Campaspe

“ My life is too empty.
Reflect, Paulet, reflect ere you make this decision. Campaspe's face was wreathed in a series of ironic smiles, subtly blending one with the other.
Paul remained silent, even grave.
What do you intend to do? Campaspe attempted to demand with more seriousness.
I thought, perhaps . . . there were strangely uncharacteristic breaks between the words . . . Cupid might take me in. He must have loads of jobs in his brokering place. ”

“ Here Carabas found it necessary to console my Campaspe before he could go on.
“I obtained work—under an assumed name, of course—and for many years found at least a living in that immense capital. I had an aptitude for languages, which was my great good fortune; yet prosperity never more than looked at me through the window. What then? I could keep body and soul together. Ill-luck is too mean a spirit for Death to patronize. Many a time has the great Angel turned his back disdainfully on the other’s spiteful hints. ”

“ Campaspe's smile was sardonic. I haven't read them, she began, but I can ask you questions. Do you believe in working regularly so many hours each day or do you wait until the spirit moves you?
Devil! Madrilena was right. You have expressive feet. I'd like to write a book about your feet. ”

“ To Campaspe, who seldom travelled in any direction, the weather was not a matter of any great moment. Her harassed state of mind was due to another cause. It seemed incredible to her that a man could destroy her habitual tranquillity, even temporarily, by leaping from a window, and yet it was patent that he had done so. There was, it would seem, sufficient diversion in the human scene to occupy her attention this spring, more, apparently, than usual, but every effort she made to direct her thoughts into more objective thoroughfares in some way or other led back to Gunnar. ”

“ Carabas sprang up.
“Monsieur!” he cried.
“I am a lawyer,” said Mr. G——; “I was connected with the case. The man confessed, I say. If I had only known that—Carabas! Carabas! you were the one witness we wanted, and could not find!”
Campaspe knelt down, and put a pitiful young arm round the shoulders of the unluckiest man in the world.
“Not only we now,” she said softly, “but others also, it seems, owe you a great debt, dear Carabas. We shall all be unable to pay it if you die. If—if I give you a kiss, will you live to return it to me on my wedding day?”
“Mademoiselle!” cried Carabas, radiant. ”

“ Frederika had returned, and Campaspe sipped her coffee.
Paul had promised to come in at five. Would he bring Harold? She laughed to herself as she recalled the precipitate romance of Bunny and Zimbule. Two babes in the woods, she mused aloud. . . . There were a few orders for the cook, which Campaspe delivered through Frederika. She never had trouble with servants. She had a system, which was to give each of them a certain part of the work to do. When they had completed their allotted tasks they could come or go as they liked. She put no restrictions on their time. ”

“ They have sworn eternal affection and they have begun housekeeping in Bunny's apartment.
I'd like to have them here, Campaspe threw in, almost. . . .
Almost . . . is what I felt. It's the way we both feel about so many things.
It's my philosophy . . . almost. Campaspe replaced the mirror on the mantelshelf.
Paul had walked to the window and was looking down on the rain-swept street. Suddenly he exclaimed, How strange! A sailor with an umbrella.
Why? What? How strange? Campaspe joined him.
Sailors don't carry umbrellas. Never. It's an unwritten law in the navy. ”

“ Campaspe, however, was not to be so easily discouraged. Were it necessary she was quite prepared to engage a secretary merely for the purpose of calling up every florist listed in the classified telephone directory to inquire which of them kept stuffed doves. It was still possible to demand first aid of Jessie Hardy or her chauffeur, but, for the moment, while Ambrose drew up the car in front of Page and Shaw's, Campaspe contented herself by appealing to Consuelo to pray ardently once more to the mother of the Muses. ”

“ Bunny watched her, glowering.
The great night arrived. There had been more discussion about the spectator-guests.
Ask your friends, Campaspe had suggested, mocking despair.
I have no f-f-f-friends, retorted the Duke, only people that amuse me, and people I sleep with.
Well . . . ask them.
The people that amuse me are all in the p-p-p-play. . . . The theatre isn't b-b-b-b-b-big enough to hold the others.
Still, from somewhere, he had gathered an audience, a splendid, showy throng. Campaspe, through the folds of the curtain, watched them file into the theatre. ”

“ Cupid and my Campaspe play’d
At cards for kisses; Cupid paid:
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother’s doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lip, the rose
Growing on’s cheek (but none knows how) ;
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple on his chin;
All these did my Campaspe win:
At last he set her both his eyes—
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me? ”

“ She b-b-b-burns like a clear white flame, using our emotions for fuel. Wherever there is passion, Campaspe's incandescence increases, but she remains faithful, under all circumstances, to her salamander. Occasionally, in one of her soaring flights, she drops a fiery feather, and some poor mortal mistakes it for the living bird.
But I have married a mortal, Campaspe objected.
Your children are salamanders, was the Duke's final word.
Harold was uncertain whether to tell Drains that he had met the Duke, but Drains saved him the trouble. ”

“ The Comte recommends marriage with one of the immortal beings who people the elements rather than with a human; he advises cohabitation with the nymphs who swim in the water, the gnomes who inhabit the earth, the sylphs who fly in the air, or the salamanders who thrive in the fire. Campaspe, I am convinced, has married a salamander and has embraced his element. ”

“ Once more Gunnar looked at Campaspe as he replied, I don't know. He seemed troubled, even a little dazed. Campaspe had not yet spoken one word. Her eyes were hyaline. Paul was chatting with the brothers. Suddenly, without warning, O'Grady broke away from the group and dashed down the street.
Hey! Gunnar! Robin cried. Come along, he urged Hugo, and they followed hot after their vanishing friend.
Consuelo's eyes filled with tears. Paul was petulantly angry. Campaspe's face was a mask. Vera, alone, remained entirely placid.
He's a very nice young man, Mrs. ”

“ The Society of Jesus had been founded only six years before Campion was born. It had as yet no English “Province,” that is, no members living under the English flag with a domestic government of their own. But Edmund Campion was already well known to the Provincials on the Continent, who had a warm contest over him, every one of them wishing to add such a promising soldier to his own wing of the army of the Lord. ”

“ Allen was naturally overjoyed. While Mercœur, the Father-General, wrote officially to Campion’s Superior at Prague, Allen wrote a moving letter to Campion himself: “My father, brother, son,” he calls him, “make all haste and come, my dearest Campion . . . from Prague to Rome, and thence to our own England.” . . . “God, in whose hands are the issues, has at last granted that our own Campion, with his extraordinary gifts of wisdom and grace, shall be restored to us. Prepare yourself, then, for a journey, for a work, for a trial.” ”

“ Pompey would find himself under great obligations to you: Cæsar might perhaps be irritated against you; but the emotions of his anger, would soon give way to his own convenience, and even to yours. If the gods, as they are able to do, should prosper our arms under the command of Pompey, all the world will respect your person, your virtue, and your power; and in spite of all Cæsar can do, after you have sustained the losses enumerated, which will be sufficient to excuse your conduct in the eye of the world, you will at last, by delivering up Pompey, be able to repair all your damage. ”

“ The assassins stabbed the coverlet with repeated blows, and then ran to rouse the soldiers to revolt. The camp was immediately in an uproar, and the elder Pompey, though he had been preserved by his son's precautions, dared not attempt to quell it. The younger man was equal to the occasion. Throwing himself on his face in front of the gate of the camp, he declared that if his comrades were determined to desert to the enemy, they must pass over his dead body. His entreaties prevailed, and a reconciliation was effected between the general and his troops. ”

“ These three, Fathers Campion, Sherwin, and Briant, were led forth on a bitter morning, and bound to their hurdles, in the rain, outside the Tower gates. Campion’s life for the past week had been nothing but fasting, watching and prayer, and he was never in more gallant spirits. “God save you all, gentlemen!” so he saluted the crowd, on first coming out: “God bless you all, and make you all good Catholics!” The two [173] younger men were strapped down on one hurdle side by side, Campion alone on the other. ”

