Joris

“ Joris felt that he must not take his seat among the deacons until he had been fully exonerated of all blame of blood-guiltiness by the dominie and his elders and deacons in full kirk session. Madam could hardly endure the thought of the glances that would be thrown at her daughter, and the probable slights she would receive. Batavius plainly showed an aversion to being seen in Katherine's company. But these things did not seem to Joris a sufficient reason for neglecting worship. He thought it [Pg 136] best for people to face the unpleasant consequences of wrong-doing ”

“ Three years later, Nicolas Blesdijk, who had married his eldest daughter Jannecke (Susanna) , but had lost confidence in Jorisz some time before his death, denounced the dead man to the authorities of Basel. An investigation was begun in March 1559, and as the result of a conviction for heresy the exhumed body of Jorisz was burned, together with his portrait, on the 13th of May 1559. Blesdijk’s Historia (not printed till 1642) accuses Jorisz of having plures uxores. Of this there is no confirmation. Theoretically Jorisz regarded polygamy as lawful ”

“ In the sixteenth century appeared David Joris, a Dutchman, who had almost fatal ecstasies and visions, and wrote and exhorted men, in mystical language, to purity and self-abandonment. Also Postel, a Frenchman, more mad than the former, who believed in a female devotee, named Johanna, as the second Eve, through whom humanity was to be regenerated. Guthmann, Lautensack, and Conrad Sperber, were theosophists who mingled, in hopeless confusion, religious doctrine and alchemic process, physics and scripture, tradition, vision, fancy, fact. ”

“ In fact, his first blow for American independence [Pg 349] had been struck in the duel with Lord Paget; for that quarrel, though nominally concerning Lady Suffolk, was grounded upon a dislike engendered by their antagonism regarding the government of the Colonies.
It was an exquisite April morning when they sailed up New York bay once more. Joris had been watching for the "Western Light;" and when she came to anchor at Murray's Wharf, his was the foremost figure on it. He had grown a little stouter, but was still a splendid-looking man ”

“ The likes and dislikes, the faiths and aspirations, of past centuries, coloured the present moments, as light flung through richly stained glass has its white radiance tinged by it. The feeling of race—that strong and mysterious tie which no time nor circumstances can eradicate—was so living a motive in Joris Van Heemskirk's heart, that he had been quite conscious of its appeal when Semple spoke of a marriage between Katherine and his own son. ”

“ But, at this hour, Neil was indifferent to adverse circumstances. He was moving in that exultation of spirit which may be simulated by the first rapture of good wine, but which is only genuine when the soul takes entire posses [Pg 108] sion of the man, and makes him for some rare, short interval lord of himself, and contemptuous of all fears and doubts and difficulties. He never noticed that Joris was less kind than usual; but touching Katherine, to arouse her attention, said, "Come with me down the garden, my love." ”

“ Amid the general dissolution, amid the assassinations of Caesars that follow close on each other's heels, amid the uproar of slaughter that rolls from end to end of Europe, a wild hurrah broke forth, terrifying men's hearts, and drowning all other sounds. ”

“ The portals yawned as caverns full of blackness, and the outer shape of the body of the building, from the towers to the apse, with its abutments and buttresses merely guessed at in the dark, stood up like a cliff worn away by invisible waves. ”

“ Visible to Salomé, alone, it embraces in the stare of its dead eyes neither Herodias, who sits dreaming of her hate satiated at last, nor the Tetrarch, who, leaning rather forward with hands on knees, still pants, maddened by the sight of the woman's nakedness, reeking with heady fumes, dripping with balms and essences, alluring with scents of incense and myrrh.
Like the old King, Des Esseintes was overwhelmed, over-mastered, dizzied before this figure of the dancing-girl, less majestic, less imposing, but more ensnaring to the senses than the Salomé of the oil painting. ”

“ Every road was crowded with pilgrims, all, men and women alike, dragging whole trees, pushing loads of sawn beams, and cartfuls of the moaning sick and aged forming the sacred phalanx, the veterans of suffering, the unconquerable legions of sorrow, all to help in the siege of the heavenly Jerusalem, forming the outer guard to support the attack by the reinforcement of prayer. ”

