Niort

“ About this time, the king and queen of Sicily visited the king at Tours and Amboise, where they were very honourably received by him; after which, the king, accompanied by the duke of Bourbon and other lords, went toward Niort, La Rochelle, and divers parts thereabout, where they met the duke of Guienne,—and, through the blessing of God, and the holy Virgin, the two brothers were completely reconciled, to the great joy of the whole realm. Te Deum was sung for this event, in all the churches; bonfires [Pg 91] were made in the streets, and tables laid out for passengers in all the great towns. ”

“ A figure representing an old pilgrim offers it a golden apple on the end of a stick; but just when poor Hans (so was the fool called) is about to close his mouth to masticate and swallow the apple, the pilgrim suddenly withdraws it. On the left of the head is an angel singing (the arms of the city of Jena) , holding in one hand a book, which he raises towards his eyes whenever the hours strike, and with the other he rings a hand-bell.
The town of Niort, in Poitou, possessed also an extraordinary clock, ornamented with a great number of allegorical figures—the work of Bouhain,{183}
Fig. ”

“ He established a national government, and he made Therach, the son of Nahor, his chief officer. When Nimrod had thus established his power he decided to build a city, a walled town, which should be the capital of his country. And he selected a certain plain and built a large city thereon, and called it Shinar. And Nimrod dwelt in Shinar in safety, and gradually became ruler over all the world; and at that time all the people of the earth were of one language and of one speech. Nimrod in his prosperity did not regard the Lord. He made gods of wood and stone, and the people copied his doings. ”

“ Two years later, Nimrod was visited with a dream. He saw himself and all his army in a valley, near the furnace into which he had cast Abraham. A man resembling the latter stepped out of the furnace and approached the king, holding a naked sword. When Nimrod recoiled, the man cast an egg at his head; the egg broke and became a mighty river, which swept all his host away, saving only three men; and on looking at them, the king saw that they wore royal robes, and exactly resembled himself. ”

“ The king had a large blacksmith's hammer brought into his throne-room, and with that his princes and nobles smote him on the head; and the more violent the blow, the greater was the relief afforded. Nimrod reigned a thousand years before he felt the torment of the gnat; up to that moment he had suffered no pains. He lived for five hundred years with the fly eating at his brain; and all that while, night and day, there were relays of men to strike his head with the hammer. ”

“ The centre of the empire of Izdubar is laid in the region of Shinar, or Sumir, Erech “the lofty” being the chief seat of his power, and thus agrees with the site of the kingdom of Nimrod, according to Genesis x. 8, 9, 10, where we read: “And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.” ”

“ Nimrod, when he had four cities under his command, could not be content till he had four more. 3. It is expensive; Nimrod will rather be at the charge of rearing cities than not have the honour of ruling them. The spirit of building is the common effect of a spirit of pride. 4. It is daring, and will stick at nothing; Nimrod's name signifies rebellion, which (if indeed he did abuse his power to the oppression of his neighbours) teaches us that tyrants to men are rebels to God, and their rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft.
15. And Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth, 16. ”

“ It was cold and snowy when Nimrod and I started out next morning to look for mountain sheep. I followed Nimrod's horse for several miles as in a trance, the white flakes falling silently around me, and wondered how it would be possible for any human being to find his way back to camp; but I had been taught my lesson, and kept silent.
I even tried to make mental notes of various rocks and trees we passed, but it was hopeless. They all looked alike to me. In a city, no matter how big or how strange, I can find home unerringly, and Nimrod is helpless as a babe. In the mountains it is different. ”

“ These legends have been taken up by the Arabs, and although his history has been lost and replaced by absurd and worthless stories, Nimrod still remains the most prominent name in the traditions of the country; everything good or evil is attributed to him, and the most important ruins are even now called after his name. From the time of the early Christian writers down to to-day, men have been busy framing systems of general chronology, and since Nimrod was always known as a famous sovereign it was necessary to find a definite place for him in each chronological scheme. ”

“ Of all things weeping to bring Balder back;
And there fell joy upon the gods to hear.
⁠But Hermod rode with Niord, whom he took
To show him spits and beaches of the sea
Far off, where some unwarned might fail to weep,—
Niord, the god of storms, whom fishers know;
Not born in heaven, he was in Vanheim reared,
With men, but lives a hostage with the gods ”

“ Nimrod has been identified both with Merodach, the tutelar god of Babylon, and with Gilgamesh, the hero of the epic of that name, with Orion, and with others. The name, according to Petrie, has even been found in Egyptian documents of the XXII Dynasty as 'Nemart.'
Nimrod seems to be one of those giants who rage against the gods, as do the Titans of Greek myth and the Jotunn of Scandinavian story. All are in fact earth-gods, the disorderly forces of nature, who were defeated by the deities who stood for law and order. ”

“ Vidil came in alarm to the presbytère to inform the Curé that she could not find her foster-son, and that she fancied he had fallen into the lake. The alarm was given, the whole village turned out, and he was discovered in the water. The Curé managed to drag him out by the hair of his head. Pierre Noirot was conveyed to his bed. Life was not quite extinct. The Abbé Téraube, stooping over him, said, "Monsieur Noirot, do you recognise me?" The dying man made a sign in the affirmative. "Do you commit yourself into the hands of God, and put your trust in the infinite mercy of Christ?" ”

“ Nimrod looked like a clay man—hair, eyebrows, mustache, skin, and clothes were all one solid coating of red dust. We were all alike. Even the sugar, paper-wrapped in the bottom of a box, covered by other boxes, bags and a canvas, became adulterated almost past use.
On the fourth day this changed, and we camped at the foot of a granite mountain. It made one think of the Glass Mountain of fable, with its smooth stretches of polished rock shining in the sun. That a human being should dare to take a wagon over such a place seemed incredible. ”

