Exuberance

“ What a change from the days of the Roman Fathers, when religion circled round one’s own hearth, and exile was practically excommunication! The mother-land is no longer a mother but a mistress, to be visited only for pleasure, and every other land is only another odalisque, devoid of sanctities, ministress to appetites. The Magnificent Ones of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance at least stayed at home and minded their serfs and their business: our modern Magnificent Ones go abroad, make new serfs everywhere, and mind only their pleasures. ”

“ You talk of your wasted years and weary exile, and yet you have not suffered as I have. You have had a clear conscience; I have had a guilty one. Everything I have won, every success, every joy I have stretched out my hand for has tasted like ashes between my teeth. ”

“ It is true that I have been shorn of my honours and privileges, that I live in exile as a prisoner and that the vile insulters of fallen majesty compass me about. I who once dwelt in splendour and issued my commands to the legions of the faithful am treated with contumely by a filthy pack of time-servers, and have nothing that I can call my own except, for the moment, the air that I breathe. ”

“ Who shall count the faces that the exile has known, the voices that have been familiar in his ear, the hands that have pressed his? In every land and in every city, he has met and talked with a score, with scores, with hundreds of men and women all leading the more or less mysterious and uncertain life which has become his own by necessity or by choice. ”

“ Think you, that because I am an exile and an outcast,—forced by misfortune to wear the livery of one who is not my rightful sovereign,—that my sense of personal honor is the less, and that the mark of an insult is not as blood-stained on my conscience as ever it was? ”

“ If it may be conceived to have been possible that their feeble and degraded reason, in the absence of divine light and of sound human discipline, might by earnest exertion have attained in some small degree to judge better that exertion was precluded by indolence, by the immediate wants and unavoidable employments of life, by sensuality, by love of amusement, by subjection, even of the mind, to superiors and national institutions, and by the tendency of human individuals to fall, if we may so express it, in dead conformity and addition to the lump. ”

“ Exasperation is physical, the itch inside the thumb, the transient wish for suffering. Like a dog growling, or the Arab stabbing up between the bloody hoofs, we turn the gaze back to savagery, and with a shrug cast off the painted blanket of our civilisation. ”

“ Now, since the retrospect of your past conduct affords you such a pure delight, you ought to feel yourself elated by conscious dignity: for on what can we justly pride ourselves, except on the reputation which we have acquired by our virtues? Since, then, you have so strong a fortress, in which you can take refuge in time of trouble, turn your attention to those things which accompany you in your exile, namely, your liberality, your prudence, your gravity, your upright intentions, your discernment, your attachment to your native country, for which you have always testified the utmost affection ”

“ The mountains of our home stand round about us, and we know it. How can we rest longer on these shores of exile? Exile is for those whose hearts are estranged from Thee. Our hearts are won back to Thee, Deliverer and King. ”

“ Neither do I speak to gain your prayers, for a lingering, living death within these walls will be a penance fit to cleanse my soul of every sin. I speak not for myself, but for one whom I have wronged though he never did me wrong; one who, if living, is now an exile under the ban of the King. ”

“ Do you not see, can you not perceive, how the world only falls away from you more and more, the more you by your excommunications and anathemas and persecutions strive to quench and stifle the new spirit? ”

“ So the face of the exile lightens up at the throbbing of his heart, when, in some foreign land, he suddenly and unexpectedly hears the sound of his own language. So his eyes light up, and his heart beats faster, and even amidst the very longing of his soul after home, the desire after that home is appeased by these its most hallowed associations. ”

“ Here was that comfort, which could never fail, offered to the most desolate, and heaven itself, as a fatherland, to the exile. Here the great gate not only rolled back the noise of the world, but, to show that mercy is ever better than vengeance, stayed the hand of the law, and blunted the sword of the pursuer. ”

“ We ought not to seek to embroider the tapestry of our lives according to our own will, but according to a divine pattern. I was right to choose my self-imposed exile, in preference to the danger of sin ”

“ For me, for us exiles of twenty years who have grown old in illusions, he was like a melody of youth, a presentiment of times that we shall not see, in which the instinct of goodness and sacrifice will dwell unconscious in the human soul, and will not be, as virtue is in us, the fruit of long and hard struggles. ”

“ I was as a crowned king till I met him, and now I am an exile and outcast and despised.
"I have lost my way in life; the passers-by all scorn me and the man whom I loved whips me with foul insults and contempt. There is no example in history of such a betrayal, no parallel. ”

“ Our young woman so yielded, at moments, to what was insidious in these foredoomed ingenuities of her pity, that for minutes together, sometimes, the weight of a new duty seemed to rest upon her—the duty of speaking before separation should constitute its chasm, of pleading for some benefit that might be carried away into exile like the last saved object of price of the emigre, the jewel wrapped in a piece of old silk and negotiable some day in the market of misery. ”

“ My plan of vengeance, to one who had seen and observed less of the varieties of human nature than you have done, might seem far-fetched and unnatural; for while the superficial are ready to allow eccentricity as natural in the coolness of ordinary life, they never suppose it can exist in the heat of the passions,—as if, in such moments, anything was ever considered absurd in the means which was favourable to the end. ”

“ Excommunication is more fitting in your case than absolution.” I waited some time before I again spoke, during which she sobbed bitterly. “My daughter,” observed I, “before I can decide upon what is to be done to save you from everlasting perdition, it is necessary that you humble yourself before the religious man, whose person you have abused. Send to the convent to which he belongs, and entreat him to come; and when you have confessed your crime, offer to him the same implements of punishment, which through your instigation were so sacrilegiously applied. ”

“ No terrors of impending vengeance, had they been a thousand times stronger than they were, could at this moment have availed to stifle the cry of triumphant pleasure—long, loud, and unfaltering— which indignant sympathy with the oppressed extorted from the crowd. ”

“ Oh, seek him, kneel to him as I to thee, implore his mercy—life, life, only the gift of life; sentence him to exile, perpetual exile, what he will, only let him live: he is too young, too good, too beautiful to die. ”

“ In viewing the ease and happiness of this people the contrast fills my soul with indignation, and makes it more and more the object of my life to assist in the destruction of the diabolical usurpation which has trampled on king as well as people. ”

“ Can it be hoped that anything should ever bend thee? that thou shouldst ever be reformed? that thou shouldst dream of any flight? that thou shouldst contemplate any exile? Would, would indeed that the immortal Gods might give thee such a purpose! And yet I perceive, if astounded by my voice thou shouldst bend thy spirit to go into voluntary exile, how vast a storm of odium would hang over me, if not at this present time, when the memory of thy villanies is recent, at least from the passions of posterity. ”

“ Again and again, as the years rolled around, I got word from the world; each time to hear that what the world had forgotten was not forgotten by the man who was not satisfied in my exile, my loss of all the things which counted. ”

“ How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man, persevere in this exile? You will return and again seek their kindness, and you will meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be renewed, and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of destruction. ”

“ The sensualist riots in the haunts of dissipation. The criminal sees the dungeon or the gallows. The awakened sinner beholds the flames of hell, or looks upon the sceptre of pardon; and the Christian anticipates heavenly joy. ”

“ When you come into the presence of some prominent man, remember that Another [1] looks from above on what is taking place, and that you must please Him rather than this man. He, then, who is above asks of you, "In your school what did you call exile and imprisonment and bonds and death and disrepute?" ”

“ I attempt to struggle, would pit the abounding strength of my youth against the woman and subdue her. In vain! I can think, I can act, no longer. My whole being is in a swoon, and I am conscious of nothing but two icy lips pressed upon mine with a vehemence calculated to draw my very life out of me. ”

“ Deeply feeling our situation as convicts, having violated laws both human and divine, it behoves us to reflect seriously on our past conduct, and endeavour to make such reparation as is still within our humble power. Animated with these sentiments, we consider it our first and paramount duty to pay that homage and adoration to the supreme Ruler of the universe, which the Creator expects from the creature. When all our visionary plans had terminated in disappointment, shame, and misery, the just sentence of exile made our wretched condition 65incapable of receiving any increase. ”

“ Are you ready to accept these humiliating conditions, and to be branded as traitors and cowards?’
“‘Never,’ we answered; ‘never! Rather proscription, ruin and death.’
“‘My friends,’ he added, ‘exile is ruin; it is despair, it is desolation. Pause a while and reflect, before forming your resolve.’
“Not one of us flinched, and without hesitancy, we all cried out: ‘Rather than disown our mother country and become apostates, let exile, let ruin, let death, be our lot.’
“‘Your answer is noble and generous, my good friends, and your resolve is sublime,’ said he; ‘then let exile be our [Pg 57] lot. ”

“ Dreams that touch the times, belong to anxious brains like mine, troublous as my checkered life, with danger and alarm. Thine are of thyself, of love and selfish gain, intrigues with traitor wenches of my Court that pay me hollow homage, and take the pay of France, or Philip, or the Queen of Scots, or even thyself! ”

“ So that excommunication is made use of, not as a punishment only, but as a remedy; that sinners, seeing the evil state they are in, being deprived of all hopes of salvation while they are out of the Church, may desire to be restored to God's grace, from which they are fallen, that they may work out their salvation with more fear for the time to come. ”

“ I see all the captious jealousy of conscious usurpation dreaded, detested, and obeyed—the giddiness and intoxication of splendid but unmerited success—the arrogance, the presumption, the self-will of unlimited and idolized power, and—more dreadful than all in the plenitude of authority—the restless and incessant activity of guilty but unsated ambition. ”

“ Thus she multiplied her whoredoms, repeated her former whoredoms, and encouraged herself to close with present temptations, by calling to remembrance the days of her youth. Note, Those who, instead of reflecting upon their former sins with sorrow and shame, reflect upon them with pleasure and pride, contract new guilt thereby, strengthen their own corruptions, and in effect bid defiance to repentance. ”

“ Because it is hopeless to try to shake off an excommunication only by saying that we're damned by blacker things than ourselves; and that the damned are those who admit they're of the damned. Inertia and hypnosis are too strong for us. ”

“ This, again, is an absurd doctrine; for, if the transgression was done through weakness, then, let us not be arrogant and too hard on the poor soul, lest we commit a worse fault.
Not the weak, but the corrupt members are cut off, lest they corrupt the others. Of such unscriptural doctrines and practices I want to be clear. I desire that excommunication be practiced in a sincere, paternal spirit, in faithful love, according to the doctrine of Christ and his apostles, as I have abundantly declared in my writings, for over five years. ”

“ We occasionally see the Exile in better moods, when he listened to the voice of reason, and thought less of the annoyances inseparable from the state to which his ambition, or as he himself always averred, his destiny, had reduced him. ”

“ They felt themselves excommunicated, whether justly or not, from the world and its institutions, and knew too well that society, and the laws by which it is regulated and protected, were hunting them like beasts of prey for their destruction. ”

“ There, in the midst of ruthless foes, a thousand miles away from home and its endearments, we stood wet, ragged, and forlorn; chained, yes, chained together, like felons, like oxen, like wild beasts. Had it not been for the comforting spirit of God, I am certain that I should have sunk at this juncture with despair ”

“ But, thank God! I hindered him. The consequences, if he got it into his possession, awoke in me a boldness at which I have trembled a score of times since then. Had there been time for cold thought I might have given it to him meekly, obsessed with that unconquerable force that is behind the minions of the Inquisition. ”

“ With these exceptions, the whole human race is open to thy destruction, and thou must omit no possible means, (but at all times dependent upon the omens by which we are guided,) to compass their destruction. I have now finished: you are become a Thug; and what remains of thy profession will be shown to thee by our Gooroo, who will, under the necessary ceremonies, instruct thee in its details. ”