Chapter VIII: Part 8

‘And what do they talk about?’ inquired Jesabelle.

‘Well,’ answered the gypsy with a smile, ‘mostly about how one has been sent to _staripen_, or prison, for stealin’--and what a fool he was to let himself be took--and how other folks has run off with one another wives, and the like um-moralitys, and how some larrups their _romis_, or _morts_, which is wives and missuses, and all such little _rakapen_ or gossip--and that’s what I calls society.’

‘_C’est tout comme chez nous_,’ remarked Miss Rockhard. ‘Here is your sixpence, Amalthea. Decidedly I will take to novelling.’

* * * * *

It was a magnificent success, as great as the toilets had been, and to Miss Jesabelle in her new mind infinitely more gratifying. She didn’t deserve it, good people may say, but somehow Jesabelle _did_ write brilliant books, and rose to the top of the wave. Even the incident of the evening at the duchess’s was now narrated as an eccentricity of genius, and when it was mentioned men in the clubs said: ‘Ah, my dear fellow, excuse me, you haven’t got the right rendering of that story.’ Finally it settled into two versions: one of the sporting world, which found its way into the _Blue ‘Un_, that ‘Jes’ had done it for a wager, which was in a way true; and the other more humane legend, that it was at the request of the duchess, who had begged her to sing the ‘Lunatic Bar-Maid’ in character.

And her novels were stinging, I warrant you. As she became amiable personally she grew savage in literature. She gave it to society and fashion _à la_ aquafortis; and as society did not see itself but only its friends in her scathing speeches, it was perfectly delighted. She did not touch lightly and gently and pityingly, as I have done, on its poor little imperfections; she ripped them up as with a scalper in the hands of a Red Indian, or a familiar tormentor of the Inquisition at a five o’clock tea. I never could learn that it did any good, for even the victims felt pride at being shown up in good company as worthy of note; but her books sold, and she was famous.

‘Heaven help their souls, they’d rather be’ _et cetera_.

* * * * *

It was more than a year after the events here narrated had taken place, and Miss Rockhard had greatly improved on her celebrity by a ‘stunning second,’ or another novel, that she found herself again at Brighton, seated as before under a white umbrella. She was reading proofs, which is of itself a bliss to a young writer, as strong minds as hers love to speak of ‘_my_ publisher,’ and this was mingled with a mild, vague impression of children digging with wooden spades, negro minstrels, ballad-singers, flower-girls, bathing-machines, the flow of a thousand voices, the broad-spreading, blue ocean, and ships far off and out at sea, with the sun upon their sails.

When lifting her eyes they encountered the gaze of another pair, which for an instant half prolonged her dreamy mood in dim conjecture, till she recognised in the other the somewhat remarkable character who had, indirectly, had such a wondrous influence on her fate. It was indeed the Great and Wise Flaxius, _in propria persona_, who had taken unto himself a pennyworth of chair at a little distance, which distance he promptly proceeded to diminish when he perceived that the lady had not forgotten him.

‘It is a long time since we first met,’ said Miss Rockhard. ‘Nearly two years.’

‘Nearly two thousand years,’ replied Flaxius in a strangely solemn voice, _wie Glocketon und Orgelklang_. ‘Yes, quite two thousand, though learned critics of the _Kethubim_ differ as to the date, and Jochanan and Ben Hillel think--but never mind! ’Tis so.’

‘And who was I then?’ inquired Miss Rockhard, entering, as she thought, into the spirit of one of Flaxius’s strange jests.

‘Truly a _femme incomprise_, and one who died, in fact, misunderstood, just as you might have done had you made your exit some two years ago, since at that time you did not really understand yourself.’

‘I think,’ replied the dear young lady, ‘that is strictly true of the whole silly sisterhood.’ She said it with a deep blush, though not a blusher in a general way, for she recalled the last interview, much in sorrow, not at all in wrath. ‘But who was I, two millennia gone by?’

‘The wife of King Ahab of the Jews, the very much distinguished Jezebel.’

Truly this was a shake for Miss Rockhard, and the blush came up as a flush somewhat heightened; yet she said with a smile:

‘I regret that you only remember me as the greatest iniquity of the Old Testament. I am curious to know if you admired me very much in that character?’

‘Not in that character, but in your true one, which, I declare sincerely and without paradox, has been most cruelly misrepresented.’

‘As it is a personal matter,’ rejoined Miss Rockhard, ‘I need not say that I am all expectancy and attention.’

‘Very well. Who is it that describes Jezebel for us? A personal enemy of extreme bitterness, and one of a race approving death and murder in any form, when any one of the _Goyim_, or Gentiles, is concerned.’

‘I never thought of that,’ said Jesabelle reflectively. ‘And religious antipathy must have been stronger among the Hebrews than in any other race, for they were strong-minded.’

‘Yes,’ replied Flaxius, ‘it is too generally lost sight of in Church histories that those who make the best martyrs are also best martyring others. But to return to Jezebel. The first and chief crime with which she is charged is remaining steadfast to that polytheistic Syrian religion in which she was brought up, and to which she was in duty bound to be attached, since her father was King of Zidon, and in a sense its head. The King of the Jews married her, and was fascinated by the charms of that splendid and sensual system which seemed so attractive, compared to the grim, Hebrew, ascetic monotheism, which gave no joyousness to this life, neither did it promise a future as did the Syrian, so that it came to pass that the greatest and wisest men among the Hebrews often adopted it, and it more than once happened that nearly all Israel went over to it.

‘Now bear in mind, my friend,’ said Flaxius with a smile, ‘that in reading the Book of Kings we generally go as in a torrent of headlong agreement with the writer, who assumes, as a matter of course, that everybody who is not a Hebrew monotheist, and an implicit believer in all that the prophets are _said to have said_, and all that is told about them, is utterly wicked beyond all sinners, and deserving death.’

