Nemours

“ Remorse is more than a thought; it comes from a feeling which can no more be hidden than love; like love, it has its own tyranny. But, just as Minoret had committed the crime against Ursula without the slightest reflection, so he now blindly longed to drive her from Nemours when he felt himself disturbed by the sight of that wronged innocence. ”

“ Nemours (Hôt. de France; pop. 3900) , a pleasant little town, noted for its mild and healthy climate, was founded in 1844 on the site of the Roman Ad Fratres, a name derived from two rocks near the beach. The banana culture thrives in the environs. On the Plateau de Taount (407 ft.) , to the N.E. of the town, are the ruins of Djemâa el-Ghazaouât (‘marauders’ community’) , once a Berber village, but afterwards a notorious den of pirates (p. 221) .—Nemours is a steamboat station (comp. R. 18) . ”

“ At twenty-one years of age he left his mother's house to make acquaintance with his relations, and try his luck in Paris. The contrast between life in Paris and life in Nemours was likely to be fatal to a young man of twenty-one, free, with no one to say him nay, naturally eager for pleasure, and for whom his name and his connections opened the doors of all the salons. Quite convinced that his mother had the savings of many years in her strong-box, Savinien soon spent the six thousand francs which she had given him to see Paris. ”

“ If you admit in that woman the faculty of annihilating or of traversing space, if you obtain a certainty that here, in Paris, she sees and hears what is said and done in Nemours, you must admit all other magnetic facts; they are not more incredible than these. Ask her for some one proof which you know will satisfy you—for you might suppose that we obtained information to deceive you; but we cannot know, for instance, what will happen at nine o'clock in your goddaughter's bedroom. ”

“ O Nero, I will confess to thee that I have talked to Acte; I have talked to Christian slaves—once my fellow-slaves—in thy Palace and the household of Narcissus, and I know that the gods—or that God, if (as they say) there be but one God—is with them. ”

“ Every physical disorder is only the hull of an order, every foul spring is the hull of a fair autumn; but are, then, our vices the buds of our virtues, and is the earthly fall of a continually sinking villain nothing but a disguised ascension of his to heaven?—And is there an object in the life of a Nero? ”

“ In the hospital part the floors were very clean, and the head nurse, a bright, cheery woman, seemed like sunshine among her patients. She showed us all her curiosities, the little baby born into an overcrowded world on the street, the little one, beautiful as an angel, found on the street in a basket. It was very touching to see the beggar mothers sparing from their own babies to nourish the little deserted waif. A poor house is a helpless, hopeless mass of human misery. ”

“ Drew my fair child into her loathsome breast;
Nothing had ever parted us till then,
O child! when shall I hold thee once again?
As if the plague's red cross upon my door,
With "Lord have mercy!" scared the passers by,
So friends of mine that I had had before,
Fled from the face of my calamity.
Shut in, and yet shut out, my days went on,
Shut in with woe, shut out from human kind
Within my boundaries, watching sad and lone,
Hope with despair kept struggling in my mind.
It is not always human hearts can say
To Him who smites, "I trust Thee though Thou slay." ”

“ At times I drew near, delicately, standing among thick leaves or crouched in long grown grasses, and I stared and mourned as I looked on men. For Nemed and four couples had been saved from that fierce storm, and I saw them increase and multiply until four thousand couples lived and laughed and were riotous in the sun, for the people of Nemed had small minds but great activity. ”

“ Bathing or sprinkling with water, or applications of ‘nirang’ washed off with water, form part of the daily religious rites, as well as of such special ceremonies as the naming of the new-born child, the putting on of the sacred cord, the purification of the mother after childbirth, the purification of him who has touched a corpse, when the unclean demon, driven by sprinkling of the good water from the top of the head and from limb to limb, comes forth at the left toe and departs like a fly to the evil region of the north. ”

“ Huge nerves to suffer, and a neck to choke—
That woman were Poppaea! I would rear
About the timeless sea, my mother’s bier,
A sky-roofed desolation groined with awe,
Where, nightly drifting in the stream of law,
The vestal stars should tend their fires, and weep
To hear upon the melancholy deep
That shipless wind, her ghost, amid the hush!
Alas! I have but one white throat to crush
With these world-hungry fingers! (From behind Nero, enter Page—a little boy—bearing a goblet of wine on a salver. Nero turns, startled.)
57Ah!—You!—You!
Page
I bring wine, mighty Caesar. ”

“ Of some sad sea-soul for his wand'ring nymph.
Thou couldst not yield to mortal love's enthralling
And Nerius calling in thy spirits coralled lymph.
O! if our hearts have sweeter balm than tears,
It is the call that kissed thy dreaming ears. ”

“ When the druggist heard this, the light in his eyes became darkness and he grieved sore for Noureddin and said to him, ‘O my son, why didst thou not bring her out of the ship into the city without a veil? But talk availeth not at this season; so rise, O my son, and come up with me to the city; it may be God will vouchsafe thee a girl fairer than she, who shall console thee for her. Praised be God who hath not made thee lose aught by her! Nay, thou hast gained by her. ”

“ Then he filled and drank and the cup went round, till it came to Noureddin’s turn, whereupon the gardener filled the cup and handed it to him; but he said, ‘I know not this thing nor have I ever drunken thereof, for therein is a great sin and the Almighty Lord hath forbidden it in His Book.’ ‘O my lord Noureddin,’ answered the gardener, ‘if thou forbear to drink only by reason of the sin, verily God (blessed and exalted be He!) is bountiful, mild, forgiving and compassionate and pardoneth the greatest sins. ”

“ The first ended with the moving scene in the coral cemetery which left such a deep impression on my mind. Thus, in the midst of this great sea, Captain Nemo’s life was passing, even to his grave, which he had prepared in one of its deepest abysses. There, not one of the ocean’s monsters could trouble the last sleep of the crew of the Nautilus, of those friends riveted to each other in death as in life. “Nor any man, either,” had added the Captain. Still the same fierce, implacable defiance towards human society! ”

“ As the water bursts from the dam the more violently because of its imprisonment, so Norah’s sneeze gained intensity and uproar from her efforts to repress it. It came—
“A—tish—oo—oo!”
The old man started violently. He dropped his damper and gazed round.
“What on earth’s that?” he said. “Who’s there?” For a moment Norah hesitated. Should she run for her life? But a second’s thought showed her no real reason why she should run. She was not in the least frightened, for it never occurred to Norah that anyone could wish to hurt her; and she had done nothing to make him angry. ”

“ They call their nurse—she has disappeared; there is nothing but a heap of old rags in the place where she was lying. The children call to their mother, but the black cloud hides her from their eyes. There they are alone, face to face with it. ”

“ A number of men were loitering about, smoking, drinking, and discussing the all-absorbing topic of the plague, and the fires that might be kindled. There was a moment's pause, as Sir Norman entered, took a seat, and called for a glass of sack, and then the conversation went on as before. The landlord hastened to supply his wants by placing a glass and a bottle of wine before him, and Sir Norman fell to helping himself, and to ruminating deeply on the events of the night. ”

“ Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone. “You set foot on one of the shores of this globe, professor, and you’re surprised to find savages there? Where aren’t there savages? And besides, are they any worse than men elsewhere, these people you call savages?” ”

“ One day, after listening to stories about rats, he went after a cracker, and hearing a noise that he fancied was made by rats, he scampered back to the sitting-room, with big eyes and a flushed face, and assured his mother that he wasn't afraid. 'O, muzzer!' said he, 'I ain't afaid o' wats, but I'se so tired I couldn't lift the cover!'" How many grown people have you heard guilty of a similar subterfuge. ”

“ In what order did these articulates belong, these creatures for which the rocks provided a second carapace? Where had nature learned the secret of their vegetating existence, and for how many centuries had they lived in the ocean’s lower strata?
But I couldn’t linger. Captain Nemo, on familiar terms with these dreadful animals, no longer minded them. We arrived at a preliminary plateau where still other surprises were waiting for me. There picturesque ruins took shape, betraying the hand of man, not our Creator. ”

“ In Germany old women tell stories received from their Ancestors that a Water-monster, called the Nickard, doth enter by night the chamber, and stealeth when they are all sleeping the new-born child, and supposeth another in its place, which child growing up is like a monster and commonly dumb. ”

“ A youngster, who had been playing in a mud-puddle till his rubber boots were full of the dirty water, came home at last to report progress, and ask leave to sit again. But his mother, with an eye to doctor's bills, and a whooping-cough, or scarlet fever, said No; and the child was kept in the house all day, till he could bear it no longer. "O mamma!" said he, at last, "please whip me, and let me go out again—do." It seems that he had outwaded all the rest of the boys, without going much beyond his depth.
No. 102. Children are wonders. ”

“ When encamped near a certain sacred rock on the Nerbudda, in the province of Nimar which was under his charge, a stalwart young man was brought to him, who had come thither from a distance, for the purpose of sacrificing himself by casting himself from the cliff, in fulfilment of a vow made by his own mother before his birth, in case she should, after long sterility, have a living son. ”

“ My only safety is the life which I describe in my little tragedy of “Thyestes”—a life which causes neither jealousy nor fear, and where one does not dread to drink poison in golden goblets.99 If I am alive at this moment, I believe I owe it to the fact that my freed man Cleonicus, whom Nero bribed to poison me, failed to do so because I only eat fruits from the tree, and drink nothing but running water.100 Yet I am wretched. ”

“ Meantime the Narcissus, with square yards, ran out of the fair monsoon. She drifted slowly, swinging round and round the compass, through a few days of baffling light airs. Under the patter of short warm showers, grumbling men whirled the heavy yards from side to side ”

“ One inhabitant made heather brooms, or besoms, as they are called here. He goes to the mountain, cuts heather, draws it home on his back, makes the besoms, and sells them for a halfpenny apiece.
In one hovel a little boy lay dying of consumption—another name for cold and hunger—his bed a few rags, a bit of sacking and a tattered coat the only bed-clothes. "I am very bad entirely, father," was the little fellow's complaint. ”

“ The Last Words of Captain Nemo
THE PANELS CLOSED over this frightful view, but the lights didn’t go on in the lounge. Inside the Nautilus all was gloom and silence. It left this place of devastation with prodigious speed, 100 feet beneath the waters. Where was it going? North or south? Where would the man flee after this horrible act of revenge?
I reentered my stateroom, where Ned and Conseil were waiting silently. Captain Nemo filled me with insurmountable horror. Whatever he had once suffered at the hands of humanity, he had no right to mete out such punishment. ”

“ If it be so, if Captain Nemo still inhabits the ocean, his adopted country, may hatred be appeased in that savage heart! May the contemplation of so many wonders extinguish forever the spirit of vengeance! May the judge disappear, and the philosopher continue the peaceful exploration of the sea! If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime. ”

“ Divine imperial Nero, and their sunk
Lugubrious aspect—pardon!—but you’re drunk,
Drunk as a lackey when the master’s out!
O kingly tears that down that regal snout
Pour salty love upon a mother’s breast!
So shall her timid doubts be lulled to rest! (Bustle within as of many rising to their feet.)
They rise! The prologue’s ended—now the play! 32 (He gets down from urn and goes off toward sea.) ”

“ Witness all shady founts, and all unfrequented brooks, and the ponds in the baths, and the conduits [6] in private houses, or the cisterns and wells which are said to have the property of “spiriting away,” [7] through the power, that is, of a hurtful spirit. Men whom waters have drowned [8] or affected with madness or with fear, they call nymph-caught, [9] or “lymphatic,” or “hydro-phobic.” ”

“ In another harbour not far distant, a woman, who was suckling a recently-born child, came one day alongside the vessel, and remained there out of mere curiosity, whilst the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom, and on the skin of her naked baby! These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world. ”