Chapter IV: Part 4

After a long pause of reflection, the emperor slowly replied, ‘Granted.’ He did not see that Puttuli, reduced to his natural stature of three inches, and who sat unseen behind him, advanced his thumb to his nose, and waved his fingers, making thereby an ancient and mysterious Egyptian sign used by the priests of Memphis when they initiated some great sage to their rites.

Then Flaxius winked to Puttuli, who presently reappeared in the form of Bumbulbulus.

‘Go to my rooms,’ said the sage, ‘and bring hither the ancient goblet of Bacchus!’

The goblin obeyed, and returned with a very large bottle of black _cuir bouilli_ or moulded leather. It was of graceful shape, apparently of great antiquity, covered with exquisite silver relief, representing the deeds of Bacchus. Handling it with great reverence, Flaxius pronounced over it in a voice which was half-singing, such as one may hear to this day among witches in Italy when they chant the following:

INCANTATION TO BACCHUS

‘Golden master of the earth!
King of joy and lord of mirth!
By thy mother the divine,
Of the ancient Cadmean line!
Semele of Earth the pride;
Who of Jove’s great splendour died!
By the Seasons, who in truth,
Nursed thee from thy early youth!
Or fair Ino, who they say,
Brought thee from Arabia!
By the lion’s form you wore
When gods and Titans fought of yore!
And by the holy miracle
Of which the morning poets tell;
When from Naxos thou didst sail
With a gentle, favouring gale,
And pirates sought to conquer thee
But fell into captivity:
By the hour when thou did’st go
To the darkling realms below,
And brought thy mother, “ever bright,”
To the upper world of light,
And all that Nonnus ever sung
Of thee with mystic, golden tongue!
I conjure thee--the all-divine--
To give me what I ask, of wine!’

Saying this he took a small gold cup and said:

‘Now, Cæsar, ask for what wine thou wilt.’

‘Let it be Cæcuban,’ replied the emperor.

Then Flaxius poured forth wine from the bottle into the cup, and extended it to Julian.

‘Cæcuban it is, sure enough,’ replied the emperor when he had drunk to the last drop, which he poured _super naculum_ upon his thumb-nail.

‘Wilt thou have another draught?’ inquired Flaxius. ‘If so--of what?’

‘Falernian,’ answered the emperor.

‘_Sit_,’ replied Flaxius. ‘Here you are. But, O Cæsar, I have not hung an ivy garland as yet round the cup, as the conjuration requires.’

‘_Vino vendibili suspensâ hederâ nihil opus._ Good wine needs no bush,’ answered Julian. ‘The miracle is wrought, and I wish that all were as agreeable. And now, Flaxius, since thou sayest that all miracles can be explained by natural causes, I pray thee to naturalise me this, for verily _ut turris super omnes_, it is a huckleberry above my persimmon, and I would like to know how it is done.’

‘Easily enough, O Cæsar. The bottle is made from a certain flexible substance, and it contains many chambers or cells, in each of which there is a different kind of wine. When I press on any one of these it pours forth its content.’

‘Then the incantation was all gammon?’ remarked Julian.

‘Not so, O Cæsar. It made the miracle.’

‘_Hum-um-um-ump!_’ replied the monarch. ‘And yet, Flaxius, it still seems to me that there are and must be miracles surpassing all human skill and knowledge, which the utmost wisdom cannot compass or explain, and _never_ will.’

‘Can your Greatness give me an example?’ replied Flaxius.

‘It is written in thine own ancient Etruscan chronicles,’ replied Julian, ‘that in the early time the mysterious nymph, Begoe or Bergoia, before the world, and in the Capitol, slew an ox by whispering in his ear a single word. Now, I believe, that had I tried, I might have worked out an explanation of thy Holy Bottle; but in the miracle of Bergoia I have reflected many a time and oft, without solving it, and therefore do I conclude that it _was_ a violation of the laws of Nature.’

‘O Cæsar!’ replied Flaxius, ‘great is the man who can infallibly decide where human reason leaves off and Divinity begins, for, _nusquam est, qui ubique est_, that which is everywhere is nowhere, and this is true of miracle. But what if I perform for thee--openly before all thy court--and all Rome if thou wilt, that same miracle?’

‘By Hercules!’ cried Julian, amazed and delighted beyond measure, his wild and mysterious eyes gleaming so as to make a very respectable miracle of their own if he had but known it, ‘thou art a man of gold, set with gems--the first real sage I ever found in the stuffing of this duck of a world. And you really will in good faith--_honestus Indicus_--slay the ox with a whisper!’

‘Thou shalt see it, O Cæsar,’ replied Flaxius. ‘But it seems to me that the miracle would be improved on, if instead of an ox we were to substitute a man. For it might be said by the sceptical that we had poisoned the ox beforehand.’

‘By Medea!’ exclaimed the emperor admiringly, ‘I never thought of that!’

‘While if we take a man who declares himself to be in good health, there can be no suspicion. Now, Cæsar, thou hast, I doubt not, in thy prisons more than one unlucky wretch condemned to the torture and the crucifix, to whom a quick and painless death would be as a divine blessing and great joy?’

‘_Depone!_ bet your head on it!’ cried Julian. ‘I sent one this morning to the Mamertine--hell would be too good for him--and I meant to give him a foretaste of it by means of preparation.’

‘He will do,’ replied Flaxius.

So on the following day, when the emperor and his court and all Rome assembled in the great amphitheatre, there was led in a ferocious, giant-like and bitterly wicked-looking Gaul, who, expecting to be tortured to death to make a Roman holiday, was on his best behaviour as regards defiance and dying game.

‘Man, whence comest thou,’ asked Flaxius.

