Chapter I: Part 1

FLAXIUS

LEAVES FROM THE LIFE OF AN IMMORTAL

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND

AUTHOR OF ‘THE BREITMANN BALLADS,’ ETC.

LONDON

PHILIP WELLBY

6 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN

1902

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, (late) Printers to Her Majesty

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

FLAXIUS AND THE FAIRY

FLAXIUS AND THE GOD

FLAXIUS AND ROOSEVELDT

FLAXIUS AND HAMLET

HOW FLAXIUS MADE THE FORTUNE OF EADWARD THE GRANDSON OF AEOLFRIC

FLAXIUS AND ASMODEUS

FLAXIUS IN FLORENCE

FLAXIUS AND THE EMPEROR JULIAN

FLAXIUS IN HADES

FLAXIUS AND ADELINDÈ

FLAXIUS AND THE WERE-WOLF

FLAXIUS AND BREITMANN

FLAXIUS IN INDIA

THE WONDERFUL STORY OF MISS JESABELLE ROCKHARD

HOW FLAXIUS SAT AS JUDGE WITH A JURY OF TWELVE DEVILS

FLAXIUS AND THE BOOKSELLER

FLAXIUS IN THE FUTURE

THE EVANISHMENT OF FLAXIUS

BREITMANN’S LAST BALLAD

FIRST WORDS

THE _raison d’être_, cause for existence, and origin of this book, may be found in the following extract from a review of the _Florentine Legends_, which appeared in the _Daily Chronicle_ of June 19, 1895:--

‘Mr. Leland frequently refers throughout his narratives to a certain Flaxius. We were somewhat puzzled as to whom this Flaxius might be, until we came across the statement that the author had once begun a book entitled, _The Experiences of Flaxius the Immortal_. The reflections of the Immortal are quoted extensively in this volume, and we can only say we wish the Flaxius project a happy ending, and would not be surprised if the new sage, racy of Italian soil, as he appears to be, should even a little eclipse Mr. Leland’s old hero of Lager beer celebrity.’

For which kind word all thanks, and from the heart, since it suggested what had never been seriously thought of; for, in truth, the experiences had no more been written than the books which appear in the catalogue of the library given in the _Chronicle_ of Pantagruel. Now, I have had all my life a strange love for works on varied subjects, in unity of style, even as in Mendelssohn’s _Songs without Words_ there are many melodies forming one work. Such were the best sketches of Irving, and such was my first original venture, _Meister Karl’s Sketch-Book_, which had the remarkable fortune to attract, most unexpectedly, a very kind letter on it from Washington Irving, and subsequently another of seven large closely written pages, critical and laudatory, from Lord Bulwer Lytton, the novelist, who, with all modesty be it said, took several palpable hints from it for his _Kenelm Chillingly_, into which he introduced me under a pseudonym, as a small _memento_. And it is in this style that the present work is composed of different stories, which, however, make one _parure_, or, changing the metaphor, of varied dishes in one dinner met.

I beg the reader to pardon this fond disquisition, but it is natural for an author to think fondly of his first work, as it is for a mother to do the same by her first-born; and I was the more influenced to do so by its having been in the same _genre_ as the present volume.

The comparison, made by the reviewer of the _Chronicle_, between the warrior-bard Hans Breitmann and his possible rival Flaxius, suggested the idea of making the two meet in this volume, the result of which encounter is two Breitmann ballads, never before published, with others which had indeed appeared casually in another form, but not as yet in any edition of the poems, and which will be assuredly new to most of my readers. And as these later lays--of which I have only given a specimen--all turn on marvellous mediæval legends of magic, I will mention, by way of _avant-courier_, that I have in manuscript, and have been writing or revising this thirty years, a curious collection of _Ballads of Witchcraft and Songs of Sorcery_, which I cannot but think would greatly please all lovers of _occulta_, and which will be published should sign be given that it would be wanted by the public.

I would end by recording that this work is most kindly and cordially dedicated to certain friends who have greatly aided me at different times in collecting Italian folk-lore, that is to say, to Miss Roma Lister, who was from the first specially interested in Flaxius, and to Mrs. Tessa Arbuthnot; whereunto I might add the names of all who have for many years and in many ways shown friendship and cordial kindness--of late in sad trials by illness--to whom be all thanks.

CHARLES GODFREY LELAND.

FLORENCE, _June 1902_.

FLAXIUS AND THE FAIRY

OR, HOW HE BECAME AN IMMORTAL

‘This work is a collection of Fables.’--_Sir Roger Lestrange._

‘There is no expression of politeness but has its root in the moral nature of man.’--_Goethe._

‘There is no policy like politeness, and a good manner is the best thing in the world, either to get a good name or to supply the want of it.’--_Bulwer Lytton._

‘Politeness is like Generosity; nay, I am not sure that it is not Generosity itself. But neither deserves respect unless perfectly innate--unaffected and natural.’--_L’Accademia._

LONG ago, when Time was in its early dawn--_à prima pueritia_, or in its pink infancy--Flaxius the Neophyte was also in his youth; for which reason he and the world got on very well together. He was far from having attained to high magic, though of an eminently respectable old priestly-sorcering family, and of fairy descent, but he had in him those qualities which in any age advance the man who gets a fair trial. And that we may the better understand what these qualities were, I will narrate the first bud of incident, or rosy adventure, by which it befell that he too rose in life.

