Читать книгу For the Blood Is the Life - Francis Marion Crawford - Страница 24

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The moon rose higher and higher in the cloudless sky, bathing the terrace in silver and lending in her turn to men the light she borrowed from heaven. For some minutes no one spoke, and it was as though all nature lay in a trance while the visions of heaven passed by. It was the hour when in eastern lands the lotus unfolds its heavy leaves, to take up the wondrous dream broken by the scorching day; it was the hour when in the laurel groves of Italy the nightingale raises her voice in long-drawn weeping for her sister's murdered son, in passionate sorrow for the blood she has shed and can never more wash away; the hour when the mighty dead come forth from their tombs beneath the dark cathedral aisles and kneel before the high altar where the transepts meet the nave, and where the moonbeams from the stained windows of the lofty dome make pools of blood-red light upon the marble floor.

All the party were silent, realising perhaps in that moment the whole beauty of the scene. Heine leaned back in his chair and looked steadily at the moon, resting his elbows on the carved arms of the seat and clasping his delicate white fingers before him.

Suddenly and without the least warning a wonderful strain of music broke the silence. Some one was playing on the piano in the great hall, and through the open windows the sounds floated out to the terrace. No one dared to speak, though all started in surprise. It was a wild Polish mazoure, fitful, passionate and sad, woven in strange movement, now sweeping forward in a burst of fervid hope, full of the rush of the dance, the ring of spurs, the timely measured tread of women's feet, the indescribable grace of slender figures in refined yet rapid motion — the whole breathing a reckless delight in the pleasure of the moment, a defiant power to be glad in the very jaws of death. Then with the contrast of true passion the pace slackens, the melody sways fitfully in the uncertain measure and sadness, waking in the harmony, trembles despairing for one moment in the muffled chords, while even love hardly dares to breathe sweet words in the ear of tired beauty. But again the dance awakes, the stronger rhythm breaks out again and dashing through the veil of melancholy, seizes on body and soul and whirls them down the storm of wild, luxurious, and wellnigh unbearable delight.

"That must be by Chopin!" exclaimed Diana. "But I never heard Gwendoline play it — "

She stopped short in surprise. She had imagined that Gwendoline had slipped away to the piano during the silence, but as she looked she saw her in her place.

"It is by Chopin," answered Heine with a smile. "It is Chopin himself."

All rose to their feet and hastened to the drawing-room ; Gwendoline reached the door first.

At the piano sat a man with a fair and beautiful face, dressed much as Heine himself but with far greater elegance. There was about him a wonderful air of distinction, an unspeakable atmosphere of refinement and superiority over ordinary men. He had the look which tradition ascribes to kings, but which nature, in royal irony, more often bestows upon penniless persons of genius. His fair hair was fine and silky as spun gold; his skin transparent as a woman's; his features delicately aquiline and noble, and in his soft eyes there shone a clear and artistic intelligence, a spirit both gentle and quiet, yet neither weak nor effeminate, but capable rather of boundless courage and of heroic devotion when roused by the touch of sympathy.

He rose as the party approached him, and they saw that he was short and very slender. He smiled, half apologetically, and made a courteous inclination.

"Perhaps the introduction of a dead man is hardly an introduction at all," he said in a muffled voice, which, however, was not unpleasant to the ear. "I will save my friend Heine the trouble — I am Frederic Chopin."

Gwendoline, in her delight at meeting her favourite composer, would gladly have pressed him to remain at the piano, but hospitality forbade her.

She sat down and the others followed her example. The two dead men glanced at each other in friendly recognition and took their places in the circle. They looked so thoroughly alive that it was impossible to feel any uneasiness in their society, and perhaps none but Augustus and Lady Brenda, who had touched Heine's icy hand, realised fully the strangeness of the situation. But Chopin was perfectly at his ease. He did not seem to admit that his presence could possibly cause surprise. He sat quietly in his chair and looked from one to the other of his hosts, as though silently making their acquaintance.

"What an ideal life! " he exclaimed. "If I could live again I would live as you do — in a beautiful place over the sea, far from noise, dust and all that is detestable."

"It is a part of fairyland," answered Heine. "Do you remember ? It was only last year that we came here together and sat on the rocks and tried to think what the people were like who once lived here, and whether any one would ever live here again. And you wished there were a piano in the old place — you have your wish now."

