Libussa

“ He had always a great horror of the dead, and especially in the night could not overcome this weakness. The Count in reply, only begged of him that he would preserve a strict silence as to the adventure in the picture gallery; especially that he should not run the risk of shocking Libussa’s feelings by any detail of minute circumstances attending it, though it was to be expected that she would question him what could have been the subject of the prolonged discourse at the window. ”

“ The sighing Wladomir awaited, in the mean time, with wistful longing, the unfolding of his fate. More than once he had tried to read the final issue of it in the fair eyes of his Princess; but Libussa had enjoined them strict silence respecting the feelings of her heart; and for a lover, without prior treaty with the eyes and their significant glances, to demand an oral explanation, is at all times an unhappy undertaking. The only favourable sign, which still sustained his hopes, was the unfaded rose ”

“ The empty basket she conferred upon the two Knights, who had failed in soliciting her love, to remind them that their suit was voided. Hence comes it, that when a wooer is rejected, people say, His love has given him the basket, even to the present day.
So soon as all was ready for the nuptials and coronation, both these ceremonies were transacted with becoming pomp. Thus the Bohemian people had obtained a Duke, and the fair Libussa had obtained a husband, each according to the wish of their hearts ”

“ It is not at all improbable that Libanza is the name of some great chief who by his resource and courage delivered the people from great peril and oppression, and around whose name have gathered many myths, and to him is ascribed great magical power. ”

“ Liuba, like an affronted queen, watched it a moment over his shoulder with savage eyes; then suddenly, as though she had only just understood and been driven mad, with a wild groan of elation she burst into the midst of the jostling women and joined the trampling in a faster measure. But for the earnestness of the drunken faces, the ferocity of the bleary eyes, the wickedness of the depraved and twisted mouths, it might all have been taken for some new kind of dance without music, without rhythm. ”

“ Then Liuba suddenly took up the word, stretching out her hands.
»He is my betrothed. He will stay with me. He was virtuous and had comrades, and now he will stay with me!«
»Come and take Màrkusha's place,« the fat woman drawled.
»Shut up, Manka, or I'll smash your face! He will stay with me. He was virtuous....«
»We were all virtuous once,« the evil old woman grumbled. And the others joined in: »I was straight four years ago ... I'm an honourable woman still ... I swear to God....«
Liuba was nearly weeping.
»Silence, you sluts! You had your honour taken from you; but he gives it me himself. ”

“ Don't think it was compassion, Liuba. No, really it wasn't. Really not, Liuba. I ... but turn out the light, Liuba.«
With an agitated smile he put out his hands to her in the clumsy caressing way of a man who has never had to do with women. And this is what he saw: she clenched her fists with a slow effort and raised them to her chin and became, as it were, one immense gasp contained in her swelling bosom, her eyes huge and staring with horror and anguish and inexpressible contempt.
»What is the matter, Liuba? ”

“ Liuba, stretching her naked neck, heard him. They were together now, side by side, these three plain truths of life, the corrupt old drunkard who yearned for heroes, the dissolute woman into whose soul some scattered seeds of purpose and self-denial had fallen—and the man. After the superintendent's words, he paled slightly, and seemed to wish to say something—but changed his mind and smiled, and went on swinging that hairy leg. ”

“ This is the full name of Libanza. It means: The one who makes things with force and noise and runs off with them, whose scraped finger-nails are tied with cane, he who is Libanza the brother of Nsongo.
The Swallower went at Libanza with his mouth wide-stretched to gulp him down, and as he went his lower jaw dragged along the ground. Libanza stirred the molten metal, the Tortoise blew the bellows, and as the Swallower rushed forward with his mouth wide open Libanza threw the liquid metal right into the gaping jaws, and the Swallower of people fell dead. ”

“ Richard and I and Charley Drake made another pleasant journey exploring the Anti-Libanus. Everybody thinks, even professional geographers, if you speak of the Anti-Libanus, that you are going over trodden ground, filling up details upon the broad outlines traced by other people; but it is very far from being the case. Now the best maps only show a long conventional caterpillar, flanked by acidulated drops, and seamed with a cobweb of drainage. They never name a valley north-east of Zebedáni, nor a summit, except Jebel el Halímah, which is not its name. ”

“ « she exclaimed, and surprised herself by adding a coarse reproof. He raised his brows in surprise and spoke to her calmly, but without averting his eyes, dully, remotely, as from a great distance.
»Listen, Liuba, certainly you can betray me, not only you, but anyone in this house, or in the street. One shout—Halt! arrest him!—and men will come in their tens and hundreds and try to get me—or kill me. And for what reason? Merely because I have done no harm, merely because I have devoted all my life to these very people. ”

“ They were trained, like the Amazons, to the use of arms and to ride on horseback. After the death of Libyssa, the narrator further says that the principal favourite of the queen, Valasca, with the assistance of the female troops, seized the throne, and held it until her death, which occurred seven years later. Resolved to form a nation of Amazons, Valasca passed a law that all male children should have their right eyes put out and their thumbs cut off, to keep them from using bow and arrows. ”

“ Then some of them crept along the dark corridor on tiptoe to the fearsome door.
A desperate knock—a shout—threats to shoot through the door. And when, almost knocking Liuba, half naked, off her feet, they burst into the little room in close formation and filled it with their boots and cloaks and rifles—then they saw him—sitting on the bed in his shirt, with his bare hairy legs hanging down—sitting there silent. ”

“ It was as though the Satanic world itself had foregathered there to laugh to its grave that little sprig of virtue, the dead innocence itself joining in the laughter.
The only one who did not laugh was Liuba. Trembling with agitation, she wrung her hands and shouted at them, and finally flung herself with her fists on the fat woman, who even with her beam-like arms could hardly ward off her blows. ”

“ Now more and more frequently, after family quarrels, in the minutes of reconciliation he would say to Liubka:
“My dear Liuba, you and I do not suit each other, comprehend that. Look: here are a hundred roubles for you, ride home. Your relatives will receive you as their own. Live there a while, look around you. I will come for you after half a year; you’ll have become rested, and, of course, all that’s filthy, nasty, that has been grafted upon you by the city, will go away, will die off. And you’ll begin a new life independently, without any assistance, alone and proud!” ”

“ All the devotees are poor and ragged, and many blind. It seems that the people of Lhasa do not begin to think of the next incarnation until they have nothing left in this. [Pg 267]
When one leaves the broad avenues between the walls of the groves and pleasure-gardens, and enters the city, one's senses are offended by everything that is unsightly and unclean. Pigs and pariah dogs are nosing about in black oozy mud. The houses are solid but dirty. It is hard to believe that they are whitewashed every year. ”

“ He is represented as having many heads and no body, and is greatly dreaded by those who have to camp on the islands during fishing and travelling; and the natives tell many stories of visits they have received from him. Next to this many-headed monster is a mythical person or spirit (named nyandembe) who is mentioned in the folk-lore stories as having caused the death of Libanza’s father, but was eventually killed by him as a punishment. He is thought by the natives to have been very strong and rich; but being dead he is no longer feared. ”

“ Liberia is already the happy home of thousands, who were once the doomed victims of oppression; and if left unmolested to go on with her natural and spontaneous growth; if her movements be left free from the paralysing intrigues of jealous ambition and unscrupulous avarice, she will throw open a wider and a wider door for thousands who are now looking with an anxious eye for some land of rest. ”

“ IN Libyssa there lately lived one, called Alexander Libanus, who, in his younger years, appeared to have great zeal for truth and piety, he began to show his great regard for truth and piety, when he was about fourteen years of age, and continued very godly till he was arrived at twenty-one years of age, and then he began to be drawn off by worldly pleasures. He was very much drawn off by the female sex, which had a tendency to deprive him of all his money, and, being very much disquieted, he went one day into a very large wood, not far from the place where he used to resort. ”

“ Just before dusk there was generally a storm in the valley, which only occasionally reached the city; but the breeze stirred the poplars, and the silver under the leaves glistened brightly against the background of clouds. Often a rainbow hung over the Potala like a nimbus.
On the Lingkhor, or circular road, which winds round Lhasa, we saw pilgrims and devotees moving slowly along in prayer, always keeping the Potala on their right hand. The road is only used for devotion. One meets decrepit old women and men, halting and limping and slowly revolving their prayer-wheels and mumbling charms. ”

“ As they passed one group of decrepit women to whose bony hands young children clung, scarcely old enough to totter along, but yet able to keep pace with the faltering steps of the hags who led them, Liliha could restrain herself no longer, and in her usual tone of authority, bade them “begone to their homes, and not leave them to glut their dim sight with the agonies of a horrible death. ”

“ From the spot where she had stood upon the bank a tiny stream of crystal water trickled through the grass and flowers and found its way back to the parent river.
"How terrible!" said Liuba. "Oh, how I hope I shall never be a rusalka!" and a great rush of longing came over the little bankrupt soul for that baptism of which it knew nothing save its own great need and desire for the gift, and away she floated once more over woods, meadows, and rivers, wailing and crying, "Oh, who will baptize me, baptize me! Christian men, have pity upon a soul that wanders and weeps, and baptize me!" ”

“ Those two, disguised as Hujjaj, defiled the Black Stone, which was given by Allah to the first Arabs; and they both escaped. But many others who have tried—"
"Have died at the hands of thy people?"
"Bismillah! Yea!" A flash of pride irradiated the dark face of Rrisa. His figure drew itself erect. Beneath the veneer of civilization with which life among the Feringi had overlaid him, the Master sensed the wild, fierce, free soul of the desert man, to whom the death of the unbelieving dog is sweet. ”

“ Liuba slowly rose to her feet, and when, in a tempest of emotion, with proud distended nostrils, he looked at her, he was met by a look as proud and even more disdainful. Even pity shone in the arrogant eyes of the prostitute ”

“ Well indeed did Liban call it the Plain of Fire, for a breath of fire is in the air for leagues and leagues around. On the lake where the Sidhe dwell the fishers row by and see nothing, or, mayhap, a flicker of phantasmal trees around the dun. These trees are rooted in a buried star beneath the earth; when its heart pulsates they shine like gold, aye, and are fruited with ruby lights. Indeed this Labraid is one of the Gods. I saw him come through the flaming rivers of the underworld. He was filled with the radiance. ”

“ Liuba gazed downwards and fixed her attention on turning a ring on her finger. He looked round the room; each time be conspicuously avoided meeting the girl's glance, and rested his eyes on the unfinished glass of cognac. Then, all at once, it became overwhelmingly clear to him, even palpably evident, that all this was no longer what it seemed—that little yellow glass with the cognac, the girl so absorbed in twiddling her ring—and he himself, too, he was no longer himself, but someone else, someone alien and quite apart.... ”

“ He introduced them in the most serious and fool-like manner.
“Here,” he said, stretching out his hand, now in the direction of the guests, now of Liubka, “here, comrades, get acquainted. You, Liuba, will find in them real friends, who will help you on your radiant path; while you—comrades, Liza, Nadya, Sasha and Rachel—you will regard as elder sisters a being who has just struggled out of that horrible darkness into which the social structure places the modern woman.” ”

“ With hands clasped under her chin she gazed into the vacancies with eyes of far-away reflection and longing. There was something pathetic in the intensity and wistfulness of the lonely figures. She turned and rose to meet them, a smile of rare tenderness lighting up her face as she saw Liban. The dim glow of a single lamp but half revealed the youthful figure, the pale, beautiful face, out of which the sun-colours had faded. Her hair of raven hue was gathered in massy coils over her head and fastened there by a spiral torque of gleaming gold. ”

“ In this division of darkness and light the Potala stands out like a haven, not flaming now, but faintly luminous with a restful mystic light, soothing enough to rob Buddhist metaphysics of its pessimism and induce a mood, [Pg 261] even in unbelievers, in which one is content to merge the individual and become absorbed in the universal spirit of Nature.
No wonder that, when one looks for mystery in Lhasa, one's thoughts dwell solely on the Dalai Lama and the Potala. I cannot help dwelling on the flight of the thirteenth incarnation. It plunges us into medievalism. ”