“ Parsons should go first, in military attire, accompanied from the Low Countries by a good youth who passed as his man George; and that if Parsons got safely to Dover, he was to send for Campion and the faithful little soul Ralph Emerson. An English gentleman “living over seas for his conscience,” brought Fr. Parsons his fine disguise: nothing less than a Captain’s uniform of buff leather, with gold lace, big boots, sword, hat, plume, and all. Campion, when he had gone, sat down to write to the General of the Society about him, with his inevitably pictorial touch. ”

“ On the following morning Campoverde assembled his chief officers and the deputies of the superior Junta: it was agreed that an effort for raising the siege should be made in the field; and while the general in chief should be thus ♦Contreras appointed to command in the city.♦ employed, Contreras was appointed to command in the city. The danger of the place, and the numerous defects of its incomplete works, were obvious to all military men; and to no one more clearly than to the general who now unwillingly took upon himself the charge of defending it. ”

“ THE FLIGHT OF POMPEY In the camps of both Pompey and Cæsar there was great suffering. The chief strength of Pompey’s army was its cavalry, which was 7000 strong, and the horses had begun to die for want of food.
Pompey had many officers of noble rank in his camp, and they urged him to fight at once, or there would be no horses left for the soldiers to ride.
But Pompey knew that his large army was undisciplined, that many of the soldiers were rebellious, and he wished to avoid a battle. He hoped that the difficulty of providing food for his army would force Cæsar to retreat. ”

“ Such were the life, misdeeds, and death of the Terror of the Pampas. Having in the most rapid and imperfect manner sketched the career of this extraordinary Fortune's-child, his rise from the most abject condition to unbridled power, his ferocious rule, and his almost heroic end, we may surely exclaim, that "nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it," and, presenting this bare résumé of facts as a mere outline, a mere pen-and-ink sketch of the terrible chieftain, refer the curious student to the impassioned narrative whence our facts are mainly derived. ”

“ The first little Jesuit group of three was commanded by Fr. Robert Parsons, a born organizer, a man of splendid resources, afterwards [79] celebrated, and much loved and hated. For convenience, as for safety, they all put on secular dress. Campion, however, would buy no new clothes, but arrayed himself in an old buckram suit, with a shabby cloak. When rallied on his highly inelegant appearance, he remarked with the gay spirit so like that of another “blissful martyr,” Sir Thomas More, that a man going forth to be hanged need trouble himself little about the fashion! ”

“ The first of these is, that the causes, whatever they are, which produced the desolation of the Campagna, had begun to operate, and their blasting effect was felt, in ancient times, and long before a single squadron of the barbarians had crossed the Alps. In fact, the Campagna was a scene of active agricultural industry only so long as Rome was contending with its redoubtable Italian neighbours—the Latins, the Etruscans, the Samnites, and the Cisalpine Gauls. ”

“ There is a dead silence; the Spanish troops fall back. A circle is formed round the now almost fainting Francis, who lies upon the blood-stained earth. De Pompérant advances. He kneels before the master whom he has betrayed, he implores him to yield to Bourbon.
At that hated name the King starts into fresh fury; he grasps his sword, he struggles to his feet. “Never,” cries he in a hoarse voice; “never will I surrender to that traitor! Rather let me die by the hand of a common marksman. ”

“ Pompey, on the other hand, had a strong expectation of success; he boasted that he could put Cæsar's legions to flight without striking a single blow; presuming that as soon as the armies formed, his cavalry, on which he placed his greatest expectations, would out-flank and surround the [Pg. 210] enemy. In this disposition Pompey led his troops to battle. 12. As the armies approached, the two generals went from rank to rank, encouraging their men, exciting their hopes, and lessening their apprehensions. ”