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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/4062-8.txt b/4062-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d2ac760 --- /dev/null +++ b/4062-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4026 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Gaston de Latour, by Walter Pater +#11 in our series by Walter Pater + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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Abode in those days +of the family of Latour, nesting there century after century, it +recorded significantly the effectiveness of their brotherly union, +less by way of invasion of the rights of others than by the +improvement of all gentler sentiments within. From the sumptuous +monuments of their last resting-place, backwards to every object +which had encircled them in that warmer and more lightsome home it +was visible they had cared for so much, even in some peculiarities of +the very ground-plan of the house itself--everywhere was the token of +their anxious estimate of all those incidents of man's pathway +through the world [2] which knit the wayfarers thereon most closely +together. + +Why this irregularity of ground-plan?--the traveller would ask; +recognising indeed a certain distinction in its actual effect on the +eye, and suspecting perhaps some conscious aim at such effect on the +part of the builders of the place in an age indulgent of +architectural caprices. And the traditional answer to the question, +true for once, still showed the race of Latour making much, making +the most, of the sympathetic ties of human life. The work, in large +measure, of Gaston de Latour, it was left unfinished at his death, +some time about the year 1594. That it was never completed could +hardly be attributed to any lack of means, or of interest; for it is +plain that to the period of the Revolution, after which its scanty +remnants passed into humble occupation (a few circular turrets, a +crenellated curtain wall, giving a random touch of dignity to some +ordinary farm-buildings) the place had been scrupulously maintained. +It might seem to have been a kind of reverence rather that had +allowed the work to remain untouched for future ages precisely at +this point in its growth. + +And the expert architectural mind, peeping acutely into recondite +motives and half-accomplished purposes in such matters, could detect +the circumstance which had determined that so noticeable peculiarity +of ground-plan. Its kernel was not, as in most similar buildings of +that date, [3] a feudal fortress, but an unfortified manor-house--a +double manoir--two houses, oddly associated at a right angle. Far +back in the Middle Age, said a not uncertain tradition, here had been +the one point of contact between two estates, intricately interlocked +with alien domain, as, in the course of generations, the family of +Latour, and another, had added field to field. In the single lonely +manor then existing two brothers had grown up; and the time came when +the marriage of the younger to the heiress of those neighbouring +lands would divide two perfect friends. Regretting over-night so +dislocating a change it was the elder who, as the drowsy hours flowed +away in manifold recollection beside the fire, now suggested to the +younger, himself already wistfully recalling, as from the past, the +kindly motion and noise of the place like a sort of audible sunlight, +the building of a second manor-house--the Château d'Amour, as it came +to be called--that the two families, in what should be as nearly as +possible one abode, might take their fortunes together. + +Of somewhat finer construction than the rough walls of the older +manor, the Château d'Amour stood, amid the change of years, as a +visible record of all the accumulated sense of human existence among +its occupants. The old walls, the old apartments, of those two +associated houses still existed, with some obvious additions, beneath +the delicate, fantastic surfaces of the château [4] of the sixteenth +century. Its singularity of outline was the very symbol of the +religion of the family in the race of Latour, still full of loyalty +to the old home, as its numerous outgrowths took hold here and there +around. A race with some prominent characteristics ineradicable in +the grain, they went to raise the human level about them by a +transfer of blood, far from involving any social decadence in +themselves. A peculiar local variety of character, of manners, in +that district of La Beauce, surprised the more observant visitor who +might find his way into farmhouse or humble presbytery of its +scattered townships. And as for those who kept up the central +tradition of their house, they were true to the soil, coming back, +under whatever obstacles, from court, from cloister, from distant +crusade, to the visible spot where the memory of their kindred was +liveliest and most exact--a memory, touched so solemnly with a +conscience of the intimacies of life, its significant events, its +contacts and partings, that to themselves it was like a second sacred +history. + +It was a great day, amid all their quiet days, for the people of +Deux-manoirs--one of the later days of August. The event, which +would mark it always in the life of one of them, called into play all +that was most expressive in that well-defined family character: it +was at once the recognition of what they valued most in past years, +and an assertion of will, or hope, for the [5] future, accordant +thereto. Far away in Paris the young King Charles the Ninth, in his +fourteenth year, had been just declared of age. Here, in the church +of Saint Hubert, church of their parish, and of their immemorial +patronage, though it lay at a considerable distance from their abode, +the chiefs of the house of Latour, attended by many of its dependents +and less important members, were standing ready, around the last hope +of their old age--the grandparents, their aged brothers and sisters, +certain aged ecclesiastics of their kindred, wont to be called to the +family councils. + +They had set out on foot, after a votive mass said early in the old +chapel of the manor, to assist at the ceremony of the day. +Distinguishable from afar by unusual height in proportion to its +breadth within, the church of Saint Hubert had an atmosphere, a +daylight, to itself. Its stained glass, work of the same hands that +had wrought for the cathedral of Chartres, admitted only an almost +angry ray of purple or crimson, here or there, across the dark, roomy +spaces. The heart, the heart of youth at least, sank, as one +entered, stepping warily out of the sunshine over the sepulchral +stones which formed the entire pavement of the church, a great +blazonry of family history from age to age for indefatigable eyes. +An abundance of almost life-sized sculpture clung to the pillars, +lurked in the angles, seemed, with those symbolical gestures, and +mystic faces [6] ready to speak their parts, to be almost in motion +through the gloom. Many years after, Gaston de Latour, an enemy of +all Gothic darkness or heaviness, returning to his home full of a +later taste, changed all that. A thicket of airy spires rose above +the sanctuary; the blind triforium broke into one continuous window; +the heavy masses of stone were pared down with wonderful dexterity of +hand, till not a hand's-breadth remained uncovered by delicate +tracery, as from the fair white roof, touched sparingly with gold, +down to the subterranean chapel of Saint Taurin, where the peasants +of La Beauce came to pray for rain, not a space was left unsearched +by cheerful daylight, refined, but hardly dimmed at all, by painted +glass mimicking the clearness of the open sky. In the sombre old +church all was in stately order now: the dusky, jewelled reliquaries, +the ancient devotional ornaments from the manor--much-prized family +possessions, sufficient to furnish the whole array of a great +ecclesiastical function like this--the lights burning, flowers +everywhere, gathered amid the last handfuls of the harvest by the +peasant-women, who came to present their children for the happy +chance of an episcopal blessing. + +And the almost exclusively aged people, in all their old personal +adornments, which now so rarely saw the light, forming the central +group, expectant around the young seigneur they had conducted hither, +seemed of one piece with [7] those mystic figures, the old, armour- +clad monumental effigies, the carved and painted imageries which ran +round the outer circuit of the choir--a version of the biblical +history, for the reading of those who loitered on their way from +chapel to chapel. There was Joseph's dream, with the tall sheaves of +the elder brethren bowing to Joseph's sheaf, like these aged heads +around the youthful aspirant of to-day. There was Jacob going on his +mysterious way, met by, conversing with, wrestling with, the Angels +of God--rescuing the promise of his race from the "profane" Esau. +There was the mother of Samuel, and, in long white ephod, the much- +desired, early-consecrated child, who had inherited her religious +capacity; and David, with something of his extraordinary genius for +divine things written on his countenance; onward, to the sacred +persons of the Annunciation, with the golden lily in the silver cup, +only lately set in its place. With dress, expression, nay! the very +incidents themselves innocently adapted to the actual habits and +associations of the age which had produced them, these figures of the +old Jewish history seemed about to take their places, for the +imparting of a divine sanction, among the living actors of the day. +One and all spoke of ready concurrence with religious motions, a +ready apprehension of, and concurrence with, the provisions of a +certain divine scheme for the improvement of one's opportunities in +the world. + +[8] Would that dark-haired, fair-skinned lad concur, in his turn, and +be always true to his present purpose--Gaston de Latour, standing +thus, almost the only youthful thing, amid the witness of these +imposing, meditative, masks and faces? Could his guardians have read +below the white propriety of the youth, duly arrayed for dedication, +with the lighted candle in his right hand and the surplice folded +over his left shoulder, he might sorely have disturbed their placid +but somewhat narrow ruminations, with the germs of what was strange +to or beyond them. Certain of those shrewd old ecclesiastics had in +fact detected that the devout lad, so visibly impressed, was not +altogether after their kind; that, together with many characteristics +obviously inherited, he possessed--had caught perhaps from some +ancestor unrepresented here--some other potencies of nature, which +might not always combine so accordantly as to-day with the mental +requisites of an occasion such as this. One of them, indeed, touched +notwithstanding by his manifest piety just then, shortly afterwards +recommended him a little prayer "for peace" from the Vespers of the +Roman Breviary--for the harmony of his heart with itself; advice +which, except for a very short period, he ever afterwards followed, +saying it every evening of his life. + +Yet it was the lad's own election which had led him to this first +step in a career that might take him out of the world and end the +race of [9] Latour altogether. Approaching their fourscore years, +and realising almost suddenly the situation of the young Gaston, left +there alone, out of what had been a large, much-promising, resonant +household, they wished otherwise, but did not try to change his +early-pronounced preference for the ecclesiastical calling. When he +determined to seek the clericature, his proposal made a demand on all +their old-fashioned religious sentiment. But the fund was a deep +one, and their acquiescence in the result entire. He might indeed +use his privilege of "orders" only as the stepping-stone to material +advancement in a church which seemed to have gone over wholly to the +world, and of which at that time one half the benefices were +practically in the hands of laymen. But, actually, the event came to +be a dedication on their part, not unlike those old biblical ones--an +offering in old age of the single precious thing left them; the +grandchild, whose hair would presently fall under the very shears +which, a hundred years before, had turned an earlier, brilliant, +Gaston de Latour into a monk. + +Charles Guillard, Bishop of Chartres, a courtly, vivacious prelate, +whose quick eyes seemed to note at a glance the whole assembly, one +and all, while his lips moved silently, arrived at last, and the rite +began with the singing of the Office for the Ninth Hour. It was like +a stream of water crossing unexpectedly a dusty way--Mirabilia +testimonia tua! In psalm and antiphon, inexhaustibly [10] fresh, the +soul seemed to be taking refuge, at that undevout hour, from the +sordid languor and the mean business of men's lives, in contemplation +of the unfaltering