It happened one day that on the annual holiday or festival of Volterra, in the first Etruscan age, lied about by Inghirami, Flaxius saw in the street, among the many in the middle distance, a girl who was, _à prima vista_, evidently not respectable, or was rather so far from it that it might not have been said, _habet pudicitiam in propatulo_. Yet there was nothing arrogantly offensive in the poor thing; she seemed to be of that kind whose whole life, like the donkey’s, is a sad, mute speech to the effect: ‘If you don’t care for me--and I’m not astonished that you don’t--then don’t speak to me, but pray do not abuse me, for I can’t help it--indeed I can’t.’

This silent-violet eloquence was, however, lost on a group of two or three rude young men and girls who came howling along in high, red-poppy spirits, and who, seeing the poor forlorn creature, proceeded to hoot her in the manner peculiar to the virtuous vulgar of all ages, by hurling at her terms intended to make her feel deeply that she was indeed that which her sad attire proclaimed her to be.

‘And out of the way of your betters, O Dirt, and into the dirt!’ cried a youth, giving a bump to the Moral Calamity, which sent her reeling, so that she indeed fell in the mud of the street, at which all roared with laughter.

Now in all the country round there was not a taller or more robust bull of a young man than Flaxius, and seeing this, he gave the Guardian or Vindicator of Morals and Holy Virtue a blow which levelled him likewise in the grey dirt, and with as little difficulty sent the rest flying; for there was that in his patrician appearance, quite as much as in his iron strength, which inspired fear. He picked up the girl, bade her be of good cheer, and not mind what had happened; there was something marvellously moving and honey-comforting in his tone of voice, which snatched a grace beyond the reach of skill.

It is an art little known now to the world, that of the voice trained to woo and win feeling, to inspire awe and emotion by musical tone--but it formed a part of cultured magic in early times, and Flaxius was at the head of the class in Enchanting natural elocution and Musical morality.

... And furthermore bestowed on her a silver coin, and was about to depart, when the girl astonished him by saying, in tones as marked and deeply magical as his own:

‘Why did you pity me?’

Flaxius replied, ‘Because you, doing no one injustice, were unjustly treated.’

‘Do you not see what I am?’

‘I see nothing beyond what I behold in all human beings, one cast by fate or chance into a certain life. And few indeed are what they fain would be.’

‘Then you despise no one?’

‘I very deeply despise all who make no effort to know or do what is _better_. I despise all who can only--I say _only_--realise their own dignity in the abasement of others. I despise the man who requires to own slaves in order to know that he is free.... I feel....’

‘There are not many who feel as you do,’ replied the girl. And this time in the voice Flaxius recognised that he was indeed speaking to a _magia_, or one of the initiated in high wisdom. Therefore he was not astonished to see in her eyes a strange and as yet unperceived expression of marvellous intellect and electric beauty, and note a divine dignity and grace in her carriage. She signed to him to follow her, and he obeyed.

‘No, there are yet few,’ he answered, ‘but there will ever be more and more in the ages to come. I would that I could live to see the time when all slavery and social injustice will disappear. But will it ever be?’

‘Who knows,’ replied his companion. ‘Who knows how long we may live, or how bad or good the world may become, or anything?’

‘Do not the gods know?’ said Flaxius, amazed.

‘Who knows what the gods know?’ replied the _magia_. ‘They do not even know what they know themselves.’

By this high time the pair had passed as if by enchantment, or in a dream, into a strange mountain country, unknown to Flaxius. Wilder grew the rocks and road until they came to a marvellous place where the cliffs were like a vast range of rude castles all in one. As they approached, Flaxius saw them change to magnificent ancient structures. Then they entered a golden door, and soon were in a splendidly furnished apartment. The _magia_ was now a being of unearthly beauty, robed in light. Before her Flaxius forgot--it is to be desired that modern realists would do the same--even the transcendental upholstery.

‘Remarkable Young Man,’ said the beautiful being (pray be it noted by the reader that all the phrases here given are far more poetic in Etruscan), ‘I have brought you hither on important business.’

‘At your command, Daughter of the Most Beautiful,’ replied Flaxius. This was a delicate compliment, according to magic, for it was from a high formula of worship, and was therefore tenderly blasphemous in the genitive. The lady smiled subjectively, not with her face, but in her intonation, as she replied in the ablative absolute:

‘Know that I was this day what I was, for being what those were who insulted me, and truly in being every whit as base as they.’

‘This is a kind of poem,’ reflected Flaxius. [A great many of the lyrics of that age were riddles, like some of the songs, and not a few of the novelettes of the present time, to say nothing of Browning.]

‘I was doing a deserved penance, from which you rescued me. Listen! I was born of the fairy race, but by long study, penance, and prayer to the Sublimities, rose to the higher order of spirits, beyond which are the minor gods, such as those to whom the great deities assign specialties in nature, or even in mortal life. My protectress was _Thana_, the chaste goddess of the moon, or Diana, and as power was to be gained by renouncing pleasure, I became proud of maiden _virtue_, believing it was a virtue in itself, and not one of the means thereto.’

‘More and more interesting,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘And a neat distinction!’

‘And one day, in my vanity, I insulted one of the beautiful attendants on Turan or Venus, the Goddess of Beauty and Love; for I reviled a Lasa, or one of the spirits who are attendants on and mistresses of the souls which come from earth. Yes, I insulted her, much as I was this day insulted by the mob. There was an appeal to the gods, and Tinia, the Lord of All, sentenced me to assume the mortal form in which you to-day first beheld me, and to endure the insults of men till I should learn higher truth, and until I should meet with a mortal who would treat me sincerely with true humanity. This I have done, and now I am not only freed from penance, but find myself advanced far beyond what I was,--going in golden glory ever on. Yet I say, in truth, that I did not suffer once or in the least as a mortal, from the time that I was struck by the great truth in all its branches, that no one should be condemned for being what one is by fate, and that Inferno is not too bad for a prurient prude on the prowl.