"It is not often that such wishes are realised," said Chopin. "It is rarely indeed that I can touch a piano now, though I hear much music. It interests me immensely to watch the progress of what Mozart began."

"It sickens me to see what has grown in literature from the ruins of what I helped to demolish," answered Heine.

"Believe me, my dear friend," returned the musician, "without romance there is neither music nor literature."

"What do you mean by romance, exactly? " asked Gwendoline, anxious to stimulate the conversation which had been begun by the two friends.

"Heine will give you one definition — I will give you another," answered Chopin.

"I never really differed from you," said his friend. " But give your definition of romance. I would like to hear it."

"It is the hardest thing in the world to define, and yet it is something which we all feel. I think it is based upon an association of ideas. When we say that a place is romantic we unconsciously admit that its beauty suggests some kind of story to our minds, most generally a love-story. Such scenery is not necessarily grand, but it is necessarily beautiful. I do not think that a man standing on the summit of Mont Blanc would say that it was a romantic spot. It is splendid indeed, but it is uninhabited and uninhabitable. It suggests no love-story. It is hugely grand and vast like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or like the great pyramid. But it is not romantic. There is more romance in a Polish landscape — with a little white village in the foreground surrounded by flat green fields and green woods, cut symmetrically in all directions by straight, white roads, and innocent of hills — one may at least fancy a fair-haired boy making love to a still fairer girl, just where the brook runs between the wood and the meadow. No — Mont Blanc is not romantic. Come down from the snow-peaks — here for instance, where the wild rocks hang and curl in crests like a petrified whirlpool, but where the walls of this' old castle suggest lives and deeds long forgotten. You have romance at once. From the grey battlements some Moorish maiden may have once looked her last upon the white sails of her corsair lover's long black ship. The fair young Conradin may have lain hidden here before Frangipani betrayed him to his death in Naples. Here Bayard came, perhaps, after the tournament of Barletta. Here Giovanna may have rested — she may even have plotted here the murder of her husband—"

"I did not know you were such an historian," interrupted Heine with a smile.

"I have learned much since I died," answered Chopin, quietly. " But I am encroaching on your ground. I only want to prove that it is easy to see the romantic element in a place which we can associate with people. If none of those things really happened here, it seems very simple to imagine that they might have happened, and that is the same thing in history."

"Absolutely the same," assented Augustus, whose favourite theory was that nobody knew anything.

"Very good," continued the composer. "Romance is then the possibility of associating ideas of people with an object presented to the senses, apart from the mere beauty of the object. I say that much magnificent music pleases intensely by the senses alone. Music is a dialogue of sounds. The notes put questions, and answer them. In fugue-writing the second member is scientifically called the 'answer.' When there is no answer, or if the answer is bad, there is no music at all. The ear tells that. But such a musical dialogue of sounds may please intensely by the mere satisfaction of the musical sense; or it may please because, besides the musical completeness, it suggests human feelings and passions and so appeals to a much larger part of our nature. I do not think the great pyramid suggests feelings and passions, in spite of all its symmetry. It may have roused a sympathetic thrill in the breast of Cheops, but it does not affect us as we are affected by the interior of Saint Peter's in Rome, or by Westminster Abbey, or by Giotto's tower. These are romantic buildings, for they are not only symmetrical, but they also tell us a tale of human life and death and hope and sorrow which we can understand. To my mind romantic music is that which expresses what we feel besides satisfying our sense of musical fitness. I think that Mozart was the founder of that school—I laboured for it myself — Wagner has been the latest expression of it."

"I adore Wagner," said Diana. " But it always seems to me that there is something monstrous in his music. Nothing else expresses what I mean."

"The monstrous' element can be explained," answered Chopin. " Wagner appeals to a vast mass of popular tradition which really exists only in Germany and Scandinavia. He then brings those traditions suddenly before our minds with stunning force, and gives them an overpowering reality. I leave it to you whether the impression must not necessarily be monstrous when we suddenly realise in the flesh, before our eyes, such tales as that of Siegmund and Siegfried, or of Parzifal and the Holy Grail. It is great, gigantic—but it is too much. I admit that I experience the sensation, dead as I am, when I stand among the living at Bayreuth and listen. But I do not like the sensation. I do not like the frantic side of this modern romantism. The delirious effects and excesses of it stupefy without delighting. I do not want to realise the frightful crimes and atrocious actions of mythological men and beasts, any more than I want to see a man hanged or guillotined. I think romance should deal with subjects not wholly barbarous, and should try to treat them in a refined way, because no excitement which is not of a refined kind can be anything but brutalising. Man has enough of the brute in him already, without being taught to cultivate his taste for blood by artificial means. Perhaps I am too sensitive—I hate blood. I detest commonplace, but I detest even more the furious contortions of ungoverned passion."

