Chapter V: Part 5

‘Mortal, since thou art here sleeping at midnight and in full moon-tide, thou hast won the power to behold us, and share our festivity. Join us and enter the castle.’

Gravely and almost sadly answered the man of the ages in the old Lombard-Gothic tongue:

‘I am as little mortal as ye are immortal, ye shadows of ghosts of days long passed away! But what ye offer me in courtesy, I do with thankful courtesy accept. My lord Agobard of the Amal race, I was by your side when you routed the Romans at Ravenna, and when you retreated, beaten yet glorious before the Huns in the Mark of Tuscany. Know that your name is still to be read in old chronicles. My Lady Chlodoviga, now Luisa, I am glad to see that your fire-sapphire eyes still flash as fiercely from under your golden hair as they did when we last met.’

‘Knowest thou _me_?’ exclaimed a giant-like and ancient warrior, with a vast grey beard, yet who had all the fire of youth, and by whom stood a younger noble who was like the elder in all save age. ‘Am I still remembered on earth?’

‘Well do I know thee, Master Hildebrand, and not I alone but all men living, where’er resounds the German tongue and German hymns to God are sung, for all men who can read it have read the Song of the Father and the Son, of thee and of my Lord Hahdubrand now by thy side, unto whom I offer greeting. While the Book of Heroes shall live ye will live in it.’

‘And _thou_, great master, who hast the serpent tongue of Gunlaug?’

‘Ask me not, but I am of the sorcerer race of the God Frey, and was ere thou wert born.’

So in music and light they all gravely passed into the castle, through brilliant, buzzing groups, harpers and horn-players and _citharœdi_ making music--threading the mazes of a torch-dance, till my Lord Hildebrand led Flaxius before a lady seated beneath a canopy on a double chair like a throne. The canopy was of light-brown silk from Sicily and on it were heavily embroidered dragons and leafy branches in black and gold, with many red and gold disks. The throne was of dark nut wood and ivory.

She who sat on the throne was a queen of beauty, of a beauty long passed away with the chivalry and romance of the early Gothic time. For every age, as Flaxius said, has its own beauty, which busts or portraits never portray to those who come after, though they may have been perfect likenesses, any more than the dried flower retains its early perfume. For there was in the woman’s face a nameless, stern, firm will, an unfamiliarity with little things and small sentiments, the steady glow of a soul which knew only great aims and was used to great efforts, and such were all who were leaders in those days, and in each other they all read their like, which is a noble thing for noble minds. Yet there was in her eyes a glow and glory of beauty and of passion which betrayed unearthly blood and immortal longing, and as she looked with a smile of welcome at Flaxius, there flashed into his mind a feeling of joy which she little suspected, that he was not one who could be bewitched or silenced or bullied by any magic:

‘Five hundred years have passed by as before, I gaze upon those eyes once more.’

‘I present to your princely highness,’ said Lord Hildebrand, ‘a stranger of great wisdom, whom we found within the domain. Who he may be, Lady Adelindè, I cannot divine, but I warrant him well worthy a warm welcome.’

‘It is given with a good will,’ replied Adelindè in a deep, sweet voice, which was as marvellous and strange as her eyes, and which seemed like their light changed to sound. ‘And be not alarmed or astonished, sir stranger, to find yourself in what is doubtless to you a marvellous scene of enchantment.’

‘I am not,’ answered Flaxius simply, as he gazed at her. ‘There is nothing here so wonderful as thou art.’

Now be she fairy or sorceress or ghost-devil of a peeress or diabolical princess, a woman is always a woman, and the Lady Adelindè, who was something of all of these at once, divined that Flaxius was no common mortal such as she had been accustomed to catch and cajole now and then, to turn out of doors that he might find himself Rip van Winkled or Barbarossa’d or Seven Sleepered and seven years older in the morning, lying with a rheumatism on a cold stone. The lightly-rosy snow of her fair cheeks flushed to richer red at the steady glance of the stern, grey-blue eyes of her grim guest, in whom she at once felt a power perhaps beyond her own--_chi sa?_--and it was with a tone into which she infused her very best sorcery--the kind formerly conserved for kings--that she invited Flaxius to rest himself beside her on the throne.

‘You will join our banquet?’ she asked with another professional smile.

‘I have had nothing to eat all day,’ replied Flaxius, in true old Lombardo-Roman tone. (Note that there was a great deal in this manner and tone, and the princess caught it.) ‘For we all require food,’ added Flaxius. ‘Mortals or spirits, all eat and drink.’

‘_We!_’ reflected Adelindè. ‘The “mortals _and_ spirits” was an after-thought! I wonder who or what he is!’

‘Even mortals,’ continued Flaxius, ‘require scent and taste in their food, else it would not nourish them. Mere spiritual beings live simply on taste and scent, while the still more refined, or divine, exist on perfume alone. You, fairest Adelindè, have, I doubt not, very often dined on a daisy, had the scent of a pink for an _entrée_, and a sniff of a rose for dessert, but that much you absolutely required. There were even mortal queens of yore who were thus refined. Chrimhilde was one. The chronicle does not mention it, but it is true that when our old friend Hildebrand, with hero Hagen, ravished her rose-garden, they destroyed her larder.’

‘No, he is not a common mortal,’ flashed Adelindè through her mind, for she always thought in sheet-lightning ere she spoke. (And I pray you note that this metaphor is truthful enough, for a later Latin writer tells us that the voices of all unearthly beings are like thunder, there being even in their softest, dulcet tones--_si symphonia canere vel ad tibiam versus fundere_--even when they sing their sweetest in symphonies or pour forth their souls unto the witching flute, a softly murmuring undertone, or strange, dark suspicion of the grandeur of the Voice of God as it speaks in the stars.) And the spiritual sheet-lightning of Adelindè’s thought was materialised in her glances.