‘From Lutetia,’ was the proud reply.

‘_Ame de boue_,’ thought the sage in a language of the future, and then asked:

‘And what is thy religion?’

‘I worship the devil; it was the last fashion ere I left home.’

‘You expect torture!’

‘I do not fear it. It will pain me, but when dead, I shall be amply revenged on ye all, if hate and hell can do it.’

‘If I could give thee out of pity a sudden painless death, wouldst thou declare that thou in all thy health and strength forgivest all men?’

The Gaul glared at him stolidly and grimly and then uttered in a strange tongue which none understood.

‘_Mais, nom d’une pipe, pourquoi pas? J’aurais bien de quoi m’amuser sans me soucier de ces b-là!_’ And then in rude Latin he said:

‘I consent. Hurry along with your washing, and get the pigs in!’ And he made the declaration.

Then Flaxius, who bore in his hand a long wand, as all the Magi were wont to do, touched him with it, while whispering a word in his ear. And the man fell dead at full length, while a thrill of awe and a murmur rose from all Rome, at sight of this mighty deed. And the great and wise and even the good, or such few of the latter as were present, _rari nantes_, thronged about him, and adored him.

‘And now, Flaxius,’ said the emperor, as they sat in solemn concert over the Holy Bottle, which his highness was never tired of admiring, ‘if thou canst explain to me on natural grounds how thou didst slay that Gaul, then “by Gaule!” as Julius Cæsar said to Vercingetorix, I will believe, or disbelieve, anything!’

‘Yea, Cæsar, I will do it,’ replied the sage. ‘Now if thou wilt remember Begoe or Bergoia, her who slew the Ox with a single word, left to Rome a book on the _Ars Fulguritorum_ or the averting, that is to say, managing thunder and lightning, and this book, which is in the ancient Etruscan tongue, and hard to understand, for those who know the language, is even yet in the temple of the Palatine Apollo, where I read it. And it explains that the lightning is caused by an invisible but terrible secret force, which like heat pervades all things while seen by none, and this is the awful power of the Divinity to smite the earth, and it was by means of it that Bergoia slew the Ox. And know that there was in my wand a charge of condensed thunder and lightning, quite strong enough to knock a bull sky-high.’

‘But the word?’ asked Julian who had not quite recovered from his ideas of miracle.

‘Truly, Cæsar, the word was _Electricity_, which is as yet unknown, but which in ages to come will be the great heritage and power of mankind. For as when thou art done with a garment thou givest it to a servant, so the gods when they have somewhat worn out their attributes and glories, hand them over to men.’

‘_Semper similem ducit Deus ad similem_, and so the gods lead ever like to like. Ah, it _is_ wonderful. And now, Flaxius, the light begins to shine in on me, and I see that there is indeed a higher and far more wonderful magic and miracle than the poor, thin Thaumaturgy which I sought for once. For true magic is the mastering the awful power and secrets of nature. Now I see that because thou mightest explain to me by natural means how Christ fed the multitude, or raised the dead or healed the sick, it would be none the less wonderful, for genius, even the genius to amaze and nothing more, is miraculous.’

‘That will be better understood, O Cæsar, in times to come when science shall have risen to glory, by means of such stupendous genius that no man can help revering it.’

‘Ah!’ said Julian with a deep sigh, ‘happy the age and happy mankind when there shall be but one faith, whatever it be! Thou wilt never know what I have suffered between the old faith in the Gods and Christianity. As Terence says, I think, somewhere in the _Andria_:

‘“How happy could I be with either,
Were t’ other dear charmer away!”’

‘Yes, Cæsar, yours is a hard case, and all the harder because you wish heart and soul to do what is right.’

‘Orcus and hell, heathen and Christian, take me if I don’t!’ replied the emperor in a passion and looking as wild as a panther on the spring: he who had seen him then and there would have believed him to be some young god enraged. ‘What the devil _can_ they expect a man to do who has seen what _I_ have seen, and gone through what I have endured? Well, I began in good faith enough as a Christian, and in truth I was cut out for one as few young Roman gentlemen are. I was never sensual, cruel, nor over-selfish.’

‘Right you are, O Cæsar,’ thought Flaxius, ‘and a very good Christian gentleman you’d have made, if your guardians had let well alone.’

‘So I, with a deep love of ancient heathen beauty and art and poetry, was put into a cloister, where the meanest, monkish, shaveling spite made a sin and a shame of all that I loved. It was not belief in their own faith, but the bitterest hate of what they called heathenism, which chiefly inspired every one of them. That was their real religion--all the rest was mere form--the adaptation to their ritual of what I knew were old Oriental ceremonies. Then I began to think out, O Flaxius, what has ever since been the idea of my life: Why cannot man keep the old faith in Beauty, and all that was charming in the old religion, and unite with it the humanity and higher truth of Christianity.’

‘There will perhaps be a time, in the dim and remote future,’ quoth Flaxius, prophetically quoting Gladstone, ‘when that idea will occur to others.’

‘So I dreamed that I, as an Eclectic--having read something of Ammonius Saccas the Egyptian--would be the apostle of the new combined religion. Well! time passed, and after I had become Cæsar, it occurred to me to examine all the faiths into which Christianity had split, and a nice job it was! Pheugh! everything from Trinitarians, Arians, and Unitarians down to Cainites, who worship the flesh and sin and the devil, all hating the common enemy but hating one another worse, like the Jews who slew one another in the siege of Jerusalem while all fought Titus.