‘But to _you_, who were in this my master, I owe great gratitude. By penance and prayer I have accumulated much power which I proposed to devote to advancing myself to higher lives. But it shall go to you in the form of two wishes. I can wait for more and work a while longer. Ask for whatever you can imagine, such as a mortal may require--wealth or power, choose!’

‘Your ladyship,’ replied Flaxius, ‘is decidedly determined to prove that in this world the less a man does, the better he is paid for it. Having been already rewarded a millionfold by the sight of your superb beauty, for what I declare in all sincerity seems to me to be a mere little street incident, in which I casually comported myself as a simply decent man should, I am, of course, to receive further recompense beyond all human conception. ’Tis the rule. So be it! Yet I pray you, most Beautifully Grateful, do not ascribe it to modesty or virtue if I am not extravagant in my desire. I have heard of a man who having been offered a wish by a god, forthwith wished that his future wishes might all be granted. Cunning, that! And they were all granted, so that in the end he became the most miserable creature on earth, and ended by wishing himself to the devil, and got there, as must befall most mortals who get all they want. Now as you, O Beyond-all-Dreams, are inconceivably my superior in wisdom, it occurs to me that a single wish guided by your sagacity would be more to my benefit than a thousand emanating from my weak mind. Therefore, for a beginning, I wish that your Divine Loveliness would kindly tell me what my second wish should be.’

‘There is in that wish,’ replied the spirit, ‘a combination of generosity, courtesy, and gratitude, such as a first-class god need not be ashamed of. Well, I will choose for you a wish that would suit few men. You shall live on earth, a philosopher, but ever in manly strength and health, as long as you will, and to the end of time if you choose it. You will see and feel so deeply into Nature--as I can well foresee--that the passing away of other mortals, races, or kingdoms, will be but as the passing away of other guests from a hostelry, or as clouds from the sky. For to such as you are, O Humorist! to live on earth or in heaven, amid ghosts or gods, would in the end be all one and the same; you would note it all with curious observation, and be the same unchanged in every age. For to him who has like unto thee attained to seeing things absolutely as they _are_--gods or geese are all one and the same.’

‘What a stupendous truth!’ thought Flaxius, ‘and how beautifully expressed! I could go on listening to this lady till I should grow thirsty--for fame!’

‘And they _are_ all one and the same,’ continued the spirit-lady, ‘to him who is honest--which always means generous; they are all one and the same to the upright or charitable. How do you like your gift?’

‘I am delighted, O my Eyes, beyond all expression, and now see how wise I was to trust to your higher wisdom. To tell the truth, O Diva, I was dreadfully afraid lest your grace might bestow on me wealth--I detest business--unbounded dominion, ineffable winsomeness, æsthetic taste--O Rubbish!--gratified ambition--O Emetics!--and power--not being, I trust, a cad. For to tell the truth, I was fearfully afraid of all earthly blessings, and so as to secure the least of evils, resolved to take but one, as I was in politeness bound not to decline your offer of sugar-plums, and therefore choose what it seems best to you to give.’

‘You are, O philosopher,’ replied the spirit, ‘so ingenious in your generosity, that you make yourself almost discourteous. Man, I read your heart, and know that you are no more free from desire than are the gods; for to wish for nothing is to live no more. Now, will I hold you firmly, and give you more, whether you will or not. Thy first wish was no wish at all, O Flaxius; it was but a kindly gift to me to spare my power, and aid me on my road to higher life. Therefore, a wish still remains to thee, and I warn thee that the favours of the gods are not to be lightly cast aside. Therefore, make a wish now for thyself, and look that thou put into it all thy heart, and all thy self.’

‘Then, lady,’ replied Flaxius, ‘since I must ask for Something, I wish to know in what manner I can best show my gratitude to you for all this kindness.’

‘Go thy way for an incorrigible rogue!’ exclaimed the spirit, this time with a divinely genial smile on her countenance. ‘I see that thou wilt never be beaten at this game. Ages on ages hence, when thou may’st take a fancy to leave the world, there shall be inscribed on thy tomb: “Here lies Flaxius, never surpassed among men or gods in generosity, courtesy, or coolness!”’

‘And the gratitude, O Marvellous One,’ exclaimed Flaxius.

‘Thou canst show it best by remaining here as my guest, and regarding my house as a home. When weary of wandering about in the wide world, come here and rest, and ever be welcome. Here no haunting _Hintial_ or Spirit of the Shadow can cast a gloom over life; in these fairy palaces all is peace. ‘But remember, Flaxius,’ added the beautiful spirit, ‘that it is still not too late for thee to express and receive another wish. By the eternal law of the Aesir, this must be done within the fated, favourable hour when a spirit offers it. Opportunity is golden, and I ask it as a favour.’

‘Then, your Resplendent Picturesqueness and Benign Benevolence,’ replied Flaxius, quoting at hap-hazard what he could recall from the Etruscan prayer-book, and grasping desperately in earnest at the first thing he could think of which would be nice to have, or to be, ‘make me an Original Character.’