‘That is true,’ assented Miss Rockhard.

‘The prophet whom Jezebel threatened in a rage because he had put to death the priests of her own religion, who were probably her intimate friends and relations, is Elijah--Elia--who with the masculine termination appears in Greek as Helios, the sun, who, like the latter, goes up to, or over, the heaven in a chariot of fire, after performing the preliminary Moses-miracle of dividing the water of a stream. I think that we may set aside Jezebel’s sins as regarded this very mythical character as dubiously inconsiderable. And when we reflect that the Hebrews slew one hundred thousand Syrians in one day, as we read in the twenty-ninth verse of the twentieth chapter of Kings, simply for differences of religious opinion, the whole war being stimulated by prophets and priests, the slaughter of a few prophets ascribed to Jezebel may well pass as an incident of war. These great bands of one hundred and fifty prophets seem to have been identical with the roaming _Darweesh_ of the Arabs, whose business it is to stir up war. We are accustomed to feel awe at the prophets, because they usually appear singly in their majesty, like God, but these bands of one hundred and fifty, all prophesying _en masse_, rather detract from the dignity of the profession.

‘Now, as regards Naboth’s vineyard, it was unquestionably a wicked deed. Ahab had offered Naboth, the Jezreelite, a _better_ vineyard for his own, or its worth in money, and Ahab was the king. The refusal was a bitter blow before all the world; so bitter that the king became ill, and seemed to be dying, because he had been, as he conceived, insulted.

‘Now there is no proof that Jezebel cared two-pence for the vineyard, but she was passionately fond of her family and husband. She had been born and brought up to familiarity with excess of bloodshed for trifles; she had seen all the priests whom she revered, and _one hundred thousand_ of her own people killed for adhering to their own religion, and as she preferred the life of Ahab to that of Naboth, and being an unquestionably clever and vigorous woman, she easily contrived to have the latter put out of the way. One _evil deed_ does not excuse another, but it is worth observing that pious King David was guilty of a very similar, but far viler and more nefarious transaction, as regarded Uriah’s wife, for which _he_ was indeed only vicariously punished, while Jezebel was made to suffer not only by loss of husband and son, but most cruelly _in person_.

‘Now we come to the end of the tragedy. Jehu, after having murdered Jehoram in a cowardly and treacherous manner, returned to Jerusalem. And here the narrator by a most ingenious little touch of art has contrived to say something of Jezebel which has done more to make her appear infamous by her biographer than every thing else accusative--if indeed he meant it--which may be doubtful. It is the simple statement that, “When Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it, and she _painted her face_ and tired her head, and looked out at a window.” From which has come the popular saying of “painted Jezebels,” suggesting vile women covered with rouge.’

‘And even rouge is not quite a sin; if it be, God help Belgravia!’ remarked Miss Rockhard.

‘And yet she was not even rouged,’ added Flaxius, for the Hebrew original says, “put her eyes in painting,” which means that she drew lines with _Kohl_ or antimony powder under her eyelashes, as was the usual custom with _all_ women, good or bad, all over the East, where it is common to this day. It amounted to no more than putting on a bonnet or drawing on a pair of gloves. As for “tiring her head,”’ added Flaxius solemnly, and almost sadly, ‘when I think how Isaiah and Jeremiah must have tired the heads and hearts of all Israel with their lamentations, I can pass over Jezebel’s work. It was her own business.

‘And when the brutal and cowardly assassin Jehu entered, she addressed him as only an injured wife and mother and a woman of marvellous wit and deep feeling could have done, with the cleverest, keenest, and most succinct sarcasm or reproach ever uttered. It was simply, “Had Zimri peace who slew his master?” Few at the present day realise how stinging this question was. To an extremely superstitious and brutal man like Jehu, fearful of omens, and uneasy as to the crimes of regicide, it was maddening. But the woman never existed who wouldn’t have said it, if she could have thought of it.’

‘I am sure that _I_ should, under the circumstances,’ replied the young lady, ‘though I knew that all the vengeance in the hand of man was to follow.’

‘So she was thrown out of the window, and Jehu killed her, stamping the bruised woman under his own feet in his frenzied rage, so that, as it is written, “some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall and on the horses,” showing how high it must have jetted up, and how savagely she was trampled on by the infuriated Jew.

‘Even the eating of Jezebel by dogs is told in such a manner as to convey an impression of infamy and guilt on her part. But if Jehu, or any other Jew or Gentile, or anything eatable, were thrown to the dogs in Jerusalem to-day, they would soon finish it. When the soul is gone, it matters little how the poor shell of humanity is treated. But I find something very degrading and disgraceful in the manner in which the writer dwells upon and exults in the fact that the ‘carcase’ of Jezebel was insulted, and that dogs ate her flesh. It would have been more creditable to Elijah, and to all concerned, if they had given her burial as became a king’s daughter. For she was queenly, and showed no fear in her last moment, and when she knew that death was at hand, she calmly made her toilet, as a lady would, to appear well, like Queen Catherine, to the last, and greeted her foe with a richly deserved reproof, and not with prayers for mercy. Yes, she died like one of royal race.’

‘Mr. Flaxius,’ said Miss Jesabelle, ‘do you know that if I should ever come into court, as defendant, in anything from pitch and toss up to murder, anarchy, or high treason, I should like to have you for my counsel. I believe that you would make me out an angel, even to my own conviction.’

‘The usual formula of polite society would be,’ replied Flaxius, ‘to say that I have always been convinced myself of the fact. But as I have not, and would be very much puzzled to know how to dispose of any such feathered anomaly, all I can say is that if you were no more guilty than I believe Jezebel to have been, I would accept the case with alacrity, and clear you, if there be such a thing as justice in the land.’