‘O sage,’ he resumed, ‘when I think how beautiful and noble, how holy and perfect were the conceptions of Christ, and how it was His ideal that every man should commune directly with God, and when I see how each one of these sects steps in and proposes with saints and forms to do for you what you should do for yourself, I cannot wonder at the scarcity of Christians. Yet there is a stupendous truth in Christianity, the truth of human rights, which even they cannot crush. _Magna est veritas et prævalebit._’

‘And the old religion?’ asked Flaxius.

‘Well! it admitted the Beautiful and let a man philosophise freely, and did not make devils out of all the sweet and fair conceptions of poetry, of fauns and nymphs and Oreads and all; and so, as I believe that nature must prevail in the end with man, I went back to it. Yet the old religion is not humane. It admits slavery and inhumanity, it allows the grosser passions of cruelty and lust full play, evil nature as well as good, and it needs reform. I would fain be that reformer.’

‘Now here is a great man,’ thought Flaxius, ‘who is either two hundred years behind his time, or a thousand or more in advance of it. He means well, but is out of the age.’ Then speaking aloud he said:

‘Cæsar, there was once a king of Bithynia or Cappadocia or some such country, who had a mind to marry. Now the king next door had two daughters; both were beautiful, but one was as Venus and the other as Minerva. One was beautiful and voluptuous, witty and charming, while the other was wise and just, humane and ever careful that no one should be oppressed. Now which of these should he have married?’

‘Had I been in his place, I would have married both,’ replied the emperor.

‘But that was impossible.’

‘H’m! Well, in that case I should have taken the wise one.’

‘That,’ said Flaxius, ‘is what he did, and it is what the world will do: it will adopt the religion which, despite all the corruption with which man surrounds it, promises the greatest good to the greatest number.’

‘I believe that thou art in the right, O sage!’ replied the emperor slowly. ‘However, _jacta est alea_, the die is cast, and I shall ever remain Julian the Apostate. But what will be the end of it all?’

‘Thou wilt die nobly as a king should die--in battle for thy country.’

‘Then,’ said Julian, ‘I am content.’

FLAXIUS IN HADES

SHOWING HOW FLAXIUS WENT DOWN INTO HELL, AND OF THE MARVELLOUS THINGS WHICH HE SAW AND LEARNED WHILE THERE

‘To the Esthete who regards all Nature and Eternity as a mere paint-box for art, hell is a necessity, as is illustrated by Ruskin when he howls that “in the utmost solitudes of Nature the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as that of heaven.”’

‘THEY manage these things,’ said Flaxius, ‘I verily believe, better in hell.’

‘You have been in hell, I suppose,’ said the goblin-snob, with the most civilly impertinent air in the world, to the sage.

‘Strange!’ reflected Flaxius, ‘that a place which may be readily reached in a minute, if we may believe the common exhortation of the vulgar, or even in an instant by the aid of electricity as they manage it in America--with I forget how many volts, but “in a demi-volt”--should be unknown to me. I must consult the Fairy. Decidedly, my education has been neglected. I have not yet made the grand tour.’

Flaxius was living then near a town in the Austrian Tyrol, in a lonely, grey, and ancient ivied tower and small house, hidden away in the mountains; and there, with his usual disregard for appearances, he had installed a small gypsy family whom he had found camped in the woods, three chairs, a table, and a stupendous service of gold plate: this last not for luxury but because it was the first which, as a buried treasure near by, came to hand. The Goblin of the Tower had revealed to him its existence, and he used it because it saved him the trouble of going to town for crockery. His servants had instructions, whenever sent to buy anything, to steal one half the money, and then half of what they bought, under penalty of severe punishment, which had the natural result that whenever they could do so without detection, they never stole anything. Once, indeed, when his boy Lajos impudently brought him a manifestly superabundant supply of fruit for a half florin, or more than he expected, did Flaxius proceed, I cannot say to spoil the child, for the young devil was beyond all spoiling, but to break a rod on him. Whereupon he fell on his knees in tears, but was pardoned on promising never to be honest any more. Even Flaxius, great as he was, could not have his own way in everything, for things got to such a pitch at last, that these gypsies would tell the truth before his very face openly with the utmost impunity, and even without blushing.

It was midnight, and Flaxius the Immortal sat alone in his baronial hall. True, it was only about twenty feet in length and fifteen in breadth, but it was a hall. The walls were rich, or, at least, ragged, with Roman-picturesque and very-much-battered stone carvings, representing a lettuce-like confusion of crockets and finials, in which were nestled angels as ugly as devils, and devils not much prettier than the angels, like crayfish, or _écrevisses_, in foliage, the whole resembling an early Christian or Pre-Raphaelite salad which would have enchanted a Gothiconolator.

There was in the hall a large black Cat and an Owl, both of whom had come in uninvited from the Without, and joined the family, on speculation, from a desire for human sympathy and love, also for mice and any little edible odds and ends which might be obtainable. There was, too, a florid chimney-piece, so large that the hall seemed to be only a portion of it, or adjunct, just as the body and tail of the pricklefish seem to be only a part of his vast ogival jaw. In it blazed a fire, and by, or in that fire, sat the house goblin. His name was _Slangbrand_, and he was engaged in swallowing live coals, and then blowing out a storm of sparks from his nose, or _de retro_--as ye may see exemplified in Callot’s picture of Saint Anthony--anon swallowing the poker like a juggler, and then rising and falling on the smoke, up and down the chimney, like a ball in a fountain, to the great admiration of the Cat and the Owl, who constituted his audience.

Then Flaxius himself took a coal from the fire, placed it on a small silver dish on the table, and sprinkled on it a powder which burned, emitting an intensely aromatic and most agreeable but strange perfume, the magian meanwhile murmuring an incantation. A beautiful, soft light diffused itself all over the room; ’twas like a delicate, rosy Aurora with a memory of moonlight, and not without stars, for in it shone two celestial eyes, and then anon the Fairy stood revealed to her worshipper.

