Richard Garnett

“ Thou art surely yet a votary of Zeus?”
“I a votary of Zeus!” exclaimed the stranger. “By these fetters, no!” And, weak as he was, the forest rang with his disdainful laughter.
“Farewell,” said the maiden, as with dilating form and kindling eye she gathered up her robes. “I parley with thee no more. Thou art tenfold more detestable than the howling mob down yonder, intent on rapine and destruction. They know no better, and can no other. But thou, apt in speaking the sacred tongue yet brutally ignorant of its treasures, knowing the father of the Gods only to revile him! ”

“ Thou rejectest the glory of standing alone in a barbarous age as the last witness to culture and civilisation. Thou despisest the gifts of the Gods and the Muses, of which I am even now the bearer. Thou preferrest the mitre to the laurel chaplet, and the hymns of Gregory to the epics of Homer?”
“O Phœbus,” replied Nonnus, “were it any God but thou, I should bend before him in silence, having nought to reply. But thou art a poet, and thou understandest the temper of a poet. Thou knowest how beyond other men he is devoured by the craving for sympathy. ”

“ But Manto found another father. She sat at Virgil’s feet in Elysium; and as he stroked the fair head, now golden with perpetual youth, listened to his mild reproofs and his cheerful oracles. By her side stood a bowl filled with the untasted waters of Lethe.
“Woe,” said Virgil—but his manner contradicted his speech—“woe to the idealist and enthusiast! Woe to them who live in the world to come! Woe to them who live only for a hope whose fulfilment they will not behold on earth! Drink not, therefore, of that cup, dear child, lest Duke Virgil’s day should come, and thou shouldst not know it. ”

“ But one day the door of the chamber was beaten down, and his old wife came in passionately upbraiding him.
“Sin-Woo,” she cried, “thou hast not the heart of a man! Thou wouldest be deathless, leaving me to die! I shall be laid in the grave, and thou wilt reign with another! Wherefore have I been true to thee, if not that our ashes might mingle at the last? Thou hoary sensualist!”
“Su-Ti,” said the Emperor, with feeling, “thou dost grievously misjudge me. I am no heartless sensualist, no butterfly sipper at the lips of beauty. ”

“ Illusion is for life’s golden prime, its fanes and pavilions may be reared but by the magic wand of Youth. The maturity that would recreate them builds not for Illusion but for Deceit. Yet, lest mortality should despair, there exists, as I have learned, yet another palace, founded midway between that of Illusion and that of Truth, open to those who are too soft for the one and too hard for the other. Thither, indeed, the majority of mankind in this age resort, and there appear to find themselves comfortable. ”

“ At a signal from the Emperor the portal of the amphitheatre was thrown open, and the whole mass of clawing and cuffing philosophy was bundled ignominiously into the street.
By this time Gallienus was seated on his tribunal, and Plotinus, released from his bonds, was standing by his side.
“O Emperor,” he murmured, deeply abashed, “what can I urge? Thou wilt surely demolish my city!”
“No, Plotinus,” replied Gallienus, pointing to the Goth and the Christian, “there are the men who will destroy the City of Philosophers. ”

“ The book of exorcisms fell from his paralysed hand, and the vial of holy water lay in shivers upon the floor. Ere he could collect himself, the dead Pope had seated himself beside the Pope with one foot in the grave, and, fondling a ferret-skin, proceeded to enter into conversation.
“What fear you?” he asked. “Why should I harm you? None can say that I ever injured any one for any cause but my own advantage, and to injure your Holiness now would be to obstruct a design which I have particularly at heart.” ”

“ And as the amazed priest preserved silence, she pursued:
“Can aught be more shameful in a religious man than ignorance of the very nature of religion? Not to know that the term, being rendered into the language of truth, doth therein signify deception practised by the few wise upon the many foolish, for the benefit of both, but more particularly the former? O silly as the crowds who hitherto have brought their folly here, but now carry it elsewhere to the profit of wiser men than thou! O fool! to deem that oracles were rendered by Apollo! ”

“ My beloved and I are riper in Hymen’s lore by not less, I ween, than one fortnight. Prudence impels us towards the Palace of Illusion.”
“Thy will is mine, Alonso,” said his lady.
“I,” said the third youth, “will seek neither; for I would not be wise over-much, while of what I deem myself to know I would be well assured. Happy am I, and bless my lot, yet have I beheld a red mouse in closer contiguity to my beloved than I could bring myself to approve, albeit it leapt not from her mouth as they do sometimes. ”

“ The humiliation of poor Euschemon on learning that he was indebted for his credit to the devil is easier to imagine than to describe. He did not, however, fail at the rendezvous next night, and found the demon sitting outside the bell in a most affable frame of mind. It did not take long for the devil and the saint to become very good friends, both wanting company, and the former being apparently as much amused by the latter’s simplicity as the latter was charmed by the former’s knowingness. Euschemon learned numbers of things of which he had not had the faintest notion. ”

“ Thou wilt indeed render me a service in depriving me of this wretched head, hideous without, and I must fear, empty within, seeing that it hath not prevented me from wasting my life in the service of vanity and luxury. Woe to the sage who trusts his infirm wisdom and frail integrity within the precincts of a court! Yet can I foretell a time when philosophers shall no longer run on the futile and selfish errands of kings, and when kings shall be suffered to rule only so far as they obey the bidding of philosophers. ”

“ I will repair to the shades and seek a ruler among the dead.”
“And why should not Mantua have a tyrant?” demanded Benedetto. “The freedom of the mechanic is the bondage of the noble, who values no liberty save that of making the base-born do his bidding. ’Tis hell to a man of spirit to be contradicted by his tailor. If I could see my heart’s desire on the knaves, little would I reck submitting to the sway of the Emperor.”
“I know that well, Benedetto,” said Manto, “and hence will take good heed not to counsel Mantua to choose thee. ”

“ This is the last day of my year, and should my engagement be unredeemed when the sun attains the cusp of that nethermost house of heaven which he is even now traversing, I must become an inmate of the infernal kingdom. No time has remained for nice investigation. I have therefore proved the courage of the Venetian youth in the manner thou knowest, and thou alone hast sustained the ordeal. Fail not at my bidding, or thou quittest not this chamber alive. For when the Demon comes to bear me away, he will assuredly rend thee in pieces for being found in my company. ”

“ The other’s beauty was of another sort; young, slender, pensive, spiritual, he looked like anything rather than a gladiator, and held his downward pointed sword with a negligent grasp.
“Guard thyself!” cried the Goth, placing himself in an attitude of offence.
“I spill not the blood of a fellow-creature,” answered the other, casting his sword away from him.
“Coward!” yelled well-nigh every voice in the amphitheatre. ”

“ Moreover, mankind would follow after me. But I too must away. Strange that I should have abode so long under the roof of a pair of perfect virtue.” And he tottered out.
But the other gods swept forth into the moonlight, and were seen no more. And Prometheus picked up the forsaken sandals of Hermes, and bound them on his own feet, and grasped Elenko, and they rose up by a dizzy flight to empty heaven. All was silent in those immense courts, vacant of everything save here and there some rusty thunderbolt or mouldering crumb of ambrosia. ”

“ I told them that Zeus should beget a child mightier than himself, who should send him and them the way he had sent his father. I knew not that this child was already begotten, and that his name was Man. It has taken Man ages to assert himself, nor has he yet, as it would seem, done more than enthrone a new idol in the place of the old. But for the old, behold the last traces of its authority in these fetters, of which the first smith will rid me. Expect no thunderbolt, dear maiden; none will come: nor shall I regain the immortality of which I feel myself bereaved since yesterday. ”

“ Deem not that thou hast in aught excited the displeasure of the Gods. In deserting their altars for Truth’s sake, thou didst render them the most acceptable of sacrifices, the only one, it may be, by which they set much store. But, Eubulides, take heed how thou again sufferest the unworthiness of men to overcome the instincts of thine own nature. Thy holiest sentiments should not have been at the mercy of a knave. If the oracle of Dorylæum was an imposture, hadst thou no oracle in thine own bosom? ”

“ Meditation upon an utterly vague subject, whether of apprehension or of hope, speedily lapses into reverie. To Iridion, Death was as indefinable an object of thought as the twin omnipotent controller of human destiny, Love. Love, like the immature fruit on the bough, hung unsoliciting and unsolicited as yet, but slowly ripening to the maiden’s hand. Death, a vague film in an illimitable sky, tempered without obscuring the sunshine of her life. ”

“ Delay not, time urges, night deepens, they that would drink thy blood are abroad. Hearest thou not the moaning and pelting of the rising storm, and the muttering and scraping of my imprisoned goblins? Save us, I entreat, I command, save us both!”
Screaming with agitation the aged sorcerer laid a scroll engrossed with fairly written characters before the youth, stabbed the latter’s arm with a stylus that at once evoked and collected the crimson stream, thrust this into his hand and strove to guide it to the parchment, chanting at the same time litanies to the infernal powers. ”

“ PAN’S WAND
Iridion had broken her lily. A misfortune for any rustic nymph, but especially for her, since her life depended upon it.
From her birth the fate of Iridion had been associated with that of a flower of unusual loveliness—a stately, candid lily, endowed with a charmed life, like its possessor. The seasons came and went without leaving a trace upon it; innocence and beauty seemed as enduring with it, as evanescent with the children of men. In equal though dissimilar loveliness its frolicsome young mistress nourished by its side. ”

“ So saying, he snatched the flask from Sorianus, and immediately turned to fly. The Greek sprang after his treasure, and failing to grasp Marcobad’s wrist, seized his beard, plucking the hair out by handfuls. The infuriated Persian smote him on the head with the crystal flagon. It burst into shivers, and the priceless contents gushed forth in a torrent over the uncovered head and uplifted visage of Sorianus, bathing every hair and feature with the most vivid purple.
The aghast and thunderstricken philosophers remained gazing at each other for a moment. ”

“ Monsters of unthankfulness!”
“I am sure,” said Alexander the Eighth soothingly, “that my predecessors’ inability to comply with your Holiness’s request must have cost them many inward tears, not the less genuine because entirely invisible and completely inaudible. A wise Pope will, before all things, consider the spirit of his age. The force of public opinion, which your Holiness lately appeared to disparage, was, in fact, as operative upon yourself as upon any of your successors. If you achieved great things in your lifetime, it was because the world was with you. ”

“ Thy strange experience, thy long wanderings, thy lonely meditations, and varied intercourse with men, have spoiled thee for a priest, while, as I would fain hope, qualifying thee for a sage. Some worthy person may easily be found to preside over this temple; and by the aid of such inspiration as I may from time to time see meet to vouchsafe him, administer its affairs indifferently well. Do thou, Eubulides, consecrate thy powers to a more august service than Apollo’s, to one that shall endure when Delphi and Delos know his no more. ”

“ Oh, Euprepia, I would tear her eyes from her head, were they beautiful as thine! But vengeance I must have. Basil must die. On the third day he expires by my hand, poisoned by the cup which I alone am trusted to offer him at the Imperial banquet where thou wilt be present. Thou shalt see his agonies and my triumph, and rejoice that thy friend has known how to avenge herself.’
“Thou seest now, father, in how frightful a difficulty I am placed. All my entreaties and remonstrances have been in vain: at my threats Helladia merely laughs. I love Basil with my whole heart. ”

“ Supreme is the spell of the genius loci. The chambers traversed by the Pope were in fact adorned with fair examples of the painter’s art, mostly scriptural in subject, but some inspired with the devout Pantheism in which all creeds are reconciled. All were alike invisible to the Pontiff, who, with the dim flicker of his lamp, could no more discern Judaea wed with Egypt on the frescoed ceiling than, with the human limitation of his faculties, he could foresee that the ill-reputed rooms would one day harbour a portion of the Vatican Library, so greatly enriched by himself. ”