The Peri of Loveliness raised the two most beautiful little hands which Flaxius had ever seen, and slightly spreading the rosy fingers, struck them downwards abruptly, even as mortals do when they ‘give it up’ in mild despair, and are dead-locked, grassed, or gravelled.

‘I hope I utter no blasphemy against the power of the immortals,’ said the Beautiful One, ‘but I verily believe the gods themselves, O Flaxius, can add nothing to thee as thou art in that respect. O Tinia, father of the deities, ineffable, overwhelming, and unspeakable Fulminator!’ she exclaimed, with the passion of a wildly inspired divinity, ‘am I not right, and if so, give me a sign, that I speak the truth? My destiny! what _can_ one do with such a man!’

Over all Northern Italy there roared such a peal of thunder as the oldest _aruspices_ or _lucumones_ had never heard before. It rang in Rome, and rolled beyond the Alps. Vesuvius, by fair Parthenopis, answered it with the tremendous peal of an eruption, as Vulcan (termed _Sethlans_, the earthly deity of fire) answered his awful brother of the air. It drove the gods of the fields and roads, the fairies and satyrs, _silvani_, fauns, _dusii_, and all their kind, in terror to the mountain caves and forests. It pierced, like a spirit, to the depths of the darkest caverns wherein reposed the ancestors, and the dead amid the painted vases and mystic bronzes turned over in their eternal sleep; and every statue in the land was found next morning in a changed position, or bottom upwards. The _magi_ consulted the _Ars Fulguritora_, written of yore by the nymph Begoe, to translate the mighty peal, for unto them its words were a distinct language. And as they overturned the holy utterance, syllable by syllable, from the dictionary into Etruscan, it read:

‘Fear not, O daughter, for thou speakest truth:
That is about the size of it, in sooth,
For well I ween on earth no queerer _cus_
Did ever live than this thy Flaxius.’

[_Cus_, be it observed, is a terminal noun signifying a person of any
kind--as _rusticus_, _grammaticus_, _clericus_, and many other kinds
of cusses--its use here being a proof of the immense antiquity of the
Sabine Latin version of the original from which this tale is taken.]

_Ab hac origine et itinere terrestri illuc profectus est_--‘’twas thus
that Flaxius got his start in life.’ _Ab hoc disce_--‘learn from his
legend this,’ concludes the scroll:

‘Be it a slipper or be she a shrew,
Be civil to women whatever you do!’

FLAXIUS AND THE GOD

‘Every Divinity--no matter who--
Is but the ideal of an age or race
Which makes its god, though it be not with hands,
Just in the form
which it would like to wear.
And every man in this is like his age.’

AGES have passed away since Flaxius found himself one twilight in autumn in the wild Lombard land of Northern Italy. Towering far as eye could see, vast cliffs or mighty peaks sprang up like living forms, with precipiced sides falling gracefully as classic draperies; bold and strange and all unlike the rounded hills and undulating plains of other countries. Before him spread, as if into a steel-blue eternity, the shining Mediterranean; all about him seemed beautiful, cold, and strange as in a dream. The western sky was one even hue of rich, ripe orange turning into brown. Upon a distant headland rose an ancient tower, by which rested a vessel with one long, sloping sail. A chill stole o’er the whispering breeze, and the evening star shone gently forth.

And standing there high upon the mountain, the mystic magian and undying one looked around among the rocks and said:

‘Here it was that the Fairy, who is so obliging as to rule my destiny, as yonder star is said to rule the heart, bade me come at dated day and hour to meet with one, whose acquaintance, as she assured me, would prove to be remarkably interesting. Truly with all my utmost stretch of thought, be it in levelled prose or rolling poetry, I can conjure up nothing personal here, or make any spiritual bread out of these stones, but then, ’tis only purblind ignorance which vows that all is nothing which it cannot see. Now, as there is no form near me, and as I can with sorcerer’s sight see for fifty miles adown, and all around the land and sea, I opine that he, the beloved personage, to keep the tryst must come here on the wings of thought far sweeping. Light of my Soul, I give thee half an hour!’

But as Flaxius made this last remark, he observed a Cypress plant, about six feet high, with leafage reaching to the ground, a furlong distant on a cliff, was evidently moving from its place towards him, and, as it moved, was growing human in its form. The head became distinct, the shoulders next, then the lower foliage unfolded in a long dark robe.

Like all illuminati--such as you and I--Flaxius drew critical, philosophical deductions first, before examining vulgar details, in these words:

‘I wonder, now, whether the seeing saplings waving in the wind did not first suggest to man, ghosts? But this is really a Being. Fairy mine, I did not think that thou wouldst play a miracle on _me_! Thaumaturgy among us is really too bad. But perhaps,’ he added, ‘it is a fancy of the gentleman himself--habit becomes strict nature with us all.’

As the form drew near him, Flaxius recognised in the face and mien of the stranger, though it would not be apparent to the world, a Gymnosophist. So they were once termed, whom we should call Brahmins--that is, Indian sages. Evidently the stranger had come far astray into the Italian land.

Now, as Flaxius had passed a century or two of his youth in company with his friend Pythagoras in study at the leading Indian universities, he understood the stranger at a glance. Therefore he addressed him familiarly in Romany, which is a cousin to Hindi, which is a grand-daughter to Sanskrit, and therefore all in the family and generally spoken:

‘_Latcho divvus prala! Būt mishto hom dikàv tute!_’ (‘Good day, brother! Right glad I am to see thee!’)

But the stranger gravely replied in the mother of Sanskrit, or ancient Aryan of the Tertiary period:

‘I am of older race than thou hast deemed. I was among the fathers of those who first came into India from the far North, and I speak the tongue which is destined in its descendants to encircle the whole world. And thou, too, knowest it, Flaxius, as I know thee, for we have met ere now, long since, beyond the Ganges, though thou now speakest flippantly, like a mad college youth, in the language of the roads. But thou art only a boy as yet in years, and wilt learn wisdom in time. And the fairy who watches over thee has sent me here that thou mayst have a lesson which will profit thee so far as thou art wise, and redouble what there is in thee, be it small or great, and mend thy flippant speech.’

To which Flaxius humbly and gently replied, in good Sanskrit:

‘Few, indeed, O father, are the diamond dewdrops of immortality which have fallen into my vase from the infinite heaven of wisdom; barely the flavour of a taste of the Amrecta cup of true knowledge has come to me from the depth of the soundless sea of Truth, and if thou canst add to it ever so little, it will be most gratefully received. I am as one who murmurs feebly in a sleep, mid broken dreams. I pray thee, waken me to life and light!’

‘It is not from me, Flaxius,’ answered the Aryan sage, ‘that thy lesson is to come, but from one nearer allied to thee in that philosophy of life which thou art next to learn. My footsteps wander in the silent paths, far beyond humanity and the visible scope of sense; thine have not yet trodden all the ways of the world in which thou hast a part. As yet, for thee, there is perfume in the green valleys, amid violets and asphodel; for thee, birds still sing in leafy trees; for thee, the lovely nymph amid the reeds still smiles and beckons with a cautious air, and brave men welcome thee with the wine-cup in the weaponed hall; for thee is yet the ring and the crash of arms, and the joy of battle, and council among sages and kings. All of this I have left far behind me--for it was my fate. Whether to press on through the ages, or exhaust the age ere leaving it, is not a question for us. To every one let his road and ours be plain.

‘Now, as to him whom thou art here to meet. Here in this land, as indeed in many others, long ere thy Etruscan ancestors had brought Egyptian and Greek art or culture into their own rude strength and tremendous superstition and faith in ancient forms, there were men who after death became spirits, and were worshipped as gods. Yet even then, so inherent was earth in their natures, they remained of the world worldly, and existed in that nature which we of India ever aspire to transcend. Among them was one who vowed never to quit this world and human life till he had mastered its last secret.’

‘A most original and glorious god, that!’ observed Flaxius, ‘and one rather to my mind. Was he, think you, square right or round wrong?’

‘Being assumedly in his right mind, he did nothing wrong,’ answered the Aryan. ‘Nay, there is a point to come, in the dim and remote future, where our paths will meet. But, to the god himself! Look about thee, and tell me what thou seest?’

‘I behold,’ replied Flaxius, after a pause, ‘vast rocks, or remnants, as it seems on closer look, of some tremendous architecture of long lost ages, of rudest form, yet worked with giant will, so worn by time and so tossed in confusion that few would trace in them the hand of man. I myself did not at first observe that these were ruins of some massy building.’

‘What modern culture would not note,’ replied the Aryan, ‘has, however, been retained in popular tradition, for the wild shepherd who pastures his goats amid these rocks, or the old crones while spindling in their shade, record, in what has been called the “Gospel of the Distaff,” tales of a time when there was a mighty temple in this spot--a marvellous building of high walls and towers, from whose lofty summit men beheld the sun while it was still dark on earth, or, as legend grows in greatness, all night long. This tale their ancestors brought from the icy North, where, indeed, it is true enough in a way, and ever will be.

‘Therein dwelt the god, who had been a mighty man, uniting in himself all that was of the earth earthy, of human craft most crafty, of strength the strongest, of honeyed sweetness the most sweet, of mortal bitterness, the bitterest. He gave himself unto the very life of the life of what the Egyptian Hermes has called the downward-borne elements of God; but suffered not a fibre, a breath of that which transcends life--or what we call the spiritual or divine--to mingle with, or enter into his sphere. Hence, dealing only with material things, he found that all things material do somewhere clash or fail, and that, however high human thoughts may rise, there is always some higher point whence they appear as mockeries and failures, or foolish incompletions. He ended--supposing an end--by seeing in all things that which, beginning as almost senseless fun, and witless laughter in apes and boors, rises to humour and true wit in culture, flits as the paradox o’er many a problem of life, thrills or charms or terrifies as contrast or contradiction in the struggle of forces, appals and bewilders us in the agony and suffering, pain and tragedy of the elements and man, and ends all in death and new birth. To him in all is one stupendous humour, whether in laughter or in weeping, or in the deepest human wisdom--for in all lies _the paradox_ always visible from some point to the god.’

‘Verily,’ observed Flaxius, ‘_that_ is having a keen perception of a joke on a tremendous scale. And considering that all nature hath as yet appeared to me as consisting principally of conundrums, I should infer that our god will find no lack of work or of amusement for some time to come. Truly, I begin to surmise that there is more wisdom in the world than the wisest are aware of, and that the greater we become the greater are our jests and the more poetic our _quodlibets_; yea and that even a pun may be so sublime that a church may be founded on it. It has indeed occurred to me many a time that many a doctrine, creed or law divine, for which myriads of lives have been lost, is all _bosh_, as ye say in your ancient Indian tongue, ‘mere noise and nonsense.’ Like bricks set in a row on end by children, they only knock one another down in due succession at the last.

‘Therefore Humour in its highest and holiest, or most diabolical sense, is the one true _aurea catena_, or golden chain which runs through all things, so far as man can know them. Yes, it is like a tremendous rock which I once saw even in thy native land, O Sage. It overhung the road so terribly that the heart of him who passed under it quaked with fear, but when it was passed, men, looking backwards, beheld that in the sunshine it wore the form of a great grotesque face beaming with winky laughter.’

‘Thou dost indeed rise to the occasion, Flaxius,’ replied the Sage, with an expression which seemed almost like the reflected, far-away, dim phantom of a pre-historic smile. It was his first for seven hundred and fifty-three years, reckoning from the fifteenth of August, which is the Ascension Day of Buddha. ‘Almost thou persuadest me that the god has a convert ready-baked to his hand. But it is past the sunset, and I know that we are awaited. Follow me!’

He led the way along a winding path or easy footway, now beside vast, uplifted stones, now by the edges of tremendous cliffs, at whose base, far below, was heard the sound of a torrent, like human voices laughing together; overhead leaned, far out, graceful trees or shrubs, like daring girls seeking to look below for coming lovers--kneeling on tufts of waving mountain vines, softly lighted by the stars and rising moon.

The breeze came from the sea to woo the night, and its cool breath was pleasant to the giant-like young Etruscan, but the Indian sage drew his cloak about him, and as he seated himself on a stone said:

‘Yet a few minutes and we shall be before the ancient god. Know that long ago, even during the days of the earliest dwellers in Italy, there was a civilisation which far transcended that of savages, for wherever there is a race with genius there will be work, however rude, to prove it. At that time, the spirit of whom I spoke had here a temple. Then in a later age, when other races such as thine, O Flaxius, invaded Italy, these people, forewarned by divinity, left the marvellous image brought from some Asian clime in which their deity had dwelt, and, walling up the shrine with utmost care, laboured long to destroy all outward traces of man’s work, and fled.

‘Then the god, who had before ever been present in the statue, also left the cave. But once a year does he return to it, to revivify that which was once himself, unto mankind, even as in all countries feudal possessions are held by the tenure of annual presence and the performance of some deed. And the performance to which he is pledged, is to answer to such words as may be spoken to him, which indeed are few and far between, since among the spiritual and Theosophists, there are not many who care for such inveterate old heathenism, and hard-pressed, material, firm-baked worldliness as his.

‘Thou, O Flaxius, having by mortal virtue won the grace of an immortal _Fata_, or celestial fairy who is well nigh one of the gods, hast had the strange chance of a man who is to be perfected in worldly wisdom, and therefore art sent to confer with him who mastered it in the past. Long it is, I ween, since he ever saw before his shrine such a neophyte as thou art!’

‘And now let us enter!’

Saying this, he pressed aside the boughs and leaves of a dense thicket or copse, finding again a passage, till he came to what seemed to be a bare wall of rock. Here, he tapped thrice with his staff, whereupon a door opened, and they entered a wide-arched hall illuminated by a very soft and brilliant light, whose source was not visible, but seemed to be in the air itself. A single and silent form, that of a youth of beautiful, but strange type, as of another race, led them to the baths, where they found, after their ablutions in perfumed water, fresh linen garments ready for them. They were then taken to another apartment where a meal was spread. It gave no great promise, being simply a cake for each, with wine, which, however, in no wise astonished sages who knew the secrets of transcendental cookery, and of draughts distilled with Rosicrucian skill. And then, being greatly refreshed, the Aryan spoke once more:

‘Thou wilt now behold the god, and I bid and beg thee earnestly, that thou, ere speaking, wilt consider long and very seriously his countenance, following it to the very depths of its expression, and through all the shadows and tones of meaning which it awakens in thy memory or imagination. Now if thou art, as becomes a true student of wisdom, keenly perceptive of the soul in the face--that is, a genuine physiognomist--then wilt thou, with the aid of what I have told thee, know enough to learn more.’

And with this they went into a great hall. At the further end, in a wonderfully quaint shrine, which seemed like a dense swarm of blinking jewels and living gems swimming in gold, was a most marvellous image. It was apparently of some strange creamy-white or ivory-like material, browned or veined by great antiquity into rich dark tones and blending polished hues, as if time had completed on it with unusual care the daintiest part of the hand-work of the artist. One would think it had been made by Keats. In the form itself there was manifest a most archaic rudeness; there was in it nothing of the divine grace of the Greek, and yet it had not the ugliness of the old traditional forms of the Egyptian, for he who made it had gone straight to nature, copying what he saw there without convention. It was the converse of art.

Flaxius bowed low before the form; the Aryan prostrated himself flat on the ground, uttering a fervent prayer in many strophes, burning incense withal, and chanting an invocation. But the young Etruscan gazed boldly at the god, steadily and without fear, as a Norse champion might have gazed at Odin or Thor, had either faced him. And as the mystic light shone on the deeply inscrutable countenance of the Aryan sage and the splendid self-confidence and jovial air of Flaxius, like an Asiatic pre-figuring of the Roman or of the race predestined to conquer the world,--and finally on the marvellous mystery of the god, the wisest observer might well have thought that even in those days such a trio was without its equal on earth. There they were, even as they are to-day: the transcendental Oriental, the vigorous prototype of the coming Europe, and the obscuring image of the giant Past--a goodly picture for the artist who could do it justice!