‘Joyful greeting to thee, Flaxius!’ said the _Fata_.

‘Deepest reverence to thee, O loveliest in form as in spirit, of all thy kind!’ replied the magian in a tone of deep sincerity.

‘And how goes the world with thee?’ inquired his queen.

‘With the world ever something new, as of old. As for me, and it was for this that I summoned thee, I would fain go----’

‘Go whither?’ inquired the fairy.

‘Go to hell!’ replied Flaxius.

‘Wherefore this unprovoked hostility?’ asked the spirit.

‘It was not spoken in the vocative,’ replied Flaxius. ‘I did but indicate the route which I fain would take, not commend it to thee, though by the twelve gods!’ he added passionately, ‘happy indeed would he be who on such a journey could meet with such an Eurydice!’

‘Flaxius,’ replied the fair one, ‘thou hadst ever so much modesty as to declare thyself unfit for heaven, and too much pride to allow that thou wert fit for the lower regions. Therefore didst thou elect to remain on earth to study and master its problems as thoroughly as it was in thee to do so, maintaining that of the few magians who like thyself had mastered immortality, too few prepared themselves, as they should do by studying the rudiments.’

‘Ay,’ replied Flaxius with his worldly smile. ‘They are mostly like boys who would fain run straight from their school to their dinner, not tarrying just for a little wholesome exercise to give a better appetite and health. But the truth which forces itself on me more and more is that hell and earth are so nearly allied that it becomes more and more difficult every day to investigate the one without knowing the other, even as a knowledge of chemistry becomes essential to an astronomer.’

‘You are quite right,’ replied the fairy. ‘_Sit tibi voluntas_, you shall have your wish. Fortunately it is extremely easy to get there, especially to obtain a place as permanent boarder, but even as a casual visitor I can assure you special honour. All the great geniuses of yore made a three days’ visit to the realm; it was a ceremony _de rigueur_, a kind of court presentation which no well-bred immortal could omit. I do not consider,’ she added reflectively, ‘that hell is exactly the place to which I would recommend parents to send their boys for an education, but for men of intelligence there are a great many valuable ideas to be picked up there. And when would you depart?’

‘Now, if you please.’

‘Said and done then,’ answered the spirit. ‘_Dicto citius_, as Virgil used to say to you--_in un batter d’occhio--in un balen--in un amen_!

‘In a wink and in a flash,
In a snap, and at a dash,
While a priest “amen” could say!
From this earth now pass away
To the mystic world below,
Which all men dread yet none do know!’

As she uttered this incantation, Flaxius sank back in his great arm-chair to a deep sleep. The fairy looked at him with a loving glance, evidently with earnest and sympathetic thought, kissed his forehead, and softly sighed:

‘Ah well, Eternity is long!’

And turning to the goblin she said:

‘Slang, take heed that no mortal enters this house for three days and nights, and see that the master here be not disturbed! And do ye,’ she added to the Owl and Cat, ‘take care also that no noise be made hereabouts, and if ye do your work well, ye shall become witch and wizard in human form. Farewell!’ Saying this she winged her way heavenward:

‘To the joyous realms afar,
Where the angel dwellers are.’

Now of the four members of that happy family, it would have been difficult to say who was the most delighted. Flaxius surely, because he had been sent to hell; the Owl and Cat certainly because they hoped to rise to the most degraded state of humanity; or Slang assuredly, simply because he had been spoken to by a queen and charged with a commission. And the three latter solemnly swore among themselves that if a mouse or bird so much as ventured to cheep or chirp about the house, they would rend it limb from limb, and have it served up for supper. According to the Penal Code of the Goblins. V. CXXXIIIV, _libro alto, capitulo nullo, folio nigro_.

* * * * *

As all the richest and most artistic or artful adornment of cathedrals or palaces, diamonded with panes of quaint device, ‘innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,’ and twilight saints and dim emblazonings, with half unearthly, holy, elfin shade, is all as trash and gingerbread, compared to the greenwood with its ineffable beauties of summer, and golden glory of autumn, so is all earthly music ever played mere scrannel-piping contrasted with that in which the soul of Flaxius seemed swept away, as he sank to sleep under the spell of the fairy. For he always loved music in every form, however made or by what mind composed; and that which now seemed to be life itself and waft him on, was what he would have had idealised for him, or that which he would have wanted had he known how to want it. This fulfilment of ideals in every form was the introduction to and the great moral lesson of Inferno. For therein lies such temptation as is mercifully spared to man on earth.

‘By the glory of the gods!’ said Flaxius, rousing himself to strength, ‘if the devil can bring art like this to bear on common mortals, who the devil can be saved? Truly it was high time for me to get out of the ruts of earth for a season, when there are such tremendous paradoxes as _this_ to solve outside it. And I thought that the problem and puzzle, and contrast, and anomaly were confined to life--_me stupide_! Verily, I say unto myself, Flaxius, that I foresee I shall find the very humour of humour in the mystery of hell, as this music intimates.’

And the music dying away, yet not quite vanishing, for Flaxius while he was in Inferno always heard it--just as in a garden we scent perfume of some kind, rising or falling--he found himself on the summit of a marvellously pleasant hill amid rocks and trees, grass and wild-flowers, with a mossy bench under an arbour, such a place as of all others he loved. He sat down on the bench and saw that there was before him a tremendous, yawning mountain gulf or valley, miles deep, but what lay beyond he knew not, since it was all covered with a veil of rolling, purple cloud of richest hue, in which he saw eyes of light wander like stars....