vigour of the divine righteousness, which had +still those who sought it, not only watchful in the night but alert +in the drowsy afternoon. Yes! there was the sheep astray, sicut ovis +quae periit--the physical world; with its lusty ministers, at work, +or sleeping for a while amid the stubble, their faces upturned to the +August sun--the world so importunately visible, intruding a little +way, with its floating odours, in that semicircle of heat across the +old over-written pavement at the great open door, upon the mysteries +within. Seen from the incense-laden sanctuary, where the bishop was +assuming one by one the pontifical ornaments, La Beauce, like a many- +coloured carpet spread under the great dome, with the white double +house-front quivering afar through the heat, though it looked as if +you might touch with the hand its distant spaces, was for a moment +the unreal thing. Gaston alone, with all his mystic preoccupations, +by the privilege of youth, seemed to belong to both, and link the +visionary company about him to the external scene. + +The rite with which the Roman Church "makes a clerk," aims certainly +at no low measure of difference from the coarser world around him, in +its supposed scholar: and in this case the [11] aspirant (the precise +claims of the situation being well considered) had no misgiving. +Discreetly, and with full attention, he answers Adsum! when his name +is called, and advances manfully; though he kneels meekly enough, and +remains, with his head bowed forward, at the knees of the seated +bishop who recites the appointed prayers, between the anthems and +responses of his Schola, or attendant singers--Might he be saved from +mental blindness! Might he put on the new man, even as his outward +guise was changed! Might he keep the religious habit for ever! who +had thus hastened to lay down the hair of his head for the divine +love. "The Lord is my inheritance" whispers Gaston distinctly, as +the locks fall, cut from the thickly-grown, black head, in five +places, "after the fashion of Christ's crown," the shears in the +episcopal hands sounding aloud, amid the silence of the curious +spectators. From the same hands, in due order, the fair surplice +ripples down over him. "This is the generation of them that seek +Him," the choir sings: "The Lord Himself is the portion of my +inheritance and my cup." It was the Church's eloquent way of bidding +unrestricted expansion to the youthful heart in its timely purpose to +seek the best, to abide among the things of the spirit. + +The prospect from their cheerful, unenclosed road, like a white scarf +flung across the land, as [12] the party returned home in the late +August afternoon, was clear and dry and distant. The great barns at +the wayside had their doors thrown back, displaying the dark, cool +space within. The farmsteads seemed almost tenantless, the villagers +being still at work over the immense harvest-field. Crazy bells +startled them, striking out the hour from behind, over a deserted +churchyard. Still and tenantless also seemed the manor as they +approached, door and window lying open upon the court for the +coolness; or rather it was as if at their approach certain spectral +occupants started back out of the daylight--"Why depart, dear +ghosts?" was what the grandparents would have cried. They had more +in common with that immaterial world than with flesh and blood. +There was room for the existing household, enough and to spare, in +one of the two old houses. That other, the Château d'Amour, remained +for Gaston, at first as a delightful, half-known abode of wonders, +though with some childish fear; afterwards, as a delightful nursery +of refined or fantastic sentiment, as he recalled, in this chamber or +that, its old tenants and their doings, from the affectionate +brothers, onwards--above all, how in one room long ago Gabrielle de +Latour had died of joy. + +With minds full of their recent business it was difficult to go back +to common occupations; as darkness came on, the impressions of the +day did but return again more vividly and concentrate [13] themselves +upon the inward sense. Observance, loyal concurrence in some high +purpose for him, passive waiting on the hand one might miss in the +darkness, with the gift or gifts therein of which he had the +presentiment, and upon the due acceptance of which the true fortune +of life would turn; these were the hereditary traits alert in Gaston, +as he lay awake in the absolute, moon-lit, stillness, his outward ear +attentive for the wandering footsteps which, through that wide, +lightly-accentuated country, often came and went about the house, +with weird suggestions of a dim passage to and fro, and of an +infinite distance. He would rise, as the footsteps halted perhaps +below his window, to answer the questions of the travellers, +pilgrims, or labourers who had missed their way from farm to farm, or +halting soldier seeking guidance; terrible or terror-stricken +companies sometimes, rudely or piteously importunate to be let in-- +for it was the period of the Religious Wars, flaming up here and +there over France, and never quite put out, during forty years. + +Once, in the beginning of these troubles (he was then a child, +leaning from the window, as a sound of rickety, small wheels +approached) the enquiry came in broken French, "Voulez-vous donner +direction?" from a German, one of the mercenaries of the Duc de +Guise, hired for service in a civil strife of France, drawing wearily +a crippled companion, so far from home. [14] The memory of it, +awakening a thousand strange fancies, had remained by him, as a +witness to the power of fortuitous circumstance over the imagination. + +One night there had come a noise of horns, and presently King Charles +himself was standing in the courtyard, belated, and far enough now +from troublesome company, as he hunted the rich-fleshed game of La +Beauce through the endless corn. He entered, with a relish for the +pleasant cleanliness of the place, expressed in a shrill strain of +half-religious oaths, like flashes of hell-fire to Gaston's suddenly- +awakened sense. It was the invincible nature of the royal lad to +speak, and feel, on these mad, alto notes, and not unbecoming in a +good catholic; for Huguenots never swore, and these were subtly +theological oaths. Well! the grandparents repressed as best they +could their apprehensions as to what other hunters, what other +disconcerting incident, might follow; for catholic France very +generally believed that the Huguenot leaders had a scheme for +possessing themselves of the person of the young king, known to be +mentally pliable. Meanwhile they led him to their daintiest +apartment, with great silver flambeaux, that he might wash off the +blood with which not his hands only were covered; for he hunted also +with the eagerness of a madman--steeped in blood. He lay there for a +few hours, after supping very familiarly on his own birds, Gaston +rising from [15] his bed to look on at a distance, and, afterwards, +on his knee, serving the rose-water dish and spiced wine, as the +night passed in reassuring silence; Charles himself, as usual, keenly +enjoying this "gipsy" incident, with the supper after that unexpected +fashion, among strange people, he hardly knew where. He was very +pale, like some cunning Italian work in wax or ivory, of partly +satiric character, endued by magic or crafty mechanism with vivacious +movement. But as he sat thus, ever for the most part the unhappy +plaything of other people's humours, escaped for a moment out of a +world of demoniac politicians, the pensive atmosphere around seemed +gradually to change him, touching his wild temper, pleasantly, +profitably, so that he took down from the wall and struck out the +notes of a lute, and fell to talking of verses, leaving a stanza of +his own scratched with a diamond on the window-pane--lines simpler- +hearted, and more full of nature than were common at that day. + +The life of Gaston de Latour was almost to coincide with the duration +of the Religious Wars. The earliest public event of his memory was +that famous siege of Orleans from which the young Henri de Guise rode +away the head of his restless family, tormented now still further by +the reality or the pretence of filial duty, seeking vengeance on the +treacherous murder of his father. Following a long period of quiet +progress--the tranquil and tolerant years of the [16] Renaissance-- +the religious war took possession of, and pushed to strangely +confused issues, a society somewhat distraught by an artificial +aesthetic culture; and filled with wild passions, wildly-dramatic +personalities, a scene already singularly attractive by its artistic +beauty. A heady religious fanaticism was worked by every prominent +egotist in turn, pondering on his chances, in the event of the +extinction of the house of Valois with the three sons of Catherine de +Medici, born unsound, and doomed by astrological prediction. The old +manors, which had exchanged their towers for summer-houses under the +softening influence of Renaissance fashions, found themselves once +more medievally insecure amid a vagrant warfare of foreign +mercenaries and armed peasants. It was a curiously refined people +who now took down the armour, hanging high on the wall for decoration +among newer things so little warlike. + +A difficult age, certainly, for scrupulous spirits to move in! A +perplexed network of partizan or personal interests underlay, and +furnished the really directing forces in, a supposed Armageddon of +contending religious convictions. The wisest perhaps, like Michel de +L'Hôpital, withdrew themselves from a conflict, in which not a single +actor has the air of quite pure intentions; while religion, itself +the assumed ground of quarrel, seems appreciable all the while only +by abstraction from the parties, the leaders, at once violent [17] +and cunning, who are most pretentious in the assertion of its rival +claims. What there was of religion was in hiding, perhaps, with the +so-called "Political" party, professedly almost indifferent to it, +but which had at least something of humanity on its side, and some +chance of that placidity of mind in which alone the business of the +spirit can be done. The new sect of "Papists" were not the true +catholics: there was little of the virtue of the martyr in militant +Calvinism. It is not a catholic historian who notes with profound +regret "that inauspicious day," in the year 1562, Gaston's tenth +year, "when the work of devastation began, which was to strip from +France that antique garniture of religious art which later ages have +not been able to replace." Axe and hammer at the carved work sounded +from one end of France to the other. + +It was a peculiarity of this age of terror, that every one, including +Charles the Ninth himself, dreaded what the accident of war might +make, not merely of his enemies, but of temporary allies and +pretended friends, in an evenly balanced but very complex strife--of +merely personal rivals also, in some matter which had nothing to do +with the assumed motives of that strife. Gaston de Latour passing on +his country way one night, with a sudden flash of fierce words two +young men burst from the doors of a road-side tavern. The brothers +are quarrelling about [18] the division, lately effected there, of +their dead father's morsel of land. "I shall hate you till death!" +cries the younger, bounding away in the darkness; and two atheists +part, to take opposite sides in the supposed strife of Catholic and +Huguenot. + +The deeds of violence which occupy the foreground of French history +during the reigns of Catherine's sons might indeed lead one to fancy +that little human kindness could have remained in France,--a +fanatical civil war of forty years, that no place at all could have +been left for the quiet building of character. Contempt for human +life, taught us every day by nature, and alas! by man himself:--all +war intensifies that. But the more permanent forces, alike of human +nature and of the natural world, are on the whole in the interest of +tranquillity and sanity, and of the sentiments proper to man. Like +all good catholic children, Gaston had shuddered at the name of +Adretz, of Briquemaut with his great necklace of priests' ears, of +that dark and fugitive Montgomeri, the slayer, as some would have it +the assassin, of a king, now active, and almost ubiquitous, on the +Huguenot side. Still, at Deux-manoirs, this warfare, seething up +from time to time so wildly in this or that district of France, was +for the most part only sensible in incidents we might think +picturesque, were they told with that intention; delightful enough, +certainly, to the curiosity of a boy, in whose [19] mind nevertheless +they deepened a native impressibility to the sorrow and hazard that +are constant and necessary in human life, especially for the poor. +The troubles of "that poor people of France"--burden of all its +righteous rulers, from Saint Lewis