‘Since you have defended Jezebel so well,’ replied the lady, ‘perhaps you could say a word for Herodias. I always understood that the _Advocatus diaboli_ was the prosecuting attorney, but in this case he appears for the defence.’

‘Herodias,’ said the sage, ‘was a bird of a very different colour, but, like all the rest, she was a _femme incomprise_. And to begin with, the original of the name, who is to this very day recognised among the older witches in Italy as their queen, jointly with Diana, was of remote Oriental origin, or the same as Lilith of the Jews. She was eminently the fair demon of fascination who was “simply killing,” and you must bear it in mind that something of all this devilry was in the mind of the good Christians who wrote about the lady of the New Testament who danced Herod off his head and the head off Saint John. And the original Herodias was as certainly the goddess of dancing, which was a serious and terrible means of bewitchment in the olden time.[11]

‘In regard to the transaction described in the later Scripture, it is marvellous that no writer has ever treated it from a modern-society, Christian, five-o’clock-tea, practical point of view. Suppose a lady--an intelligent, accomplished widow who has had a pleasant life as wife of the governor of Paryobberee, or Cathay. The governor dies, his brother succeeds to the appointment, and marries the widow, as was strictly commanded in the Old Testament; from which book sundry moderns derive the command that a man is not to marry his wife’s sister.’

‘Consistency, thou art a jewel!’ interpolated Miss Rockhard.

‘Well he marries the widow, or, it may be, the fraternal divorced wife. Then uprises a clergyman of a new sect, with what were considered eccentric new views, who has tremendous influence among the people, and informs the governor that his marriage is illegal. And _then_, fancy the feelings of Herodias! On one hand divorce and perhaps death or poverty, with a charming daughter just coming out; on the other a prophet of the wildest description. And it was considered to be such a remarkably natural, trifling, and commonplace thing in those days to put anybody to death who was in your way, if you had the power to do it; just as good John Calvin did with Servetus when the latter got in _his_ way, or as some millions of heretics were disposed of, mostly with antecedent torture, by “meek, merciful, all-Christlike Mother Church.” And so Herodias did what the grand majority of worldly-minded, High or Low Church, Christian matrons and mammas would do to-day, under the same circumstances--if they could--and put Saint John out of the way.

‘This is the legend of Herodias.’

* * * * *

There was a long silence, when Flaxius said:

‘Now tell me, if under the same conditions of secrecy as before, and with all your recent experience and newly acquired wisdom, would you accept the marvellous wardrobe of the fairy Alban once more, for if you will take it you shall have it, forthwith?’

Miss Rockhard had for months reflected on and studied this very question to its very lees. But she took a minute--two minutes--to her reply, and when she spoke it was with emotion close to tears, but with firm voice:

‘Oh, I thank you from my very heart, for I feel deeply that this offer _now_ is a thousand times kinder than was the first. But I have had my lesson, and I hope I do not need another--when I _do_, you will, I hope,’--here she looked up with a sad, sweet smile.

(‘She is immensely prettier than she used to be,’ thought Flaxius.)

‘You will I hope not spare me. But as for the wardrobe, it is best where it is--in fairy hands. Nor would I know anything more of magic or _occulta_ or mysteries, for I have learned what few know, that no human nature, unless perhaps it be gifted as few are, and has had years of training, can keep, or is fit to know, such secrets. It will be time to attend to them when we shall have exhausted science.’

‘Yes,’ replied Flaxius, ‘when you exhaust science a little more, you will indeed find that magic is beginning in earnest.’

‘And so,’ added Jesabelle with a smile, as they rose to depart--I dare say it was in the direction of Mutton’s, to lunch--‘we learn from past trials and bitter storms how in future to keep under shelter, and seek only the sunny way.

‘“For all experience is an arch where through Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever as we roam.”’

* * * * *

_Haec fabula docet,_ ‘ye morale of whych lytil historie,’ pens Flaxius as usual on the galley, ‘is that we should, firstly, not believe the worst of anybody, be it derived from their own manner, and demeanour, or from oral or written report, and above all have patience with them, and try to help them to a better state. For, verily, this Miss Rockhard was a hard nut to crack, and enough to daunt the devil, or any decent man as I first met her, and a hard time I had with her, yet did she come out ‘all right as a trivet,’ a _trivet_ being, as ye know, dearly beloved, a _tripod_, and the reference ‘all right’ to the infallible accuracy of the Delphic oracle, which is, however, a fact not generally known. For of all things a three-legged stool stands most securely.

As for the manner in which any evil report may be cruelly and undeservedly attached to a name, there is still a word to be said for belle Jezebel of Hebrew history. When I of late defended her character, I was rebuffed with the remark that there was in the Book of Kings a distinct assertion that she was a--ahem!--social evil--and a witch: this being the speech of Jehu, Kings II. 9, v. 22.

Now be it observed that the expression here employed is to be found over and over again in the Old Testament, and in almost every instance is used not to signify any adultery or individual immorality, but to discredit the Syrian religion. It was a very nasty and unmanly form of abuse which the Hebrew prophets, and Saint John, used far too freely, on _all_ occasions, to characterise everything theological which displeased them; just as sailors and the like use ‘bloody,’ _et cetera_, very often with no meaning whatever, or as the gentlemen and ladies of Houndsditch cry out _noffgur_ and _ben-noffgur_, and so forth, far too freely to all offenders. This speech of Jehu’s was, it is true, used not in the Pickwickian sense, but most certainly in the theological, which is the next thing to it. For the first impulse of the _odium theologicum_ is, to be ‘nasty.’

Now a good tough nature like Jesabelle’s, when really honest, is all the better and cleaner for a good mangling. As was beautifully expressed by the ancients as follows--

that is, three V’s, meaning _Virtus virtute virescit_, Virtue flourishes by virtue, signifying that like the chamomile it grows the more for being trampled on. To the present day this sign is often to be seen on the walls of Florence, scratched in chalk or charcoal, and prefixed to the names of popular favourites. It is generally believed to be a monogram of _Evviva_!

[10] Vide _Etruscan-Roman Remains_, by Charles Godfrey Leland: London, Fisher Unwin.

[11] Here the chronicler of Flaxius would fain get in a little _réclame_, by mentioning that Herodias and Diana have a small book to themselves in _Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches_, by Charles Godfrey Leland. London: D. Nutt.

HOW FLAXIUS SAT AS JUDGE WITH A JURY OF TWELVE DEVILS

‘Sono demoni chi rappresentano il popolaccio del inferno, mentre che i diavoli ne sono i principi e i gran signori.’

‘There are demons who represent the populace of hell, while the devils are its nobility and great gentlemen; and some of these have left a name, such as it is, in books on strange subjects.--_Del Diavolo, a Treatise_, 1870.

THE Sun had drowned himself in the sea, and his widow, the Sky, after dissipating the evening gold which he had left, was contracting a second marriage with Night, who brought her as settlement the silver moon and the whole heavenly sack of stars, when Flaxius wandered along alone by the wild, wailing waves, seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and hearing the sweet-salt, vapoury ocean breeze. So he went on--it was a lonely coast--till he encountered a shepherd established in a hut of stones and turf; a tenement so small as to bear to its inhabitant the relation a shell bears to a tortoise.

‘Is there any place hereabout,’ asked Flaxius, ‘where I could lodge for the night?’

‘None for near a five mile,’ answered the herd, removing the slender pipe of clay from his lips; ‘leastwise none where yer could get _hin_. That is, ’cept the Devil’s Den, a hold ouse, furder on, and _there_,’ he added emphatically, ‘I reckon yer’d only be too glad to get _hout_.’

‘Why?’ inquired Flaxius.

‘’Cos it’s ruined--wuss than Jane Shoree hever wus by the royal _rep-ro-bate_,’ replied the herd, who appeared to have some tincture of letters.

‘Is it roofed?’

‘Roofed and water-proofed,’ was the reply. ‘’Taint _there_ that the affliction commences. I mean ruined in reppertation and char-ac-ter. It’s mellincolly and hin bad sperits--leastways bad sperits is in hit--an’ always were--since the smugglers left hoff usin’ hof hit. Hits ‘osts his ghosts.’

Flaxius gave the man a deeply pensive look, and a small silver coin. The herd replied with a six-pence-ive smile of gratitude. ‘Sir,’ he exclaimed, ‘“you are a good Lot,” as the lady said to her ’usband before she turned to a piller hof salt.’

‘How can I be a lot, being but one?’ inquired Flaxius.

‘Hi call a cove good com-peny when a penny come to me from ’im,’ replied the shepherd. ‘You stand six hof ’em. You’re more’n a cove, you’re a whole covey hof birds, a multitood o’ virtues, a ‘arf dozener.’

The sage went on from pile to pile of pebbles, or earth, marked with whitewash to serve the coast-guards as guides in darkness, till he beheld before him the shelter which he sought. It was a dilapidated stone house of the Jacobean time and style; not unpicturesque, gracefully draped with ivy, and as it stood in the light of a full moon on a rising rocky platform, with a sea-view circling round, there was in it something which irresistibly recalled scenes in theatres and novels, smugglers, witches, Guy Mannering, and Anne the uncanny of Geierstein.

But what gave it specially this appearance to Flaxius was the gleam from within of a light, which he knew at once was lit by no mortal match and fed by no earthly oil or fuel. It rose and fell, quivering and thrilling like a Northern light, sometimes causing the building to appear as if in flame, and then shrinking to an arrowy ray, or a mere needle, changing to many hues in which, however, a sulphur blue ever predominated. And with its changes there rang in time and measure, high or low, unearthly laughter, strange shouts or ululations, sinking to stranger humming or buzzing, and passing to a dreamy melody in softened shade, all at once broken up by a startling blare and flare and wild vociferation in strange tongues.

It required little reflection for the Magian to conjecture the nature of the company from whom such sounds proceeded, nor was he astonished, after opening the door, entering the hall, and uttering the wizard greeting, which proclaimed his nature, to see the sight which met his eyes.

Round about a great block of sandstone, which served for a table, and on which stood two open cases of gin, several loose bottles, a ten-gallon demijohn of whisky, a raisin box full of Perique, or _favori du diable_ tobacco, and an ancient, much-thumbed manuscript bound in sheet-iron, sat lolling and sprawling in all the extravagance of unconventional ease, on divans or seats, also of stone, twelve demons, or spirits of that kind whose mission it is in life to busy themselves especially with all that is mischievous, reckless, stirring, wild, eccentric, or subversive. That is to say, they are always occupied with what they call ‘whooping it up’; aiding and encouraging youth to paint towns red, inspiring Celtic politics, whether French or Irish, organising riots, editing society newspapers, evoking up divorces, anarchising, and filling police courts with cases. They were all smoking and drinking, and seemed to be earnestly occupied with some extremely interesting subject of debate; the intensity or moderation of which was manifested in the _crescendo_, or _diminuendo_, of a flame rising from a great terra-cotta vase, and by the tones of their voices.

‘Hallo, old Flax, is that you?’ cried the only one of this precious company with whom the Sage had ever before made acquaintance. This was Slang--not by any means the worst of them, since his mission merely was to corrupt language, and invent all kinds of new, grotesque forms of speech. ‘_Mozeltoff!_ luck to you, old cove, _sās tute a kairin tiro kokero_?’ he continued in the tongue generally spoken among devils and goblins, ‘how have you been doing since they let you out?’

‘_Kūshti adosta_, well enough,’ replied Flaxius in the same tone and tongue, for there never was man on earth who could so adapt himself gracefully to the most varied society or ‘all shorts and editions’ of life. ‘May I venture to ask for what purpose you gentlemen are here assembled?’

‘_Lel a swägler an’ a cutter a mūl-tatto-pani_, take a pipe and a drop of brandy before we get to _biz_,’ exclaimed Slang, dusting a seat obsequiously as he spoke; and indeed it was quite evident, despite their swaggering impudence and their feet on the tables, that the whole party of demons were deeply sensible of the honour of entertaining such a distinguished guest. Flaxius accepted the refreshment, and sat down.

‘What you behold,’ said Moloch, the _diavolo_ of Pessimism, ‘is a sad spectacle and a melancholy instance of diabolical deterioration, showing how even natures which have received every blessing of hell and all infernal advantages from the devil himself can become depraved to mere _inertia_. We are now a jury here assembled to try one of our number for his reputation. You, sir, though happily exempted from all such mutations, are aware that the limit of moral existence is one thousand years for a member of our order, unless he by progressive energy or genius advances himself, in which case he receives a renewal of his social lease. Now there is one of our number known as _Sneak_, who during all his snivelling millennium has never got beyond where he begun--or vulgarity and idle folly--including carrying and retailing petty gossip, teaching foolish old club-men and ladies how to twaddle about divorces and marriages, elopements, and relationships, gleaning trash and mean slander from low servants, and sticking _just there_. Such an existence, we hold, is too contemptible for even the meanest devil in Inferno; hence this jury, to decide whether the creature shall exist among us any longer; and as our judge has failed to put in an appearance we respectfully request your Wisdom to take his place as referee.’

‘I consent with pleasure,’ said Flaxius. ‘Produce the culprit!’

A truculent-looking demon named Dobble, whose department was quarrelling, the prize-ring, rencounters, and rows, here arose, went to a corner, put a box under his arm, brought it to the table, opened it, and took from it a form pressed flat like a pair of trousers in a trunk. This he unfolded--blew it up like a bladder by means of the stem of his clay-pipe--and gave it a drink of whisky, when lo! the form assumed some semblance of, if not humanity, at least demonity. It was a wretched-looking phantom, something in it recalling a battered Punch or tattered Ally Sloper, a Paul Pry, a thing without a conscience or moral sense, yet not without prying inquisitiveness or petty cunning--a poor _simulacrum_ of a popular, paltry jest. It sat up and grinned, and leered, without a trace of fear, as if--all its function finished--it had nothing else to do but to die game, as vulgar, second-hand tradition enjoined its kind to do.

‘I appear here,’ said Moloch, not without dignity, ‘as _advocatus diaboli_, or public prosecutor. The entire life and actions of this sneak, whom I will not honour with the name of devil, or even imp, are so well known to all here present as to render a formal indictment a work of supererogation. Yet that all due formalities may be properly fulfilled, I ask the accused if he demands that any accusation be made?’

To which the culprit replied by casting up his head, and saying, in a tone which would have elicited roars of applause in a music hall:

‘_Ya-ap!_ Who’re _you_? Shut up!’

‘An indictment is therefore needless. Let me here remark, gentlemen,’ said Moloch, with great impressiveness, ‘that though we may all be demons, and even the humblest of our order, our mission is _not_, as is vulgarly supposed, to do evil. It is simply agitation and action.’

‘To keep things a-bilin’,’ interposed Slang.

‘Quite true. The honourable gentleman who has just interrupted me is, for example, often accused of mere vulgarity, but unjustly. He may be a rude poet, but he invents new similes and vigorous racy words which are often wanting. I myself--in many ways--by introducing Pessimism to society, and by raising the question as to whether life is worth living, caused a discussion which rendered me worthy of receiving a renewal of my lease of life. The pugnacity of my colleague Dobble has its silver lining--it provokes resistance, argument, and conclusion. We may all be a rough lot with a hard bark, but there is _wood_ in us. But the accused is all rotten bark and no bite, and _hollow_. Vulgarity, twaddle, gossip, and small-talk are all one and the same thing; and the mind devoted to them alone stagnates and putrefies. The spirit of it dies very slowly, gentlemen; but if nothing better can be said of this _fin de siècle_, it must be at least admitted that this century has witnessed no advance in vulgarity and the pettiness which kills for everything. Gentlemen, I await your verdict?’

‘GUILTY, in large capitals,’ cried Slang, who seemed to be foreman. ‘We’re all agreed like a rope of inyons.’

‘Prisoner,’ exclaimed Flaxius, ‘have you anything to say why sentence of non-renewal of existence should not be passed on you.’

‘Oh, a’nt I just?’ screamed Sneak in a Punch tone. ‘Call _me_ vulgar do yer, yer vaggabones--me that moves in the highest circles among the biggest suckers! Listen to _this_!’ And with that, he drew from his pocket a fashionable weekly newspaper, well known on every stand, and proceeded to read from it such a mass of drivelling silliness relating to the pettiest acts or tastes of the upper classes, including that of royalty itself, and all that constituted what _it_ regarded as ‘Society,’ that even Flaxius was fain to drink another glass of brandy, and light a cigar to enable him to sustain the infliction. At last it came to an end.

‘There!’ exclaimed Sneak triumphantly. ‘That’s what Erbamala, the great _noveliste_, and I call human nature. The best art is the depicting that--it pays best--and I’m the spirit who inspires it all. There I rest my defence.’

‘The defence,’ said Flaxius, ‘has aggravated the offence.’

‘Well, my time is not out, and you’ll find that I shall drag on awhile longer.’

‘True,’ observed Flaxius, ‘but observe that there _was_ a time when you had a place, such as it was, among those who are here present. Now it is lost; even the demons of the present day disown you. Therefore I pronounce you dead _de facto_, for those for whom you now live among mortals have no intellects. Begone!’

The foreman opened a window, and the living dead whisked out of it, like a great carrion blue-bottle with a buzz.

‘Did the deceased leave any property on which to administer?’ asked Boodle, the modern incarnation of Mammon.

‘Yes, he left ME,’ piped a small voice. And a sharp little imp, two inches in height, sprang on the table. ‘I’m _Puttuli_.’

‘Immortalised by Musæus,’ said Moloch. ‘You were used to go about to people’s pockets and report what you found therein to your master.’

‘Yes, but I can do more than that,’ replied Puttuli. ‘I can observe and report anything.’

‘Well, none of us want you,’ cried Slang, ‘you little, sneaking, spying villain. So be off with you by the first boat--quicker than immediately, if not sooner.’

‘Nay,’ said Flaxius, ‘he may be useful if properly employed. With your permission, gentlemen, I will take him.’

And as there was no dissenting voice, the wise Flaxius departed with Puttuli in his pocket. And he soon found that he had indeed a pocket-companion, and voluble--if not valuable--_vade-mecum_, for the diminutive imp was what a distinguished American writer calls an ‘amoosin’ little cuss,’ and ‘especially good at beguiling off the odd corners of the weary hours.’

* * * * *

‘_Haec fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius, ‘or its moral is--not what too many satirists so sadly wail--that Sneak actually represents the spirit of this bottom of the century, but its very dregs, which are, however, stirred up too much by the spoons of small writers into what would be, but for them, a clear, exhilarating beverage. The very devils, whose agitation in a certain way leads ever to something that is good, find their work hindered by this imp of pettiness. Prosperity and peace, or its stagnation, engender the birth of such mosquitoes. A roaring torrent of even dirty water is better, for it will wash itself clean ere long, but a standing pool only creates vile insects and malaria.

FLAXIUS AND THE BOOKSELLER

‘“L’amour des livres est plus utile que vous ne croyez,” dit le
capitaine, “car je trouve dans mes études un calme qui vous manque.
Vous ne soupçonnez pas tout ce qu’une manie a de précieux, docteur!
Elle occupe comme une passion, et n’a aucun de ses tourments.
Croyez-moi, puisque la vie n’est après tout qu’une voiture mal
suspendue qui nous conduit à la mort, les sages sont ceux qui baissent
les stores, sans songer au but ni aux cahots.”’

_Souvenirs d’un Bas Breton, par Émile Souvestre._

‘Few are the men who know what lives do hide,
Or dream what demons lurk, or fairies flit,
In places which to them seem dull and tame,
Even as a drop of water to the eye
Appears to it like naught; but take to it a glass,
And lo it is a sea with monsters filled,
Devouring, making love, or raging wild--
Full many a heart is like that water drop.’

THE day had been grim and ill-tempered--flitting fitfully through all the phases of bad weather--promising at times, like a deceitful child, to be good, when it would clear a little into curling mists, through which there came a doubtful ray of light--when straight anon there fell a dismal fog, then wild rain, maddened by the roaring of the wind--for ’tis terrible mourning when any one cries aloud and weeps at the same time--_laut aufweinend_--as the Germans say.

Oh, I warrant you that the rusty weather-cocks, as they whirled round and round, and screamed as if crowing to the _Wilde Jäger_, in the old town of Nuremberg, and the wind low-waving like the deep baying of his hounds made a fine witches’-chorus that night--yea, the very gutters in their unwonted joy at becoming bounding brooks sang gurgling songs as they hurried along to leap into the Pegnitz....

‘’Tis a _Sauwetter_--yea, a _Hundeswetter_--a swine and dog weather,’ exclaimed the little old man to Flaxius, as the latter refuged himself just long enough to turn his umbrella, which had been reversed into a great goblet by a sudden squall, under an arch. This arch was over the projecting doorway of a shop; ’twas immensely massive from the old, bold time, and I warrant you that Albert Dürer and Willibald Pirckheimer and Hans Sachs and all of ’em had passed under it often.

‘I could make better weather,’ added the old man, ‘with only a rusty tea-kettle and a pint of----’

Flaxius looked up. There was a little, half-obliterated sign over the ancient door, which had once proclaimed to the world that here was a _Buchhandlung_ or book-shop, but like an ancient warrior, with stress of time and battling with the elements, it had forgotten most of its letters.

‘You sell books?’ replied Flaxius.

‘How do you know _that_?’ asked the little man, with a quick, suspicious glance, as if a secret which he wished to keep hidden had been revealed.

‘And you have for sale a fine copy of the _Emblemata_ of Iselburg in old German rhyme, published in Nuremberg in Fifteen Hundred and Seventeen ... and a superbly bound exemplar of the _Altdeutsche Wälder_ of Grimm.’

‘Not for sale--not for sale--oh, no!’ exclaimed the little old man eagerly. ‘They belong to my private library.’

‘Also the _Mascarades Monastiques_ of Rabelli,’ pursued Flaxius pitilessly.

‘’Tis sold,’ cried the Bookseller, as if alarmed.

‘It isn’t; but never mind, I don’t want to buy them, yet I would like to see your collection.’

‘_A--ch, so!_’ responded the ancient, visibly relieved. ‘_Komm herein, du lieber Gast, wenn du nichts im Beutel hast._

‘“Enter as a welcome guest,
If thou really nothing hast,
If thou’rt poor then sit thee down
If thou’st money, get thee gone!”’

And with this invitation, he led the way into a marvellous old German interior, which looked as if it had been painted by some artist who was, as I once heard a French artist say, ‘mad on the Middle Age and earlier time.’ For it was heavily arched, and looked like the crypt of a cathedral, or the _Stube_ of the Giant Tavern in the Hof-Gasse of Innsbruck, which is, indeed, lovely to behold, and far away finer than the Auerbach Keller of Leipzig. All around were books: books of tarnished gold in old ivory-parchment bindings; books in tremendous plank covers of old oak, knobbed with bronze or iron, like castle doors; books in marvellous cut-vellum, with rich Gothic grotesques, and silver clasps of extravagant richness; books on shelves and heaped up in piles like rubbish; everywhere books--and _such_ books! ’Twas a vision, a dream, an endless promise of a bibliomaniac’s paradise!