Then he perceived standing by his side, a very beautiful woman, young and lithe, holding a flask.

‘Have I not known thee of yore, O sister?’ asked Flaxius in Etruscan. ‘Art thou not of the _Lases_, who receive the spirits of the departed?’

‘I am of the Lases, and I am Alpan, or Alban, the Fairy of the Dawn, and their chief,’ said the maiden gently, ‘and I am sent by the lord of this land, whom men know as Pluto, to welcome thee. But first--behold!’

And as the music, sweet beyond dreams, again rose gently--as in a play or orchestra--the Lasa waved her hand and, the purple cloud vanishing, revealed to Flaxius such a vision of stupendous and beautiful palaces--all forming one--as he had never in all the splendour of the antique world seen the like of. He recalled Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, the temples of Greece and of Egypt in all their massive mystery, the marvels of the Buddhist structures of Cambodia and India, the awful grotesques of America, the stately Lombard-Norman cathedrals of the West--the Gothic glory of Europe--and all seemed to be poor and wretched, yea, squalid, beside the grandeur, magnitude, and elaborate perfection of what was now before him.

‘This must be,’--he said, but he could speak no more, so overwhelmed was he at the sight.

‘Yes,’ added Albana, reading his thought. ‘It is--Pandemonium--the first structure ever erected.’

‘Ay,’ replied Flaxius recovering, of course to make a reflection, ‘and I see that architecture has step by step sunk, as man has risen. Another paradox! And this,’ he suddenly exclaimed, ‘is hell!’

‘Yes, Flaxius,’ replied the fairy with a sad smile, ‘and be thankful that thou comest here as an immortal who will depart as soon as thou shalt have learned the mystery, for verily with thy love and knowledge of the beautiful in art it had also gone hard with thee.’

‘Another paradox!’ thought Flaxius. ‘So, _tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse. En avant!_’

‘And now,’ said Albana, ‘for new sights! But wait! Drink from this flask! All who enter this realm must do so!’

‘I know it of old,’ said Flaxius. ‘It was the draught of the mysteries given me by the Fairy when I was made immortal. I drink to thee,’ he said, ‘O terrible ruler of this wondrous world! Yes, to thy realm and to thy mystic spouse! and with them to the angel of my dreams! and also thee, my fair, angelic guide!’

As he said this, there came from the depth below an ebony car or boat, exquisitely inlaid with gold in richest profusion, which rose slowly, quivering with the music, to their feet. Then there was a far, soft sound as of melodious chimes of a thousand bells.

‘Enter with me,’ said Albana. And having entered, they floated slowly over the gulf: they saw the city palace in new forms, while far beyond a landscape of marvellous beauty also developed itself, and in it too were other palaces, towns, towers, burgs, and villes or villas, castles, and immense ranges of crenellated, arched walls with glorious gates, and over the walls grew or hung masses of trees or clustering vines, bright with a mystic beauty of their own.

They landed at the edge of an immense marble precipice, which was however richly carved far adown with quaint devices, the more beautiful for moss and grey lichen. There appeared to be nothing freshly new, yet nothing ruined in the whole land; all spoke of an old time for ever young.

‘You see no escort,’ said Albana. ‘You are too great a visitor to be received with a cortège, or a procession, as we welcome the small great men of earth. It is long indeed since any one was received with such honour as this. You are deemed to be above ceremony.’

‘Charming!’ thought Flaxius, ‘the greatest mark of attention which I ever received in my life is the most devoid of all semblance of politeness. Another paradox, but this I understand.’

‘I think, beautiful Albana,’ he remarked, ‘that your company alone is here considered the highest compliment which can be paid to a guest.’

‘His majesty the king has said so,’ replied Albana simply. Meanwhile they had been passing along streets and scenes of surpassing magnificence or beauty, and after traversing a garden of the gods came to an immense open portal which they entered. And so on and ever on through stupendous colonnaded corridors, and cloistered squares with innumerable groups of statuary and fountains like vast rivers trained to play, great as the Nile when freshets fill its flood, leaping on high a mile, then roaring down through arches strange and high, falling over thundering waterfalls, broad and deep as Niagara, by towers like that of glorious Babylon which met the clouds; and above and beyond and higher yet again, like stairs of mountains beyond mountains growing dim, were walls of citadels like snowy marble, with a coral blush in the sunset, and domes like diamond, and pearly spires, glinting with gold in every form of grace.

When at last passing along a turquoise-walled and opal-paved arcade, to which unbroken divans of lapis lazuli, inlaid with silver, seemed more beautiful for inexhaustible masses of all shades and kinds of blue flowers hanging from vines, growing in vases of sapphire, so that the very air seemed to be of a dreamy azure hue, they came to a door and passed into a hall.

Wherein sat, not on a throne, but in a throne-like, ebony, high chair, at a table, a man of god-like mien and marvellous dignity.

So far beyond anything human in his awful beauty was he, that Flaxius was more deeply impressed by him than by all the wonders which he had thus far beheld. And truly, as Flaxius reflected, when a man has passed some scores of centuries in forming ideals of the beautiful and finds his ideal outdone, ’tis time to look about for _new powers_!

The Olympian Jove with a shade of Lucifer, the Spirit of the serene heaven mingled with the darker yet still beautiful earth below, the two united as by a spirit in the eternal yet ever intermingling ocean of the eye. Such he appeared, and Flaxius recalled Goethe:

‘The soul of man
Is like the water.
From heaven it cometh
To heaven it riseth,
And thence at once
It must back to earth
For ever changing.’