downwards--these, at all events, +would not be lessened by the struggle of Guise and Condé and Bourbon +and Valois, of the Valois with each other, of those four brilliant +young princes of the name of Henry. The weak would but suffer +somewhat more than was usual, in the interest of the strong. If you +were not sure whether that gleaming of the sun in the vast distance +flashed from swords or sickles, whether that far-off curl of smoke +rose from stubble-fire or village-steeple, to protect which the +peasants, still lovers of their churches, would arm themselves, women +and all, with fork and scythe,--still, those peasants used their +scythes, in due season, for reaping their leagues of cornland, and +slept with faces as tranquil as ever towards the sky, for their +noonday rest. In effect, since peace is always in some measure +dependent on one's own seeking, disturbing forces do but fray their +way along somewhat narrow paths over the great spaces of the quiet +realm of nature. La Beauce, vast enough to present at once every +phase of weather, its one landmark the twin spires of Chartres, +salient as the finger of a dial, guiding, by their change of +perspective, victor or vanquished on his way, offered room enough +[20] for the business both of peace and war to those enamoured of +either. When Gaston, after a brief absence, was unable to find his +child's garden-bed, that was only because in a fine June the corn had +grown tall so quickly, through which he was presently led to it, with +all its garish sweets undisturbed: and it was with the ancient +growths of mind--customs, beliefs, mental preferences--as with the +natural world. + +It may be understood that there was a certain rudeness about the old +manor, left almost untouched from age to age, with a loyalty which +paid little or no heed to changes of fashion. The Château d'Amour, +indeed, as the work of a later age, refined somewhat upon the rough +feudal architecture; and the daintier taste had centred itself in +particular upon one apartment, a veritable woman's apartment, with an +effect in some degree anticipating the achievement of Gaston's own +century, in which the apparatus of daily life became so eloquent of +the moods of those to whom it ministered. It was the chamber of +Gabrielle de Latour, who had died of joy. Here certainly she had +watched, at these windows, during ten whole years, for the return of +her beloved husband from a disastrous battle in the East, till +against all expectation she beheld him crossing the court at last. +Immense privilege! Immense distinction! Again and again Gaston +tried to master the paradox, at times, in deep concentration of mind, +seemed [21] almost to touch the point of that wonderful moment. + +Hither, as to an oratory, a religious place, the finer spirits of her +kin had always found their way, to leave behind them there the more +intimate relics of themselves. To Gaston its influence imparted +early a taste for delicate things as being indispensable in all his +pleasures to come; and, from the very first, with the appetite for +some great distinguishing passion, the peculiar genius of his age +seeming already awake spontaneously within him. Here, at least, had +been one of those grand passions, such as were needed to give life +its true meaning and effect. Conscious of that rudeness in his home, +and feeding a strong natural instinct for outward beauty hitherto on +what was barely sufficient, he found for himself in this perfumed +place the centre of a fanciful world, reaching out to who could tell +what refined passages of existence in that great world beyond, of +which the echoes seemed to light here amid the stillness. On his +first visit one pensive afternoon, fitting the lately attained key in +the lock, he seemed to have drawn upon himself, yet hardly to have +disturbed, the meditations of its former occupant. A century of +unhindered summers had taken the heat from its colours--the couches, +the curtains half shading the windows, which the rain in the south- +west wind just then touched so softly. That great passion of old had +been also a dainty love, leaving [22] its impress everywhere in this +magic apartment, on the musical instruments, the books lying where +they might have fallen from the hands of the listless reader so long +since, the fragrance which the lad's movement stirred around him. +And there, on one of the windows, were the verses of King Charles, +who had slept here, as in the most courtly resting-place of the +house. On certain nights Gaston himself was not afraid to steal from +his own bed to lie in it, though still too healthy a sleeper to be +visited by the appropriate dreams he so greatly longed for. + +A nature, instinctively religious, which would readily discover and +give their full value to all such facts of experience as might be +conformable thereto! But what would be the relation of this +religious sensibility to sensibilities of another kind, now awaking +in the young Gaston, as he mused in this dreamy place, surrounded by +the books, the furniture, almost the very presence of the past, which +had already found tongues to speak of a still living humanity-- +somewhere, somewhere, in the world!--waiting for him in the distance, +or perchance already on its way, to explain, by its own plenary +beauty and power, why wine and roses and the languorous summer +afternoons were so delightful. So far indeed, the imaginative heat, +that might one day enter into dangerous rivalry with simple old- +fashioned faith, was blent harmoniously with it. They [23] were +hardly distinguishable elements of an amiable character, susceptible +generally to the poetic side of things--two neighbourly apprehensions +of a single ideal. + +The great passions, the fervid sentiments, of which Gaston dreamed as +the true realisation of life, have not always softened men's natures: +they have been compatible with many cruelties, as in the lost spirits +of that very age. They may overflow, on the other hand, in more +equable natures, through the concurrence of happier circumstance, +into that universal sympathy which lends a kind of amorous power to +the homeliest charities. So it seemed likely to be with Gaston de +Latour. Sorrow came along with beauty, a rival of its intricate +omnipresence in life. In the sudden tremor of an aged voice, the +handling of a forgotten toy, a childish drawing, in the tacit +observance of a day, he became aware suddenly of the great stream of +human tears falling always through the shadows of the world. For +once the darling of old age actually more than responded in full to +its tenderness. In the isolation of his life there had been little +demand for sympathy on the part of those anywhere near his own age. +So much the larger was the fund of superfluous affection which went +forth, with a delicacy not less than their own, to meet the +sympathies of the aged people who cherished him. In him, their old, +almost forgotten sorrows bled anew. + +[24] Variety of affection, in a household in which many relations had +lived together, had brought variety of sorrow. But they were well- +nigh healed now--those once so poignant griefs--the scars remaining +only as deeper lines of natural expression. It was visible, to their +surprise, that he penetrated the motive of the mass said so solemnly, +in violet, on the Innocents' Day, and understood why they wept at the +triumphant antiphons:--"My soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare +of the fowler!"--thinking intently of the little tombs which had +recorded carefully almost the minutes of children's lives, Elizabeth +de Latour, Cornélius de Latour, aged so many years, days, hours. +Yes! the cold pavement under one's feet had once been molten lava. +Surely the resources of sorrow were large in things! The fact must +be duly marked and provided for, with due estimate of his own +susceptibility thereto, in his scheme of life. Might he pass through +the world, unriven by sorrows such as those! And already it was as +if he stept softly over the earth, not to outrage its so abundant +latent sensibilities. + +The beauty of the world and its sorrow, solaced a little by religious +faith, itself so beautiful a thing; these were the chief impressions +with which he made his way outwards, at first only in longer rambles, +as physical strength increased, over his native plains, whereon, as +we have seen, the cruel warfare of that age had [25] aggravated at a +thousand points the everyday appeal of suffering humanity. The vast +level, stretching thirty miles from east to west, thirty from north +to south:--perhaps the reader may think little of its resources for +the seeker after natural beauty, or its capacity to develope the +imagination. A world, he may fancy, in which there could be no +shadows, at best not too cheerful colours. In truth, it was all +accent, so to speak. But then, surely, all the finer influences of +every language depend mostly on accent; and he has but to think of it +as Gaston actually lived in it to find a singularly companionable +soul there. Gaston, at least, needed but to go far enough across it +for those inward oppositions to cease, which already at times beset +him; to feel at one with himself again, under the influence of a +scene which had for him something of the character of the sea--its +changefulness, its infinity, its pathos in the toiling human life +that traversed it. Featureless, if you will, it was always under the +guidance of its ample sky. Scowling back sometimes moodily enough, +but almost never without a remnant of fine weather, about August it +was for the most part cloudless. And then truly, under its blue +dome, the great plain would as it were "laugh and sing," in a kind of +absoluteness of sympathy with the sun. + + + +II. OUR LADY'S CHURCH + + "I had almost said even as they." + +[26] Like a ship for ever a-sail in the distance, thought the child, +everywhere the great church of Chartres was visible, with the passing +light or shadow upon its grey, weather-beaten surfaces. The people +of La Beauce were proud, and would talk often of its rich store of +sacred furniture, the wonder-working relics of "Our Lady under the +Earth," and her sacred veil or shift, which kings and princes came to +visit, returning with a likeness thereof, replete in miraculous +virtue, for their own wearing. The busy fancy of Gaston, multiplying +this chance hearsay, had set the whole interior in array--a dim, +spacious, fragrant place, afloat with golden lights. Lit up over the +autumn fields at evening, the distant spires suggested the splendour +within, with so strong an imaginative effect, that he seemed scarcely +to know whether it was through the mental or bodily eye that he +beheld. When he came [27] thither at last, like many another well- +born youth, to join the episcopal household as a kind of half- +clerical page, he found (as happens in the actual testing of our +ideals) at once more and less than he had supposed; and his earlier +vision was a thing he could never precisely recover, or disentangle +from the supervening reality. What he saw, certainly, was greater +far in mere physical proportion, and incommensurable at first by +anything he knew--the volume of the wrought detail, the mass of the +component members, the bigness of the actual stones of the masonry, +contrary to the usual Gothic manner, and as if in reminiscence of +those old Druidic piles amid which the Virgin of Chartres had been +adored, long before the birth of Christ, by a mystic race, possessed +of some prophetic sense of the grace in store for her. Through +repeated dangers good-fortune has saved that unrivalled treasure of +stained glass; and then, as now, the word "awful," so often applied +to Gothic aisles, was for once really applicable. You enter, looking +perhaps for a few minutes' cool shelter from the summer noonday; and +the placid sunshine of La Beauce seems to have been transformed in a +moment into imperious, angry fire. + +It was not in summer, however, that Gaston first set foot there; he +saw the beautiful city for the first time as if sheathed austerely in +repellent armour. In his most genial subsequent impressions of the +place there was always a lingering [28] trace of that famous frost +through which he made his way, wary of petrifying contact against +things without, to the great western portal, on Candlemas morning. +The sad, patient images by the doorways of the crowded church seemed +suffering now chiefly from the cold. It was almost like a funeral-- +the penitential violet, the wandering taper-light, of this half- +lenten feast of Purification. His new companions, at the head and in +the rear of the long procession, forced every one, even the Lord +Bishop himself, to move apace, bustling along, cross-bearer and +acolyte, in their odd little copes, out of the bitter air, which made +the jolly life Gaston now entered on, around the great fire of their +hall in the episcopal palace, seem all the more winsome. + +Notre-Dame de Chartres! It was a world to explore, as if one +explored the entire Middle Age; it was also one unending, elaborate, +religious function--a life, or a continuous drama, to take one's part +in. Dependent on its structural completeness, on its wealth of well- +preserved ornament, on its unity in variety, perhaps on some +undefinable operation of genius, beyond, but concurrently with, all +these, the church of Chartres has still the gift of a unique power of +impressing. In comparison, the other famous churches of France, at +Amiens for instance, at Rheims or Beauvais, may seem but formal, and +to a large extent reproducible, effects of mere architectural rule on +a gigantic scale. The [29] somewhat Gothic soul of Gaston relished +there something strange, or even bizarre, in the very manner in which +the building set itself, so broadly couchant, upon the earth; in the +natural richness of tone on the masonry within; in its vast echoing +roof of timber, the "forest," as it was called; in the mysterious +maze traced upon its pavement; its maze-like crypt, centering in the +shrine of the sibylline Notre-Dame, itself a natural or very +primitive grotto or cave. A few years were still to pass ere +sacrilegious hands despoiled it on a religious pretext:--the catholic +church must pay, even with the molten gold of her sanctuaries, the +price of her defence in the civil war. At present, it was such a +treasure-house of medieval jewellery as we have to make a very +systematic effort even to imagine. The still extant register of its +furniture and sacred apparel leaves the soul of the ecclesiologist +athirst. + +And it had another very remarkable difference from almost all Gothic +churches: there were no graves there. Its emptiness in this respect +is due to no revolutionary or Huguenot desecration. Once indeed, +about this very time, a popular military leader had been interred +with honour, within the precinct of the high altar itself. But not +long afterwards, said the reverend canons, resenting on the part of +their immaculate patroness this intrusion, the corpse itself, ill at +ease, had protested, lifting up its hands above [30] the surface of +the pavement, as if to beg interment elsewhere; and Gaston could +remember assisting, awakened suddenly one night, at the removal of +the remains to a more ordinary place of sepulture. + +And yet that lavish display of jewellers' work on the altars, in the +chapels, the sacristies, of Our Lady's Church, was but a framing for +little else than dead people's bones. To Gaston, a piteous soul, +with a touch also of that grim humour which, as we know, holds of +pity, relic-worship came naturally. At Deux-manoirs too there had +been relics, including certain broken children's toys and some rude +childish drawings, taken forth now and then with almost religious +veneration, with trembling hands and renewal of old grief, to his +wondering awe at the greatness of men's sorrows. Yes! the pavement +under one's feet had once been, might become again for him, molten +lava. The look, the manner, of those who exposed these things, had +been a revelation. The abundant relics of the church of Chartres +were for the most part perished remnants of the poor human body +itself; but, appertaining to persons long ago and of a far-off, +immeasurable kind of sanctity, stimulated a more indifferent sort of +curiosity, and seemed to bring the distant, the impossible, as with +tangible evidence of fact, close to one's side. It was in one's +hand--the finger of an Evangelist! The crowned head of Saint Lubin, +bishop of Chartres [31] long centuries since, but still able to +preserve its wheat-stacks from fire; bones of the "Maries," with some +of the earth from their grave; these, and the like of these, was what +the curious eye discerned in the recesses of those variously +contrived reliquaries, great and small, glittering so profusely about +the dusky church, itself ministering, by its very shadows, to a +certain appetite in the soul of Gaston for dimness--for a dim place +like this--such as he had often prefigured to himself, albeit with +some suspicion of what might seem a preference for darkness. +Physical twilight we most of us love, in its season. To him, that +perpetual twilight came in close identity with its moral or +intellectual counterpart, as the welcome requisite for that part of +the soul which loves twilight, and is, in truth, never quite at rest +out of it, through some congenital uneasiness or distress, perhaps, +in its processes of vision. + +As complex, yet not less perfectly united under a single leading +motive,--its sister volume, was the ritual order of Notre-Dame de +Chartres, a year-long dramatic action, in which every one had, and +knew, his part--the drama or "mystery" of Redemption, to the +necessities of which the great church had shaped itself. All those +various "offices" which, in Pontifical, Missal and Breviary, devout +imagination had elaborated from age to age with such a range of +spiritual colour and light and shade, with so much poetic tact in +quotation, such a depth of insight into [32] the Christian soul, had +joined themselves harmoniously together, one office ending only where +another began, in the perpetual worship of this mother of churches, +which had also its own picturesque peculiarities of "use," proud of +its maternal privilege therein. And the music rose--warmed, +expanded, or fell silent altogether--as the order of the year, the +colours, the whole expression of things changed, gathering around the +full mystic effulgence of the pontiff in his own person, while the +sacred theme deepened at the great ecclesiastical seasons, when the +aisles overflowed with a vast multitude, and like a court, combed, +starched, rustling around him, Gaston and his fellows "served" +Monseigneur--they, zealous, ubiquitous, more prominent than ever, +though for the most part profoundly irreverent, and, notwithstanding +that, one and all, with what disdain of the untonsured laity! + +Well! what was of the past there--the actual stones of the temple and +that sacred liturgical order--entered readily enough into Gaston's +mental kingdom, filling places prepared by the anticipations of his +tranquil, dream-struck youth. It was the present, the uncalculated +present, which now disturbed the complacent habit of his thoughts, +proposing itself, importunately, in the living forms of his immediate +companions, in the great clerical body of which he was become a part, +in the people of Chartres itself (none the less animated because +provincial) as [33] a thing, alien at a thousand points from his +preconceptions of life, to be judged by him, to be rejected or +located within. How vivid, how delightful, they were!--the other +forty-nine of the fifty lads who had come hither, after the old- +fashioned way, to serve in the household of Monseigneur by way of an +"institution" in learning and good manners, as to which a grave +national assembly, more than three centuries before the States- +General of 1789, had judged French youth of quality somewhat +behindhand, recommending king and nobles to take better care for the +future of their education, "to the end that, enlightened and +moralised, they might know their duties, and be less likely to abuse +their privileges." + +And how becomingly that cleric pride, that self-respecting quiet, sat +upon their high-bred figures, their angelic, unspoiled faces, +saddened transiently as they came under the religious spell for a +moment. As for Gaston, they welcomed him with perfect friendliness, +kept their best side foremost for an hour, and would not leave his +very dreams. In absolute unconsciousness, they had brought from +their remote old homes all varieties of hereditary gifts, vices, +distinctions, dark fates, mercy, cruelty, madness. Appetite and +vanity abounded, but with an abundant superficial grace, befitting a +generation which, as by some aesthetic sense in the air, made the +most of the pleasant outsides of life. All the [34] various traits +of the dying Middle Age were still in evidence among them, in all +their crude effectiveness; only, blent, like rusty old armour +wreathed in flowers, with the peculiar fopperies of the time, +shrewdly divined from a distance, as happens with competent youth. +To be in Paris itself, amid the full, delightful, fragrance of those +dainty visible things which Huguenots despised:--that, surely, were +the sum of good-fortune! Half-clerical, they loved nevertheless the +touch of steel; had a laughing joy in trifling with its latent soul +of destruction. In mimicry of the great world, they had their +leaders, so inscrutably self-imposed:--instinctively, they felt and +underwent that mystery of leadership, with its consequent heats of +spirit, its tides and changes of influence. + +On the other hand also, to Gaston, dreamily observant, it was quaint, +likeable, the way they had of reproducing, unsuspectingly, the +humours of animal nature. Does not the anthropologist tell us of a +heraldry, with a large assortment of heraldic beasts, to be found +among savage or half-savage peoples, as the "survival" of a period +when men were nearer than they are or seem to be now, to the +irrational world? Throughout the sprightly movement of the lads' +daily life it was as if their "tribal" pets or monsters were with or +within them. Tall Exmes, lithe and cruel like a tiger--it was +pleasant to stroke him. The tiger was there, the parrot, the hare, +the goat of course, and certainly much apishness. [35] And, one and +all, they were like the creatures, in their vagrant, short, memories, +alert perpetually on the topmost crest of the day and hour, +transferred so heartlessly, so entirely, from yesterday to to-day. +Yet out of them, sure of some response, human heart did break:--in +and around Camille Pontdormi, for instance, brilliant and ambitious, +yet so sensitive about his threadbare home, concerning which however +he had made the whole company, one by one, his confidants--so loyal +to the people there, bursting into wild tears over the letter which +brought the news of his younger brother's death, visibly fretting +over it long afterwards. Still, for the most part, in their perfect +health, nothing seemed to reach them but their own boyish ordinances, +their own arbitrary "form." It was an absolute indifference; most +striking when they lifted their well-trained voices to sing in choir, +vacant as the sparrows, while the eloquent, far-reaching, aspiring +words floated melodiously from them, sometimes, with truly medieval +license, singing to the sacred music those songs from the streets (no +one cared to detect) which were really in their hearts. A world of +vanity and appetite, yet after all of honesty with itself! Like +grown people, they were but playing a game, and meant to observe its +rules. Say, rather, a world of honesty, and of courage! They, at +least, were not preoccupied all day long, and, if they woke in the +night, with the fear of death. + +[36] It was part of their precocious worldliness to recognise, to +feel a little afraid of their new companion's intellectual power. +Those obviously meditative souls, which seem "not to sleep o' +nights," seldom fail to put others on their guard. Who can tell what +they may be judging, planning in silence, so near to one? Looking +back long afterwards across the dark period that had intervened, +Gaston could trace their ways through the world. Not many of them +had survived to his own middle life. Reappearing, from point to +point, they connected themselves with the great crimes, the great +tragedies of the time, as so many bright-coloured threads in that +sombre tapestry of human passion. To recall in the obtuse, grieved, +marred faces of uninteresting men or women, the disappointments, the +sorrows, the tragic mistakes of the children they were long ago; that +is a good trick for taking our own sympathy by surprise, which Gaston +practised when he saw the last, or almost the last, of some of them, +and felt a great pity, a great indulgence. + +Here and now, at all events, carrying their cheerful tumult through +all those quiet ecclesiastical places--the bishop's garden, the great +sacristy, neat and clean in its brown, pensive lights, they seemed of +a piece with the bright, simple, inanimate things, the toys, of +nature. They made one lively picture with the fruit and wine they +loved, the birds they captured, the buckets of clear water drawn for +pastime from [37] the great well, and Jean Sémur's painted conjuring +book stolen from the old sorceress, his grandmother, out of which he +told their fortunes; with the musical instruments of others; with +their carefully hidden dice and playing-cards, worn or soiled by the +fingers of the older gamesters who had discarded them. Like their +elders, they read eagerly, in racy, new translations, old Greek and +Latin books, with a delightful shudder at the wanton paganism. It +was a new element of confusion in the presentment of that miniature +world. The classical enthusiasm laid hold on Gaston too, but essayed +in vain to thrust out of him the medieval character of his +experience, or put on quite a new face, insinuating itself rather +under cover of the Middle Age, still in occupation all around him. +Venus, Mars, Aeneas, haunted, in contemporary shape, like ghosts of +folk one had known, the places with which he was familiar. Latin +might still seem the fittest language for oratory, sixteen hundred +years after Cicero was dead; those old Roman pontiffs, draped +grandly, sat in the stalls of the choir; Propertius made love to +Cynthia in the raiment of the foppish Amadée; they played Terence, +and it was but a play within a play. Above all, in natural, +heartfelt kinship with their own violent though refined and cunning +time, they loved every incident of soldiering; while the changes of +the year, the lights, the shadows, the flickering fires of winter, +with [38] which Gaston had first associated his companions, so full +of artificial enjoyment for the well-to-do, added themselves +pleasantly, by way of shifting background, to the spectacular effect. + +It was the brilliant surface with which the untried world confronted +him. Touch it where you might, you felt the resistant force of the +solid matter of human experience--of human experience, in its strange +mixture of beauty and evil, its sorrow, its ill-assorted fates, its +pathetic acquiescence; above all, in its overpowering certainty, over +against his own world of echoes and shadows, which perhaps only +seemed to be so much as echoes or shadows. A nature with the +capacity of worship, he was straightway challenged, as by a rival new +religion claiming to supersede the religion he knew, to identify +himself conclusively with this so tangible world, its suppositions, +its issues, its risks. Here was a world, certainly, which did not +halt in meditation, but prompted one to make actual trial of it, with +a liberty of heart which might likely enough traverse this or that +precept (if it were not rather a mere scruple) of his earlier +conscience. These its children, at all events, were, as he felt, in +instinctive sympathy with its motions; had shrewd divinations of the +things men really valued, and waited on them with unquestioning +docility. Two worlds, two antagonistic ideals, were in evidence +before him. Could a third condition supervene, to mend their +discord, or [39] only vex him perhaps, from time to time, with +efforts towards an impossible adjustment? + +At a later date, Monseigneur Charles Guillard, then Bishop of +Chartres, became something like a Huguenot, and ceased, with the +concurrence of ecclesiastical authority, from his high functions. +Even now he was but a protégé of King Charles in his relations to a +more than suspicious Pope; and a rumour of the fact, reaching somehow +these brisk young ears, had already set Gaston's mind in action, +tremblingly, as to those small degrees, scarcely realisable perhaps +one by one, though so immeasurable in their joint result, by which +one might part from the "living vine"; and at times he started back, +as if he saw his own benighted footsteps pacing lightly towards an +awful precipice. At present, indeed, the assumption that there was +sanctity in everything the kindly prelate touched, was part of the +well-maintained etiquette of the little ecclesiastical court. But, +as you meet in the street faces that are like a sacrament, so there +are faces, looks, tones of voice, among dignified priests as among +other people, to hear or look upon which is to feel the hypothesis of +an unseen world impossible. As he smiled amiably out of the midst of +his pontifical array on Gaston's scrupulous devotion, it was as if +the old Roman augur smiled not only to his fellow augur but to the +entire assistant world. In after years Gaston seemed to understand, +and, as a consequence of [40] understanding, to judge his old patron +equitably: the religious sense too, had its various species. The +nephew of his predecessor in the see, with a real sense of the divine +world but as something immeasurably distant, Monseigneur Guillard had +been brought by maladroit worldly good-fortune a little too close to +its immediate and visible embodiments. From afar, you might trace +the divine agency on its way. But to touch, to handle it, with these +fleshly hands:--well! for Monseigneur, that was by no means to +believe because the thing was "incredible, or absurd." He had +smiled, not certainly from irreverence, nor (a prelate for half his +life) in conscious incredulity, but only in mute surprise, at an +administration of divine graces--this administration in which he was +a high priest--in itself, to his quite honest thinking, so unfitting, +so improbable. And was it that Gaston too was a less independent +ruler of his own mental world than he had fancied, that he derived +his impressions of things not directly from them, but mediately from +other people's impressions about them, and he needed the pledge of +their assents to ratify his own? Only, could that, after all, be a +real sun, at which other people's faces were not irradiated? And +sometimes it seemed, with a riotous swelling of the heart, as if his +own wondrous appetite in these matters had been deadened by surfeit, +and there would be a pleasant sense of liberty, of escape out-of- +doors, [41] could he be as little touched as almost all other people +by Our Lady's Church, and old associations, and all those relics, and +those dark, close, fragrant aisles. + +At such times, to recall the winged visitant, gentle, yet withal +sensitive to offence, which had settled on his youth with so deep a +sense of assurance, he would climb the tower of Jean de Beauce, then +fresh in all its array of airy staircase and pierced traceries, and +great uncovered timbers, like some gigantic birdnest amid the stones, +whence the large, quiet, country spaces became his own again, and the +curious eye, at least, went home. He was become well aware of the +power of those familiar influences in restoring equanimity, as he +might have used a medicine or a wine. At each ascending storey, as +the flight of the birds, the scent of the fields, swept past him, +till he stood at last amid the unimpeded light and air of the watch- +chamber above the great bells, some coil of perplexity, of +unassimilable thought or fact, fell away from him. He saw the +distant paths, and seemed to hear the breeze piping suddenly upon +them under the cloudless sky, on its unseen, capricious way through +those vast reaches of atmosphere. At this height, the low ring of +blue hills was visible, with suggestions of that south-west country +of peach-blossom and wine which had sometimes decoyed his thoughts +towards the sea, and beyond it to "that new world of the Indies," +[42] which was held to explain a certain softness in the air from +that quarter, even in the most vehement weather. Amid those vagrant +shadows and shafts of light must be Deux-manoirs, the deserted rooms, +the gardens, the graves. In mid-distance, even then a funeral +procession was on its way humbly to one of the village churchyards. +He seemed almost to hear the words across the stillness. + +They identified themselves, as with his own earliest prepossessions, +so also with what was apt to present itself as being the common human +prepossession--a certain finally authoritative common sense upon the +quiet experience of things--the oldest, the most authentic, of all +voices, audible always, if one stepped aside for a moment and got +one's ears into what might after all be their normal condition. It +might be heard, it would seem, in proportion as men were in touch +with the Earth itself, in country life, in manual work upon it, above +all by the open grave, as if, reminiscent of some older, deeper, more +permanent ground of fact, it whispered then oracularly a certain +secret to those who came into such close contact with it. Persistent +after-thought! Would it always survive, amid the indifference of +others, amid the verdicts of the world, amid a thousand doubts? It +seemed to have found, and filled to overflowing, the soul of one +amiable little child who had a kind of genius for tranquillity, and +on his first coming hither had led Gaston to what he held to be the +[43] choicest, pleasantest places, as being impregnable by noise. In +his small stock of knowledge, he knew, like all around him, that he +was going to die, and took kindly to the thought of a small grave in +the little green close, as to a natural sleeping-place, in which he +would be at home beforehand. Descending from the tower, Gaston knew +he should find the child seated alone, enjoying the perfect quiet of +the warm afternoon, for all the world was absent--gone forth to +receive or gaze at a company of distinguished pilgrims. + +Coming, sometimes with immense prelude and preparation, as when King +Charles himself arrived to replace an image disfigured by profane +Huguenots, sometimes with the secrecy and suddenness of an apparition +vanished before the public was aware, the pilgrims to "Our Lady under +the Earth" were the standing resource of those (such there were at +Chartres as everywhere else) who must needs depend for the interest +of their existence on the doings of their neighbours. A motley host, +only needing their Chaucer to figure as a looking-glass of life, type +against type, they brought with them, on the one hand, the very +presence and perfume of Paris, the centre of courtly propriety and +fashion; on the other hand, with faces which seemed to belong to +another age, curiosities of existence from remote provinces of +France, or Europe, from distant, half-fabulous lands, remoter still. +Jules Damville, who would have liked best to be a sailor, [44] to +command, not in any spiritual ark, but in the French fleet--should +half-ruined France ever come to have one--led his companions one +evening to inspect a strange maritime personage, stout and square, +returned, contrary to all expectation, after ten years' captivity +among the savages of Florida, kneeling among the lights at the +shrine, with the frankness of a good child, his hair like a mat, his +hands tattooed, his mahogany face seamed with a thousand weather- +wrinklings, his outlandish offerings lying displayed around him. + +Looking, listening, as they served them in the episcopal guest- +chamber, those young clerks made wonderful leaps, from time to time, +in manly knowledge. With what eager shrewdness they noted, +discussed, reproduced, the manners and attire of their pilgrim +guests, sporting what was to their liking therein in the streets of +Chartres. The more cynical or supercilious pilgrim would sometimes +present himself--a personage oftenest of high ecclesiastical station, +like the eminent translator of Plutarch, Amyot, afterwards Bishop of +Auxerre, who seemed to care little for shrine or relic, but lingered +long over certain dim manuscripts in the canonical library, where our +scholarly Gaston was of service, helping him directly to what he +desired to see. And one morning early, visible at a distance to all +the world, risen betimes to gaze, the Queen-mother and her three sons +were [45] kneeling there--yearning, greedy, as ever, for a hundred +diverse, perhaps incompatible, things. It was at the beginning of +that winter of the great siege of Chartres, the morning on which the +child Guy Debreschescourt died in his sleep. His tiny body--the +placid, massive, baby head still one broad smile, the rest of him +wrapped round together like a chrysalis--was put to rest finally, in +a fold of the winding-sheet of a very aged person, deceased at the +same hour. + +For a hard winter, like that famous winter of 1567, the hardest that +had been known for fifty years, makes an end of the weak--the aged, +the very young. To the robust, how pleasant had the preparation for +it seemed--the scent of the first wood-fire upon the keen October +air; the earth turning from grey to black under the plough; the great +stacks of fuel, come down lazily from the woods of Le Perche, along +the winding Eure; its wholesome perfume; the long, soothing nights, +and early twilight. The mind of Gaston, for one, was touched by the +sense of some remote and delicate beauty in these things, like +magicians' work, like an effect of magic as being extorted from +unsuspected sources. + +What winter really brought however, was the danger and vexation of a +great siege. The householders of catholic Chartres had watched the +forces of their Huguenot enemies gathering from this side and that; +and at last the dreaded circle was complete. They were prisoners +like [46] the rest, Gaston and the grandparents, shut up in their +little hotel; and Gaston, face to face with it, understood at last +what war really means. After all, it took them by surprise. It was +early in the day. A crowd of worshippers filled the church of +Sainte-Foy, built partly upon the ramparts; and at the conclusion of +the mass, the Sacrament was to be carried to a sick person. Touched +by unusual devotion at this perilous time, the whole assembly rose to +escort