And there the two sat for hours turning over the black letter of the olden time, like two wizards evoking the spirits of the dead, which, indeed, the scholar always does when he reads reverently in such books, which were made, and once studied, by the departed. For it is in his thoughts that the writer lives in after ages, and he is ever with us as we read.

The dealer was enchanted also with his guest, hearing the wondrous words and ponderous stories, strange, which were uttered in calm, solemn tone; and a rapt shuddering stole over him as they turned some old and legend-leaved book, mysterious to behold, while he learned priceless secrets enhancing the value even of what he most esteemed.

Flaxius took up an old work--_Das Schachzabel-spiel_ of Jacob Manuel of 1536.

‘There seems to be something in the binding,’ he said. ‘Perhaps some old paper. May I examine it?’

He bent back with care the thin parchment, and drew out a manuscript of perhaps twenty leaves, which had been put in to stiffen the binding, as waste-paper.

‘This is indeed a find,’ he solemnly remarked. ‘A great discovery.’

‘What is it?’

‘A manuscript play as yet unknown, by Hans Sachs, entitled _Die Weisse Rabe_, or, _The White Raven_, with the motto from the _Renner_ of Trimberg:

‘“Selten wir gesehen haben
Swarze Swanen und weisse Raben.

Seldom have we ever seen
Black swans or ravens white I ween.”

It bears the signature of the author: _Hans Sachs_.’

‘Blessed be the storm which drove thee to my gate; blessed be this day and hour, and the mother who bore thee, and all and everything dear unto thee!’ cried the Bookseller. ‘Lo, it has been the dream of my life to find that play--I have seen it in visions, I have prayed for it; I would have given a finger, an eye, yea, my choicest book to even behold it.’

‘And now it is thine,’ replied Flaxius gently. ‘And indeed it was--_de facto_--thine own discovery, since thou didst lead me here, and it was in thy possession.’

The old man clasped the manuscript to his heart, and kissed it reverently; there was silence, save for the pattering of the rain, and anon a thunder peal, which seemed like a joyous _salvo_ fired off in honour of the event. The Bookseller rose with tottering steps.

‘I will return anon,’ he said.

He came back, bearing two ancient bottles covered with dust and cobwebs, and two tall, magnificent old glass goblets.

‘There is no better wine, and none so old in Nuremberg,’ he exclaimed. ‘I would not have offered it to the emperor; but, verily, we will carouse therewith--_vinum bonum et suave lætificat_.’

‘_Gurgle, gluck, gluck!_’ sang the Wine as it came forth again into the world after a century of slumber.

‘Hearest thou?’ cried the old man. ‘_Gluck, gluck!_ They are words of good omen. This day I have had good luck.’

And he drank solemnly--_feierlich_--to his guest.

‘The wine,’ said Flaxius, as he touched his glass to his host’s--it was like the ringing of cow-bells heard afar on a mountain side in the Tyrol--‘is like a butterfly long imprisoned as a chrysalis under earth, which now comes forth to shine in light for a brief space--the butterfly gladdens the child, and wine gladdens man.’

‘And poetry like that gladdens everybody,’ cried the host; ‘albeit I confess that I love it best when it is printed in a rare old book.’

‘What is this?’ said Flaxius, taking up a little manuscript.

‘Truly a quaint thing, a fourteenth-century transcript, or translation of a far older work of earliest German times, the _Vision of Baldemar_, now lost. It is unique. I pray you accept it as a gift.’

Flaxius would have declined the offer, but the old man, who had inquired the name of his visitor, took a pen and wrote therein in a very ancient, but distinct, hand, which seemed to be uniform and contemporary with the writing of the manuscript itself:

_To the Moſt Learned and Very Honourable
DOMINO FLAXIO_

_This Work is preſented with humbleſt Regards as a trifling
Teſtimonial of inexpreſſible Gratitude from his
Moſt Devoted Servant_

_BUCHERWURM SCHMOKER._

~‘Hast mir geschassen großes Glück;~
~Doch wenig geb’ ich Dir zurück:~
~Giebst Du mir Was,~
~Schenk’ ich Dir Das.’~

‘_Great pleasure hast thou made for me
But little I return thee.
Thou giv’st a lot,
I but a jot._’

‘What a thing,’ thought Flaxius, ‘it is for man in this life to set his mind on something, and when so setting to make a dead set, cooking all his victuals, as the gypsies say, “_adré yeck Kekavi_,” in one pot. For they hold by tradition--the Romany cook-book being as yet unpublished--that when all conceivable food is thus boiled it acquires, like Mississippi punch, an additional agreeable flavour with every new ingredient, eggs, carrots, ham, butter, chickens, bread, turnips, honey, hedgehogs, snails, oatcake, rice, herrings, a sucking-pig, mutton-chops, raisins, bacon, cold plum-pudding, cabbage and anything else edible being welcomed to the _mixtum-compositum_; which is declared to be so palatable that the author of _Rookwood_ assures us that when Dick Turpin the highwayman first tasted it he actually shed tears of delight.

‘So hath it been with the venerable Bucherwurm Schmoker who hath cast into the one passion of antique literature all the emotions and feelings, hopes and affections of life. I have heard that among the Five Thousand Commandments which were appended by the devil and Society to those of Moses--the which I do propose some day to publish--there is one which says, “Put not all thy eggs into one basket.” But there is great pleasure in breaking commandments, especially when one desires, like the French lady, to make with them an _omelette aux confitures_; and there is also great delight in concentrating our feelings, as the devil observed when he saw that the mystics united the excess of piety with that of earthly pleasure. “_Cela suffit_”--quotha.

