Montano

“ It is night, and a storm is raging. It is really Shakespeare's Act ii., Scene 1. Iago, Cassio, Montano, Roderigo, and chorus are watching Othello's ship, buffeting the waves, making slowly for harbour. Eventually Othello lands, and explains that the ocean has overwhelmed the Turk, and the war is over. Othello goes into the castle, and the chorus celebrate the happy news, the storm gradually dying away. No finer opening for an opera has ever been devised, and it is remarkable how the composer and librettist have managed to sustain this high level right through the four acts of the work. ”

“ On the floor at Bembo's feet squatted Cicada, acrid, speaking little, and spending his long intervals of silence in staring at the girl Lucia, who, crouching at a distance away by the fireless forge, in the gloom of the shuttered smithy, seemed given over to an eternal reverie of hate. She, alone of the household, had remained impervious to all the sweet influences of sorrow and pity. Her wrong was such as no angel could remedy.
Cicada spoke now, with a scowl of significance for Montano:—
'Speak plain, master philosopher. Innuendo is the weapon of Fools, and wisdom shall prevail in candour. ”

“ Phœbe is no lettuce for your lips, and her grapes hang so high, that gaze at them you may, but touch them you cannot. Yet Montanus I speak not this in pride, but in disdain: not that I scorn thee, but that I hate love: for I count it as great honour to triumph over fancy as over fortune. Rest thee content therefore Montanus, cease from thy loves, and bridle thy looks, quench the sparkles before they grow to a farther flame; for in loving me, thou shalt but live by loss, and what thou utterest in words are all written in the wind. ”

“ In sooth we should have been in danger of pushing one another into the abyss, if they had not built between the river and the wayfarers a wall which was continued in places a German league at a stretch. The more lofty of the mountains which stood around us were wild rocks, some in solid masses, some scored and broken up by the passage of the torrents, and some of a kind of shale which let fall below innumerable fragments of astonishing size, wherefore it impressed us that it would be perilous to travel here during a tempest. ”

“ Montaña (pronounced Montanya) is the name given by the Peruvians to any wooded country, “monte” being the Spanish term for a thick and tangled forest. As there is no other wooded country in Peru except to the eastward of the Andes, the term applies only to the eastern slope and the level country at the base of the mountains, stretching as far as the confines of Brazil. ”

“ He was sound throughout; and if he lacked the genius and the philosophy of Montaigne, he was his equal in worldly knowledge and in tolerant good temper. He heard, enjoyed, and repeated all the gossip of foreign courts, all the "severe jests" which passed from lip to lip. He loved the beauty of Italy, the wit of France, the spirit of the Netherlands, and the valor of Spain. The first handsome woman that earth ever saw, he tells us, was made of Venice glass, as beautiful and as brittle as are her descendants to-day. ”

“ Where the Wind River Chain of the Rocky Mountains stretches far away to the east, and the Bitter Root Range far away to the northwest, like giant arms holding in their embrace the fertile valleys whence the myriad springs which form the two great rivers of the continent take their rise,—on the northern border of the United States, and accessible only through leagues of desert,—lie the gold fields of Montana. ”

“ Utterly different, yet in its way no less sublime, is the immense panorama of big peaks as seen from Montana. Here again{174} (though perhaps, strictly speaking, you are in the Rhone valley) there is no impression of being in a valley at all, so lofty is the shelf on which Montana stands, so swiftly the ground plunges into the Rhone valley proper below. But this is no narrow cleft as at Mürren, and the hills that climb out of it on the further or southern side are miles away. But what a row of glistening giants is piled up on those hills. ”

“ We rumbled down hill and out upon the desert, plodding until evening through sand, and over rocky, cedar-wooded spurs, at last crossing adobe meadows, where were settlements and a herd of Spanish cattle which had escaped the drought of California, and now marched, northward bound, for Montana.
Frowning volcanic hills flanked our road as evening wore on, lifting dark forms against a sky singularly pale and luminous. ”

“ Before it was over I knew a lot more than when we started out, and had got hard as nails; riding on round-up beats a gym for putting wire muscles under a man's skin, in my opinion. We worked all around White Divide—which was turning a pale, dainty green except where the sandstone cliffs stood up in all the shades of yellow and red. Montana, as viewed on "horse round-up," looks better than in the first bleak days of March, and I could gaze upon it without profanity. I even got to like tearing over the newborn grass on a good horse, with a cowboy or two galloping, keen-faced and calm, beside me. ”

“ The mountains lost their glassy look; blue, ice-topped, they were as full [134] of young and vivid life as when they danced about, heedless that the heaving earth purposed they should wait for centuries before settling into things of beauty for unborn man to admire. They never will look old, those mountains of Montana; man may take the treasure from their veins and the jewels from their crowns, but they drink forever the elixir of the air. ”

“ Just outside Monterey’s eastern gate is the world renowned Del Monte and the equally famous Del Monte grounds, where the world’s pleasure seekers gather throughout the year, and where one may wander amid the beauties of garden and grove. Here, in a natural park of unusual beauty, for whose adornment a world-wide arboreal and horticultural tribute was levied, the genius of man and a bountiful nature have conspired to produce a veritable fairyland. ”

“ The Landes—that long, desolate tract on the western coast of France between the Gironde and the Adour, with its vast forests of melancholy pines, its lone moors and solitary deserts, its broad marshes, and its dunes of sand that creep relentlessly on as if they had life—appeal wonderfully to the imagination, that folle du logis, as Montaigne calls it, but which, in spite of him, we love to feed. ”

“ The unique book which I packed was the sixth volume of Montaigne in the Temple Classics edition. We are all aware, from the writings of Mr. A.B. Walkley, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, Mr. Hall Caine, and others, what a peerless companion is Montaigne; how in Montaigne there is a page to suit every mood; how the most diverse mentalities—the pious, the refined, the libertine, the philosophic, the egoistic, the altruistic, the merely silly—may find in him the food of sympathy. I knew I should be all right with Montaigne. ”

“ The Indian traversing the Montaña never feels himself alone. Legions of beings accompany him. All of the nature to whom he owes his soul speaks to him through the noise of the wind, in the roaring of the waterfall. The insect like the bird—everything, even to the bending twig wet with dew—for him has language, distinct personality. ”

“ In all this multitudinous forest of the Montaña, there is nothing of the gloom of the impenetrable vegetation of the fiery lowlands of the tropics. In this elevated valley vegetation assimilates to that of the temperate zones; there is never any nipping check of winter; the tree can develop its life without harsh discipline of frost, and grow without need of frantic impulse after long lethargy. Hence we are at home, and yet strangers in these woods. Our Northern comrades seem to surround us, but they have suffered promotion. ”

“ MONTANUS. Can't you hear? I say "Monsieur Montanus."
JACOB. Mossur Montanus, Mossur Montanus.
MONTANUS. That's right. "Montanus" in Latin is the same as "Berg" in
Danish.
JACOB. Then can't I be called "Jacob Montanus"?
MONTANUS. When you have been to school as long as I have and passed your examinations, then you can give yourself a Latin name, too; but as long as you are a peasant boy, you must be satisfied with plain Jacob Berg. By the way, have you noticed that my sweetheart has been longing for me?
JACOB. Indeed she has. She has been very impatient at your staying away so long, brother. ”

“ It took us to Toby’s door, and went flat as I turned into my own driveway. Thus did our guardian angels stay with us, like the guide’s mule, to the end.
Like tired horses whose heads are turned homeward, our pace accelerated steadily as we moved east. Each day we put two hundred miles or more behind us. Montana, brown and parched like all the West, yet magnificent in the tremendous proportions of its mountains and valleys, we left with regret. We followed the Great Northern to the bleak town of Havre, then dropped south to the perfidious Yellowstone Trail. ”

“ Even the blind may read, and thus bring back to themselves the life of the past; but how the indolent mind is helped when spurred by the eye's impressions! The eye awakens ideas that might otherwise sleep on for ever, by looking at scenes filled with the living interest of a Montaigne or a Talbot.
I might have got to within four miles or thereabouts of the Castle of Montaigne, by using the railroad that runs up the valley of the Lower Dordogne, but I preferred to start on foot from Montpont. ”

“ They were married women, who left their husbands to become disciples of Montanus, were given the rank of virgins in his church, and with him were the greatest prophets of the sect. They were regarded with the most profound reverence by all Montanists, who in many quarters were called after the name of the latter, Priscillianists. It was a characteristic of the Montanists that they insisted upon the religious equality of men and women; that they accorded just as high honor to the women as to the men, and listened to their prophecies with the same reverence. ”

“ Montanus is beautiful, and women's eyes are snared in the excellence of objects, as desirous to feed their looks with a fair face, as the bee to suck on a sweet flower. Montanus is wealthy, and an ounce of give me persuades a woman more than a pound of hear me. Danaë was won with a golden shower, when she could not be gotten with all the entreaties of Jupiter: I tell you, sir, the string of a woman's heart reacheth to the pulse of her hand; and let a man rub that with gold, and 't is hard but she will prove his heart's gold. ”

“ Montaine came staggering out.
He was a tall, finely formed man with an intelligent cast of features.
He was but a trifle older than Frank, and much after his type. The two friends embraced warmly.
“Oh, God, you cannot know what a joy it is to be relieved from that cursed cell,” said Montaine, fervidly. “It is like entering upon an entirely new life.”
“I can imagine it well,” replied Frank, “but the danger is not over. We are still in the lion’s den.”
“Right, my friend,” said Montaine. “But we must find a way out.”
He went to the railing of the gallery and looked over. ”

“ What made the prospect all the more delightful was that, beyond these fertile hills, we could distinguish the rugged and inaccessible summits of the Apennines, and the torrents descending therefrom, which, when they have lost their primal impulse, come down into the valleys as gracious and gentle brooks. While traversing these hills we could see, both on the heights and down below, many fertile level fields, some of them wider than the eye could cover on account of a slight slope in the distance, the landscape being of a beauty and richness beyond the power of a painter to imitate. ”

“ MONTANUS. My name is Montanus.
JESPER (aside to Jeppe) . Montanus? is that the Latin for Rasmus?
JEPPE. Yes, it must be.
JESPER. Listen, my dear Monsieur Montanus Berg. I have heard that learned folk have such extraordinary ideas. Is it true that people in Copenhagen think the earth is round? Here on the hill no one believes it; for how can that be, when the earth looks perfectly flat?
MONTANUS. That is because the earth is so large that one cannot notice its roundness.
JESPER. Yes, it is true, the earth is large; it is almost a half of the universe. ”

“ Here we find the man giving his experience of a phase of life which, for good or evil, has become almost normal in these latter days. Most of us have crossed the Alps and descended upon Italy; and, changed as the conditions of travel are, it raises a sympathetic interest to read of the humours of the road in Montaigne’s time, and to compare his experience with our own. ”

“ The sea, in its lighter order, has submerged the earth. Monterey is curtained in for the night in thick, wet, salt, and frigid clouds, so to remain till day returns; and before the sun’s rays they slowly disperse and retreat in broken squadrons to the bosom of the sea. And yet often when the fog is thickest and most chill, a few steps out of the town and up the slope, the night will be dry and warm and full of inland perfume. ”

“ But we had a perilous passage of the swollen Po, on which our carriage was embarked in a large boat, towed with ropes by numbers of men in smaller boats. In our long journey in our roomy excellent carriage—our home for about three weeks—we were provided with a perfect library of books, for my mother was quite of the opinion of Montaigne when he said, “Je ne voyage sans livres, n’y en paix, n’y en guerre. C’est la meilleure munition j’aye trouvé à cet humain voyage.” ”

“ Through this quaint desert the railway cars drew near to Monterey from the junction at Salinas City—though that and so many other things are now for ever altered—and it was from here that you had the first view of the old township lying in the sands, its white windmills bickering in the chill, perpetual wind, and the first fogs of the evening drawing drearily around it from the sea.
The one common note of all this country is the haunting presence of the ocean. A great faint sound of breakers follows you high up into the inland cañons ”