the procession on its way, passing out slowly, group after +group, as if by mechanical instinct, the more reluctant led on by the +general consent. Gaston, the last lingerer, halting to let others +proceed quietly before him, turned himself about to gaze upon the +deserted church, half tempted to remain, ere he too stepped forth +lightly and leisurely, when under a shower of massy stones from the +coulevrines or great cannon of the besiegers, the entire roof of the +place sank into the empty space behind him. But it was otherwise in +a neighbouring church, crushed, in a similar way, with all its good +people, not long afterwards. + +And in the midst of the siege, with all its tumult about her, the old +grandmother died, to the undissembled sorrow of Gaston, bereft, +unexpectedly as it seemed, of the gentle creature, to whom he had +always turned for an affection, that had been as no other in its +absolute incapacity of offence. A tear upon the cheek, like [47] the +bark of a tree, testified to some unfulfilled hope, something wished +for but not to be, which left resignation, by nature or grace, still +imperfect, and made death at fourscore years and ten seem, after all, +like a premature summons in the midst of one's days. For a few +hours, the peace which followed brought back to the face a protesting +gleam of youth, far antecedent to anything Gaston could possibly have +remembered there, moving him to a pity, a peculiar sense of pleading +helplessness, which to the end of his life was apt to revive at the +sight (it might be in an animal) of what must perforce remember that +it had been young but was old. + +That broken link with life seemed to end some other things for him. +As one puts away the toys of childhood, so now he seemed to discard +what had been the central influence of his earlier youth, what more +than anything else had stirred imagination and brought the +consciousness of his own life warm and full. Gazing now upon the +"holy and beautiful place," as he had gazed on the dead face, for a +moment he seemed to anticipate the indifference of age. And when not +long after the rude hands of catholics themselves, at their wits' end +for the maintenance of the "religious war," spoiled it of the +accumulated treasure of centuries, leaving Notre-Dame de Chartres in +the bareness with which we see it to-day, he had no keen sense of +personal loss. + + + +III. MODERNITY + +[48] The besieging armies disappeared like the snow, leaving city and +suburb in all the hardened soilure of war and winter, which only the +torrents of spring would carry away. And the spring came suddenly: +it was pleasant, after that long confinement, to walk afar securely +through its early fervours. Gaston too went forth on his way home, +not alone. Three chosen companions went with him, pledged to the old +manor for months to come; its lonely ancient master welcoming readily +the tread of youth about him. + +"The Triumvirate":--so their comrades had been pleased to call the +three; that term (delightful touch of classic colour on one's own +trite but withal pedantic age) being then familiar, as the +designation of three conspicuous agents on the political scene of the +generation just departing. Only, these young Latinists went back for +the associations of the word to its Roman original, to the three +gallants of the distant time, rather than to those native French [49] +heroes--Montmorenci, Saint-André, Guise--too close to them to seem +really heroic. Mark Antony, knight of Venus, of Cleopatra; shifty +Lepidus; bloody, yellow-haired Augustus, so worldly and so fine; you +might find their mimic semblance, more easily than any suggestion of +that threadbare triad of French adventurers, in the unfolding manhood +of Jasmin, Amadée, and Camille. + +They had detached themselves by an irresistible natural effectiveness +from the surface of that youthful scholastic world around the +episcopal throne of Chartres, carrying its various aptitudes as if to +a perfect triple flower; restless Amadée de l'Autrec, who was to be a +soldier, dazzled early into dangerous, rebellious paths by the iron +ideal of the soldiers of "the religion," and even now fitting his +blond prettiness to airs of Huguenot austerity; Camille Pontdormi, +who meant to be a lawyer in an age in which certain legists had +asserted an audacity of genius after a manner very captivating to +youth with any appetite for predominance over its fellows--already +winsomely starched a little, amid his courtly finery, of garb, and +manner, and phrase; Jasmin de Villebon, who hardly knew what he meant +to be, except perhaps a poet--himself, certainly, a poem for any +competent reader. Vain,--yes! a little; and mad, said his +companions, of course, with his clinging, exigent, lover's ways. It +was he who had led the others on this visit to Gaston de Latour. +Threads to [50] be cut short, one by one, before his eyes, the three +would cross and recross, gaily, pathetically, in the tapestry of +Gaston's years; and, divided far asunder afterwards, seemed at this +moment, moving there before him in the confidential talk he could not +always share, inseparably linked together, like some complicated +pictorial arabesque, under the common light, of their youth, and of +the morning, and of their sympathetic understanding of the visible +world. + +So they made their way, under the rows of miraculous white thorn- +blossom, and through the green billows, at peace just then, though +the war still blazed or smouldered along the southern banks of the +Loire and far beyond, and it was with a delightful sense of peril, of +prowess attested in the facing of it, that they passed from time to +time half-ruined or deserted farm-buildings where the remnants of the +armies might yet be lingering. It was Jasmin, poetic Jasmin, who, in +giving Gaston the book he now carried ever ready to hand, had done +him perhaps the best of services, for it had proved the key to a new +world of seemingly boundless intellectual resources, and yet with a +special closeness to visible or sensuous things;--the scent and +colour of the field-flowers, the amorous business of the birds, the +flush and re-fledging of the black earth itself in that fervent +springtide, which was therefore unique in Gaston's memory. It was +his intellectual springtide; as people look back to [51] a physical +spring, which for once in ten or fifteen years, for once in a +lifetime, was all that spring could be. + +The book was none other than Pierre de Ronsard's "Odes," with +"Mignonne! allons voir si la Rose," and "The Skylark" and the lines +to April--itself verily like nothing so much as a jonquil, in its +golden-green binding and yellow edges and perfume of the place where +it had lain--sweet, but with something of the sickliness of all +spring flowers since the days of Proserpine. Just eighteen years +old, and the work of the poet's own youth, it took possession of +Gaston with the ready intimacy of one's equal in age, fresh at every +point; and he experienced what it is the function of contemporary +poetry to effect anew for sensitive youth in each succeeding +generation. The truant and irregular poetry of his own nature, all +in solution there, found an external and authorised mouthpiece, +ranging itself rightfully, as the latest achievement of human soul in +this matter, along with the consecrated poetic voices of the past. + +Poetry! Hitherto it had seemed hopelessly chained to the bookshelf, +like something in a dead language, "dead, and shut up in reliquaries +of books," or like those relics "one may only see through a little +pane of glass," as one of its recent "liberators" had said. Sure, +apparently, of its own "niche in the temple of Fame," the recognised +poetry of literature had had the [52] pretension to defy or +discredit, as depraved and irredeemably vulgar, the poetic motions in +the living genius of to-day. Yet the genius of to-day, extant and +forcible, the wakeful soul of present time consciously in possession, +would assert its poetic along with all its other rights; and in +regard to the curiosity, the intellectual interest, of Gaston, for +instance, it had of course the advantage of being close at hand, with +the effectiveness of a personal presence. Studious youth, indeed, on +its mettle about "scholarship," though actually of listless humour +among books that certainly stirred the past, makes a docile act of +faith regarding the witchery, the thaumaturgic powers, of Virgil, or +may we say of Shakespeare? Yet how faint and dim, after all, the +sorrows of Dido, of Juliet, the travail of Aeneas, beside quite +recent things felt or done--stories which, floating to us on the +light current of to-day's conversation, leave the soul in a flutter! +At best, poetry of the past could move one with no more directness +than the beautiful faces of antiquity which are not here for us to +see and unaffectedly love them. Gaston's demand (his youth only +conforming to pattern therein) was for a poetry, as veritable, as +intimately near, as corporeal, as the new faces of the hour, the +flowers of the actual season. The poetry of mere literature, like +the dead body, could not bleed, while there was a heart, a poetic +heart, in the living world, which beat, bled, spoke with irresistible +power. Elderly [53] people, Virgil in hand, might assert +professionally that the contemporary age, an age, of course, of +little people and things, deteriorate since the days of their own +youth, must necessarily be unfit for poetic uses. But then youth, +too, had its perpetual part to play, protesting that, after all said, +the sun in the air, and in its own veins, was still found to be hot, +still begetting, upon both alike, flowers and fruit; nay! visibly new +flowers, and fruit richer than ever. Privately, in fact, Gaston had +conceived of a poetry more thaumaturgic than could be anything of +earlier standing than himself. The age renews itself; and in +immediate derivation from it a novel poetry also grows superb and +large, to fill a certain mental situation made ready in advance. +Yes! the acknowledged, and, so to call it, legitimate, poetry of +literature was but a thing he might sip at, like some sophisticated +rarity in the way of wine, for example, pleasing the acquired taste. +It was another sort of poetry, unexpressed, perhaps inexpressible, +certainly not hitherto made known in books, that must drink up and +absorb him, like the joyful air--him, and the earth, with its deeds, +its blossoms, and faces. + +In such condition of mind, how deeply, delightfully, must the poetry +of Ronsard and his fellows have moved him, when he became aware, as +from age to age inquisitive youth by good luck does become aware, of +the literature of his own day, confirming--more than confirming-- +[54] anticipation! Here was a poetry which boldly assumed the dress, +the words, the habits, the very trick, of contemporary life, and +turned them into gold. It took possession of the lily in one's hand, +and projecting it into a visionary distance, shed upon the body of +the flower the soul of its beauty. Things were become at once more +deeply sensuous and more deeply ideal. As at the touch of a wizard, +something more came into the rose than its own natural blush. +Occupied so closely with the visible, this new poetry had so profound +an intuition of what can only be felt, and maintained that mood in +speaking of such objects as wine, fruit, the plume in the cap, the +ring on the finger. And still that was no dubious or generalised +form it gave to flower or bird, but the exact pressure of the Jay at +the window; you could count the petals,--of the exact natural number; +no expression could be too faithful to the precise texture of things; +words, too, must embroider, be twisted and spun, like silk or golden +hair. Here were real people, in their real, delightful attire, and +you understood how they moved; the visible was more visible than ever +before, just because soul had come to its surface. The juice in the +flowers, when Ronsard named them, was like wine or blood. It was +such a coloured thing; though the grey things also, the cool things, +all the fresher for the contrast--with a freshness, again, that +seemed to touch and cool the soul--found their account [55] there; +the clangorous passage of the birds at night foretokening rain, the +moan of the wind at the door, the wind's self made visible over the +yielding corn. + +It was thus Gaston understood the poetry of Ronsard, generously +expanding it to the full measure of its intention. That poetry, too, +lost its thaumaturgic power in turn, and became mere literature in +exchange for life, partly in the natural revolution of poetic taste, +partly for its faults. Faults and all, however, Gaston loyally +accepted it; those faults--the lapse of grace into affectation, of +learning into pedantry, of exotic fineness into a trick--counting +with him as but the proof of faith to its own dominant positions. +They were but characteristics, needing no apology with the initiated, +or welcome