“ And beyond the valley, on the further bank, the scene was still more sullen and silent; the plains of La Beauce stretched away as far as the eye could reach, mute and melancholy, without a smile, under a heartless sky divided by an ignoble barrack facing the Cathedral. ”

“ It has not the flaming raptures of the mystical Gothic, which finds utterance in all these soaring shafts of stone; the Romanesque lives self-centred, in reserved fervour, brooding in the depths of the soul. ”

“ Through the veil of his tears his angelic vision poured itself out in the light of ecstasy, and he created beings that had but the semblance of human creatures, the earthly husk of our existence, beings whose souls soared already far from their prison of flesh. ”

“ Bresdin's Comedy of Death was one, where in an impossible landscape, bristling with trees, coppices and thickets taking the shape of demons and phantoms, swarming with birds having rats' heads and tails of vegetables, from a soil littered with human bones, vertebrae, ribs and skulls, spring willows, knotted and gnarled, surmounted by skeletons tossing their arms in unison and chanting a hymn of victory, while a Christ flies away to a sky dappled with little clouds; a hermit sits pondering, his head between his hands, in the recesses of a grotto ”

“ In the last resort, he could turn his gaze upon a litter of fishing-rods, brown tanned nets, rolls of russet-coloured sails, a miniature anchor made of cork painted black, all heaped together near the door that communicated with the kitchen by a passage padded, like the corridor joining the dining-room and study, in such a way as to absorb every unpleasant smell and disturbing noise. ”

“ At that moment, the door into the street opened, and a number of people came in, bringing with them a stench of drowned dog mingled with a smell of cooking which the wind beat back into the kitchen as the unlatched door banged to and fro. ”

“ With due sense of justice it now comes forward where it can be seen, and the sister art retires, leaving it to address the multitude, giving it the noblest framework in those arched doorways, imitating a deeper perspective by their concentric arches, diminishing and retreating to the door-frames. ”

“ Finally he settled on stones whose hues would supplement each other,—the hyacinth of Compostella, mahogany red; the aquamarine, sea green; the balass ruby, vinegar rose; the Sudermania ruby, pale slate-colour. Their comparatively feeble play of colours would suffice to light up the deadness of the dull, grey shell, while leaving its full value to the brilliant bouquet of jewelled blossoms which they framed in a slender garland of uncertain splendours.
Des Esseintes stood gazing at the turtle where it lay huddled together in one corner of the dining-room, flashing fire in the dim half light. ”

“ Frames of tapers on each side shot up little tongues of flame, and prostrate women were praying, their faces hidden in their hands or upturned to the dark countenance, on which the light did not fall. ”

“ Already he was dreaming of a refined Thebaïd, a desert hermitage combined with modern comfort, an ark on dry land and nicely warmed, whither he could fly for refuge from the incessant deluge of human folly.
One passion and one only, woman, might have arrested him in this universal disdain that was rising within him ”

“ One, the Crampton, an adorable blonde, shrill-voiced, slender-waisted, with her glittering corset of polished brass, her supple, catlike grace, a fair and fascinating blonde, the perfection of whose charms is almost terrifying when, stiffening her muscles of steel, pouring the sweat of steam down her hot flanks, she sets revolving the puissant circle of her elegant wheels and darts forth a living thing at the head of the fast express or racing seaside special! ”

“ Take poor Jorian for an example of what the absence of ambition brings men to. I treasure Jorian, I hoard the poor fellow, to have him for a lesson to my boy. Witty and shrewd, and a masterly tactician (I wager he would have won his spurs on the field of battle) , you see him now living for one hour of the day—absolutely twenty-three hours of the man's life are chained slaves, beasts of burden, to the four-and-twentieth! So, I repeat, fag at your German.
'Miss Penrhys retires to her native Wales; Jorian and I on to London, to the Continent. Plinlimmon guard us all! ”

“ With my large Crucifix on my breast, my gown looking like a nun's—every one asked: 'What can that woman be?' I looked like a charcoal-burner out for a holiday; no white to be seen but my cap, collar and cuffs; all the rest—face, hands and petticoats—quite black. ”

