius with what became absolute approval or admiration.

‘By Esculapius and Jupiter!’ he exclaimed, ‘that is a good-looking man. Something in my line, I think! Who is he?’

‘Cæsar!’ replied Puttuli, who had assumed the form and voice of Bumbulbulus, the court factotum, ‘that is the great Flaxius, a sage who has travelled all over the world, and who is reported to know everything from the works of Moloch the Pismirist, up to those of God.’

‘That is a large order,’ replied the emperor reflectively, ‘_magnum postulatum est_. But bring him here that I may measure him.’

‘That will take more time, O Cæsar, than it would for him to measure you!’ thought Puttuli, as he departed. ‘He needs a long line who would sound such a sea as the Master. Come now! I think we are as good as established at court.’

Now the emperor had for many years been devoted to magic and _occulta_, and observing the herb-bouquet which Flaxius bore, grasped its hidden meaning with great pleasure.

‘_Salve_, Cæsar!’ said the sage.

‘_Salve, adepte!_’ replied the monarch. ‘So thou hast mastered the lore of the Etruscan, as I read by the _Concordia_, “_Janus adorandus cum quo Concordia mitis_,” as Ovid saith; of Egypt, as the rue proclaims; “_cingebat rutæ quæ coma multicomæ_’; and of Persia, I see by the verbena, _Verbenasque adole pinguis et mascula thura_. Hem! Virgil!’

‘I have heard, even in the remotest region of the earth,’ replied Flaxius, ‘that what Cæsar could not do in the way of apt quotation was not worth doing.’

‘_Um!_ I flatter myself that I know a thing or two,’ replied the emperor--the very phrase occurs in his _Epistolæ_--‘but like Apicius with the British oysters, I am always ready for a few more. And I read it in thee, O Flaxius,’ he added, suddenly changing his whole mien and manner, and looking through his tangled locks with that strange, unearthly glare which so impressed his contemporary familiars, as if he had become another man, ‘that thou canst teach me much which I do _not_ know, therefore I ask thee to sup with me to-night.’

The emperor said this, turning away so abruptly, that all present who did not know his ways inwardly thanked God, according to their heathen or Christian faith, that they did not stand in the shoes of that philosopher with the flowing beard. But those who knew him better looked gravely, and said, ‘Cæsar hath found a new friend!’

But Flaxius himself was deeply amazed when Julian, leading him to a table, by which stood a single Greek servant--there was no other soul present--showed him with some pride that the meal consisted only of a grilled fish and _garum_, with bread and olives, new cheese and fruit.

‘There is your supper, Flaxius!’ he exclaimed, ‘and much good may it do you!’

‘By the lance and laurel bough or olive of the god Honour, whose temple is by the Campidoglio!’ cried the sage, ‘what am _I_, O Cæsar! that thou shouldst treat me with such esteem!’

‘_Non rectis oculis aspice_, never do you mind _that_,’ replied Julian. ‘Truly if I were going to entertain a Bythnian prince or a sow-bellied contractor for the army, whom I hoped some day to crucify, I would have given him a hundred courses of ortolans stuffed with oysters, and galantine with truffles and pistachios, and all that sort of thing. But to a philosopher whom I wish to treat as a brother, I give just what I am accustomed to eat myself. One cannot be a slave at the same time to his brain and his belly--_non potes Tethidem simul et Galateam amare_, as Lucian says.’

‘Now, I see,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘that when a man is a gentleman at heart, he can turn even his vanity to a kindness. A marvellous character is this Cæsar, and one who will do much to be misunderstood in history.’

So they held wondrous discourse of great and glorious things in philosophy, over which the emperor quoted nearly all the Orphic sayings, with the Poemander of Hermes, and finally came to what he had been aiming at from the first, by bluntly asking:

‘Knowest thou aught of magic?’

‘O Cæsar! do not think I seek to quibble or raise a sophistical cloud between us,’ replied Flaxius, ‘if I ask thee what is the meaning of magic.’

‘It is,’ replied the emperor--who had been there before--‘the violation of the laws of nature.’

‘And what is nature?’ asked the Sage.

‘H’m!--the eternal order of things--the action of laws, or _potentia quatenus in potentia_.’

‘Rather vague, yet good so far as it goes. But, Cæsar, if there be but one substance, though you call it matter in one form and spirit in another, and one eternal law manifesting itself in infinite forms, there can be no violation of them. Miracle or magic is only _something which man cannot explain_, something which puzzles and astonishes him. _Si placet_--give me an example for a miracle!’

‘I am devilish thirsty,’ replied Julian. ‘That _garum_ or fish-sauce is pungent enough to make a Nazarene drink a gallon of strong Sicilian wine. Now, if you could pour me any kind of wine which I may call for out of one and the same bottle----

‘It may be done, O Cæsar! but remember that to do this one must invoke the invisible spirits or forces of nature, whom we call the gods, to aid in such mysteries.’