Moreover there was in the wonderfully grand face something sympathetically human, and humanly chevaleresque, even touching in genial moods on the ‘devilish handsome fellow.’ ‘I have heard,’ thought Flaxius, ‘of a town in Western America, wherein appeared a married lady of such irresistible beauty that all the male inhabitants of the place, even unto the deacons, gave up the commandments, or more especially one of them, as a bad job. A few like his majesty, turned loose on London society, would convert Mayfair into a divorce court.’

For he had at times a smile, a laugh which went like an electric flash of champagne to the heart of your heart, which is the reason why the inhabitants of a certain American State, with the exquisite poetry peculiar to their refined natures, call apple brandy ‘Jersey lightning,’ it being so potent that a taste thereof goes flashing and coruscating through the soul, suggesting Etna in full play on the great fourth of July Day of Judgment, when the _sæculum_, or _fin de siècle_, or the age, is to be dissolved in sparks, since having gone up like a rocket it is to come down--like the stick! This glance had Pluto, and Flaxius found it useful, because by means of it his majesty rendered clear, or, as one may say, coloured, like an artist, the outlines of his spoken arguments.

‘You are truly welcome, Flaxius!’ said the Lord of the Underworld, ‘as are all immortal mortals who have raised themselves as types of ideas to such a power that they can pass my realm as tourists between heaven and earth without becoming mine. Ah! that is a very vulgar error on earth that I pass my time in trying to catch souls! Did men but know how I pass all my life in painful effort to get rid of them! Well, I have seen here in days of yore, each for his three days, Adonis--ah, _he_ stayed six months, by request of my wife! Orpheus--music--poor fellow!... Socrates, Buddha, Dante--you know the list--and so on down to Emanuel Swedenborg. And every one of them saw hell after his own fashion--and then raised it after his peculiar style to earth, and no one interfered with the seeing thereof....

‘But, my Flaxius,’ resumed Pluto, with a genial smile, ‘is there any reason why we should not drink, although we are in hell?’

‘_Raison de plus_, most men would surely think,’ replied Flaxius.

And at the word there were before them two goblets creaming and streaming over; and Flaxius noticed that the infernal care of details was exquisitely carried out in this, that the _drops_ which are generally a great drawback to the over-brimming beaker, did not fall on his clothes and wet or stain them, but, becoming diamonds or pearls, rebounded dry.

And the draught was transcendental--so cool, so piquant, so enlivening! Pluto smiled.

‘Confess, Flaxius,’ he said, ‘that hell is not, as you find it, exactly what man imagines it to be?’

‘True,’ said Flaxius emptying his goblet, which refilled itself; ‘and yet I imagine that I am as far as ever from knowing what it is!’

‘And that distance,’ replied the monarch, drawing his own glass, ‘I will diminish for thee, O thou Sage of Sublime Common Sense, for thou shalt have a nearer perception of the truth and what Inferno is than any of thy predecessors.’

Now, Flaxius, comfortably seated in a high-backed chair, with the towering, Jacqueline can, or goblet, foaming before him, listened, _arrectis auribus_, graving every word which he heard on the tablet of his soul, even as Alba seated on a Greek tabouret at a little distance was doing on a leaf of ivory with her stylus. [And here notes Flaxius in the margin: ‘It is a curious fact that Alban is depicted in Etruscan vases as holding a stylus or pen, and that the witches of Tuscany, who still know her as Bellaria, declare that she is the spirit of the Pen, and is the one to be invoked by all who would write, _i.e._ compose well. _Aurora Musis amica._]

‘Know, my Flaxius,’ began his majesty, ‘that earth and all its trials, troubles, and torments, diseases, and miseries, ceases even for the worst and wickedest when they come here. We begin with them all _de novo_, on an entirely new system--the old body is gone and we are done with it. Physical torment ceases with the old life, for even the most earthly. Only ideas and earthly ideals remain, and to these is given full scope and free play. All begin here with unlimited freedom and indulgence.’

‘If I may interrupt your majesty,’ said Flaxius, ‘I would remark that many people would suppose that you are, by inadvertent error, describing heaven.’

‘Yes,’ replied Pluto, ‘that is indeed the heaven of every fool. But it is the surest way to come to grief in the long run. The ultimate extreme of hell or of punishment is for every man to be left utterly to himself, to have his own way, to follow his own fancies, to rule as he lists, and do uncontrolled just what he likes. Few and far between have those mortals ever been who, gifted with power, would not damn themselves on earth if left without guidance or control.

‘Now this is _hell_, and if thou wouldst know what the word really means, I reply, “a place where every one can do just what he pleases, and have all that he wants.” Every one entering here is supplied with such a world as he desires, with corresponding scenes and companions--he himself unconsciously drawing them all from memory and imagination. But note--for it is an important point--that they believe it all to be real, and in a certain sense it is so, for they have given to them the power, which science will some day give to man on earth, of perfect synthesis by volition--that is of drawing out the elements by _will_ from the _prima materia_ or _materialising_ unseen elements, or conceptions.’

‘I understand,’ said Flaxius. ‘Gods in a small way. Demiurguses. Make things!’

‘They think so,’ laughed Pluto. ‘All here believe for a long time--as they believed like fools on earth--that all which they saw on earth or see here is real. What is real is unchangeable and eternal. Who lives in Evolution, as all do on earth or in matter, lives in the Transient. It is when they realise by mere satiety the unreality of things that their punishment comes--that of despair. Then after a season they begin to exert themselves to seek higher ideals or something new, which being attained, there comes again satiety, and then renewed effort, every new stage becoming easier, until at last man rises to the gods or God. The best experience disappointment and rebuffs; but they go on. The wise who on earth have shaped better ideals, the altruists and benevolent philosophers or Christians, and people who have not meddled with others, or lived entirely in the eyes and opinions of others, or revelled in notoriety, or been selfish and tyrannical in the small or great relations of life, these do not remain long in our world of shams. The honest poet or artist or man of letters is let off very easily, as indeed are all who have been kinder to mankind than mankind has been unto them.