even, as savouring of the master's peculiarities of +perfection. He listened, he looked round freely, but always now with +the ear, the eye, of his favourite poet. It had been a lesson, a +doctrine, the communication of an art,--the art of placing the +pleasantly aesthetic, the welcome, elements of life at an advantage, +in one's view of it, till they seemed to occupy the entire surface; +and he was sincerely grateful for an undeniable good service. + +And yet the gifted poet seemed but to have spoken what was already in +Gaston's own mind, what he had longed to say, had been just going to +say; so near it came, that it had the charm [56] of a discovery of +one's own. That was an illusion, perhaps; it was because the poet +told one so much about himself, making so free a display of what +though personal was very contagious; of his love-secrets especially, +how love and nothing else filled his mind. He was in truth but +"love's secretary," noting from hour to hour its minutely changing +fortunes. Yes! that was the reason why visible, audible, sensible +things glowed so brightly, why there was such luxury in sounds, +words, rhythms, of the new light come on the world, of that wonderful +freshness. With a masterly appliance of what was near and familiar, +or again in the way of bold innovation, he found new words for +perennially new things, and the novel accent awakened long-slumbering +associations. Never before had words, single words, meant so much. +What expansion, what liberty of heart, in speech: how associable to +music, to singing, the written lines! He sang of the lark, and it +was the lark's voluble self. The physical beauty of humanity lent +itself to every object, animate or inanimate, to the very hours and +lapses and changes of time itself. An almost burdensome fulness of +expression haunted the gestures, the very dress, the personal +ornaments, of the people on the highway. Even Jacques Bonhomme at +his labour, or idling for an hour, borrowed from his love, homely as +it was, a touch of dignity or grace, and some secret of utterance, +which made [57] one think of Italy or Greece. The voice of the +shepherd calling, the chatter of the shepherdess turning her spindle, +seemed to answer, or wait for answer,--to be fragments of love's +ideal and eternal communing. + +It was the power of "modernity," as renewed in every successive age +for genial youth, protesting, defiant of all sanction in these +matters, that the true "classic" must be of the present, the force +and patience of present time. He had felt after the thing, and here +it was,--the one irresistible poetry there had ever been, with the +magic word spoken in due time, transforming his own age and the world +about him, presenting its everyday touch, the very trick one knew it +by, as an additional grace, asserting the latent poetic rights of the +transitory, the fugitive, the contingent. Poetry need no longer mask +itself in the habit of a bygone day: Gaston could but pity the people +of bygone days for not being above-ground to read. Here, was a +discovery, a new faculty, a privileged apprehension, to be conveyed +in turn to one and to another, to be propagated for the imaginative +regeneration of the world. It was a manner, a habit of thought, +which would invade ordinary life, and mould that to its intention. +In truth, all the world was already aware, and delighted. The +"school" was soon to pay the penalty of that immediate acceptance, +that intimate fitness to the mind of its own time, by sudden [58] and +profound neglect, as a thing preternaturally tarnished and tame, like +magic youth, or magic beauty, turned in a moment by magic's own last +word into withered age. But then, to the liveliest spirits of that +time it had seemed nothing less than "impeccable," after the manner +of the great sacred products of the past, though in a living tongue. +Nay! to Gaston for one, the power of the old classic poetry itself +was explained by the reflex action of the new, and might seem to +justify its pretensions at last. + +From the poem fancy wandered to the poet, and curious youth would +fain see the writer in person,--what a poet was like, with anxious +surmises, this way and that, as to the degree in which the precious +mental particles might be expected to have wrought up the outward +presence to their own high quality. A creature of the eye, in this +case at least, the intellectual hold on him being what it was, Gaston +had no fear of disillusion. His poetic readings had borrowed an +additional relish from the genial, companionable, manner of his life +at this time, taking him into the remotest corners of the vast level +land, and its outer ring of blue up-lands; amid which, as he rode one +day with "the three," towards perfectly new prospects, he had chanced +on some tangible rumour of the great poet's present abode. The hill +they had mounted at leisure, in talk with a village priest, dropped +suddenly upon a vague tract of wood and pasture, [59] with a dark +ridge beyond towards the south-west; and the black notch, which broke +its outline against the mellow space of evening light, was the +steeple of the priory of Croix-val, of which reverend body Pierre de +Ronsard, although a layman, was, by special favour of King Charles, +Superior. + +Though a formal peace was come, though the primary movers of war had +taken hands or kissed each other, and were exchanging suspicious +courtesies, yet the unquiet temper of war was still abroad +everywhere, with an after-crop of miserable incidents. The +captainless national and mercenary soldiers were become in large +number thieves or beggars, and the peasant's hand sank back to the +tame labour of the plough reluctantly. Relieved a little by the +sentimental humour of the hour, lending, as Ronsard prompted, a +poetic and always amorous interest to everything around him, poor +Gaston's very human soul was vexed nevertheless at the spectacle of +the increased hardness of human life, with certain misgivings from +time to time at the contrast of his own luxurious tranquillity. The +homeless woman suckling her babe at the roadside, the grey-beard +hasting before the storm, the tattered fortune-teller who, when he +shook his head at her proposal to "read his hand," assured him +(perhaps with some insight into his character) "You do that"--you +shake your head, negatively--"too much!" these, and the like, [60] +might count as fitting human accidents in an impassioned landscape +picture. And his new imaginative culture had taught him to value +"surprises" in nature itself; the quaint, exciting charm of the +mistletoe in the wood, of the blossom before the leaf, the cry of +passing birds at night. Nay! the most familiar details of nature, +its daily routine of light and darkness, beset him now with a kind of +troubled and troubling eloquence. The rain, the first streak of +dawn, the very sullenness of the sky, had a power, only to be +described by saying that they seemed to be moral facts. + +On his way at last to gaze on the abode of the new hero or demi-god +of poetry, Gaston perceives increasingly, as another excellence of +his verse, how truthful, how close it is to the minute fact of the +scene around; as there are pleasant wines which, expressing the +peculiar quality of their native soil, lose their special +pleasantness away from home. The physiognomy of the scene was +changed; the plain of La Beauce had ruffled itself into low green +hills and gently winding valleys, with clear, quick water, and +fanciful patches of heath and wood-land. Here and there a secular +oak tree maintained a solitude around it. It was the district of the +"little river Loir"--the Vendomois; and here, in its own country, the +new poetry, notwithstanding its classic elegance, might seem a native +wild flower, modest enough. + +[61] He came riding with his companions towards evening along the +road which had suddenly abandoned its day-long straightness for +wanton curves and ascents; and there, as an owl on the wing cried +softly, beyond the tops of the spreading poplars was the west front, +silver-grey, and quiet, inexpressibly quiet, with its worn, late- +gothic "flamings" from top to bottom, as full of reverie to Gaston's +thinking as the enchanted castle in a story-book. The village lay +thinly scattered around the wide, grass-grown space; below was the +high espaliered garden-wall, and within it, visible through the open +doors, a gaunt figure, hook-nosed, like a wizard, at work with the +spade, too busily to turn and look. Or was it that he did not hear +at all the question repeated thrice:--Could one see His Reverence the +Prior, at least in his convent church? "You see him" was the answer, +as a face, all nerve, distressed nerve, turned upon them not +unkindly, the vanity of the great man aware and pleasantly tickled. +The unexpected incident had quickened a prematurely aged pulse, and +in reward for their good service the young travellers were bidden +carry their equipment, not to the village inn, but to the guest- +chamber of the half-empty priory. The eminent man of letters, who +had been always an enthusiastic gardener, though busy just now not +with choice flowers but with salutary kitchen-stuff, working indeed +with much effort, to counteract the gout, was ready enough [62] in +his solitude to make the most of chance visitors, especially youthful +ones. A bell clanged; he laid aside the spade, and casting an eye at +the whirling weather-vanes announced that it would snow. There had +been no "sunset." They had travelled away imperceptibly from genial +afternoon into a world of ashen evening. + +The enemies of the lay Prior, satirists literary and religious, +falsely made a priest of him, a priest who should have sacrificed a +goat to pagan Bacchus. And in truth the poet, for a time a soldier, +and all his life a zealous courtier, had always been capable, as a +poet should be, of long-sustained meditation, adapting himself easily +enough to the habits of the "religious," following attentively the +choir-services in their church, of which he was a generous +benefactor, and to which he presently proceeded for vespers. Gaston +and "the three" sat among the Brethren, tempting curious eyes, in the +stalls of the half-lighted choir, while in purple cope and jaunty +biretta the lay Prior "assisted," his confidentiaire, or priestly +substitute, officiating at the altar. The long, sad, Lenten office +over, an invitation to supper followed, for Ronsard still loved, in +his fitful retirements at one or another of his numerous benefices, +to give way to the chance recreation of flattering company, and these +gay lads' enthusiasm for his person was obvious. And as for himself, +the great poet, with his [63] bodily graces and airs of court, had +always possessed the gift of pleasing those who encountered him. + +The snow was falling now in big, slow flakes, a great fire blazing +under the chimney with its cipher and enigmatic motto, as they sat +down to the leek-soup, the hard eggs, and the salad grown and +gathered by their host's own hands. The long stone passages through +which they passed from church, with the narrow brown doors of the +monks' dormitories one after another along the white-washed wall, +made the coquetries of the Prior's own distant apartment all the more +reassuring. You remembered that from his ninth year he had been the +pet of princesses, the favourite of kings. Upon the cabinets, +chests, book-cases, around, were ranged the souvenirs received from +various royal persons, including three kings of France, the fair +Queen of Scots, Elizabeth of England; and the conversation fell to, +and was kept going by, the precious contents of the place where they +were sitting, the books printed and bound as they had never been +before--books which meant assiduous study, the theory of poetry with +Ronsard always accompanying its practice--delicate things of art, +which beauty had handled or might handle, the pictured faces on the +walls, in their frames of reeded ebony or jewelled filigree. There +was the Minerva, decreed him at a conference of the elegant, pedantic +"Jeux Floraux," which had proclaimed [64] Pierre de Ronsard "Prince +of Poets." The massive silver image Ronsard had promptly offered to +his patron King Charles; but in vain, for, though so greatly in want +of ready-money that he melted down church ornaments and exacted +"black" contributions from the clergy, one of the things in which +Charles had ever been sincere was a reverence for literature. + +So there it stood, doing duty for Our Lady, with gothic crown and a +fresh sprig of consecrated box, bringing the odd, enigmatic +physiognomy, preferred by the art of that day, within the sphere of +religious devotion. The King's manuscript, declining, in verse +really as good as Ronsard's, the honour not meant for him, might be +read, attached to the pedestal. The ladies of his own verse, Marie, +Cassandre, and the rest, idols one after another of a somewhat +artificial and for the most part unrequited love, from the Angevine +maiden--La petite pucelle Angevine--who had vexed his young soul by +her inability to yield him more than a faint Platonic affection, down +to Helen, to whom he had been content to propose no other, gazed, +more impassibly than ever, from the walls. + +They might have been sisters, those many successive loves, or one and +the same lady over and over again, in slightly varied humour and +attire perhaps, at the different intervals of some rather lengthy, +mimetic masque of love, to which the theatrical dress of that day was +appropriate; [65] for the mannered Italian, or Italianised, artists, +including the much-prized, native Janet, with his favourite water- +green backgrounds, aware of the poet's predilection, had given to all +alike the same brown eyes and tender eyelids and golden hair and +somewhat ambered paleness, varying only the curious artifices of the +dress--knots, and nets, and golden spider-work, and clear, flat +stones. Dangerous guests in that simple, cloistral place, Sibyls of +the Renaissance on a mission from Italy to France, to Gaston one and +all seemed under the burden of some weighty message concerning a +world unknown to him; the stealthy lines of cheek and brow contriving +to express it, while the lips and eyes only smiled, not quite +honestly. It had been a learned love, with undissembled "hatred of +the vulgar." Three royal Margarets, much-praised pearls of three +succeeding generations (for to the curious in these objects purity is +far from being the only measure of value) asserted charms a thought +more frank, or French, though still gracefully pedantic, with their +quaintly kerchiefed books--books of what?