‘This venerable Schmoker seems to me like the thorn-bush of the poet, of which it would be hard to say how it could ever have been young, it looks so old and grey, like rock or stone all overgrown with lichens to the very top, or thoughts of some primeval time which fain would give it all the grime which they have gathered up. Yet underneath this aged thorn there is a lovely hill of moss, wherein are exquisite curling lines and scarlet-orange-tawny-sable-ivory flowers, which, seen with a glass, do to perfection resemble the enlacements and tracery and fancied flowers of an illuminated manuscript; and therein and therefore do the fairies love to dwell and sit love-making of a moon-lit night.

‘And if I think thereon I needs must laugh, remembering that all the world thinks that such an erudite old Dryasdust leads the most arid, infestive, humdrum, prosy life, given to old and long-forgotten things, buried in the rust of antiquity, palætiology, archæology, which all, like the Dismal Grove in Tieck’s wondrous tale, do but conceal a sunny elfin-land of quaint caprice and merry, wanton joy. As every antiquary and folk-lorist who is anything better than a mechanical maker of tables, and a clipper and collector of variants, well knows.

_Serious_, indeed! Now, an’ I had time, good people, I would tackle Calvin, Knox, and Chalmers, and Young of the _Night Thoughts_, and show you what Mephistopheli, what humbugs, what subtle deceivers of self or others, and what mad humorists they all were, and in what Hampton Court mazes they led their followers. For, meaning it or not, it came to that; and ye who cannot perceive it, think that the partition six feet high, over which ye cannot peep, is the top of heaven’s wall. Yea, I repeat: For, meaning it or not, it comes to that!

* * * * *

‘_Vale, Corcule!_ Good-night, old Parable, for there is in thee a deeper meaning than men divine. Sleep well, O mirror of ten thousand books, whom I have made happy by adding unto them “one volume more!” as Dibdin sweetly sang.’

When Flaxius opened the door, it was a bright, full-moon-lit night; clear and fresh, and gently breezy, gauzy cloudlets flitting now and then before the stars, like transparent veils blowing away or waving before the eyes of Eastern girls. So he went to his dwelling, and the night being young, sat down to read the little book, which ran as follows:

BALDEMAR’S TROUME

THE VISION OF BALDEMAR

As in slumber once I lay
In a wood one summer day,
All beneath an oaken tree,
With green leaf-curtain, fair to see;
Flowers peeped upward from below
To the sun as he did go,
And the drops fresh from the showers
Looked lovingly upon the flowers,
Like bright eyes as clear as glass,
Or diamonds glittering in the grass;
And all around from many a bloom
There came a pleasant, fresh perfume,
While in the forest all day long,
Dame Nightingale did tell her song.[12]

By me ran a spring full clear,
And it sounded to my ear,
With its steady murmuring,
Like children who a lesson sing,
Or as one who reads alone
To himself in single tone;
While the wind in harmony
Rustled sweet in every tree.
Flies and bees the measure kept
All in chorus--so I slept.

Now whether I from sleep awoke
To life again beneath the oak,
Or whether I did deeper sink,
In dreams, I know not what to think,
Yet this I know that I was there,
Where I had been, but in the air;
And all around there was a change,
Unto another life and strange,
As if one should sleep in spring
When all is green and burgeoning;
Then wake in autumn to behold
The trees all clad in red and gold;
For other sounds I seemed to hear,
Other scents were in the air,
Elfin light shone all around,
And new herbage on the ground,
There full silently had come,
As strangers move into a home.

There I sat but had not known,
It was on the Wildè Stone[13]
That I had fallen into sleep,
Since there the elves their watches keep,
And he who sitteth there an hour
For all that week is in their power.
But this secret well I knew,
And now lived to find it true,
That the man who passes well
Into the spirit of the spell,
Meets with nothing to alarm,
Nor will come to any harm;
Many marvels he may learn,
Many wondrous things discern,
If he sleep an hour alone
In faith upon the Wildè Stone.

As in silence still I sat,
Marvelling in amaze thereat,
I soon heard a sudden sound,
As of a footstep on the ground,
And looking up, there in the wood,
A vision fair before me stood:
When all at once the forest rang,
In chorus all the birdés sang,
And wondrous flowers in bright array,
Came shooting to the light of day,[14]
And in all her beauty’s sheen
Before me stood the fairy queen.

Thus she spoke: ‘O minstrel dear!
Long have I longed to see thee here!
For it is in our destiny
That if not placed in poetry,
Although we live in lordly state,
With wealth and power and titles great,
We’ll pass unto oblivion’s shame
Unless some poet notes our name.
There is more life in one small song
Than in a century ‘mid the throng,
With all their work, and war and strife;
Song only is eternal life.
‘Mid all great deeds--too great to last--
Men seek the poems of the past,
And one sweet lay, as all may see,
May make an Immortality.
It may full long forgotten lie,
Yea sleep for many a century,
Hidden away in darkling nook,
Yet be revived in many a book:
For though states fade and tongues may die,
There is no death for poetry,
Since unto it we well may say:
“A thousand years are as a day,”
’Tis God’s own voice which, when it spoke,
In poetry the silence broke:
To inspiration doth belong,
And it alone, the power of song.

Even we who are of fairy kind
Are least of all unto it blind,
Since all the life which we receive,
Legends or lays unto us give.
For all of our appointed time
Is measured by the poet’s rhyme,
Unless we’re sung we soon are not,
And even our name would be forgot:
Therefore to me, O Baldemere!
Thou art indeed of men most dear.
Long I have lived in hope to be
But mentioned in thy minstrelsy:
Even in one line be’t low or high,
For then I know I ne’er can die.’