“ He did not raise hand against Hito, but stood like a rock against the fat one's futile pummellings. For to strike a superior meant, for a slave, instant and lawful death. Hito would none the less maintain that he had been struck, but Nicanor could not help that. So that Hito battered until his fists were sore; and Nicanor stood and took it silently, with set jaws and eyes gleaming like a wolf's in his dark face. He could not hope to keep Hito there much longer. The latter, wearied at length and puffing, sat on the edge of that grim bridal bed and cursed Nicanor by all the evil gods. ”

“ To atone for past shortcomings, two hundred children of the best families in Carthage were sacrificed, and further, to obtain the god's favour, three hundred adult citizens immolated themselves.
Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah, was an idolator, as were also his descendants. Nineveh was the seat of his empire. As the sun and moon became early objects of worship among the Assyrians, so in later days they adored the fire as their substitute,—a form of worship that was common among the ancients in many lands. ”

“ The Van Niörd, who is god of the sunny summer seas, has his counterpart in Neptune and more especially in Nereus, the personification of the calm and pleasant aspect of the mighty deep. Niörd’s wife, Skadi, is the Northern huntress; she therefore resembles Diana. Like her, she bears a quiver full of arrows, and a bow which she handles with consummate skill. Her short gown permits the utmost freedom of motion, also, and she, too, is generally accompanied by a hunting hound. ”

“ And then the crowd parted, and Nicanor saw a girl, a lean wisp of a thing, with burning eyes and a gray face framed in straight black hair, with chained wrists and a ragged frock which slipped aside to show a long red welt across her brown shoulders. The slave-driver held the end of the chain, his heavy whip tucked beneath one arm,—a squat man with a black and brutal face and small hard eyes. He was appraising the girl's good points glibly, as though of a mare to be sold,—her working strength, present perfections, future possibilities. ”

“ That is the history of our own deliverance."
"Thus, my child, we reached the cell in which your mother was confined," added Eidiol, again embracing Anne the Sweet.
"The young chief Gaëlo quitted us to join old Rolf, the chief of all the Northman forces," rejoined Guyrion, "who had just disembarked near the abbey. He entered the place and now holds it with a large body of men. The pirates are now hastily throwing up earth-works above the abbey on the side of Paris. Before sailing up towards the city they wish to fortify themselves here so as to have a safe place of refuge." ”

“ The derivation of the name Nimrod may mean 'rebel.' In all his later legends, for instance, those of them that are related by Philo in his De Gigantibus (a title which proves that Nimrod was connected with the giant race by tradition) , [Pg 51] he appears as treacherous and untrustworthy. The theory that he is Merodach has no real foundation either in scholarship or probability. As a matter of fact the Nimrod legend seems to be very much more archaic than any piece of tradition connected with Merodach, who indeed is a god of no very great antiquity. ”

“ If so, it would be the third person of the imperfect, formed by prefixing n, as in Aramaic. Schrader [377] regards this prefixed n in Nimrôd as a sound used for the formation of nouns. I will also call to mind incidentally that on Babylonian ground we meet also with the name of a god Merôd. [378] The wars of Nimrod with Abraham are not preserved in the Old Testament, but are in Agadic tradition, which has also retained from the Nimrod-myth an expression of a truly solar character; that three hundred and fifty kings sit before Nimrod, to serve him. ”

“ Nicanor asked boldly.
Hito slipped an arm about the slave's broad shoulders and patted him.
"Because thou art a man after mine own heart," he said smoothly. "Because I love thee and thy bold eyes and thy dare-devil recklessness, and would make a friend of thee. Why else? Now, then, to-morrow thou shalt bring the girl to me. I am minded for an hour's sport with the tiger-cat. My fingers itch for that lean throat of hers. After, I will give her to thee if it please thee—and then we'll see what the rack will leave of her beauty." ”

“ The Vizier bade him welcome to Bassora and dismounting, embraced him and made him sit down by his side and said to him, "O my son, whence comest thou and what dost thou seek?" "O my lord." answered Noureddin, "I come from the city of Cairo;" and told him his story from beginning to end, saying, "I am resolved not to return home, till I have seen all the towns and countries of the world." When the Vizier heard this, he said to him, "O my son, follow not the promptings of thy soul, lest they bring thee into peril; for indeed the lands are waste and I fear the issues of Fortune for thee." ”

“ When Nimrod was an infant he was taken by his mother to sea, and the ship being wrecked, all that were in it perished, save only the infant Nimrod who was saved through the pity of Izrail, the Angel of Death. God spared him, and nurtured him without the aid of mother or nurse; but when he grew up he proved ungrateful, and was puffed up with self-conceit and egotism, and showed enmity against God and Abraham His servant. When the prince found himself cast off by the King he came to himself, and repented and humbled himself with deep contrition. ”

“ Again, he would make them shiver at his tales of the world of darkness—shiver and glance from side to side into the outer blackness, with eyes gleaming white in the firelight. For it was a superstitious age, in which every field, every hearth-stone, had its presiding genius for good or ill; and there were many things of which men spoke with bated breath and two fingers out.
Nicanor ended his chant:
"So this man died, being unpunished, and went away into a great country which was a field of flowers. And in the midst of the field was a city wherein the man would enter. ”

“ The family has died out in the Netherlands, and the ancient manor house now belongs to a farmer. The last of the name was buried at Nijkerk, April 11, 1819. The weathervanes on the gabled houses of the old estate long bore the crest of the van Rensselaers. In the struggle for independence from Spain not a few of the men gave their lives for their country. Other names in Nijkerk church and cemeteries are the same as those we read on the gravestones in Schenectady, Kingston, Yonkers, and Tarrytown. ”