Marie Corelli

“ I love you with all the love pent up in my poor starved soul since childhood until now!—I love you more than woman ever loved either lover or husband! I love you, my lord and King!—but even as I love you, I honour you! No selfish thought of mine shall ever tarnish the smallest jewel in your Crown! Oh, my beloved! My Royal soul of courage! What do you take me for? Should I be worthy of your thought if I dragged you down? Should I be Lotys,—if, like some light woman who can be bought for a few jewels,—I gave myself to you in that fever of desire which men mistake for love? ”

“ Once in a hundred centuries a woman is born like Lotys, to drive men mad with desire for the unattainable—to fire them with such ambition as should make them emperors of the world, if they had but sufficient courage to snatch their thrones—and yet,—to fill them with such sick despair at their own incompetency and failure, as to turn them into mere children crying for love—for love!—only love! No matter whether worlds are lost, kings killed, and dynasties concluded, love!—only love!—and then death!—as all sufficient for the life of a man! ”

“ A strange glow came into her eyes,—a deeper crimson flushed her cheek.
“You can do nothing for me!” she said, after a long pause, “You are a King—I, a poor commoner. I would not be indebted to you for all the world! I am prouder of my ‘common’ estate than you are of your royalty! What are ‘royal’ rewards? Jewels, money, place, title! All valueless to me! If you would serve anyone, serve the People;—do something to deserve their trust! If you would show me any personal recognition, as you say, for saving your life, make that life more noble!” ”

“ Amazement and utter stupefaction held every man for the moment paralysed. Had a volcano suddenly opened beneath their feet and belched forth its floods of fire and lava, it could not have rendered them more helplessly stricken and speechless.
“I am the King!”
The words appeared to blaze on the air before them,—like the handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast. The King! He,—their friend, their advocate, he—Pasquin Leroy,—the most obedient, the most daring and energetic of all the workers in their Cause—he—even he—was the King! ”

“ How common and easy it would be for me to give myself to you!—as other women are only too ready to give themselves,—to take your tenderness, your care, your admiration,—to demand your constant attendance on my lightest humour!—to bring you shame by my persistent companionship!—to cause an open slander, and allow the finger of scorn to be pointed at you!—to see your honour made a mockery of, by base, persons who would judge you as one, who, notwithstanding his brave espousal of the People’s Cause, was yet a slave to the caprice of a woman! ”

“ She would never be swayed by gold,—but power! Her genius would rise to it—her beauty would grow to it like a rose unfolding in the sun! ‘Past youth, and without beauty’ as she says of herself! My God! Compare the tame pink-and-white prettiness of youth with the face of Lotys,—and that prettiness becomes like a cheap advertisement on a hoarding or a match-box! Contrast the perfect features, eyes and hair of the newest social ‘beauty,’—with the magical expression, the glamour in the eyes of Lotys,—and perfection of feature becomes the rankest ugliness! ”

“ When I talk of ‘persuasion,’ I only mean the persuasion of that force which has surrounded me as closely as the air I breathe!—that spirit which is bound to enter into all who work for you, or with you! Oh no!—neither you nor any member of your Order ever seek openly to ‘persuade’ any man to any act, whether good or evil—your Rule is much wiser than that!—much more subtle! You issue no actual commands—your power comes chiefly by suggestion! And with you,—working for you—I have thought day and night, night and day, of the glory of Rome!—the dominion of Rome!—the triumph of Rome! ”

“ Justice? Ay—justice!—but how can you gain this by being yourselves unjust? Will you remedy Wrong by injuring Right? Nay—this must not be!—this cannot be, with you, whose passion for liberty is noble,—whose love for truth is fixed and resolute,—and who seek no more than is by human right your own! This sudden tempest, by which your souls are tossed, is like an angry gust upon the sea, which wrecks great vessels and drowns brave men;—be something more than the semblance of the capricious wind which destroys without having reason to know why it is bent on destruction! ”

“ Must the King, because he is King, go through life unloved?”
“Unless the King is loved with honour,” said Lotys in the same hushed voice; “He must go unloved!”
He dropped her hand and looked at her. She was very pale—her breath came and went quickly, but her eyes were fixed upon him steadily,—and though her whole heart cried out for his sympathy and tenderness, she did not flinch.
“Lotys!” he said; “Are you so cold, so frozen in an ice-wall of conventionality that you cannot warm to passion—not even to that passion which every pulse of you is ready to return? What do you want of me? ”

“ It surged on the King’s ears, as with hands clasped on the drenched lilies strewn over the sleeping Lotys, he welcomed the coming Unveiling of the Beyond! And then—the waters rose up, and caught living and dead together, and dragged them down with a triumphal rush and roar,—down, down to that grand Unconsciousness,—that sublime Pause in the chain of existence,—that longer Sleep, from which we shall wake refreshed and strong again,—ready to learn Where we have failed, Why we have loved, and How we have lost. ”