‘The world is ever advancing,’ continued Pluto, ‘and to satisfy the soul with what is for the time around it on earth, or to think of carrying it on for ever into the future, as _all_ creeds do’ added his majesty significantly, ‘is _to stop_. (Flaxius, my son, be thou not like to them, but keep that holy emblem the Cup going.’) They both drained, and the Lord of Hades resumed:

‘The selfish nature thus gratified and satisfied with temporary forms does not lift its mind to, or progress with--Evolution.’

‘Ha!’ quoth Flaxius, ‘light is coming fast; I do begin to feel I have indeed immortal longings in me! This then is the faith so long foretold--which is neither Buddhist nor Christian, nor Material.’

‘Ay, Flaxius, it is the very truth, as it seems to me every one might surmise from the very infinity of creative forms in nature, from the ideals which they declare and the inexhaustibility of matter and force. All goes on, slowly it seems, but there is eternity to work in, and its great law is progress.

‘Now Evolution is the creation of new laws from old, of new types from others exhausted, of new ideals, as new patterns are created _ad infinitum_ by a revolving kaleidoscope, a continual out-blossoming and ripening of flowers which were once small, wild blossoms and are now hundred-leaved _grandifloræ_. And these again will be raised to newer and more magnificent forms. And you need not ask what is to become of Man in all this, for, rely upon it, where all is progressing, all is well. He who is magnanimous, and who can grasp in its fulness all this scheme, will not be afraid to cast himself headlong into the foaming flood and trust to its bearing him safely on. Fortune favours the bold, and he who _is_ afraid, whimpering “What is to become of poor little _Me_?” will be carried away in time all the same. But that man never loved the beautiful or nature who feared death.

‘Now we may consider all mankind on earth as a single man in hell--living in Evolution, yet ignorant of it, opposing it with his self-formed, conservative ideas--an old woman sweeping out the sea with a broom--and you have the key to the whole.’

‘It appears to me,’ observed Flaxius, who had listened to these remarks with evident approbation--if the taking a drink ever and anon and sighing with content could be interpreted as ‘Hear! Hear!’ or ‘fervent applause’--‘that there is a marvellous spirit of romance and poetry and wild adventure in Evolution as you set it forth, and exquisite inspiration to a higher devotion, and a purer and far more vigorous religion than man has ever before dreamed of. For this faith in nature with her ever-unfolding ideals, and that of self, in “_What_ I know not, but in the best, _that_ I know!” is so bold and knightly that before it all that was ever presented to man seems poor and weak and dim. The Church and conventional cant, or modern life, have well-nigh crushed out in man every trace of daring or chivalry, and this religion has in it that which will revive such qualities on a far higher scale than was found in the Middle Ages.’

‘Saving this, Flaxius,’ added his majesty, ‘that Evolution asks man to understand pure science as a basis and accept its deductions as to evolving ideals, and not rely entirely on tradition which is well-nigh folk-lore. And when the simple truth of anything has once been studied or accepted, the poetry and romance soon follow. _Crede experto Roberto!_’

‘Ay, by the Father of the Fathers of Faith!’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘your majesty has had some experience. May I venture to inquire,’ he added, ‘what part this ever “freshly fresh and newly new,” as the Hindus sing it, this ever-beautiful and good young lady whom I see here has in your tremendous _pension_, or boarding-school for eternity?’

‘Eternity!’ said Pluto, with a smile. ‘Nay, you have not yet heard the last word. But as for Albana----’ Here he gave a glance of ineffably respectful, fond kindness at the subject of their discourse. ‘You have seen in life in many lands noble women who, as Sisters of Charity or slummers--go anywhere to do good. Albana ranges through hell, earth, and heaven. The pure soul is everywhere at home, and love hath no bounds. We are not so cruel in our punishment as to leave souls entirely to themselves in the task of rehabilitation. She and her sisters--love and love alone--suggest to the despairing new ideals of life.’

‘Ay,’ cried Flaxius, ‘hell is the gate to heaven, that I see. A lesson which I should have learned on earth. Yet man has been there longer than I without learning it. It must be so--“Pluto, thou reasonest well,”’ he added. (And to himself, ‘I suppose the reviewers will light on _that_ as a typographical error.’)

‘And now,’ said his majesty, ‘the lecture is over for to-day. Go with Albana as a Beatrice through my realm and visit the condemned in their homes.’

‘And the _last word_ to which you alluded?’ inquired Flaxius.

‘It is,’ said Pluto, with a smile, ‘that all which you have seen, or shall see here in Hades, as I have indeed plainly said already, is, to speak Sanscritically, only Maya, or Illusion. All smoke, but it rises from a real fire. _Ite!--missa est!_’

* * * * *

‘And what did you think of the Lower World?’ inquired the Fairy of Flaxius.

‘That it is misnamed, O Soul of the Violets!’ replied the Etruscan, ‘since it appeared to me as being one degree higher than this. For in it the average Philistine and guinea-pig and sinful gossip are gently led or induced to find out that they are fools or evil-doers, and that he who gives himself most earnestly to life goes deepest into death. Now man is destined to slowly learn this lesson through the ages, and as he progresses in it, Science will, step by step, overcome death. So that as we become idealists, so shall we also advance into earthly immortality. That, your Fairyness, is what I conclude from what I beheld. In fact I am so smitten with admiration at the beautiful humanity of hell as I saw it, that I can only declare that if there is really no such place there _ought_ to be one!’

