Meleager

“ With one exception every member of this interior circle has some time or another performed the voyage between the Earth and Meleager; and how strangely does it strike me [Pg 121] in my utter solitude to reflect that here in Meleager are nearly a score of persons whose acquaintance with the planet of my birth is in some ways more extensive than my own! The sole exception is the Arch-priest, who may not be transported to Earth, because he is the one person who is in constant and close touch with the King. ”

“ It seems that d'Aragno did accompany me in my strange aerial voyage to Meleager, which terminated (as I had so often expected) at the [Pg 179] temple on Mount Crystal. From that time up till the present moment he had been living in strict retirement in this remote sequestered valley, in accordance with the inexorable rule of the hierarchy, which positively forbids under pain of immediate death any meeting or communication whatsoever between the Earth-born King of Meleager and the envoy who has selected him for that royal office. ”

“ I must hasten to divulge what is lying like a load upon my heart, for my span of life can now but be reckoned by hours, not days. In the first place you have been grievously, wilfully deceived by our envoy on Earth and also by myself (though herein I have been merely following the normal trend of our polity) in one most important matter. For you have been permitted, even encouraged, to believe that your reign here in Meleager can be indefinitely prolonged, provided you do not set yourself to withstand or embarrass the ruling hierarchy of this planet. ”

“ But those who are content to criticise a pagan by his own rule of right and wrong will admit that Meleager had a spirit of the subtlest and the sweetest, a heart of the tenderest, and a genius of the purest that has been ever granted to an elegist of earthly love. ”

“ First of all, in my bald, inadequate account of the people and polity of Meleager, I fear I have not dwelt sufficiently on the unswerving loyalty of the hierarchy to their own order and to their fixed devotion to what they consider the perfect common-weal; to the general happiness and content of the whole population, and to the universal sense of peace and plenty that prevails here. But remember, I neither praise nor blame, neither approve nor condemn the system that produces ends so desirable in themselves, which form the recognised aim of every conscientious statesman. ”

“ When Jason and his heroes sailed away into a distant land to win the Golden Fleece, Meleager was one of the noble band. From all men living he won great praise for his brave deeds, and when the tribes of the north and west made war upon Ætolia, he fought against their army and scattered it as a wind in autumn drives the fallen leaves before it. ”

“ The course of time being reckoned in Meleager after the old Italian mode of counting the twenty-four hours from the uprising of the sun, at the first streak of dawn watchers in the temple proclaim the new-born day, by firing a piece of ordnance. This is succeeded by loud trumpet calls in the barracks of the soldiery, and the whole city awakens. Every one leaps from bed, and kneeling repeats the following short prayer to the Sun:
"O Sun, mighty King, Father of Lights, I bless thee and thank thee for another day! ”

“ Enamoured of the beauty of Atalanta, Meleager made over to her the chief spoils of the animal, on the plea that she had inflicted the first wound. But his uncles, the brothers of Thestius, took them away from her, asserting their rights as next of kin, [342] if Meleager declined to keep the prize for himself: the latter, exasperated at this behavior, slew them. ”

“ And herewith I think I had now better give you some instructions, or rather hints, as to your new position and as to your proper attitude towards the governing caste of Meleager on your arrival there. As King, the Child of the Sun is invested with a species of sovereignty that has no exact counter-part on your Earth. Your high office in Meleager partakes in some respects of the nature of a King of England, of a Pope of Rome, of an old-time Sultan of Baghdad, of a modern colonial governor ”

“ Thirdly, he must be either a bachelor or a widower, and preferably a misogynist at heart. He must not quit the Earth homesick; he must not be a natural prey to the influence of women, so far as it is possible to guard against this danger, the mainspring of all our fears in Meleager. For the sheer possibility of the founding of a royal race springing from the union of the Child of the Sun with a maiden of Meleager is a constant cause of alarm and watchfulness on the part of our hierarchy. ”

“ You, however, on your part must swear never to divulge the incident of our chance encounter to-day, and for this mutual exchange of oaths it is expedient for us both to have recourse to the Meleagrian formula in its most solemn aspect. And I must notify you here that we in Meleager are all believers in the Hereafter, which we hold is arranged for us according to our merits in this our present life. We all (and I am no exception) build much on the Hereafter, albeit we may seem overmuch attached to life itself ”

“ We are at the present time in a parlous state of unrest and transition in Meleager. Our people cry aloud for their vanished King, and threaten to over-turn our ancient constitution, for some peculiar instinct seems to have penetrated the common mind—by what means or influence assuredly even I cannot divine—that you have deserted our planet in wrath and dudgeon to seek again your Father's court. ”

“ Religion has already entered so significantly into my narrative that I feel I must apologise for a special dissertation on this subject. Yet I have never so far described the exact nature or scope of the Meleagrian faith which may be said to permeate and regulate the whole private and public existence of the people.
The inhabitants of Meleager—and in the ensuing statements, of course, I always except the hierarchy—are worshippers of the Sun, who is their sole deity. He is visible to them for a large portion of almost each day; he is tangible, in so far as they can feel the warmth of his beams ”

“ Whether or no, vague, restless, unsatisfied aspirations and longings occasionally assail the minds of some of the younger men I cannot say for certain; but I do feel sure that the womanhood of Meleager is absolutely satisfied with its present lot and cannot so much as conceive of any betterment of existing conditions. ”

“ I have every reason to believe no such catastrophe is likely to occur in your case. Your native endowments of head and heart, combined with the additional advantages of youth and wisdom that you will obtain on your arrival in Meleager, will protect you sufficiently from such an untimely ending. Yet I warn you, you will require all your faculties, especially those of self-restraint and discretion, if you are to win and retain the good will and co-operation of that all-powerful hierarchy which is actually not only your master but in a certain sense also your creator. ”

“ In my eyes, therefore, you are the ideal King; and yet, and yet, you will not survive to behold the complement of the half score of years of sovereignty, which has only once been attained hitherto in the whole course of Meleagrian annals. Your very virtues of self-restraint and implicit honour have only contrived to arouse in its direst shape that spectre of suspicion which is the guiding genius of our state craft. In other words, even a good King of Meleager is likewise foredoomed, whatever struggles and sacrifices he may make to gain and hold the approval of his virtual masters. ”

“ Nevertheless, it amuses me to assume that my former letter from Meleager has been duly found, debated and published, even though such assumption likewise includes the theory that its veracity is discredited by all who have cared to study its contents. Are we not assured in The Book that one arising specially from the dead and scorched with the flames of hell will [Pg 202] not arouse belief in the living man? And if the mission of Dives to his careless brethren be a predestined failure, what chance of credence can possibly await such a message in manuscript from Meleager? ”

“ We demand a man of intelligence, a man of good birth and breeding, one of fine presence, and last of all an individual of a fair complexion and with blue eyes. This final condition may strike you as absurd, but then the Meleagrians are a dark race with dark skins and dark eyes and hair, as you may perceive in my own person; and in their fixed opinion their extraneous ruler must be the scion of an immortal stock, a member of the family of the Sun, who alone is worshipped in Meleager. ”

“ You are in the eyes of your subjects, as you know, the Child of the Sun, whom alone we worship in Meleager, and who sends you as a king to rule over his favoured people. You will therefore be presented in public by myself and my colleagues of the Sacred College to the populace; you will be robed and crowned; you will extend your formal blessing to them; you will offer incense at the crystal altar of your Father the Sun, in the great courtyard of the temple ”

“ At length things came to such a pass that, unless the monster could be checked, famine would ere long stare the people in the face. When Meleager saw that neither prayer nor sacrifice would turn the heart of Artemis, nor any ordinary hunting put an end to the boar, he determined to gather around him a band of heroes who, for the sake of glory, would come together for the hunt, and either kill the beast or perish themselves in the attempt. ”

“ How, when and by whom The Secret came into existence I know not; and did I know, I should not inform you; but this much I am empowered to say; there is intercommunication of long standing between our small planet and your larger one; or rather, to use exact language, a limited knot of persons in Meleager own the power of visiting your Earth from time to time for certain purposes, one of which I shall presently disclose to you, as it concerns intimately our meeting and conversation this night. ”

“ We trace a blunt earnestness of intention in his epigrams, a certainty of feeling and directness of artistic treatment, which show that he had only one object in view. Meleager has far higher qualities as a poet, and his feeling, as well as his style, is more exquisite. But he wavered between the love of boys and women, seeking in both the satisfaction of emotional yearnings which in the modern world would have marked him as a sentimentalist. ”

“ You alone of all the earth-rapt monarchs of Meleager that ever I have known or heard of have pursued an even tenor of deportment, holding yourself strictly aloof from the besetting snares of popular adulation and of selfish indolence. You have never strained to encroach on the prerogative of the hierarchy, yet you have openly and boldly clung to such shreds of power as our constitution legally permits you to exercise. You have never stooped to flatter the priestly caste ”

“ And with no missile wound, the monstrous boar
Right in the hairiest hollow of his hide
Under the last rib, sheer through bulk and bone,
Deep in; and deeply smitten, and to death,
The heavy horror with his hanging shafts
Leapt, and fell furiously, and from raging lips
Foamed out the latest wrath of all his life.
And all they praised the gods with mightier heart,
Zeus and all gods, but chiefliest Artemis,
Seeing; but Meleager bade whet knives and flay,
Strip and stretch out the splendour of the spoil ”

“ The aristocracy of Meleager is closely connected with the land, and it is to some extent strongly impregnated with feudal principles. Every noble is either the owner of an estate, be it large, moderate or small, or else is connected by family ties with the actual landowner. Each house forms a distinctive gens in itself, and all its male members are entitled to bear a badge, which is its peculiar mark. These badges at first suggested to my mind a relic of totem-kin, but I soon changed my opinion on this point, and now hold the family badge to be heraldic in its aim and use. ”

“ The story of Meleager, [863] whose life was said to be bound up with a brand plucked from the fire on the hearth, belongs to the same class of ideas, which will be examined at large in a later part of this work. Wherever a superstition of this sort gathered round the king’s hearth, it is obvious that he would be moved to watch over the fire with redoubled vigilance. On a certain day the Vestal Virgins at Rome used to go to the King of the Sacred Rites, the successor of the old Roman kings, and say to him, “Watchest thou, O King? ”

“ Nowadays everything that is ordered or orderly you worldlings have set out to destroy. Your barbarian hordes broke up the stable Roman Empire; your fanatical reformers and greedy monarchs destroyed the consolidating features of the Middle Ages, which though very far from being perfect yet presented many illuminating features which we deemed expedient to copy in Meleager. ”

“ On all sides you see nothing but rapid change upon change, all for the worse; the rooting-out of all that is good, artistic and ennobling, and the substitution of all that is vile and mercenary....
"You are obsessed with the same hatred of this evil transformation as are we ourselves, the ruling body in Meleager, who utilise your planet now, not as in the past for purposes of imitation and guidance, but for serious warnings as to what to avoid in our own future course of polity. ”