“ The conveyance blundered off, throwing up showers of mud from the wheels. The streets were like a swamp; under the grey sky that seemed to rest on the roofs of the houses, the walls were dripping from top to bottom, the rain-gutters overflowing, the pavements coated with mud of the colour of gingerbread in which the passers-by slipped and slid. On the side-walks, as the omnibuses swept by, people would stop in crowded masses, and women, kilted to the knees and bending under sodden umbrellas, would press against the shop windows to escape the flying mire. ”

“ Moreover, the painter seemed to have wished to mark his deliberate purpose to keep outside centuries of history; to give no definite indication of race or country or period, setting as he does his Salomé in the midst of this strange Palace, with its confused architecture of a grandiose complexity; clothing her in sumptuous, fantastic robes, crowning her with a diadem of no land or time shaped like a Phoenician tower such as Salammbô wears, putting in her hand the sceptre of Isis, the sacred flower of Egypt and of India, the great lotus-blossom. ”

“ It was a weird and mysterious vapour, as strange as the crypt itself, which, with its furtive lights and breadths of shadow, was at once penitential and soothing.
Durtal went up the broader aisle to the left arm of the cross and sat down; the tiny transept had its little altar, with a Greek cross in relief against a purple disk. Overhead the enormous curve of the vaulting hung heavy, and so low that a man could touch it by stretching an arm; it was as black as the mouth of a chimney, and scorched by the fires that had consumed the cathedrals built above it. ”

“ Ah! the days were far away when Rhadegond, Queen of France, used with her own hands to prepare the bread destined for the altars; the days when, by the custom of Cluny, three priests or three deacons, fasting, clad in alb and amice, after washing face and fingers, sorted out the wheat grain by grain, crushed it in the hand-mill, kneaded the dough with cold spring-water and baked it themselves over a clear fire, singing psalms the while! ”

“ And Saint Joseph, opposite to him, represented as a bald old man, with a short beard, and wearing a red cloak, comes forward as if amazed at his happiness, and scarce daring to believe that the moment has come when he may adore the Messiah born at last; he smiles, deferentially, mildly stepping with the almost clumsy care of an old man who would fain be serviceable but fears to intrude. ”

“ At last, in the apse, forming the top of the cross, it poured in, symbolical of the light that flooded the world from the top of the Tree; and the pictures were diaphanous, just lightly covered with flowing lines and aerial tints, to frame in a sheaf of coloured sparks the image of a Madonna, less hieratic and barbaric than the others, and a fairer Infant, blessing the earth with uplifted hand. ”

“ Is not the sentiment exquisite of our Lord dwelling in the heart of the Virgin, the Ivory Tower of the Canticles? Is not ivory indeed the most admirable material to serve as a sanctum for the most pure white flesh of the Sacrament? ”

“ Under the breath of prayer, the soul, buried under the ashes of worldly cares, flamed up, and the air that fanned it made it glow like an inward fire, lighting up the thick cheeks, the stolid, heavy features. ”

“ Rome, paralyzed, sacked by the Visigoths, felt her life frozen within her veins as she saw her outlying limbs, the East and the West, struggling in a sea of blood, growing more and more exhausted from day to day. ”

“ The crypt was closed in the afternoon, but he found his way in by a small door in the sacristy inside the cathedral, and descended into utter darkness.
Having reached the crypt in front of the altar, he round once more the doubtful but soothing odour of that vault, smoked by burning tapers, and went forward in the soft, warm atmosphere of frankincense and a cellar. It was even darker than in the early morning, for the lamps were out; floating wicks only, shining through what looked like very thin orange-peel, threw gleams of tarnished gold on the sooty walls. ”

“ All three were stones that flashed with mysterious, incalculable sparkles, painfully drawn from the chill interior of their turbid substance,—the cat's eye of a greenish grey, striped with concentric veins that seem to be endowed with motion, to stir and shift every instant according to the way the light falls; the cymophane with bluish waterings running across the milky hue that appears afloat within; the sapphirine that lights up blue, phosphorescent fires on a dull, chocolate-brown background. ”