‘It will do just as well if you write and publish an account of it,’ replied the fairy. ‘The main thing is to teach mankind the great lesson that most men left to mere commonplace and earthly ideals must inevitably damn themselves.’

‘Beyond this, O Loveliness,’ resumed Flaxius, ‘I was induced to reflect, that to avoid hell, satiety, and despair, it is necessary to have an iron _will_, and one formed on the strictest moral lines. And he who can make a perfect will unto himself, so as to make his whole soul or intellect obey his spirit or conscience or God-within, has won all that he needs in time or eternity. This, O Life of Endless Light! is the great lesson of Orcus.’

‘It would have been well worth going there to learn that,’ said the fairy, ‘had it even been all fire and suffering. But haste and write it down, for many there be who need the lesson, which is the highest of all in true wisdom.

‘He to whom the devil grants All he wishes, all he wants, However gaily time be passed Will catch the devil at the last.’

FLAXIUS AND ADELINDÈ

A LEGEND OF THE EARLY LOMBARD DAYS, BEING ONE OF THE VISIONS WHICH FLAXIUS HAD WHILE IN HELL

‘Said Chider the immortal, the ever young:
“I passed by a city, a man stood near
Plucking fruit that in a fair garden hung.
I asked, “How long has the city been here?”
He said, as the clustering fruit he caught,
“There was always a city in this spot,
And so there will be till time is not.”
Five hundred years passed by as before:
I was standing upon that spot once more.”’

WHILE the learned Flaxius repeated these lines with strange feeling, as if recalling to him missing memories, he looked intently at every object round as if he would wring from it some buried mystery or long-hidden secret. It was twilight-tide in the last golden-brown of a Carpoccio sky. Broad and wide in the rapidly dimming distance were undulating hills covered with vineyards and olives, like a waving sea topped with green foam; here and there were hamlets of white houses, and above them stately towered castles, like shepherds watching flocks of sheep at eve; long lines of stone walls, flowing with maiden-hair or helmeted with cactus--all softly fair and far away!

It was a beautiful picture; but what interested the man of many years, and by-gone lives, was what lay close about him--the grey and mossy relics of an ancient ville--it may have been a quaint, small town of well-marked fortalices, or a brave and beautiful little city in Lombard times--now all abandoned in its solitude. Here and there a run of ivied wall and a square tower still held themselves up respectably, as if opposing a stout heart to bad fortune;--a fine thing to see in any ruin, be it of man or marble. There were hillocks--ruined arches--and now it was all a home for ghosts and owls, or else some shadowy night-hag wandering slow.

And as Flaxius considered the masses of ferns and weeds, and saucy acanthus, and golden blossoms of many kinds, and arrogant asphodels, which seemed to crowd themselves into the ruins and say: ‘Poor things, _we_ will protect you and make everything look respectable,’ the sage reflected:

‘’Tis all, as in every city--where _la génération qui vient se moque de la noblesse qui va_--golden blossoms or guinea-pigs--flaunting weeds, rotting while they cover that which is older and nobler!--_avanti!_ Dandelions--_pisciacane_ in Italian--with your flowers like golden florins, and your dandy-lions of sons, begone!’

As if in answer to him he heard a bell from some church cloister far away strike twelve, softly and slowly, as if the chimes had been transfused through the honey-golden summer air which lingered into night. And with the last note all the weeds and flowers vanished; the ruins revived, shooting up again into ancient glory; towers rose from the dust--façades en-niching many a form of forgotten saints--transfigured and idealised, and over all zig-zagging and working wildly into life-like, pictured dreams, innumerable arabesques of old Lombard vines and monsters, warriors fighting dragons whose tails ended in branching dragon-wort and dogs who were half dog-wood, chasing wolves who were three-quarters wolfsbane--puns in stone, for those who can read them.

Stern and unmoved sat the man of many ages, looking at the wondrous transformation scene, as if at the opera. Like one who has had for years a season ticket, he keenly looked to see if it were well done, for he was a member of the Eternal Press which reports history, the great _Times_ of all time.

And verily he who has mastered the course of the circling ages in chronicles, and feels their soul, and has learned their lesson, may sit like Mephistopheles before the Sphinx and put such mocking questions as he will, with all the might of all that man may dare.

Then, one by one, and two by two, lights began to appear in the windows, and a great beacon fire, at first all violet, and anon waving into blended emerald and scarlet flame blazed out on the summit of the donjon-tower. And soon all the scene was translucent and fluent with a wondrous glow as if an Aurora had been suddenly born, or the Goddess of the Four Winds, amid blazing laurel and roses while the fairies sang a pæan of welcome (as a Romagna legend tells the tale). For with the out-bursting light, there rose a strange, sweet chorus of unearthly voices in the long-forgotten, Lombard-Gothic tongue; and Flaxius hummed softly to the air:

‘Five hundred years have passed by as before: I am listening to the song once more.’

Then shadowy forms were seen among the shades, as if born from them, and blending in them, and as the light grew, they too became beings of light and colour and beauty, lords and ladies of the olden time with their pages and maidens dressed in the Latin-Lombard style; in which as in its sculptures, a rude, Northern strength submitted to, and was blended with, Romano-Greek grace and ornament, even as Hercules was subdued by Omphalé.

‘Five hundred years,’ hummed Flaxius, ‘that garb once more!’

In step with the music, and as if moving with the waves of coloured light, gracefully and stately as swans in a dream, there came by a walking group of gentlemen and ladies, who, seeing Flaxius, paused while one from the latter said to him in old Italian: