Don Juan

“ The tale they tell of Don Juan, immortal lover and doubter of women, is bold with life and color——a merry, insolent tale slashed with intrigue——yet its beginning is as gray as the old Spanish castle of Juan's earliest memory. ”

“ The next morning Don Juan made himself ready to go on alone. Leading his horses, he was about to start for the palace, when Noet Noen called to him, and said, “Be sure not to forget the name of the skin I told you. Put it in the depths of your heart.”
“Have no fear that I shall forget,” said Don Juan. “Furthermore, Don Juan, I want you to undertake to do whatever the king may ask of you. Do not refuse. No matter how hard the task the king may impose on you, do not hesitate to undertake it; for God Almighty is ever merciful, and will help you. ”

“ And sea-sick passengers turn’d somewhat pale;
But Juan, season’d, as he well might be,
By former voyages, stood to watch the skiffs
Which pass’d, or catch the first glimpse of the cliffs.
At length they rose, like a white wall along
The blue sea’s border; and I Don Juan felt—
What even young strangers feel a little strong
At the first sight of Albion’s chalky belt—
A kind of pride that he should be among
Those haughty shopkeepers, who sternly dealt
Their goods and edicts out from pole to pole,
And made the very billows pay them toll. ”

“ The true lover is rare because the full-grown man is rare. Don Juan is common because infancy is common: the state of seeking only oneself, of taking life as a flowered highway along which appetite and ease run gayly in pursuit of their own image.
Like his mother Seville, Don Juan is restlessly pagan, hunting in countless dramatic scenes a tribute to self-adoration. Each woman is a mirror to himself; love of each woman is a pageant in which he enacts his triumph. ”

“ Don Juan, turning to his comrade, who
Though somewhat grieved, could scarce forbear a smile
Upon the metamorphosis in view,—
‘Farewell!’ they mutually exclaim’d: ‘this soil
Seems fertile in adventures strange and new;
One ’s turn’d half Mussulman, and one a maid,
By this old black enchanter’s unsought aid.’
‘Farewell!’ said Juan: ‘should we meet no more,
I wish you a good appetite.’—‘Farewell!’
Replied the other; ‘though it grieves me sore;
When we next meet we’ll have a tale to tell:
We needs must follow when Fate puts from shore. ”

“ But, right or wrong, Don Juan was without it;
In fact, his manner was his own alone;
Sincere he was—at least you could not doubt it,
In listening merely to his voice’s tone.
The devil hath not in all his quiver’s choice
An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice.
By nature soft, his whole address held off
Suspicion: though not timid, his regard
Was such as rather seem’d to keep aloof,
To shield himself than put you on your guard:
Perhaps ’twas hardly quite assured enough,
But modesty ’s at times its own reward,
Like virtue ”

“ I really think -- yet Juan's then ordeal
Was more triumphant, and not much less real.
XCVII
Here I might enter on a chaste description,
Having withstood temptation in my youth,
But hear that several people take exception
At the first two books having too much truth;
Therefore I'll make Don Juan leave the ship soon,
Because the publisher declares, in sooth,
Through needles' eyes it easier for the camel is
To pass, than those two cantos into families. ”

“ Don Juan rose and met him. His face was sad; it would be a sad face always; but there was in it a look as of one who saw the end, and who knew that, however dark the way might be, the end was light everlasting. "Look here, my friend," he said, for no concealment was necessary there; truth could hurt no one. "See how wondrously God has dealt with me and mine. Here is the record of the life and death of my honoured father. For three-and-twenty years he lay in the Dominican monastery, a prisoner for Christ's sake. ”

“ In all his wildest excesses Don Juan is the king’s companion, but never for murder, injustice, or spoil. No wantonness is too great for him where women are concerned, and woe to the wife or maid who takes his fancy.
No one can rival Don Juan in the jewels he wears except the southern lord, Ponce de Leon, whose robe of pale silver tissue is covered with uncut stones, and his head encircled by a wreath of orient pearls taken from a Moorish emir whom he has slain. ”

“ After that first fearful greeting, in which the half-transformed being refuses the earthly nourishment offered him, how strangely and horribly moves the unsteady voice up and down in that singular scale! He demands speedy repentance; the spirit's time is short, the way it must travel, long. And Don Juan, in monstrous obstinacy withstanding the eternal commands, beneath the growing influence of the dark spirits, struggles and writhes and finally perishes, keeping to the last, nevertheless, that wonderful expression of majesty in every gesture. ”

“ Don Juan in his feminine disguise, With all the damsels in their long array, Had bow'd themselves before th' imperial eyes, And at the usual signal ta'en their way Back to their chambers, those long galleries In the seraglio, where the ladies lay Their delicate limbs; a thousand bosoms there Beating for love, as the caged bird's for air. I love the sex, and sometimes would reverse The tyrant's wish, 'that mankind only had One neck, which he with one fell stroke might pierce:' My wish is quite as wide, but not so bad, And much more tender on the whole than fierce ”

“ No matter how or why the thing befell, But there were she and Juan, face to face— When two such faces are so, 't would be wise, But very difficult, to shut their eyes. How beautiful she look'd! her conscious heart Glow'd in her cheek, and yet she felt no wrong. O Love! how perfect is thy mystic art, Strengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong, How self-deceitful is the sagest part Of mortals whom thy lure hath led along— The precipice she stood on was immense, So was her creed in her own innocence. ”

“ Always to dream, always to wait, to feel one's good days pass, to see youth torn out hair by hair, to fold nothing in one's arms, yet find one's self accused of being a Don Juan! A gross and empty Don Juan! ”

“ The best of remedies is a beef-steak Against sea-sickness: try it, sir, before You sneer, and I assure you this is true, For I have found it answer—so may you. Don Juan stood, and, gazing from the stern, Beheld his native Spain receding far: First partings form a lesson hard to learn, Even nations feel this when they go to war; There is a sort of unexprest concern, A kind of shock that sets one's heart ajar: At leaving even the most unpleasant people And places, one keeps looking at the steeple. ”

“ I say, Don Juan, wrapt in contemplation,
Walk’d on behind his carriage, o’er the summit,
And lost in wonder of so great a nation,
Gave way to ’t, since he could not overcome it.
‘And here,’ he cried, ‘is Freedom’s chosen station;
Here peals the people’s voice, nor can entomb it
Racks, prisons, inquisitions; resurrection
Awaits it, each new meeting or election.
‘Here are chaste wives, pure lives; here people pay
But what they please; and if that things be dear,
’Tis only that they love to throw away
Their cash, to show how much they have a-year. ”

“ The indulgent father loved to hear Don Juan's story of this and that wild freak of youth. "So long as these follies amuse you, dear boy——" he would say laughingly, as he lavished money on his son. Age never took such pleasure in the sight of youth; the fond father did not remember his own decaying powers while he looked on that brilliant young life.
Bartolommeo Belvidero, at the age of sixty, had fallen in love with an angel of peace and beauty. Don Juan had been the sole fruit of this late and short-lived love. ”

“ Don Juan, gifted with all the physical and intellectual attributes of power, urged by aspirations blind but uncontainable, full of the feeling of life, and resolved to LIVE, if possible, so fully as to fill all with himself and never own a limit, (and this is only a perversion of the true desire to live in harmony with all,) finds the tempting shadow of this satisfaction in the love of woman, and the poor bird flutters charmed and trembling toward his fascinating glance. ”

“ He took soul and matter, threw them into a crucible, and found nothing there, and from that time forth he became Don Juan.
Master of the illusions of life he threw himself—young and beautiful—into life; despising the world, but seizing the world. His happiness could never be of that bourgeois type which is satisfied by boiled beef, by a welcome warming-pan in winter, a lamp at night and new slippers at each quarter. He grasped existence as a monkey seizes a nut, peeling off the coarse shell to enjoy the savory kernel. ”

“ Don Juan, strong as he was in his scepticism, felt a tremor as he opened the magic crystal flask. When he stood over that face, he was trembling so violently, that he was actually obliged to wait for a moment. But Don Juan had acquired an early familiarity with evil; his morals had been corrupted by a licentious court, a reflection worthy of the Duke of Urbino crossed his mind, and it was a keen sense of curiosity that goaded him into boldness. The devil himself might have whispered the words that were echoing through his brain, Moisten one of the eyes with the liquid! ”

“ What a deep-laid plan! They might have strayed back! and that—oh! horrible villain! My mother was right—it is he! it is he!”
“Who, Carlos! What mean you?” inquired Don Juan, wondering at these strange and incongruous phrases.
“Ask me not now, Don Juan! Presently I shall tell you all—presently, but not now; my brain’s too hot—my heart is burning: presently—presently. The mystery is past—I know all—I had suspicion from the first—I saw him at the fiesta—I saw his bad ruffian gaze bent upon her. Oh, despot! I’ll tear your heart out! Come, Don Juan!—Antonio—comrades!—After me on the trail! ”

“ Nowadays we are inclined to regard Don Juan as a kind of dupe, the plaything of woman from puberty to decrepitude. We picture him to ourselves more engaging when he first begins to sin, and less easy to convert when he has become hardened to it. ”

“ Don Juan, who was much more sentimental, Swore they should see him by the dawn of day, Or that the Russian army should repent all: And, strange to say, they found some consolation In this—for females like exaggeration. And then with tears, and sighs, and some slight kisses, They parted for the present—these to await, According to the artillery's hits or misses, What sages call Chance, Providence, or Fate (Uncertainty is one of many blisses, A mortgage on Humanity's estate) — While their beloved friends began to arm, To burn a town which never did them harm. ”

“ I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.
II
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier. ”

“ But Juan never left them, while they had charms,
Unless compell’d by fate, or wave, or wind,
Or near relations, who are much the same.
But here he was!—where each tie that can bind
Humanity must yield to steel and flame:
And he whose very body was all mind,
Flung here by fate or circumstance, which tame
The loftiest, hurried by the time and place,
Dash’d on like a spurr’d blood-horse in a race. ”

“ Don Juan sat next ‘an l’Espagnole’-
No damsel, but a dish, as hath been said;
But so far like a lady, that ’twas drest
Superbly, and contain’d a world of zest.
By some odd chance too, he was placed between
Aurora and the Lady Adeline—
A situation difficult, I ween,
For man therein, with eyes and heart, to dine.
Also the conference which we have seen
Was not such as to encourage him to shine;
For Adeline, addressing few words to him,
With two transcendent eyes seem’d to look through him. ”

“ Yet ’tis in vain such sallies to permit,
They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early:
I ‘scotch’d not kill’d’ the Scotchman in my blood,
And love the land of ‘mountain and of flood.’
Don Juan, who was real, or ideal,—
For both are much the same, since what men think
Exists when the once thinkers are less real
Than what they thought, for mind can never sink,
And ’gainst the body makes a strong appeal;
And yet ’tis very puzzling on the brink
Of what is call’d eternity, to stare,
And know no more of what is here, than there ”

“ As yet are strongly stinging to be free.
Don Juan, who had shone in the late slaughter,
Was left upon his way with the despatch,
Where blood was talk’d of as we would of water;
And carcasses that lay as thick as thatch
O’er silenced cities, merely served to flatter
Fair Catherine’s pastime—who look’d on the match
Between these nations as a main of cocks,
Wherein she liked her own to stand like rocks. ”

“ It was Gonsalvo's. Juan answered,--
"It is I--Don Juan."
"Come to me, for Heaven's sake!"
A private interview with a madman is not generally thought particularly desirable. But Juan was a stranger to fear. He entered the room immediately, and was horror-stricken at the change in his cousin's appearance. A tangled mass of black hair mingled with his beard, and fell neglected over the pillow; while large, wild, melancholy eyes lit up the pallor of his wasted face. He lay, or rather reclined, on a couch, half covered by an embroidered quilt, but wearing a loose doublet, very carelessly thrown on. ”