"But you cannot say that Wagner is exaggerated in his effects," argued Diana.

"No — they are well studied and the result is stupendous when they are properly reproduced. He is great — almost too great. He makes one realise the awful too vividly. He produces intoxication rather than pleasure. He is an egotist in art. He is determined that when you have heard him you shall not be able to listen to any one else, as a man who eats opium is disgusted with everything when he is awake. I believe there is a pitch in art at which pleasure becomes vicious; the limit certainly exists in sculpture and painting as well as in literature, just as when a man drinks too much wine he is drunk. The object of art is not to make life seem impossible, any more than the object of drinking wine is to lose one's senses. Art should nourish the mind, not drown it. To say that Wagner's own mind, and the minds of some of his followers were of such strong temper that nothing less than his music could excite them pleasurably, is not an answer. The Russian mujik will drink a pint of vodka in the early morning, and when he has drunk it he is gayer than the Italian who has taken a little cup of coffee. You would probably think his gaiety less refined than that of the Italian, though there is more of it. It will also be followed by a headache — but the headache, the moral headache after an orgy of modern art is worse than the headache from too much vodka. It is like Heine's 'toothache in the heart.' He used to say that the best filling for that was of lead and a certain powder invented by Berthold Schwarz. Romantism can go too far, like everything else. The Hermes of Olympia was descended from a clumsy but royal race of Egyptian granite blocks; but he is the historical ancestor of the vilest productions of modern sculpture. Modern art is drunk — drunk with the delight of expressing excessively what should not be expressed at all, drunk with the indulgence of the senses until the intellect is clouded and dull, or spasmodically frantic by turns, drunk with the vulgar self-satisfied vanity of a village coxcomb. Ah, for Art's sake let poor art be kept sober until the heaven-born muses deign to pay us another visit!"

"Amen ! " exclaimed Heine, devoutly. " The same things are true of literature. But I admire Wagner, nevertheless, though his music terrifies me. I think Mozart was the Raphael, Wagner the Michelangelo of the opera. Any one may choose between the two, for it is a matter of taste. But in music the development from the one to the other seems to me more rational than it has been in literature."

"How do you mean ? " asked Gwendoline.

"I think music has advanced better than literature. They were both little boys once, but the one has grown into a great, dominating, royal giant — the other into a greedy, snivelling, dirty-nosed, foulmouthed, cowardly ruffian. There are bad musicians and good writers, of course. The bad musicians do little harm, but the good writers occupy the position of Lot in the condemned cities — they are the mourners at the funeral of romance. The mass of fiction makers to-day are but rioters at the baptismal feast of Realism, the Impure."

"What a sweeping condemnation!" exclaimed Augustus. " I thought that you yourself were a supporter of realism, or declared yourself to be, though your lyrics are certainly very romantic."

"I was the renegade monk from the monastery of the romantists," said Heine. "A Frenchman once told me so. But when I grew old and married, I hankered for the dear old atmosphere, and my little French wife helped me to breathe it again."

"Our great modern realist, Ernest Renan, says of himself, half regretfully, that he feels like a religieux manque" said Augustus.

"I can understand that," answered Heine. " But when I was young the word romance stunk in my nostrils. It meant Platen."

"And what does it mean to you now?" inquired Gwendoline, who wanted to lead the dead poet back to the point.

" You would have a definition, madam ?" he replied. " Romance is a beautiful woman, with a dead pale skin, and starry eyes and streaming raven hair, and when I look into her sweet dark face I could wear a ton of armour on my back and cleave a Saracen to the chine with my huge blade for her sake, or go barefoot to Jerusalem, or even read Platen's poetry all through. But she looks so strangely at me with her great black eyes, that I am never quite sure whether she is quite real and quite serious. I only know that she is very, very beautiful, and that I love her to distraction."

"That is a definition from fairyland," said Chopin with his soft sweet smile.

"And you want one from the library of a student, I suppose," answered Heine. "Romance is the modern epic. I forget who said so, but it is true in a limited way. The romantic languages were those Latin tongues which were not Latin, but Berlinish."

"In other words — slang," suggested Augustus.

"Slang — exactly. Latinus grossus qui facit tremare pilastros, as the Roman schoolboy calls it —"

"Please translate ! " exclaimed Lady Brenda.

"If it means anything it means the Romantic dialect — a coarse rough Latin that would make columns shake. The words are not all in the dictionary, madam, but metaphorically they are in most people's mouths. It afterwards became the most elegant language of its age and has given the name of romance to the school of literature it founded. The first romantic writings were in that language — the love-songs of the troubadours, and I have seen in an old library in Siena a very beautiful manuscript collection of them with the original music and words by Jehan Bretel."

"What were they like?" asked Gwendoline, eagerly.

"I can remember a stanza or two:

"Mi chant sont tout plain d'ire et de douleur

Pour vous dame ke je ai tant aimee

Que je ne sal se je chant u se pleur

Ainsi m'estant souffrir ma destinee

Mais se Dieu plaist encor verrai le jour

Kamour sera cangie en autre tour

Si vous donra envers moi millo r pensee

Chanson vatent garde ne remanoir

Prie celi ki plus jaime pour ke souvent par li soiez cantee.

"The spelling is very curious, but the sentiment is unmistakable and the language is Provencal. There is the origin of romance in the Romansch language. Those songs preserved the customs of those times, the troubadour with his lute below the castle wall, the obdurate lady behind the lattice in her tower, the life-and-death seriousness of love in the eleventh century — it is all there, and we call it romance. The literature of love-songs continued to spread after the customs of those days had passed away, but it did not move with the times, though it increased. The knight in armour, the lute, and the lady with her scarf were preserved like curious zoological specimens in spirits, and are the foundation of all romance. Then we had Germans and Englishmen who wrote long epic romances in other languages, such as Wolfram von Eschenbach and Sir Thomas Malory, who got his Morte d 'Arthur from the French. A modern poet owes much of his fame to his treatment of the same theme, which shows that the subject is not even yet worn out. But though the old songs still stir us, they are not enough for us nowadays. The frantic fighting, the melancholy tragedy, the black-and-white magic which appealed to the imagination of a Black Forest freebooting baron of the tenth century, do not appeal to ours. The French pastoral romances were an attempt to change the form of the solemn chivalric epic of earlier times into something lighter and more gay. But unlike the chivalric epic the pastoral had no foundation in real life and consequently disappeared almost without a trace. The modern romantic novel is a prose epic, generally founded on modern life."

"And what is the modern realistic novel?" asked Diana.

"It is the prose without the epic," answered the poet. "It is therefore the opposite of romance in every respect. It sets aside all invention, and takes for its standpoint the principle that a hero is not necessary to a story, and that every-day life, with such episodes as it may chance to bring forth, should be of sufficient interest to everybody, to make everybody ready to dispense for ever with imagination. The realists say that a man may learn more from being shown what he is than from being told what he should be. The romantists say that if a man will study the ideal he can to some extent imitate it. When I was a young man romance stood on a low level. The mechanically correct and spiritually feeble performances of our little poets did not please me. Goethe was a realist, and I determined to be a realist. I did not perceive that Goethe was also a romantist, and that while he was well able to paint men as they are, he had a surpassing gift for describing them as they should be. I believe that literature without realism cannot last. But I believe also that literature without romance cannot interest."

"Nor life, without romance, either," said Gwendoline.

"Oh! Do you think so ? " exclaimed Lady Brenda. " I am sure I know many people who are not at all romantic but whose lives are very interesting to themselves."

"People who make money an object," answered Augustus. " But they have a romance nevertheless, and a very pretty one — the story of the loves of the pound, the shilling and the penny, told in many manuscript volumes with a detail worthy of M. Zola."

"Yes," said Heine with a smile, " the love of a Hamburg banker for a dollar is wonderful, passing the love of women."

"The sense of romance must be instinctive," said Diana. " We distinguish at a glance between what is romantic and what is not, as we distinguish between black and white. For instance Alexander the Great is a romantic character; Julius Caesar is not. I do not see that in those cases the explanation is true which ascribes romance to the traditions of knights-errant, troubadours and tournaments."

"That is true," said Chopin. " Just as the primeval song of the Arab or the Hindoo peasant is romantic, while Chinese music is not."

"Judas Maccabseus was a romantic character," put in Heine. " Moses was not, though he was a greater man. Judas Maccabaeus was the Cromwell of the Jews, and it is impossible to read his history without a thrill of enthusiasm. I suppose that is why the early Church instituted the feast of the Maccabean martyrs, on the first of August, though they were Jews, put to death before the birth of Christ for the Jewish faith by Antiochus Epiphanes — a mother and her seven sons. Judas Maccabseus was undoubtedly a hero."

"Then our whole theory of romance falls to the ground," said Lady Brenda.

"I think not," answered Augustus. " It is enough to extend it a little, and to say that all men and women who have acted nobly under the influence of strong and good passions have been romantic characters."

"That is not enough, either," objected Heine. "I do not think that they need have acted nobly, nor necessarily under the influence of good passions. Alexander, burning Persepolis under the influence of Thais's smiles and Timotheus's song is a romantic character enough. But the action was not noble, nor the passion good."

"But was he romantic in that case? " asked Lady Brenda. "It was rather like Nero burning Rome, you know."

"Perhaps there is a doubt on the subject," replied the poet. " It may be a question of individual taste.

Take another instance, out of more recent times. Was Giovanna of Naples, the first — the daughter of Robert — a romantic character or not ? "

"Of course," answered Lady Brenda.

"Was her love for Luigi of Taranto a romantic passion ? "

"I suppose so," admitted the lady.

"Then the murder of her husband, Andreas of Hungary, which she planned and caused to be executed out of her love for Luigi, her cousin, was romantic. There is no doubt of it. Many murders have a strong romantic colour. Christina of Sweden causing Monaldeschi to be killed at Fontainebleau, is another instance. There was nothing noble or good about either of those cases."

"I yield," said Augustus. " Then suppose we say that men and women acting under the influence of strong passions are romantic characters."

"There is more truth in that," replied Heine; " but it does not include enough."

"It does not tell me why I feel that the Arab is romantic while the Chinaman is not," remarked Chopin.

"My dear friend," said the other, " we know very little about Chinamen, and their appearance does not suggest romantic thoughts."

"True. But why?" insisted the composer, who felt that there was something in his question.

"It appears," said Augustus, " that some races are fundamentally excluded from all connection with our ideas of romance. But I believe that is because we cannot get so near to them, being by nature so different from them, as to be able to understand their feelings and passions."

"I have heard that Chinese music has sixty-six keys," remarked Chopin. " That would account for their music not being comprehensible to us. Then it follows that unless people and their feelings come readily within our understanding we cannot connect them with any idea of romance."

"Yes," answered Heine, " and the more we know them, the more we appreciate the romantic element. No schoolboy thinks Achilles half as romantic as Rob Roy. And yet Achilles is one of the most romantic characters in all epic poetry."

"Then the Iliad is a romance ?" inquired Gwendoline.

"It is the big romance, with a big hero, in big times, which we call an epic," replied the poet. " And it is written in magnificent verse. The modern romance is an infinitesimal epic of which Tom is the hero, Sarah Jane the heroine,' and a little modern house with green blinds and an iron railing is the scene of the action. But Tom and Jane love each other almost as much as Achilles and Briseis and are a great deal happier; and if the little house catches fire when Tom is out, and he comes back just in time to plunge through the flames and carry off Sarah Jane, with the loss of his eyebrows and beard and at the risk of his life, he is just as much of a hero as Achilles when he put on his new armour and went to kill Hector and the Trojans. For a man cannot do more than risk his life with his eyes open for the sake of what he loves, whether he be Achilles or Tom. The essential part of the romance is something which shall call out the strongest qualities in the natures of the actors in it; because all strong actions interest us, and if they are also good they rouse our admiration. And if those strong actions are done for the sake of love, or of what we call honour, or to free a nation from slavery they strike us as romantic."

"Because all those things," remarked Augustus, "are closely associated with modern romance from its beginning. The mediseval knight was the impersonation of love, honour and patriotism."

"Also, because those are the feelings most deeply felt by the human heart, and in spite of all that realism can do, stories of love, honour and patriotism will always and to the end of all time, appeal to every one who has a soul. The realists, of course, say that there is no soul, and that love, honour and patriotism are conventional terms, as right and wrong are conventional conceptions. That is paltry stuff. But the actions may be bad and yet be romantic, where love is the subject, and as that is the most usual subject for romance, it follows that men have endeavoured to treat it in the greatest variety of situations. Bad or good, it always interests. Our sympathy for fair Rosamund is at least as great as that we feel for Anne Boleyn."

" I fancy it is not certain whether the most romantic characters excite the most sympathy," said Lady Brenda.

"After they are dead they generally do," answered the poet, with a smile. " When we think of a romantic character we always fancy to ourselves that it must have been very charming to be the hero or heroine of all the thrilling scenes in which he or she took part. In fiction the romantic character has been worn out, partly because fiction is never so extraordinary- as reality; the result is that in modern books we are often most drawn towards some minor character of whom we feel at the end of the book that we have not seen enough, simply, because we have not been bored by him. But the romance of history does not wear out. There is the same difference between people in history and people in fiction which exists between a real king and a stage king with a tinsel crown. It is easy enough to dress an actor in royal robes, and to tell people that the crown is of real gold, eighteen carats fine; it is quite another matter to find words for the sham king to speak, and kingly actions for him to perform. For the construction of a good epic you must have both, or must find both; and that is a little hard when one has but a little acquaintance with kings. It is not everybody who can say with Voltaire: ' I have three or four kings whom I coddle — j'ai trois ou quatre rois que je mitonne.' But history presents us with the real king, in flesh and blood; his actions are harmonious, because they have actually been performed by the same man. Few writers of fiction nowadays have the combined imagination, accuracy and versatility necessary to invent and describe a series of actions, thoughts and words, so harmonious as to make the reader feel that one man could really have spoken, thought and acted as the author makes his hero act, speak and think. The writer then separates himself from romantism altogether and confines himself to describing things he has actually seen and of which he is positively sure. But he finds it hard to make his books interesting with such materials. Failing greatness, he sees that there is a short cut to popularity. If a writer cannot be sublime, he can at least be disgusting; and to excite disgust is, he thinks, better than to excite no notice at all."

"I think you are unjust to the realists," said Gwendoline. "I do not think that realistic books are always disgusting, by any means."

"No," answered Heine. "But they are more likely to be. With the genius of Goethe one may be realistic without being repulsive. But Goethe himself said that to call a thing bad which is bad doss no good, whereas to call a bad thing good does immeasurable harm. Many realists call bad things good."

"So do many romantists," objected Gwendoline. " And I do not see that we are any nearer to knowing what romance really is. Your beautiful woman with the starry eyes does not satisfy me. That is poetry, but it does not explain my feelings."

"I believe I can define romance, after listening to you all," said Chopin, who had not spoken for some time. "My own definition only applied to music, but it can be extended. In the first place romance consists in the association of certain ideas with certain people, either in history or in fiction. The people must belong to some race of beings of whom we know enough to understand their passions and to sympathise with them. The ideas must be connected with the higher passions of love, patriotism, devotion, noble hatred, profound melancholy, divine exaltation and the like. The lower passions in romance are invariably relegated to the traditional villain, who serves as a foil for the hero. Shorten all that and say that our romantic sense is excited by associating ideas of the higher passions, good and bad, with people whom we can understand, and in such a way as to make us feel with them."

"I do not think we shall get any nearer than that," said Augustus Chard. " It explains at once why we think that Alexander was a romantic character, whereas Julius Caesar was not. Alexander was always full of great passions, good or bad. Csesar was calm, impassive, superior to events. Alexander burnt a city to please a woman. Caesar found in a woman's love a pretext for conquering her kingdom and reducing the queen who loved him to the position of his vassal. Cleopatra was a romantic character, but she was unfortunate in her choice of men. Csesar was murdered, she murdered her husband, Antony killed himself for her and she concluded the tragedy by killing herself for Antony, after her son and Cassar's had also been put to death. There is material for a dozen romances in her life, but if she were a character of fiction we should say her story was absurdly impossible. As it is, her history is a romance of the most tremendous proportions."

"I think Caesar was romantic too," said Diana. " He had outgrown romance when he conquered the world. He must have been very different when he was young."

"Very different," said a placid voice from one of the tall windows.

A man stood outside in the moonlight, looking in. His tall and slender figure was wrapped in a dark mantle of some rich material; the folds reflected the moonbeams with a purple sheen, circling the straight neck and then falling to the ground behind the shoulder. On his brow a dark wreath of oak and laurel leaves sat like a royal crown above his high white forehead. The aquiline nose, broadly set on at the nostrils, but very clearly cut and delicate, gave to his face an expression of supreme, refined force, well borne out in the even and beautifully chiselled mouth and the prominent square chin. His eyes were very black, but without lustre, of that peculiar type in which it is impossible to distinguish the pupil from the surrounding iris.

"It is Caesar," said Augustus, under his breath, as he rose to greet the new-comer.

"Yes, I am Caesar," answered the calm voice of the dead conqueror. He came forward and stood in the midst of the party, so that the lamplight fell upon his grand face. " You spoke of me and I was near and heard you. You are not afraid to take a dead man's hand ? No — why should you be ? "

The hand he held out was long and nervous and white, looking as though the fingers possessed the elastic strength of steel.

"Are we in a dream ?" asked Diana in low tones, turning to Heine. The poet sighed.

"You are but a dream to us," he said, softly. " We are the reality — the sleepless reality of death."

"Yes we are very real," said Caesar, seating himself in a huge carved chair that might have served for an imperial throne, and looking slowly around upon the assembled party. "You were speaking of my life. You were saying that I was not a romantic character. Do not smile at my using the word. In nineteen centuries of wandering I have learned to speak of romantists and realists. I was not romantic. Could Homer himself have made an epic poem about my life ? I think not. Homer had traditions to help him, and Virgil had both Homer and the traditions. The purpose of my life was to overthrow tradition and to found a new era for the world. I was a modern. I was a source of realism. There was nothing mythical about me. Romance grew out of the decay of what I founded. I do not think that the romantic sense existed in men of my day, though the popular respect for the ancients was even then immense, and Rome was full of traditions. It is only by extending the term that anything can be called romantic which happened earlier than ten centuries after my death."

Too much awed to speak as yet by the strange presence, the living members of the party held their breath while Caesar was speaking, and the smooth inflexions of his calm voice filled the quiet air. A few moments of silence followed his speech and it seemed as though no one would answer him; but at last Chopin lifted his delicate face and spoke.

"Nineteen centuries!" he exclaimed. " Ah, Caesar, why could you not have lived on through all those years ? Poland would still have been free and the Poles would still have been a people."

"The world would have been free," rejoined the dead conqueror, sadly. " I believed in unity, not in partition. I meant to build, not to destroy. My heart sinks when I see the world divided into nations, of which I would have made one nation."

"Every individual man is himself a world,' " said Heine. "'A world that is born with him and dies with him, and under every gravestone lies the history of a world.' "

"That is true," answered Chopin, " and my world was Poland and is Poland still."

"Mine is the whole world of living beings," returned the poet.

"Yes," replied Chopin, with a fine smile. "I know it. But the world according to Saint-Simon would not resemble the world according to Julius Caesar."

"And yet," said Caesar, "I watched the development of Saint-Simon's doctrines with interest. They failed as all socialist movements have failed and always must fail, to the end of time, until they proceed upon a different basis."

"Why?" asked Lady Brenda, taking courage.

"The usual mistake. The followers of Saint Simon, or the stronger part of them, tried to abolish marriage and they tried to invent a religion. Religions are not easily invented which can be imposed upon any considerable body of mankind, and no considerable body of civilised mankind has ever shown itself disposed to dispense with the institution of matrimony. The desire to obtain wealth without labour, the negation of religion and the degradation of women have ruined all socialistic systems which have ever been tried, and have undermined many powerful nations. It is impossible to govern men except by defending the security of property, upholding the existing form of religion and exacting a rigorous respect for the institution of marriage."

"That is true," said Heine, thoughtfully. " The object of the Saint-Simonists was to create a common property, to be shared equally for ever, and to inculcate a form of religion which they had invented. They might have succeeded in that. But Enfantin had the unlucky idea that free love was a good thing, and that ruined the whole institution just when it was at the point of success."

"It could never have succeeded," answered Caesar, " even if he had let marriage exist, because the perpetual division of property is an impossibility. But the abolition of marriage would alone have been enough to ruin the scheme. I see in the modern world many nations, and each nation has its own very distinct form of government. Apply as a test to each the question of the stability of property, of religion and of marriage, and you will have at once the measure of its prosperity. I see in Europe a new empire, vast, strong and successful. The government protects wealth, marriage and religion; but religion is the least stable of the three, and there is no country in the world where there are so many who deny religion as there are in Germany. Look closer. You will see that there is no country in the world where there are so many anarchists, and these anarchists are perpetually sapping the sources of the nation's wealth and trying to undermine the institution of marriage. They are doing their work well. Unless there is a religious revival in Germany, she will soon cease to preponderate in Europe."

"That is a novel idea," said Augustus Chard.

" I think not," answered Caesar, with a quiet smile. " I think it is as old as I am at least. But look at Europe again. Of all European nations, which is the most prosperous? England. In spite of many political mistakes, in spite of many foolish and expensive wars, in spite of the many incompetent statesmen and dissolute monarchs by whom she has been often governed, in spite of civil wars which have overturned her government and religious wars which have changed her dynasties, in spite of the narrowness of her original territory, the inclemencies of her climate, the barrenness of her Scotch mountains and the indolent misery of her Irish peasants—in spite of all these, England is the most prosperous country in modern Europe. Apply my test. Is there any country in Europe where property is better protected, where religion is a more established fact, where the marriage-contract is so scrupulously observed? Certainly not. Look at her neighbours—even at France. Why did France grow prosperous under Napoleon the Third? Because he protected religion, fostered the growth of commerce, and never so much as thought of attacking marriage. Now the existing government is opposed to religion of any kind and has introduced divorce, which in France is a very different matter from divorce in England. France is less prosperous than she was. Italy comes next with her cry of freedom. Religion is tolerated, marriage is respected, but the property of the individual is eaten up to pay the debts of the government. The country is not prosperous. Italy as a nation is a failure, not by her own fault, perhaps, but by force of circumstances. How can a man be healthy whose head is buried in ice while his feet are plunged in hot water ? You must cool his feet and warm his head, but you must not apply leeches to every part of his body at once. When a man needs blood you must not bleed him in order to show him that his veins are not yet quite empty."

"Nations suffer at first when any great change is made, even when it is a change for the good," remarked Heine.

"That is a maxim which has been made an excuse for much harm," replied Caesar. " I do not think it is always true. A nation certainly ought not to suffer for twenty years because it has been unified. In twenty years a new generation of men grows up, and if the change has been for good, these young men should find themselves in better circumstances at twenty than their fathers were before them. I have watched the world for nearly two thousand years, and I think the history of that period shows that whenever a change for the better has taken place in a nation's government it has been followed almost immediately by a great increase of prosperity. Within a very few years after my death the empire of my nephew had eclipsed everything which had preceded it and in some ways, also, everything which has been seen since. The second unification of the empire under Charlemagne gave a fabulous impulse to the growth of wealth. Even the foundation of the present German Empire was followed in a short time by a great development. England became powerful from the time of William's conquest. She increased in wealth and importance under the great changes made by Elizabeth. She made another stride under the reign of William Third; and she reached the highest point of wealth and influence shortly after the inaugurar tion of Free Trade, which was one of the greatest changes ever introduced into the administration of any country. There is a gigantic republic in America which but a few years ago was struggling in a great civil war, but which is now probably the most prosperous nation in the whole world. No. I believe that great changes, if they are good are followed very soon by an increase of prosperity. This has not taken place in Italy, and there are/ no signs of it. On the contrary, her lands are ceasing to be cultivated, her men are emigrating in enormous numbers, and those who remain are obliged to pay the taxes, in order to maintain the fictitious credit of an imaginary importance. The best king, the best statesmen, even the best disposition of the people cannot turn thousands of square miles of barren rock into a fertile garden, nor force a small and poor country to maintain the state of a great empire."

The dead man spoke calmly and sorrowfully of his country. He alone could realize the vast gulf that lay between his day and the present, and though he was Caesar yet the rest could hardly believe him. There was silence for a time in the hall, and the great moon rose outside and her rays made the tiles of the terrace gleam like snow, while far down upon the sea the broad path of her light glittered like a river of pearls on dark velvet.

Then a cool breeze sprang up and the three dead men rose silently and went out from among the living into the wonderful night.

"We have been dreaming," sighed Lady Brenda, rising from her chair and looking out.