And what Flaxius first beheld in the face was the coarse and laughing look, not even of the lowest faun or satyr, but of a boor or clown ‘grinning through a horse-collar,’ such as I have seen in a head of the fourteenth century in an old hall in Herefordshire: a look changing, an instant later, into the expression of a devil, with an unutterable depth of malice and despair, as of lunacy in man. But whether it was the play of the mystic light, or of something more marvellous within, he suddenly saw a new soul in it, as of a higher and more cultured fiend--a Mephistopheles who denied all things and smiled on all; and yet it was the same face, and anon there came insensibly the expression of the sage who, cold and calm, observes all human error and earthly change, like one studying insoluble problems.

‘Now we have come,’ thought Flaxius, ‘to the earliest Greek philosophers, Cynic and Stoic and Epicurean--sunshine on ice!’

And anon it was the poet, seeking his similes and correspondences in nature and man, caring not, so that he found the beautiful and vivid, how contradictory the elements might be.

‘Ha! art thou there, Hesiod--or is it Homer--or Sappho--or seest thou thy singers of the Mahabarata and Kalidasa?’ inquired Flaxius of the Indian. ‘Yes--’tis all the same--the simile and the antithesis--the contradiction and anomaly which point man’s highest poetry.’

But the face was ever the same nor had it changed.

‘And last of all I see the seeker into all,’ reflected Flaxius. ‘He who from the lowest sense of incongruity, as from the deepest agony of passion and faith, from the highest truth evolved by philosophy, as from the whirling million-folded threads of the garment of God, draws only the conclusion of strife and absurd change. The eternal Wheel of the Law, held by a laughing fiend--all is Humour--and thus endeth the first lesson!’

Then he spoke to the god.

‘I perceive that I can see in thee no more, since I have got back to my beginning. Doubtless there are in thee higher phases which I, the mere pupil, cannot perceive. All of us cannot fathom everything. But what I have learned during this past hour transcends all that I knew before, and I must live ages upon earth to master it. Humour is the perception of incongruity and imperfection, of contrasts and errors; the truest humorist is he who sees it with the most philosophy and truth.’

There was silence, and then there came a deep yet soft and solemn voice from the god:

‘Thou hast learned all which I expected from thee--now learn to live in life, and take it as it comes, since gods and men are all subject to the same laws. _Seek_ continually. Knowledge is the soil which when well cultivated yields the grain by which thou canst live. Children, go in peace, I have spoken!’

* * * * *

‘He spoke well,’ said the Aryan sage; ‘very well, but not beyond his past. Mine is another road. The true and far-advanced sage, my Flaxius, can by penance and contemplation rise through the ages far above all changes and contradictions of nature and of matter, and pass through the Gate of Nirvana--to eternal and unchangeable peace and happiness. Whether it be, as some suppose, into absorption with the highest happiness, or to pursue new fields of individual actions beyond all that intellect has ever dreamed, I know not, but that he can escape thereby the miseries of change, I _do_ believe.’

‘But that is only for one in millions,’ remarked Flaxius.

‘Eternity is long,’ replied the Sage.

‘I think,’ answered the Etruscan, ‘that as all truth is three-fold, there may be yet a third way. What it is I truly do not know, but I will think of it. Meanwhile I have enough to do for many a year, in following out what I this night have learned. Before I endeavour to excel in the higher heavenly mathematics and celestial algebra and transcendental curves and equations, I will first master this earthly arithmetic. Perhaps a few of your sages might find the gate of Nirvana sooner if they would do so. You Theosophists forget that you are here in this world as ants, and that the visions and thoughts of the eagle--however grand and fine they may be--are misplaced in the emmet. Speculations in billions of æons and millions of millenniums and blue eternities are folly for men whose manifest measure of black and white time is the change of day and night, the course of seasons and the path of years. You narrate minutely what occurred for thousands of Kalpacs to the gods, yet cannot trace your own human history accurately for more than a few centuries. To me it seems that knowledge--like charity--should begin at home. And like unto it, friend, but even worse, do I find your esoteric reincarnation. The gradual evolution of all men through revolving cycles, which requires for ‘complete unfoldment’ a solar system on the seven principles through each of which the soul makes seven rounds, in seven races, and so on through seventy times seven sevenings, with seven times seventy new senses, seasonings, and so on, ere you can get the human being into good form, reminds one very much of the machine depicted by Hogarth. There are in it steel wheels and springs, cogs, latchets, levers, eccentrics, valves, and God knows what all--to draw a cork!

‘You reply that Eternity is long, and by that saying you refute yourself. For life seems to be all to him who is in it. And you require man to master, study, understand, and in life live up to a system which he can only comprehend, or do anything with in a million of years. Wherein, O friend, thou art illogical.

‘And yet, O Aryan, I thank thy faith, for the time was not quite lost which I spent in studying it. For even as oysters lead to soup, and soup to fish and good _pièces de résistance_, or beef and game, so do I prophetically foresee that this thy Indian soup of speculation will lead to German metaphysics, which will conduce to the fish of a _Natur-philosophie_, which will bring man to the English roast beef of Darwin and Huxley, and solid pudding thereunto.

‘And I thank thee for introducing me to this god, in whom I find incarnate the moral aspect of the mere materialism in which I, for the time, live, move, and have my being. Truly, it is not quite enough for one who would fain think that ’tis not all of life to live, nor all of death to die, but it is all in all sufficient for the disciple of Epicurus and Lucretius, which it is well to be for once in life’s journey, wherein we must sometimes stop in queer inns of Hedonism.

‘Now may we in the ages often meet! Farewell until our paths again are one!’