Meanwhile the banquet, or revel, grew wild and bold. Flaxius ate like a mortal, or like three--(‘Decidedly he is only human,’ thought Adelindè)--and drank like four, five, or six. But there was no change in the grey-blue eyes, or in his voice.

‘No, he is in-human,’ reflected the lady. ‘Mortal man could never drink like _that_!’

Yet she had seen stout drinkers in her time, in the old Roman-Longobardi days. Yes, they drank like bricks, for, as ye know, a dry brick will absorb its own equivalent of fluid. Which the Latins rendered, _Ranas superat bibendo_, and the old Italians ‘like a German’ or a cardinal--cardinal virtues being, alack, more like carnal vices in those days.

Wilder pealed the music, louder laughed and roared the company. From a revel which would have maddened a mortal, it became a Sabbath of sorcerers and witches, a Pandemonium of passions, an Inferno broken loose. Even the figures in the marvellous mosaics on the vaulted ceiling above--saints and kings and queens and warriors brave, such as we still see at Ravenna--became animated and danced or embraced, trailing after them gorgeous and jewelled robes, so that as there had been over much decay and silence and death before in the ruin, even so there now seemed to be as much excess of life and tumult.... A reverend bishop reeled and tumbled down ... while saints too fondly fondled saintesses--a rosy wine-light seemed to tinge the air, as if the very hall itself were drunk, and all were swimming in a ruby sea. _Quasi vinis Græcis Neptunus suffudit mare!_

The princess, wild as a mænad, wanton as a faun, had cast herself on the heart of her guest, while she seemed joyous as a mad panther,--the maddest of all things when gay,[5]--but she still realised to her unbounded awe, that she in all _deliria_ of delight had never for an instant cast a charm or fascination over her mystic guest.

But what was to her astounding, well-nigh petrifying, a thing new to her since a thousand years, the princess felt a mighty thrilling influence in her heart, a new-born spirit speaking in her soul, that she herself was at last being won, instead of being the winner! But why this should have so fearfully struck and startled her, not without a joyous after-glow of hope, will appear anon.

‘Great and marvellous man,’ she at length exclaimed, recovering her breath--then bursting into her true self and life,--’twas like a pale moon exploding into a noonday sun--‘tell me who or what art thou, now speaking our long-forgotten Lombard tongue, knowing all my court and me, inaccessible to my power, and oh, that I should ever dare to think and dream it! perhaps mastering me!’

‘Dost thou desire it?’ asked Flaxius calmly.

‘Does the lost soul desire to be freed from hell?’ cried the princess, in a long, wailing tone of a spirit in despair. ‘Does the prisoner on the rack wish the torture to cease? Man of mystery!’ she suddenly cried, ‘dost thou know my life and my doom?’

‘Well do I know it,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and now look me well in the eyes, thou daughter of the old Lombard line of kings, and yet a spirit’s child, for thy fated hour has come at last. Yet ere I tell thee more, answer me, great soul, what has this life which thou didst take of thy own free choice--when thou hadst liberty to choose among all--what has this life become, which was, as thou didst once declare, the only heaven thou couldst understand?’

‘It has become a hell,’ replied Adelindè, with an immortal shudder; ‘a hell of weary, worn-out, oft-repeated imagery of splendour, a tiresomeness of idle power, with the real torment of the conscience that I was--a fool!’

‘He or she is a long way advanced towards freedom or wisdom,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘who has found out that he--or she--is a fool. Well, lady, thus it was that centuries ago there lived on earth a beautiful princess of the Lombard line, who had a sorceress mother, and a fairy Amal-Alruna ancestress, and who, having been trained to all the mysteries and magic of the North, as well as of Rome, and of many races, attained to such power as had rarely been given to woman. Yet through it all she retained beauty and the love of power and pleasure, of magnificence, and the keen, fierce delight of preying on the hearts and lives of men, and of living, even as thou livest here now, Adelindè!

‘And having gained great power, and on one occasion by mighty worship and great services to _Tinia_--the great ruling spirit of the Tuscan land--obtained full and free choice as to her future life for ever, she said: “What that life for saints may be I know not, but this I know, that the life which I now lead is all that heart can desire, and I would fain live it so long as a single fibre of my soul remains as it is.”

‘Near and dear to her in those days was one who had lived in the ages, and been her teacher, and more, and had tried to win her from her worldly wont, and all in vain. So they went their ways, she to splendour and pageantry in life and after life, and he to study and observe in existences beyond her ken. And in her gaiety and luxury the ages rolled on, and as they rolled, there wore away the happiness of her elfin life, and torment set in, the torment ordained to every one on earth who succeeds in having to satiety and excess his own will.’

‘Man, thou speakest true,’ wailed the princess, as the voices of revelry sank lower, and the figures fading began to pass away, and the lights grew dim. The music became softer in its modulations, and the mind of Flaxius ran insensibly into unspoken song, in accompaniment with the line:

‘Five hundred years have passed by as before.’

‘One by one,’ he resumed, ‘the enchanted princess lost her passions and longings. She had delirious desires, keen appetites, an immortal and beautiful thirst, an exquisite appreciation of all that is beautiful, dainty caprices, delicate and true. Wit, humour, whim, wild-will, and Attic salt were as life to her; she revelled in music and song and letters--as thou dost in this life, or as thou didst when in the body.’

The poor princess grew tearful; the marble pallor of her fading cheek might have made sorrow in the hardest heart.

‘Yes, it all wore into triteness and commonplace, even the being hungry and eating, desiring and realising the same things over and over again, for _she_ had a soul, and every soul is damned, as soon as it is clogged and stops working, like a bee that has wished itself into eternal honey.’

Adelindè cried on.

‘But one thing survived--it generally _is_ about the last thing to die out of any woman’s heart--and that was the desire to fascinate men, to win them, to impose on them, and to have her own way. She felt it in her head and heart like a curse; she knew it was the poison of her soul; everything else grew stale, but that kept fresh.

‘And it had been decreed that if she could ever meet a man who could resist and conquer her, the spell would end; but, alas, she had wished for and won such a stupendous stock of enchanting charms that she was perfectly _irresistible_ and simply distracting, which is a thing that stands between many a woman and her salvation, in all ages. For it has kept more souls in the dark, and made more ugly fools, who might have become spiritually beautiful, than any cause on earth. So from such mothers many men are fools: an Agrippina has always a Nero for a son.’

Crushed to naught, fair Adelindè wept, till, lifting her eyes to those of the guest, a sudden, tremendous convulsion, one of transcendent rapture, mingled with strangest amazement, thrilled over her. She bent on him a glance which might have split a stone.

The music played on ever more softly, more sweetly to their words in perfect time.

‘Now I know thee, Flaxius,’ she cried. ‘_Vicisti_, thou hast conquered! The last link of the chain which bound me for centuries to earth is broken. And even in the hour in which we meet, beloved master, and in the instant of our love, because it is our love, and I am conquered, I leave thee for the better life beyond! But, ah! to have remained with thee, I would have gladly endured this ghostly existence, which had become a torment. All this is ended. Now these walls will know me no more; the peasant benighted will no longer see strange lights flickering over the ancient ruin; the enchantment has departed, and the spell of golden glory and glamour will no longer shine at midnight in these halls. The wanderer may now safely sleep here; he will behold no longer the elfin array, or my Lombard lords and ladies of the olden times, nor be enchanted by their queen. Sound for the last time my fairy music--your sweet strains will never more be heard in the court of Adelindè! Farewell, O master, we shall meet again soon, and full often in a better life--such as thou hast chosen--a life not clogged by earthly desires or petty worldly aims.’

As she said this, the princess cast herself in a last passionate embrace on the breast of Flaxius, and as she did so, he felt that her life and form were passing away to a purer, more idealised existence. The figure faded, the features, the face, last of all the ineffable splendour of the Sorceress’s eyes, in which there was the radiance of a divine, parting smile: she spoke no more, the music died away.

‘O love, in thy glory go!’ said Flaxius. ‘Never yet passed into life eternal a sweeter soul, never yet was a fairer goblet of the ancient time remelted into a nobler form. O love, in thy glory go! Lovelier form did never fade, brighter rose was never broken. ’Tis but a brief minute since thou wert in thy inferno of despair, and now by one instant’s flash of love and humility, thy beautiful soul is passing through the golden-pearled portals, and through the halls of the heavenly unknown. Even I cannot tell, not in this short space, what sphere contains the fairy soul that hath forsook her mansion in this earthly nook. O love, in thy glory go!’

Silent and alone sat Flaxius as the shades vanished one by one. Last of all there stood before him the giant forms of Hildebrand and his son Hahdubrand. The warrior pressed his hand and spoke no word, but Flaxius read in his eyes deep and full feeling--the knowledge of all that had passed, and a farewell.

‘Yes, farewell, my brave old companion of ancient days,’ said Flaxius. ‘Thou, too, mayst pass away to lands beyond. Thou didst battle for glory and fame, and hast learned from me that it has been truly won. _Du kannst zu Land ausreiten_--so, warrior, fare thee well!’

So he sat there till all had passed away, the glitter and glamour of chivalry and a fairy court; till the high towers had become a low, grey ruin, and the spiders’ webs hung again in the palace halls, and there were vines on crumbling walls, and the stones, themselves to ruin grown like him, seemed death-like old. Then, as in waves, the weeds grew again up to where he sat; and as the rising sun cast its first ray on him, he started as if from a dream.

‘_Comedia luget, scena est deserta_,’ he murmured. ‘Now if I wished to preach a new faith to mankind, Adelindè has given me the text. For I now see that hell _is_ the place where every mortal can have to his heart’s content his own desire, as Pluto declared. And this hell may be on earth, in life, and all may know it in their very hearts.

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius on the revise, ‘two or three morals not mentioned in the conclusion. _Item_, the Spirit that is in the trees, the Being in green leaves among the groves, the rocks and waters, or the wanton weeds, reveals unto the poet wondrous things which, being written, are as real in truth, in beauty, and in goodness for the world, as aught that ever happened in the past. He who has mastered this in every sense lives in a fairyland while here on earth, yet they are few who ever master it.

‘And yet again that great prosperity gives birth to a vanity which is often an intermittent weakness in men, and a steady madness in women, as may be clearly discerned in the memoirs or lives of all who have flourished in the atmosphere of courts, wherein, as in a hot-house, things worth no more than weeds in nature or in their proper state, are as exotics, nursed up into such condition by prosperity, that they despise every flower or plant which grows in the open air. For who, indeed, has not known some feeble-minded man or woman whose head has been so turned by having everything he or she wanted, that either is fain to scream as at some great inhuman injustice when a miracle is not wrought in some dire need--as in the want of “diamonds like the duke’s”!’

‘Now it was in the instant when her vanity was humiliated for ever, and she realised that there was, indeed, a man who was too much for her, that Adelindè first saw herself in very truth as she was, like Hawthorne’s Man of Straw, and grasped the tremendous truth of Christian humility. Which is enough time for a great mind to be saved, just as one handful of powder will in an instant overthrow a lordly tower, while it may require a ton thereof, and a long time, to destroy a mud-bank.

‘But every mortal, be he who he may, has learned a great lesson, and taken his first step to divinity, when he has learned in very truth that he is not a god.

‘Finally, there are many who imagine that old age cannot attack a man while he has health, strength, and physical or worldly appetite. And so long as he is a brute or a fool, were it for a thousand years, he could indeed go on eating, drinking, and frolicking with his kind. But with experience there comes a soul, and to that soul in time a weariness of all that earth contains, be it what it may. Now it is a curious thing to observe that as the average growth of intellect in England has increased--I pray ye here put on your studying-caps--the average of life and the duration of vitality and intelligence has increased with it. When the great Duke of Marlborough pleaded extreme old age in asking for merciful indulgence--he was then sixty-three--no one thought it strange. ’Tis hardly worth the while to say, that now, few people would lend grace to such a plea, for life is lengthening, and ‘twill lengthen on slowly--it may be--surely, into wondrous Time.

[5] The frolicsomeness of a panther suggests intoxication. In this it surpasses all other animals. Therefore the car of Bacchus is drawn by panthers.

FLAXIUS AND THE WERE-WOLF

THE WONDERFUL STORY TELLING HOW RANDOLPH OF UPSALA ATE THE SHEEP, AND HOW MR. RANDOLPH OF WALL STREET DEVOURED THE LAMBS.

‘Now there are some people who think that those who believe they are Were-wolves only suffer from what is called by doctors _Lycanthropia_. But others hold that they are indeed changed to brutes, and this cannot be denied, and those who deny it are all infamous liars.’--_Peter Goldschmied_, _Hexen Advocat._ 1705.

IT happened once in the days of sword-songs and sagas, runic sorcery and sea-dragons, that Flaxius found himself in Sweden on a summer eve, gazing at the town of Upsala. He sat upon the little hill before it, where, as tradition tells, Odin was buried. Ye may see his bones, to-day, in a paste-board box in a case in the Stockholm Museum, where I who write these lines was allowed to reverently touch them, which is indeed a favour only accorded to a pious few who still worship the gods, disguised as folk-lorists and archæologists--_quorum pars sum_.

Now as Flaxius looked upon the strange city, and the old tower, with its eight arches typifying the eight rings or armlets of the All-Father, he observed here and there on the walls, swinging in the wind, the corpses of the strangers who were caught straying about the country, and were then sentenced to _sus per coll_, or be hanged, slung up, or hitched to swing, dangle, swaggle, and go bibbety-bob in the breezes, as a sacrifice to Odin.

‘A somewhat severe custom,’ mused Flaxius gently, ‘yet doubtless not without its peculiar advantages. The stranger within our gates often seems to us well worthy of being gated, when he gets the entire government of cities into his hands, and runs the taxes--into his own pocket; as I with eye prophetic do foresee will be the case one day in Western lands, but late discovered by these valiant Norse.

‘But for the Sacrificed on yonder walls. I remember how upon a time in Rome when Nero made full oft grim martyrdoms, that a disciple of Paulus asked--hearing me declare that there was humour in all things--if it could be found in the awful conception of a God dying as a criminal to show his humility and love for the world? And I can recall how Odin once coming as stranger, or in some disguise, into this very town, he being their god, was seized at once and hung on yonder wall, as a due sacrifice unto himself. Over which thing he merrily exults as if it were a wondrous racy joke, as we may read in the Edda:

‘“For nine nights,
I hung on the wind-rocked tree
A sacrifice unto myself.”

‘Truly the idea was too much for me, but not for the All-Father of the Northern gods, who found a grotesque humour in the conception of a Creator baffled by his own work. So he carried out the jest by being hung. Ah well! he lost the game after all, which shows that the Scandinavians were not good myth-makers. We managed these things much better in Etruria, Greece, and Rome. “There’s nothing sacred to a pioneer,” says a French proverb, and Odin was the _Sapeur_ and leader, and discoverer for all the North. The Norseman and Norman were his children. Od or Hud was his name as “the traveller,” and Henry Hudson was of the blood. Like an old traveller, Odin would have his joke.

‘But as to this custom of stringing up, or scragging strangers, and making them dance upon nothing in honour of the Lord Odin, it behoves me to look to myself with care unless I too would wear a tight cravat, and I care not for such worldly vanities.’

Saying this he wandered on and away, till he came to a lonely place amid rocks and trees by a headlong stream, where he paused. Suddenly his attention was caught by a cry, which he found came from a pit hard by. It was a deep and powerful voice. And to it Flaxius replied:

‘Who calls?’

The voice answered:

‘I am one who has fallen into this pit, and have not the power to come forth.’ Then he sang in staff-rhyme:

‘“To catch the Band-olf,
To take the Adelolf,
Bertolf, Eginolf,
Frekulf, Aistolf,
Hedenolf, Ingolf,
Kelolf and Kunolf,
Orkulf, Ordulf,
Ludolf and Rachulf,
Ralf and Ranulf,
Wolfram and Tackolf,
Theodolf, Unolf,
Wolfart and many a wolf,
Men with the sword,
Bearers of Lances,
Go forth to battle.
To catch the Were-wolf,
They dig the pit-fall,
With runes and sorcery,
Witch-rhyme and magic,
So well they guard it
That the wild wolf-man
Falling into it,
There must remain,
Starving, a prisoner,
Until a sorcerer,
Pitying, comes to him,
Breaking the witch-spell.”’

‘Which means in prose,’ said Flaxius, ‘that a poor devil of a sheep-stealer, _alias_ a were-wolf, is here in the pit--more’s the pity! There is to my mind indeed--I know not why--something less of crime in stealing mutton and venison than some other things; in fact I remember that a great Etruscan dramatist, now forgotten, once made deer-poaching almost sacred. And I recall how a bold, brave man said to a judge in my hearing: “Jedge, I’m glad you punished that mizzable creeter so severely for stealing hens. Being naterally strong in the back, it _hes_ befel at times when the country was thinly settled, that I myself have now and then inadvertently stolen a sheep, but I allays had the moral grandeur to refrain from Hens. _Hens!_ O the low, poor, ornery, medium-minded cuss!--he orter to be _ashamed_ of himself!”’

The man in the pit uttered an exclamation not over-pious.

‘It would serve these Swedes right, for their hanging strangers at Upsala,’ pursued Flaxius, ‘if I were to pull this poor devil up into the light of day. Let us see how they have laid their hocus-pocus of runes and witch-knots! Why rubbish and trash!’ he exclaimed with a scornful laugh, ‘an old Roman witch who tells fortunes for a penny would undo this sorcery with a pin! Ahem, let me try:

‘Aldebarantiphoscophornio!
Bombochidescluninstaridé sarchides!
Tarchun, Hinthial, Tara!

There--the charm is broken! Were-wolf, my son, come forth!’

And sure enough the pittite came forth. His appearance was _not_, to draw it mildly, as Flaxius observed unto himself, ‘absolutely prepossessing.’ _Punchius_, a celebrated Roman jester of the Lower Empire, once remarked of such an appearance, ‘that he would not be a nice customer to meet of a dark night in a lonely lane, on the loose.’ For he was red all over, as if with excessive health, and awful in muscle, an over-done Hercules, like to the Cacus of Baccio or Bandinell in the Signoria of Florence. His arms hung out from his sides like a turtle’s fins, because the bulging biceps were so great. His hair was red and dishevelled, and his eyes glared from under it with unmitigated ferocity, like those of a wild cat staring from a pig-pen. He bore on his left arm a wolf’s skin.

But suddenly, ere Flaxius could speak a word, the two found themselves surrounded by a crowd of furious rustics, who had evidently been ambushed on the watch, in the forest, about the pit. They rushed upon the pair with angry cries, accusing Flaxius of having delivered the Were-wolf, also of being a stranger, and ere they were aware, cast over them a net in which they were helpless.

‘_Flagrante delicto_,’ thought Flaxius. ‘Misplaced humanity oft leads to woe. He who lets a rat out of a trap loses his cheese. What next?’

The next was that the culprits found themselves imprisoned in the witch-tower. Its walls were about twenty-five feet in thickness; there was just room in it for two to sit on a bench, and there was one grated window to admit air.

They looked at one another. Flaxius began to sing a song written some time after by the Trouvère, Marie de France:

‘“When lays abound, ’twould ill beseem
Bisclaveret were not a theme;
Such is the name by Bretons sung,
And Gar-wal in the Norman tongue.”’

‘_Gar-wal!_’ exclaimed the other prisoner. ‘That means me--a were-wolf. ’Tis not our tongue, and yet I know the word.’

‘So I suppose, my son, therefore I sang,’ rejoined Flaxius. ‘So now while we are resting a space, from our romantic adventure, ere we get out of this somewhat limited apartment, I pray you tell me all your story clearly ... in simple words, and few.’

‘By Fenris!’ exclaimed the Were-wolf, ‘I will tell you the truth. Loki and Hela take me if I lie! I was a free, simple _bonde_, a plain small farmer, and I lived from a flock of sheep. It was my all, and hard was my life withal. Now I had a rich neighbour, and one year my pasture was ruined by flood and storm, and this man being crafty, and I as simple as a child, he persuaded me to pasture my sheep on his farm for half the lambs to come. But he so managed by head-craft and law-craft, as to take from me all I had; and when I followed my claim at the Thing or court, it went even worse with me, and I was cast into debt, and made a thrall or slave.

‘Then I was mad with rage. Short words, master--I met a witch who gave me a spell, and I made myself a were-wolf. Then I slew all that man’s sheep ... one by one ... I set fire to his home--his family all perished in the flame--he escaped, lame and a beggar. And I was made a Wolf’s Head.’

‘Truly a pretty tale!’ remarked Flaxius. ‘Apuleius might have made something of it. _Entre chien et loup_ in this twilight, my son--or _entre nous_--hast thou more to narrate?’

‘Yes. I had taken from my foe’s house a goodly treasure of gold rings and coin, which I have concealed. Now, if any sorcerer would take the wolf-spell from me and change my face, I would buy me a ship and go a-pirating as a Viking, and so reform and lead an honest life.’

‘Truly men’s ideas as to _honesty_,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘are indeed somewhat involved--or as we may say--conventional. But what dost thou think, my son,’ he said aloud, ‘as to our present prospects?’

‘Simply, my lord, that we shall be burned alive to-morrow in honour of Odin.’

‘All lost--except honour,’ quoth Flaxius. ‘But, my son, I have no fancy to figure as a _rôti_, albeit I propose to be a _pièce de résistance_. Let us for once in our harmless and innocent lives vary the monotony of moral goodness by evading the law. All novelty is pleasing.’

‘And how shall we do it?’ asked the man amazed.

‘Thou art a strong carl,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and I warrant me that thou couldst tear yon window grating out of its place. And I--’tis a mere trick, my son--can increase thy strength ten-fold. Only drink now and then from this flask. So, so! bully boy, to work! Work while I sing to thee a magic spell taught by the great Ir-Ving.

‘“Hinculus dinculus trinculus!
Holy boly bum!
The Latin for chain is _Vinculus
Nunc inspiratus sum_!”’

It was with intense awe that the Were-wolf listened to these words, and in full faith that he attacked the grating, which he pulled away as if it were straw.

