Victor

“ As the approach of the triumphal procession is made manifest by the sweet perfume scattered far and wide by incense-bearers in the conqueror's train, so the heavenly Victor makes use of his vanquished to herald the victories of his grace and diffuse like fragrant odors the saving knowledge of his name. It is the triumph of grace over sin, the triumph of truth over error, the triumph of faith over unbelief, the triumph of divine love over human selfishness. ”

“ Come, Victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin, but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of festering, the wounds of our minds. Enter the house of mourning, my friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not with hatred for your enemies. ”

“ But the first tear in a beloved eye is too mighty for a soft heart.... Victor knelt down, overpowered by reverence and rapture, before the noble soul, and lost himself in the darkling, weeping form, and in the weeping tones. ”

“ Nevertheless Victor was more joyous and free than any of them, not merely because he was under the free heavens,—for a room always lay upon him like a blockhouse, and a chair was like the stocks,—but because he was among fine people, who, despite the most angular relations, give to conversation four butterflies'-wings, that it may—in contrast to the clinging caterpillar, who impales himself on every thorn—fly without noise and in little curves over all prickles, and alight only on blossoms. ”

“ There was no reserve between these two--if, indeed, propinquity had not established complete freedom from what Victor termed gêne long ago--and she gazed up into his face with eyes transparent, shining, darkly blue as sapphires, eyes so brilliant that in admiring them he hardly noticed the coarse red and white grease paint which thickly coated her delicate skin, or the bistre rings around those beautiful orbs. "Victor! Speak! If you are not satisfied, I shall chuck the profession--dearly as I love my work, I couldn't stand it!" ”

“ Then Victor awoke as out of a dream and out of life, and clasped the harmonious, fleeting airs to his languishing bosom, and, amidst the gushing tears which, like a rain-cloud, veiled from him the whole landscape, he cried out, beside himself: "Ah, Emanuel, come!—Ah, I thirst for thee—Float no more in sound, thou blessed one; take thy deposed human face, and appear to me, and slay me by a shudder, and keep me in thy arms!" ”

“ The good youth often seeks, by acts of sacrifice, to reconcile his conscience again with his thoughts. With heart-beatings of enthusiasm he awaited the moment of solitude. A garden detaches and draws together people in the easiest manner, and only in such a place should one impart secrets; Victor could soon, in an arbor which wove itself on four chestnut-trees with its blooming vein-work nest-wise over their heads, embrace his father with trembling emotion, and speak and glow for his friend with tongue and heart. His Lordship's surprise was greater than his emotion. ”

“ Victor led the beloved blind one softly to his place of slumber, where dream restored his disordered eyes and arrayed the little landscapes, of his childhood, with morning hues, more brightly around him.—He then laid himself down without undressing himself, opposite to the moon which hung low above the horizon, and sank to sleep on the building-ground of our fairer air-castles, on the sounding-board of childhood, where morning-dreams lead consecrated man out of the wilderness of day to the mount of Moses, and let him look over into the dark, promised land of Eternity.... ”

“ Instantaneously the Asiatic disappeared, thrust back into its habitual latency within the prison of European: Prince Victor was as he had been, as always to the world, cool, composed, and crafty, master, never creature, of his emotions. ”

“ Victor found in him a man full of dignity, from whom business did not take away politeness, nor thinking wit; and whom a little irony and coldness only the more exalted, but who seemed to despise feeling, scholars, and mankind. Victor generally imagined to himself a minister—e. g. Pitt—as a Swiss glacier, on which the clouds and dew that nourish it freeze overhead, which oppresses the low places, and, in its alternation between melting and congealing, sends out great torrents down below, and out of whose clefts corpses are drifted. ”

“ Victor was struck with the lightning of joy and must needs remain immovable in the sweet smile of rapture, when the beloved rose behind the flower-clouds like the moon behind an Eden standing in full bloom, and in the womanly transfiguration of love resembled an angel dissolved into a prayer.
The blind youth knew nothing as yet of the third blessed one. ”

“ One should not forget that besides a strong body one had to transmit to one's children class honor and trade character.
These words from the lips of the childless man stung Victor into opposition. He gasped for air and struck the table with his fist. Then he hissed like a rocket; he, too, could talk as well as the long one. ”

“ Victor, alone, led the blind youth home, and both were silent and embraced each other with brotherly tears behind every screen, and asked each other neither for the reasons of the embrace nor of the tears. When they had passed through the still village, and as they came along by the park of the Abbey, Victor saw his Emanuel pass out of the last bower into the dazzling convent. ”

“ Wherever he might go, the world would go also, and the covert smile ... and the covert smile ... God, how apart from all mankind he seemed this night. But for Victor he would have sought the woods at once, facing the Iroquois fearlessly. He must remain, to bow his head before the glances of the curious, the head that once was held so high; accept rebuffs without murmur, stand aside, step down, and follow. If a man laughed at him, he must turn away: his sword could no longer protect him. How his lips thirsted for the wine-cup, for one mad night, and then ... ”

“ Victor dared not disturb his poetic hopes by any reasons; much rather was he himself from hour to hour drawn deeper into the belief of his death; at least he feared that to-day's storm of rapture might rend asunder the frail dwelling of this fair heart and of its sighs, and that death would creep about the noble soul till by its very wings, as it rose in its ecstasy, he could pluck it away from life, as children go round and round the butterfly till at last it lifts its wings folded on one another into their predatory fingers. ”

“ O Victor, how gentle thou art, and how harmonious, how ennobled, how beautiful in the tear of joy, how great in thy inspiration!—Ah, love of man, thou that givest to the inner man the Grecian profile, and to his motions lines of beauty, and to his charms bridal ornaments, redouble thy wondrous and healing powers in my hectic breast, when I see fools, or sinners, or uncongenial men, or enemies, or strangers! ”

“ Victor, I have more than most men to make life pleasant, but I would lay down life at this moment with you. You know me well enough to be sure that I utter no melodramatic fiction when I say that I love my country as a young man loves the ideal of his dreams—with my whole mind and heart and soul! ”

“ Victor watched him from every angle, overt and covert, but had his trouble for his pains; Nogam, observed in a mirror, when Victor’s back was turned, went about his business with no more betrayal of personal feeling or independent mentality than when waiting upon his master face to face. Victor could have kicked him for sheer resentment of his pattern virtues. ”

“ We will seat ourselves only among the joyous ones, and listen while they, during the afternoon, work away as portrait-painters, drapery-painters, and gallery-inspectors, at the picture of the beloved Briton. All remembrances are made into hopes, and Victor is to bring nothing with him that is changed except his stature. Flamin, wild as an English garden, but more fruitful, refreshed himself and others with his delineation of Victor's gentle truthfulness and honesty, and of his head, and praised even his poetic fire, which he generally did not rate very high. ”

“ Victor knows what has happened, and does not demand of you that passionate love which linked you to Oscar--perhaps, he would not even understand it. But you are necessary to his happiness, and his faithful, honorable devotion is well worth the sacrifice of those memories. Of course, you are at full liberty to do as you choose, Maia--only consider this one thing: whoever would truly live, must also live for others! ”

“ Still more heart-burning matter and acid collected in Victor's bosom, from the fact that he, who tolerated everything,—vain men, proud ones, atheists, enthusiasts,—could nevertheless not endure men who regard virtue as a kind of refined provision-bakery, wantonness as allowed, the spirit as an almsgatherer for the flesh, the heart as a blood-syringe, and our soul as a new shoot of the body. ”

“ Julius stopped for sorrow, and Victor said, "Play on the song of rapture, he has only just died."—During the tones Victor shut to the eyes of his beloved, and said with a heart above the earth, "Now close yourselves,—the spirit is above the earth, to which you gave light,—thou pale, hallowed form, thou hallowed heart, the angel within thee is gone out and thou fallest back into the earth."—And here he embraced once more the cold, empty wrappage, and pressed the heart, which beat no more, knew him no longer, to his hot bosom ”

“ Then, for gratitude, the king would have given his daughter to Victor for a wife; but Victor remembered Blanche, and knew that no other maiden must be bride of his.
Not long after this, the king was lost overboard at sea during a storm. Now the people must have a new ruler. They determined to choose a wise and brave man; and, young as he was, no man could be found braver and wiser than Victor: so the people elected him for their king. ”

“ Victor wondered about this priest. A mystery enveloped his beauty, his uncommunicativeness.
Presently the Jesuit caught sight of the dim, half-recognizable face below.
"The Chevalier improves?" he asked.
"His mind has just cleared itself of the fever's fog, thank God!" cried Victor, heartily.
"He will live, then," replied Brother Jacques, sadly; and continued his pacing. After a few moments Victor went below again, and the priest mused aloud: "Yes, he will live; misfortune and misery are long-lived." All about him rolled the smooth waters, touched faintly with the first pallor of dawn. ”

“ I could wish the Regency-Councillor were more discerning; but crowded souls like Victor's, that have more powers, and for that very reason more sides, than common, seem, of course, to be less porous, just as authors full of meaning seem less clear. A man who exposes to you with frankness all the colors of his heart playing into each other, loses thereby the glory of frankness;—one who like Victor, from humor, collects and shows up other people's tricks, seems to imitate them;—a changeable, an ironical, a fine man is in the eyes of narrow ones a thorough-going false thief. ”

“ On the top of it Victor had carved his initials. The Chevalier's eyes filled. Brave poet! Always ready with the jest, light of heart and cheery, gentle and tender, brave as a lion, too. Here was a man such as God intended all men to be. A beggar himself, he gave his last crown to the beggar; undismayed, he would borrow from his friend, paying the crown back in golden louis. How he loved the lad! Only that morning he had romped about the mess-room like a boy escaped from the school-room; imitated Mazarin, Uncle Gaston, the few great councillors, and the royal actors themselves. ”

“ Now a voice cried aloud in Victor's soul, "Save the brother of thy beloved!"—Yes, a way to do it was at hand;—but it was perjury. If, namely he committed that crime by disclosing to the Prince who Flamin was, then he was rescued. But his conscience said, "No!—The downfall of a virtue is a greater evil than the downfall of a man,—only death, but not sin, must be;—shall it cost me still more to break my word, than it has hitherto cost me to keep it?" ”

“ After dinner the Prince came and disturbed the stiff ceremonial, which he hated from love of comfort, just as Victor despised it on philosophical grounds. "Verily, an archangel," Victor would often say, "who should remark the wisdom and virtue observed by mortals in all trifles at their session-tables, altars, receptions, must needs bet his heaven and his wings that we are worth a farthing—or at least something—in greater things; but we all know where the conclusion limps; and this very disgust at the stiff, pedantic, decent micrology and machinery of men is the humor of the satirist. ”

“ There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance, that makes me tremble. Dear Victor, banish these dark passions. Remember the friends around you, who centre all their hopes in you. Have we lost the power of rendering you happy? Ah! while we love—while we are true to each other, here in this land of peace and beauty, your native country, we may reap every tranquil blessing,—what can disturb our peace? ”

“ But Victor said to himself, "Be not a child! be not the reversed fox who pronounces sour grapes, because he cannot reach them by leaping, to be sweet! I flatter myself, thou canst dispense with courtly hearts, which like their viands must first be warmed over a chafing-dish full of flickering spirits of wine.—By heaven! a man will surely be able to eat, even though that which he puts on the spit is not fetched by a guard from the kitchen, then handed to a page, then served up by a chamberlain or some other regulation-cavalier.—Only my father,—if it makes no difference to him!" ”

“ And Victor answered: "O King, urgent business awaits my master today. Hence I am come, the bearer of tidings unwelcome but wholesome. This is not, indeed, the desire of dependents, who yet bring such tidings when they fear the neglect of immediate and necessary action. As the proverb says:
When those appointed to advise
Speak wholesome truth, they cause surprise
By this remarkable excess
Of passionate devotedness.
And again:
A man is quickly found, O King,
To say the sycophantic thing;
But one prepared to hear or speak
Unwelcome truth, is far to seek." ”