And with this each went his way again into life.

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote the great master as a note, ‘this legend teacheth a lesson which may peradventure not be unto all quite so plain as a fly in a milk-pan, or the sun at noon-day, _oculis subjecta fidelibus_, or “before our werry eyes,” as the elder Weller hath it, or as intelligible as one-third of the sermon of Arlotto was to himself--_che n’intese lui_--for which reason, O refined reader, I will explain it to thee! The ancient godkin whom I did interview represents the practical wisdom of life as based on a narrow materialism which sees in all things only atoms and chance, and believes that nature does but carry out things to a certain extent when they fail, or roll the stone up a hill, whence it comes tumbling back on Sisyphus. Therefore his worshippers found in life only contradictions--and paradoxes without end. Now it is true that these abound in life, and are the soul of humour and of poetry, and exist from laughter up to sublimity in everything material--yet is this crude materialism far away different from that Evolution which I afterwards learned, which goes deeper than atoms, and believes in infinite progress from stage to stage, in ideals, and the ever-advancing power of volitional consciousness or human will. In the course of progress through the ages, paradoxes disappear, or else are succeeded by high and nobler and purer forms of the complex and contradictory.’

FLAXIUS AND ROOSEVELDT

‘When Julius Cæsar gave the deputies
From Gaul their rights and treated them as men,
All Rome roared out in rage, because in Rome
All foreigners were held as vile and low:
And thus it was that Cæsar showed himself
Most perfectly the bravest of mankind,
And fittest man of all to rule the state.’

_Comment by Miss Winifrede Orr, on the following chapter._

‘And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying: This man receiveth
sinners, and eateth with them.’--_St. Luke_, xv. 2.

THE wise and great Flaxius in his steps from century to century did much to endear himself to the men of the present, who take a pride in their northern ancestry. For when no elegant Roman scholar would have given a rusty denarius to know what was going on in the whole world, north of Italy, our sage made himself intimate with Odin and Thor, not to mention the God Frey (whose name is yet borne by descendants of the old stock), had been favoured by Freya, had read the first edition of the Edda scraped in runes on birch-bark, had suggested emendations in it, and so on. He was a great friend of Olaf Tryggvason, whose true history, and it is a marvellous one, yet remains to be written. And here-and-thereing about, it happened that he came into the Netherlands, where he made acquaintance with King Gambrinus the inventor of beer. But, in fact, it was Flaxius who, having in India learned from Vishnu the art of brewing _Soma_, which is now generally agreed to have been India pale ale, taught him the secret. And not to digress, I would here note that Bass has his name from Bassaro, a place in Lydia, where Bacchus had a temple, which name is supposed to be derived from the Hebrew _Bassar_, to gather in a vintage, because in those days beer was regarded as a sort of wine, an idea still preserved by German poets, who call it barley-wine. As for ale, Flaxius affirms that it is found in the marvellous myth of Ale-sia, a city of Sicily, where there was a fountain, which foamed up joyously at the sound of music, so that the froth ran over the brim, just as Lager is believed to foam in the glass when students sing. For which the reader may consult Pliny (_lib._ 3), and Solinus. As for the Lager, I have witnessed that miracle myself--and hope to see it again. And it is also true, as it is lovely, that the beautiful, clear Pilsener beer, as well as that of Vienna, will leap up in joyous bubbles when it hears an orchestra play, as ye may see for yourselves, according to Puttuli, if you chance to be present when it occurs! And it is for this reason that the Cup of the Winds, which is before me as I write, a goblet of the tenth century, carved from wood, and undoubtedly a Lombard beer-cup, has on it the four Modes in music, each represented by a female figure playing on a musical instrument, and all their skirts blowing in a high wind, to signify _aria_ or melody, which is a pun in wood, even as the Catholic Church is one in stone. _Ergo bibamus!_

And while thus up-and-downing in the North, Flaxius came to Holland, which had at that time been but recently taken by the Dutch. Now at this particular period, or P. P., as a friend of mine used to denote the great dates in the margin of his history, the Netherlands were under the dominion of Siegfried the Dragon-killer (as you may learn from Wagner’s opera), who had for a wife eventually the fair Chriemhilde, so sweetly described in the _Book of Heroes_:

‘Her heart in beauty burning--a ruddy ruby shone.
The gleaming of her eyelets was like the glowing moon.
She clad herself in roses and pearls as bright and rare:
Yet none came to the maiden to give her comfort there.

She was right fair of figure and slender in the waist,
Like to a golden lustre, naught in her form misplaced;
Her hands and fingers perfect, each unto either trim;
Her nails so white and shining, you could see yourself therein.

Her hair was bound in beauty with noble silken twine,
She let it flow a-downward, that lovely maiden fine.
She wore a crown with jewels, and all of gold so red.
Of Elberich the Dwarfling she had in truth great need.

And in that crown bright shining lay a carbùncle stone,
Which even in the palace like a bright topaz shone.
Upon her head the ringlets in glossy masses lay;
They gleamed as clear and brightly as doth the sun by day.

She stood alone, unheeded, right sorrowful her mood.
How beautiful her colour, it was like milk and blood;
And through her locks so purely the neck shone white as snow.
Ah! Elberich the Little felt deep the maiden’s woe.’

Then in time her sorrow was relieved, and amid the conflicting jar of legendary songs, it appeared that she married Siegfried. But her great deed was to lay out a glorious and wonderful garden of roses, or Rooseveldt, in German Rosengarten, of which Carlyle writes: