Hasmoneans

“ Today we know, however, that the pathological case represents nothing but an extension of perfectly normal tendencies. In the same way we know that the miraculous atmosphere of the Northland serves merely to develop and emphasize traits that lie slumbering in men and women everywhere. And on this basis the fantastic figures created by Hamsun relate themselves to ordinary humanity as the microscopic enlargement of a cross section to the living tissues. What we see is true in everything but proportion. ”

“ I tell you, Nature has ordained it so wisely that he bears it remarkably well. Just look at me."
Johannes said:
"I can see that you're doing well."
"Excellently for that matter. Look, feel and listen! Has a set of unenticing troubles swept over my person? I have clothes, shoes, house and home, wife and children—well, the hopeful anyhow. What was I saying?—with regard to my poetry I'll answer the question on the spot. Oh, my young colleague, I am older than you and perhaps a little better equipped by Nature. ”

“ Accordingly, Haman setting his mind to work the ruin of the Hebrew, went to the king, and affirmed that there was in his kingdom a race of men of wicked superstitions, and hateful alike to God and men. He said that, as they lived according to foreign laws, they deserved to be destroyed; and that it was a righteous thing to hand over the whole of this nation to death. At the same time, he promised the king immense wealth out of their possessions. ”

“ The scene is laid in his beloved Northland, but the old primitive life is going--going even in the outlying districts, where the pioneers are already breaking ground for new permanent settlements. Business of a modern type has arrived, and much of the quiet humor displayed in these the latest and maturest of Hamsun's works springs from the spectacle of its influence on the natives, whose hands used always to be in their pockets, and whose credulity in face of the improbable was only surpassed by their unwillingness to believe anything reasonable. ”

“ And Ha-man's heart was full of pride, since the queen chose him and no one else to feast with her and the king. And when he went out he felt that all men ought to bow down to him. But Mor-de-ca-i would not. And Ha-man told all his friends how kind the king and queen were to him, and what high rank he held, and said that his life would be full of joy if it were not for the Jew at the king's gate. ”

“ But though he amused himself with them all, there was in truth but one man among them in whom he really felt much interest; and that one, we need hardly say, was Hammond. It was not often that he found the old gentleman in a conversible mood; always courteous, indeed, but generally cool and reserved; often engaged in his one room, to which Middleton had never yet been admitted, though he had more than once sent in his name, when Hammond was not apparent upon the bench which, by common consent of the Hospital, was appropriated to him. ”

“ Now, if thou wilt be a benefactor to thy subjects, thou wilt give order to destroy them utterly, and not leave the least remains of them, nor preserve any of them, either for slaves or for captives." But that the king might not be damnified by the loss of the tributes which the Jews paid him, Haman promised to give him out of his own estate forty thousand talents whensoever he pleased ”

“ I suppose some day I'll be wealthy, married, and bound in the chains of social usage and custom," said Gramont, energetically. "But that day isn't here yet. If you think I'll accept deference and servility from any man who has endured the same hunger and cold and wounds that I endured in France—then guess again! We're friends in a democracy of Americans. You're just as good a man as I am, and vice versa. Besides, aren't we fellow criminals?"
Hammond grinned at this. ”

“ The king was so inattentive to business, and so bewitched with Haman, that he took no time to examine the truth of his allegations, but was as willing as Haman could wish to believe the worst concerning the Jews, and therefore he gave them up into his hands, as lambs to the lion: The people are thine, do with them as it seemeth good unto thee. ”

“ The silver is thine. Such an implicit confidence likewise he had in Haman, and so perfectly had he abandoned all care of his kingdom, that he gave Haman his ring, his privy-seal, or sign-manual, wherewith to confirm whatever edict he pleased to draw up for this purpose. Miserable is the kingdom that is at the disposal of such a head as this, which has one ear only, and a nose to be led by, but neither eyes nor brains, nor scarcely a tongue of its own. ”

“ But the possibility that a political body may be in two classes at once does not occur except during those periods when a community is gradually growing out of one form and into another. Such periods of transition have occurred in the history of many peoples: there was one in Greek history when the tribes were growing into cities: one in Roman history when the Republic was ceasing to be a mere enlarged city and was growing into a heterogeneous empire: and one in English history when the English were losing the character of a tribe and acquiring the qualities of a nation. ”

“ The Nazarene could not be our Messiah!”
Turning quickly to Hammond, he asked, “Are you a Christian, sir?”
For a moment Tom Hammond was startled by the suddenness, the definiteness, of the question. He found no immediate word of reply.
“You are a Gentile, of course, Mr. Hammond,” the Jew went on; “but are you a Christian? For it is a curious fact that I find very few Gentiles whom I have [105] met, even professed Christians, and fewer still who ever pretend to live up to their profession.” ”

“ As soon as he reached his own castle, he gathered his friends about him, and declared war against his liege lord. No great battle was fought; but continual conflict raged between the contending parties, the country was laid waste, and the peasantry suffered terribly. Haymon was able to move about from place to place with such incredible swiftness that people began to say he rode a magic horse, gifted with the speed of lightning, and the wit of man. The war lasted for years, till at last King Karl came with a large army, and besieged the castle of the rebel count. ”

“ Man, while he speaks, must, for the moment, become one-sided; there is no communication, no instruction, without severing. Now since Hamann, once for all, opposed this separation, and because he felt, imagined, and thought in unity, chose to speak in unity likewise, and to require the same of others, he came into opposition with his own style, and with all that others produced. To produce the impossible, he therefore grasps at every element ”

“ The
king started, as if stung by an adder, and with a brow dark as wrath,
and a voice that sent Haman to his feet, exclaimed: "Thy life! my queen?
Who is he? where is he that dare even harbor such a thought in his
heart? He who strikes at thy life, radiant creature, plants his
presumptuous blow on his monarch's bosom." "That man," said the lovely
pleader, "is the wicked Haman." ”

“ The proud king longed for peace, and at last sent ambassadors to his disobedient vassal, offering to restore all his fiefs, and to pay him four times the weight in gold of the murdered Hug of Dordone. Count Roland was sent at the head of the embassy. Haymon received 372 the messengers with all honour, especially his old friend Roland; but when he heard the terms offered by Karl, he said that the king’s expiation for the murder must be six times the weight of his victim, and that he must further give his sister Aya to Haymon in marriage. ”

“ The old Tutor remembered Johannes as a boy and a conversation was started between them. He said that he too had written poetry in his young days, he had kept his manuscripts, Johannes could read them some day. Now they had sent for him on this great occasion that he might participate in the joy of the family over Victoria's engagement. The Master and Mistress of the Castle had given him this surprise for the sake of old friendship.
"I have read nothing of yours," he said; "I read myself when I want to read anything; I have a drawer full of poems and tales. ”

“ Hammond. "What could induce you to undertake it?"
"Simply the wish, so common and natural with Americans," said Middleton—"the wish to find out something about my kindred—the local origin of my own family."
"You do not show your wisdom in this," said his visitor. "America had better recognize the fact that it has nothing to do with England, and look upon itself as other nations and people do, as existing on its own hook. I never heard of any people looking hack to the country of their remote origin in the way the Anglo-Americans do. ”

“ During the speech the eyes of all were turned upon Johannes; even the Master nodded to him, and the Chamberlain's Lady put up her glasses and looked at him. When the speech was finished they all drank.
"Give it him back now," said the Tutor. "He stood up and made you that speech. It ought to have fallen to one who is your senior in the craft. Besides, I didn't agree with him at all. Not at all."
Johannes looked along the table to Victoria. It was she who had got the young man with the diamond studs to speak ”

“ To this the Prince Hæmon made answer, "What thou sayest, my father, I do not judge. Yet bethink thee, that I see and hear on thy behalf what is hidden from thee. For common men cannot abide thy look if they say that which pleaseth thee not. Yet do I hear it in secret. Know then that all the city mourneth for this maiden, saying that she dieth wrongfully for a very noble deed, in that she buried her brother. And 'tis well, my father, not to be wholly set on thy own thoughts, but to listen to the counsels of others."
"Nay," said the King; "shall I be taught by such an one as thou?" ”

“ This Haman, who now, in a time of profound peace and full security—while both races were exiles from the land of their fathers—had plotted the ruin of their nation, the total extermination of their race; who had doomed the feeble and helpless, the little one and the aged, to perish with the strong man in his might; this Haman was the son of those who fell upon the tribes, faint and weary, in the wilderness ”

“ Hammond stood holding the ends of the cord that bound the Invisible, twisted round his hand, while before him, self-supporting as it were, he beheld a rope laced and interlaced, and stretching tightly round a vacant space. I never saw a man look so thoroughly stricken with awe. ”

“ We seem to be hopelessly in their power, as hopelessly as the Jews seemed to be in the power of Haman. But Haman did not succeed in carrying out his diabolical purpose; and the power that checked him, and that overthrew him, was the power of prayer. We, as a race, must use this power more than we have been in the habit of doing. Those among us, in every community, who believe in God, and who are trying earnestly to serve him in sincerity, for unless we are our prayers will avail nothing, should make it a business to take our race troubles to him as well as our individual and family troubles. ”

“ Hammon’s, and we discussed his part of the plot from every standpoint, coming to what seemed to be a perfect understanding. If he kept his agreement, I couldn’t see how there’d be a failure. Mrs. Hammon thought so too. Would the man be faithful in the deal? That was the question. I took Mrs. Hammon aside and questioned her about the guard. She said there’d be no mistake in trusting him. At this I handed him twelve hundred dollars, and he left, promising to perform every detail of his part in the plan, by the clock. ”

“ The German tribes in the times of Cæsar and of Tacitus and the Greek tribes in the time of Homer were alike in being of small size and in being primitive in their habits and government: but in a German tribe the whole population lived scattered over the open country and there was no walled city, while in a Greek tribe, though most of the people lived in the open country, there was a walled city as a centre for the community and a dwelling place for a few of the most important tribesmen. ”

“ She wrote up their great find in Paris, wrote it up like a magazine short-story—modiste who up to the time Hammond had spotted her had been so exclusive you couldn't find her with a microscope, had only worked for the pure-bloods among the French aristocracy, no mere Americans had ever known her name (you can bet your life they hadn't) —you can imagine the kind of patter, the sort of thing women suck up by the barrelful. ”

“ Many callers came in. Everyone noticed the strange placard. Some asked what it meant. Modestly, but with strong purpose, and with perfect frankness, Hammond told each and all who enquired, of his change of heart, and how possessed [188] with the fact that Christ’s return was imminent, he had had the placard done for his own, and for others quickening and reminder.
People smiled indulgently, but entered into no argument with him. He was too important a man for that, and, equally, they dare not pooh-pooh his testimony, wild as it appeared to most, if not all of them. ”

“ To a reader not acquainted with the peculiar nature of the man, which led him to regard what commended itself to him as therefore objectively true, they must be, moreover, entirely unintelligible and, from their peculiar, pietistic tone and scriptural jargon, probably offensive. A place in the history of philosophy can be yielded to Hamann only because he expresses in uncouth, barbarous fashion an idea to which other writers have given more effective shape. ”

“ Outside his doorway a man was walking up and down, an old acquaintance, the former Tutor at the Castle.
Johannes greeted him.
He was dressed in a long, warm overcoat which was carefully brushed and there was a brisk and decided air about him.
"Here you see your friend and colleague," he said. "Give me your hand, young man. God has guided my ways marvellously since we last met; I am married, I have a home, a little garden, a wife. The days of miracles are not yet past. ”