‘Now try a stone, my son!’ exclaimed Flaxius. ‘Nay--take a pull first from the flask. There is a spirit therein, unknown to thee--_spiritus vini Gallici, duæ unciæ, fiat potatio_!’

Crash came a stone weighing a ton, then another, then a third. The Berserker rage was on the giant. Soon he had made a hole through which one could have driven a coach, but he kept on.

‘Softly, softly, my dear boy!’ interposed Flaxius. ‘Thou art too good an actor, and wilt bring down the whole house about our ears. Now, if thou art ready, I see the new moon rising o’er yon trees. Ha! Hesperus! I give thee greeting fond! Come to the green wood; let us haste away!’

It was a drop of twenty feet from the window, but the red man took it like a mountain goat, and then caught Flaxius in his arms, like a ball, albeit the latter was none of your light-weights, neither was he small. Now, as the Wolf was still _berserk-wode_, or half-mad with the tremendous magic potion, he gave a fearful yell, turning townwards,

‘And shook his gauntlet at the towers,’

when catching up Flaxius on his back, he ran with him, ‘as a fox might run with a goose,’ thought the passenger, at headlong speed, along the road and into the woods, crashing through boughs and thickets, over rocks leaping, through torrents splashing; a-down a force or waterfall here, up a hill there, while Flaxius sang:

‘“Va petit postillon!
Va en avant, vite, vite!
Tu vas comme l’aquilon
Sur ta jument favorite?

Go on, my postillion!
Before thee lies the way!
And thou art like an eagle fleet
Upon thy gallant grey!”’

Truly the similes were all a little mixed, but they were in a devil of a shaking, jumbling hurry, and there was no pause till they found themselves far away in a lonely land, where it seemed as if the cock never crew, the sun never shone, and the wind never blew. There the Berserker threw himself matt and flat on the ground, out of wind, and dead broke. And then Flaxius noticed that he had in his right hand a sheep, which he had caught up on the way as he ran.

‘Truly there is a good soldier lost in this man,’ said Flaxius. ‘He can forage even during a retreat.’ So there was resting, cooking, and camping _au clair de la lune_; and the next day they went on, and so to the North for many days more. The wolf-man seemed to be bound for a certain place, and Flaxius followed to see what would come thereout.

When on a time as they sat in a sunset on a headland overlooking a fiord, and far away from Upsala, the Wolf-man said:

‘Master, wilt thou take from me the spell which forces me when the moon is full to don this skin and raven as a wolf? For, anon, I shall begin to feel fierce convulsions throbbing, and wild commotion in all my blood, and raging madness for murder in my whole soul, the time for it being nearly come, and then I spare neither beast nor human being. Now, if thou dost not care to work the charm, there lives near this place, a-down in yonder dale, a Finn who is a famed sorcerer, and to him will I go for relief.’

Flaxius replied musingly, more to himself than to his follower:

‘Yes, it is true. Long, long ago in Greece, I made research into the _Lycanthropia_, which is one of the oldest mysteries of mad humanity. And it was in happy, sunny Arcady--_et in Arcadia ego_--where all was like a proverb of sweet peace, that it first showed itself to the world.

‘In that land, my son, was a wicked king named _Lycaon_. Once it happened that the great god, who was as the Odin and Frey of your faith in one, whose name was Zeus or Jupiter, and in Etruscan, Tinia, came in disguise to this Lycaon, who, to test the divinity or magic of his visitor, set before him human flesh cooked as mutton.’

‘But that was a _great_ sin!’ exclaimed the Wolf-man, who was listening with round eyes and full belief. ‘To treat a _guest_, who should be sacred to the vilest of the vile, in such wise was _nidering_.’

‘It was _très_ low-flung, my son,’ said Flaxius, who had a habit of prophetically borrowing phrases from vocabularies of the future. ‘Yes, _niederträchtig_, scandalous, ribald, scrubby, pitiful, vile, infamous conduct--_infra dignitatem regis_. And it was promptly punished, for Zeus, on the spot, turned the king and his sons, who had had a hand in the little game, all into wolves--the first wolves ever seen--and they ran howling away through the door into the darkness, like mad.’

‘’Tis a fine tale,’ said the Wolf-man. ‘And so the first of us was a _king_, and if he was wicked, he was bold to dare such a deed.’

‘But whence came this _mania_,’ continued Flaxius, talking to himself, ‘since there is a scientific cause for all things? _H’m-h’m!_ the Arcadians were of the primæval race of the Pelasgi, who dwelt secluded from the mob of Asiatics, Egyptians, Levantines, and God knows what all, who fused into Greeks in time. In lonely valleys, deep in mountain dales, they pastured flocks, fought with the beasts of prey, and kept unchanged a mass of the wildest tales of sorcery and witchcraft in freshest faith. So they knew _fear_ in its strangest form--the _panicus terror_--which seizes on mobs of men or beasts, and the _deliria_ of spectres, as no other Greeks knew them. Out of such fear grew the bewildering _insania zoanthropica_, and the awful _insania metamorphosis_ of which Nebuchadnezzar was the prototype. Finally we get to the _dementia lycanthropia_, so interestingly exemplified in thee--O my son!’ he exclaimed, turning to the other, who had sat open-mouthed with wonder and admiration at the speech, of which he had not understood one word. ‘By the way, what is thy name, my son?’ he continued.

‘Ranulf, the mad wolf, is what men call me,’ said the other proudly.

‘_Mon fils, ce n’est pas l’instant pour la vanité humaine_,’ rejoined Flaxius mildly; ‘but as regards removing this disorder of thine, I would fain see how thy Finn will work it. I promise thee a cure in any case.’

They went down and on, till they came to a large, low cottage, buried amid birch-trees and willows. At the door sat an old man weaving baskets, droning to himself an ancient lay, while by him crouched an immense cat of some wild kind. The Finn was dressed in furs and woven bast, or softened willow wood in strips; his face was withered, but his eye was keen as an eagle’s, and as his glance met Flaxius, the two understood one another,

‘The curse of Ilmarin, or of Fenris, lies heavily on him,’ said the Finn, indicating Ranulf.

‘He hath a double curse,’ replied Flaxius, ‘with him it is _at leysa or laedingi eda at drepa or droma_,--the wolf hath two fetters to break--for he is firstly mad, and secondly outlawed, so that he must be mentally cured, and then disguised so as to escape the law. And I would fain see, my brother, how thou workest thy spell.’

‘By the Great Oak!’ exclaimed the sorcerer with a shrewd twinkle of his eye, ‘I doubt not that our methods are much alike. But if it please you, O wise lord from the far Out-gard, to see my simple work, I will most willingly do my best.’

Saying this he took them into a room which was closed and windowless, but in which burned a large, rude Lapland lamp; and having made Ranulf drink of a certain potion, he rubbed him over with an ointment, in the smell of which Flaxius detected certain ingredients which were to him far from being unknown.

‘Ahem!’ he reflected, ‘extract of mandragora, opium, henbane (order _solanaceæ_), sulphur, bitumen, verbena, _amico mio, dove diavolo avete pigliato tutte queste coglionerie_--where the devil didst rake up all this stuff? Yea, from the very ends of the earth do these Voodoos and conjurors correspond, and the Shaman of Kamtschatka sends the _Ammanita muscaria_ unto Timbuctoo for sorceries. Proceed, O friend, I pray thee with thy work!’

The Finn laid the patient on a bed, lighted a pan, in which were strange fumigants, and bade the Were-wolf look him long and steadily in the eyes; which he did with ten owl-power till he began to blink like a judge after luncheon, and finally went into a deep sleep. Then the shaman, taking a kind of large, oval-shaped tambourine, covered with reindeer skin, on which were drawn many mysterious, rude figures, began to beat it gently, while he sang in strange and evidently carefully measured and elaborately trained tones, the following:

‘By the soul of him the father!
By the mighty Wainamoinen!
By the sun and moon and planets,
And their light upon the water!
And the water all surrounding,
And the forest by the seashore,
And the bear within the forest!
And the runic mystery written
On his paw, and by the letters,
Which the lightning writes in darkness,
Only read by Ilmarinen!
By the One, Three, Five and Seven,
And the Four which causes growing,
Ever giving, life-begetting:
Wolf, I charge thee leave this mortal!

Fly along the running river,
Fly across the ferny mountains,
Fly into the pine-tree forest!
Flee across the birch-edged meadows!
Hasten to the oak-bound valley,
Or where slopes are dense with beeches,
Wade in haste through shallow water,
Where the fishes dart in terror!
By the rock on which the warriors
Cut of yore their strongest record,
With the mesh of interlaces,
Which avert the witches’ glances:
Wolf, I charge thee, leave this mortal!
Leave him so that when awaking,
He shall never more remember,
That he ever wore the wolf hide!’

Thereupon was heard near by the sound of a wolf howling, and, as one would think, praying and expostulating with the shaman, who was, however, very firm, and when the Wolf was over bold, began to sing again:

‘Fly along the running river!’

Till at last the Wolf was heard at some distance, and then still further away; his voice ever less audible, until it seem to disappear amid rustling leaves, and mingle with the wind.

‘Admirably played, my brother,’ exclaimed Flaxius; ‘Apollo never did the trick better. Hypnotized to perfection and cured--like a ham! Yes, the wolf will be no longer at his door. And, my dear doctor, I like your _mise en scène_, your drum and your poetry and perfumery. By the way I can give you a hint or two as to improving the narcotics in your ointment, and yet, who knows? perhaps for your rough folk you have the best _fiat lotio Cras mane sumendus_.’

‘And if Ranulf would like to go a-Viking,’ said the shaman, ‘there is a rich man hard by who has a fine ship to sell cheap, with forty men all armed, and well.’

‘Just like your provident kindness,’ responded Flaxius. ‘Always the same thoughtful old chap. And now for your fee--you won’t take it--ah yes, _inter doctores_, among us members of the Faculty, of course. But permit me,’ he said, producing from his pocket a second flask of the mystic alchemical, spagirical essence, ‘to present to you a medicine which is as yet unknown in the North. Taste it and try its virtue on yourself! _Jameson, Dublin._’

Saying this he uncorked the bottle, presented it, and the Finnic sorcerer, as the saying is, ‘took a sight’; that is to say, the bottle ascended at an angle of forty-five degrees from his mouth, so that his vision glanced exactly in a line with the side, as if it were a pistol. He took very deliberate aim, was in no hurry, being evidently determined to make a line-shot, hit the bull’s eye and bring down the game, and then _clucked_. The shot had been fired. Then turning to Flaxius he spoke no word, but uttered a _wink_, and such a wink as Flaxius had never seen before in all his mighty experience. The charge had gone home, and he had brought down his racoon, killing him dead at a shot.[6]

There was a Finnish shaman sorcerer who had a wondrous interview with Hibernian spirits all that night, and who was found next morning buried in a magic trance. And far out at sea there was a solitary Viking sail bearing southward, and from the oarsmen came the chorus of a song in Icelandic:

‘Sing hey! sing ho! for the land of flowers!’

* * * * *

Ages had come and gone, and the cobwebs and dust had gathered three inches deep in crust on many an old bottle of wine in many an ancient cellar, when Flaxius found himself of a bright, crisp, autumn day in the city of New York, presenting a letter of introduction to a retired stockbroker, whose home was situated up the river, in the Catskills. This gentleman was named Randolph, and Flaxius was much pleased with him. He was a genial, jovial, merry-go-tumble man in a general way, with a quaint American _mot_ for every circumstance, and quick at filling the kettle whenever there was any fun to be boiled; but he had withal evidently a tremendous hard pan, or substratum, of what is called _horse-sense_, which is a sixth sense supplied by nature to her Western children. He was immensely powerful, in fact a perfect picture of excessive ruddy health, being one of those enviable muscular beasts who can bend a horse-shoe, or tear in two a pack of cards; and he had a tremendous shock of red hair.

This ‘powerful party’ took a great liking in turn to Flaxius, forcing him to come at once, ‘to stay his time and plenty of it,’ at his villa on the Hudson; where, what between reed-bird, venison, soft shell crab, terrapin and snapper soup, Spanish mackerel and blue-fish banquets, pretty faces, festivities, drives, and gaieties, the guest drew comparisons with the pleasures of ancient Rome and Paris, not in all respects favourable to the latter.

It is an invariable rule in life, that however powerful and reticent a nature like that of Randolph’s may be, it inevitably runs into intimate confidence when it meets with another of the kind of Flaxius. Mercury does not melt more surely into lead than the strong animal soul combines with a stronger intellectual power. And the end of it was, to abridge the tale, that one day Mr. Randolph told to his guest the story of his life.

‘I was the son,’ he said, ‘of a farmer who lived in one of the eastern counties of Massachusetts, and who, being favoured by fortune, accumulated about one hundred thousand dollars. I was an only son; was sent to Harvard, graduated, and went to practise law in New York.

‘Now with all these advantages, and some plain, hard-working common sense to boot, I still fell into the teeth and claws of a rascal. All that I can say in my own defence was that he took in and ruined many a far shrewder and more experienced man than I was. He was eminently pious, having what we here call ‘New Jersey piety,’ the kind which forms a part of every-day life, even as the skin does of the body. It is never laid aside, even by the thief in prison or by the keeper of the lowest den of iniquity, as was shown in the case of the Wickedest Man in New York, who was withal perfectly sincere in his piety and neither a Pharisee nor a hypocrite.

‘This man was a stockbroker, and he induced me by a series of marvellously ingenious tricks and devices to intrust to him the whole of my property. He was one of those great ‘operators’ who are technically said to live by slaughtering sheep or lambs.’

‘Ahem!’ interrupted Flaxius, ‘you said _lambs_, I think. So he got all your flock?’

‘Every handful of wool, and left me as bare as the back of your hand. It was by a very simple swindle. He invested my money, or that of others, in stocks, which were manipulated or depreciated by tricks to far below their value. If a man is a thorough rascal it is easy in the immense range of insecurities to find something which can be thus run down, or up. So my broker, when they were _down_ bought them in for himself--it did not take him long to use up my hundred thousand. When all was gone, one of his clerks told me the whole story.

‘I calmly and deliberately determined that I would devote my life and all its energies, without one qualm of conscience, to revenge. I swore I would hunt him, as a wolf.’

‘Ah! I beg your pardon,’ exclaimed Flaxius. ‘But this is becoming extremely interesting.’

‘As a wolf hunts a deer. So I went into Wall Street and worked as few have ever done to learn all its tricks and devices, and I had a great advantage, for while others worked for money, I only sought to learn how to work.

‘Well, it came to pass in time that I knew that my enemy had invested a very large part of his means in a certain manufactory, which was in a remote district, several days away from New York, with which it had only a partial railroad communication. I managed long and well, till I contrived to have it telegraphed that the entire town had been utterly destroyed by fire, and then we cut the telegraph wire, and tore up the rail. For three days we had that stock down to nothing, and bought it right and left.’

‘The wolf was loose,’ remarked Flaxius.

‘You bet! And the best of it was that we ran it all over town that mine enemy had got up the whole thing himself to bear the stock! So be sure he was tee-totally ruined, but then he had _mis-cal-cu--lated_!’

Mr. Randolph uttered this with an expression which was distinctly lupine, showing his teeth in a style which recalled to Flaxius an ancient witch-tower in Upsala, and corpses hanging on the walls in the evening sunlight, and a story about certain sheep and lambs, _et cetera_.

‘Yes, it was a glorious, a noble operation,’ continued Mr. Randolph, ‘and perfectly successful. I got my hundred thousand back again with interest, every _plunker_ of it. “Plunker” is Cambridge College for a dollar.’

‘_Palanco_,’ interpolated Flaxius. ‘The Florentine for a two soldi piece. The same size.’

‘And that was only the beginning of my luck,’ continued Mr. Randolph. ‘For of course the truth oozed out, and it gave me a magnificent reputation, in Wall Street.’

‘Truly enviable,’ remarked Flaxius. ‘Were there many, think you, among your--colleagues--who would have done the same?’

‘No,’ replied Randolph proudly, ‘not a beggar of them. They hadn’t the nerve for it.’

‘It seems to me,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘that the ideas of mankind as to honesty are somewhat conventional. _Où, diable, va l’orgueil se nicher?_’

A few days after, Mr. Randolph invited Flaxius to take a sail in his yacht. And as they went along before the breeze, the host said:

‘I don’t know why it is, but the being on board my craft and hearing the waves, makes me feel as if I were an old Norse _vikingir_. Strange, isn’t it? By the way, my family was of Swedish origin, and yet the name Randolph is _Virginian_.’

‘H’m!’ replied Flaxius, ‘Ranolf is Norse enough. It means a raging wolf.’

* * * * *