“ Not with the People, who, despite the prophet’s warning, ‘still put their trust in princes’—but with the falsity and hollowness of the system! Sovereignty is like an old ship stuck fast in the docks, and unfit for sailing the wide seas—crusted with barnacles of custom and prejudice,—and in every gale of wind pulling and straining at a rusty chain anchor. But the spirit of Change is in the world; a hurrying movement that has wings of fire, and might possibly be called Revolution! It is better that the torch should be lighted from the Throne than from the slums! ”

“ Every tick of the clock sounded heavy and long, even to the equable-minded Professor. The storm outside was growing louder and even louder, and his thoughts, despite himself, turned to the ocean-wildernesses over which Prince Humphry’s home-returning vessel must be now on its way—while that other solitary barque, unhelmed and unmanned, whose sail bore the name of ‘Lotys’ was also voyaging, but in a darker direction, down to death and oblivion, carrying with it, as he feared, all the love and heart of a King! ”

“ It is not for you, as King, that I have turned aside a murderer’s weapon,—but solely because you have the face, the eyes, the smile of one who is a thousand times greater and nobler than you,—who, though poor and uncrowned, is a true king in the grace and thought and goodness of his actions,—who, all unlike you, personally attends to the wants of the poor, instead of neglecting them,—and who recognises, and does his best to remedy, the many wrongs which afflict the people of this land! ”

“ It is for you to work out your own salvation! It is for you to throw off tyranny, and show yourselves free men of reason and capacity! Just as the priests chant long prayers to cover their own iniquity, so do the men of government make long speeches to disguise their own corruption. You know you cannot believe their promises. Neither can you believe the press, for if this is not actually bought by Pérousse, it is bribed. And you cannot trust the King; for he is as a house divided against itself which must fall! ”

“ For one moment the moonbeams fell purely on the calm upturned face of the King, who like others allied to him in kingship throughout history, had esteemed mere sovereignty valueless at the cost of Love! For kings,—though surrounded with flatterers and sycophants who seek to make them imagine themselves somewhat more than human,—are but men, with all men’s vain sins and passions, mad weaknesses and wild dreams; and when they love, they love as foolishly as commoners,—and when they die, as die they must, there is no difference in the actual way of death than is known to a pauper. ”

“ It is a foolish, blind world nowadays, that forgets the glory of its youth,—the glow, the breath, the tenderness of love!—all for amassing gold and power! I will not be of such a world, nor with it;—I will not be like my father, the slave of pomp and circumstance;—I will live an unfettered life—yes!—even if I have to resign the throne for the sake of freedom, still I will be free! ”

“ Tell me of any king who so truly loved the people he was called upon to govern, that he sacrificed his own money, as well as his own time, to remedy their wrongs?—to save them from unjust government, to defend them from cruel taxation?—to see that their bread was not taken from their mouths by foreign competition?—and to make it possible for them to live in the country of their birth in peace and prosperity? Bah! There never was such a king! ”

“ If society is made up of corrupt women and unprincipled men, the spirit of political government will be as corrupt and unprincipled as they. If any King, beholding such a state of things, were to suddenly cut himself clear of the corruption, and to make a straight road for his own progress—clean and open—and elect to walk in it, society would follow his lead, and as a logical consequence politics would become honourable. But no monarchs have the courage of their opinions nowadays,—if only one sovereign of them all possessed such courage, he could move the world! ”

“ Take, and keep the rights of your humanity!—the right to think,—the right to speak,—the right to know what is being done with the money you patiently earn for others;—and work, all together in unity. Put aside all petty differences,—all small rancours and jealousies; and even as a Ministry may unite to defraud and deceive you, so do you, the People, unite to expose the fraud, and reject the deception! There is no voice so resonant and convincing as the voice of the public; there is no power on earth more strong or more irresistible than the power of the People! ”

“ The under-scent of hidden violets among moss flowed potently upon the quiet air, mingled with strong pine-odours and the salt breath of the gently heaving sea,—and all the land seemed as lonely and as fair as the fabled Eden might have been, when the first two human mated creatures knew it as their own. To every soul that loves for the first time, the vision of that Lost Paradise is granted; to every man and woman who know and feel the truth of the divine passion is vouchsafed a flashing gleam of glory from that Heaven which gives them to each other. ”

“ Is it possible you do not understand! All my work—all my plans—all my scheming and plotting has been for you—to make you happy! To give you high place and power! Without you, what do I care for the world? What do I care whether men are rich or poor—whether they starve or die! It is you I want to serve—you! It is for your sake I have desired to win honour and position. Have pity on me, Lotys! Have pity! I have seen you grow up to womanhood—I have loved every inch of your stature—every hair of the gold on your head—every glance of your eyes—every bright flash of your intelligent spirit! ”