--in their pale hands. +Among the ladies, on the pictured wall as in life, were the poet's +male companions, stirring memories of a more material sort, though +their common interest had been poetry--memories of that "Bohemia," +which even a prince of court poets had frequented when he was young, +of his cruder youthful vanities. [66] In some cases the date of death +was inscribed below. + +One there was among them, the youngest, of whose genial fame to come +this experienced judge of men and books, two years before "St. +Bartholomew's," was confident--a crowned boy, King Charles himself. +Here perhaps was the single entirely disinterested sentiment of the +poet's life, wholly independent of a long list of benefits, or +benefices; for the younger had turned winsomely, appealingly, to the +elder, who, forty years of age, feeling chilly at the thought, had no +son. And of one only of those companions did the memory bring a +passing cloud. It was long ago, on a journey, that he had first +spoken, accidentally, with Joachim du Bellay, whose friendship had +been the great intellectual fortune of his life. For a moment one +saw the encounter at the wayside inn, in the broad, gay morning, a +quarter of a century since; and there was the face--deceased at +thirty-five. Pensive, plaintive, refined by sickness, of exceeding +delicacy, it must from the first have been best suited to the +greyness of an hour like this. To-morrow, where will be the snow? + +The leader in that great poetic battle of the Pleiad, their host +himself (he explained the famous device, and named the seven chief +stars in the constellation) was depicted appropriately, in veritable +armour, with antique Roman cuirass of minutely inlaid gold, and +flowered mantle; [67] the crisp, ceremonial, laurel-wreath of the +Roman conqueror lying on the audacious, over-developed brows, above +the great hooked nose of practical enterprise. In spite of his +pretension to the Epicurean conquest of a kingly indifference of +mind, the portrait of twenty years ago betrayed, not less than the +living face with its roving, astonished eyes, the haggard soul of a +haggard generation, whose eagerly-sought refinements had been after +all little more than a theatrical make-believe--an age of wild +people, of insane impulse, of homicidal mania. The sweet-souled +songster had no more than others attained real calm in it. Even in +youth nervous distress had been the chief facial characteristic. +Triumphant, nevertheless, in his battle for Greek beauty--for the +naturalisation of Greek beauty in the brown cloud-lands of the North- +-he might have been thinking, contemptuously, of barking little +Saint-Gelais, or of Monsieur Marot's pack-thread poems. He, for his +part, had always held that poetry should be woven of delicate silk, +or of fine linen, or at least of good home-spun worsted. + +To Gaston, yielding himself to its influence, for a moment the scene +around seemed unreal: an exotic, embalming air, escaped from some old +Greek or Roman pleasure-place, had turned the poet's workroom into a +strange kind of private sanctuary, amid these rude conventual +buildings, with the March wind aloud in the chimneys. [68] +Notwithstanding, what with the long day's ride, the keen evening, +they had done justice to the monastic fare, the "little" wine of the +country, the cream, the onions,--fine Camille, and dainty Jasmin, and +the poet turned to talk upon gardening, concerning which he could +tell them a thing or two--of early salads, and those special apples +the king loved to receive from him, mille-fleurs pippins, painted +with a thousand tiny streaks of red, yellow, and green. A dish of +them came to table now, with a bottle, at the right moment, from the +darkest corner of the cellar. And then, in nasal voice, well-trained +to Latin intonation, giving a quite medieval amplitude to the poet's +sonorities of rhythm and vocabulary, the Sub-prior was bidden to +sing, after the notation of Goudimel, the "Elegy of the Rose"; the +author girding cheerily at the clerkly man's assumed ignorance of +such compositions. + +It was but a half-gaiety, in truth, that awoke in the poet even now, +with the singing and the good wine, as the notes echoed windily along +the passages. On his forty-sixth year the unaffected melancholy of +his later life was already gathering. The dead!--he was coming to be +on their side. The fact came home to Gaston that this evocator of +"the eternally youthful" was visibly old before his time; his work +being done, or centered now for the most part on amendments, not +invariably happy, of his earlier [69] verse. The little panelled +drawers were full of them. The poet pulled out one, and as it stood +open for a moment there lay the first book of the Franciade, in +silken cover, white and gold, ready for the king's hands, but never +to be finished. + +Gaston, as he turned from that stolen reading of the opening verse in +jerky, feverish, gouty manuscript, to the writer, let out his soul +perhaps; for the poet's face struck fire too, and seeming to detect +on a sudden the legible document of something by no means +conventional below the young man's well-controlled manner and +expression, he became as if paternally anxious for his intellectual +furtherance, and in particular for the addition of "manly power" to a +"grace" of mind, obviously there already in due sufficiency. Would +he presently carry a letter with recommendation of himself to +Monsieur Michel de Montaigne? Linked they were, in the common +friendship of the late Etienne de la Boetie yonder! Monsieur Michel +could tell him much of the great ones--of the Greek and Latin masters +of style. Let his study be in them! With what justice, by the way, +had those Latin poets dealt with winter, and wintry charms, in their +bland Italy! And just then, at the striking of a rickety great bell +of the Middle Age, in the hands of a cowled brother came the +emblazoned grace-cup, with which the Prior de Ronsard had enriched +his "house," and the guests withdrew. + +[70] "Yesterday's snow" was nowhere, a surprising sunlight +everywhere; through which, after gratefully bidding adieu to the +great poet, almost on their knees for a blessing, our adventurers +returned home. Gaston, intently pondering as he lingered behind the +others, was aware that this new poetry, which seemed to have +transformed his whole nature into half-sensuous imagination, was the +product not of one or more individual writers, but (it might be in +the way of a response to their challenge) a general direction of +men's minds, a delightful "fashion" of the time. He almost +anticipated our modern idea, or platitude, of the Zeit-geist. A +social instinct was involved in the matter, and loyalty to an +intellectual movement. As its leader had himself been the first to +suggest, the actual authorship belonged not so much to a star as to a +constellation, like that hazy Pleiad he had pointed out in the sky, +or like the swarm of larks abroad this morning over the corn, led by +a common instinct, a large element in which was sympathetic trust in +the instinct of others. Here, truly, was a doctrine to propagate, a +secret open to every one who would learn, towards a new management of +life,--nay! a new religion, or at least a new worship, maintaining +and visibly setting forth a single overpowering apprehension. + +The worship of physical beauty a religion, the proper faculty of +which would be the bodily eye! Looked at in this way, some of the +well- [71] marked characteristics of the poetry of the Pleiad assumed +a hieratic, almost an ecclesiastical air. That rigid correctness; +that gracious unction, as of the medieval Latin psalmody; that +aspiring fervour; that jealousy of the profane "vulgar"; the sense, +flattering to one who was in the secret, that this thing, even in its +utmost triumph, could never be really popular:--why were these so +welcome to him but from the continuity of early mental habit? He +might renew the over-grown tonsure, and wait, devoutly, rapturously, +in this goodly sanctuary of earth and sky about him, for the +manifestation, at the moment of his own worthiness, of flawless +humanity, in some undreamed-of depth and perfection of the loveliness +of bodily form. + +And therewith came the consciousness, no longer of mere bad- +neighbourship between what was old and new in his life, but of +incompatibility between two rival claimants upon him, of two ideals. +Might that new religion be a religion not altogether of goodness, a +profane religion, in spite of its poetic fervours? There were +"flowers of evil," among the rest. It came in part, avowedly, as a +kind of consecration of evil, and seemed to give it the beauty of +holiness. Rather, good and evil were distinctions inapplicable in +proportion as these new interests made themselves felt. For a +moment, amid casuistical questions as to one's indefeasible right to +liberty of heart, he saw himself, somewhat [72] wearily, very far +gone from the choice, the consecration, of his boyhood. If he could +but be rid of that altogether! Or if that would but speak with +irresistible decision and effect! Was there perhaps somewhere, in +some penetrative mind in this age of novelties, some scheme of truth, +some science about men and things, which might harmonise for him his +earlier and later preference, "the sacred and the profane loves," or, +failing that, establish, to his pacification, the exclusive supremacy +of the latter? + + + +IV. PEACH-BLOSSOM AND WINE + +[73] Those searchings of mind brought from time to time cruel starts +from sleep, a sudden shudder at any wide outlook over life and its +issues, draughts of mental east-wind across the hot mornings, into +which the voices of his companions called him, to lose again in long +rambles every thought save that of his own firm, abounding youth. +These rambles were but the last, sweet, wastefully-spent remnants of +a happy season. The letter for Monsieur Michel de Montaigne was to +hand, with preparations for the distant journey which must presently +break up their comradeship. Nevertheless, its actual termination +overtook them at the last as if by surprise: on a sudden that +careless interval of time was over. + +The carelessness of "the three" at all events had been entire. +Secure, on the low, warm, level surface of things, they talked, they, +rode, they ate and drank, with no misgivings, mental or moral, no too +curious questions as to the essential nature of their so palpable +well-being, [74] or the rival standards thereof, of origins and +issues. And yet, with all their gaiety, as its last triumphant note +in truth, they were ready to trifle with death, welcoming, by way of +a foil to the easy character of their days, a certain luxurious sense +of danger--the night-alarm, the arquebuse peeping from some quiet +farm-building across their way, the rumoured presence in their +neighbourhood of this or that great military leader--delightful +premonitions of the adventurous life soon to be their own in Paris. +What surmises they had of any vaguer sort of danger, took effect, in +that age of wizardry, as a quaintly practical superstition, the +expectation of cadaverous "churchyard things" and the like, intruding +themselves where they should not be, to be dissipated in turn by +counter-devices of the dark craft which had evoked them. Gaston, +then, as in after years, though he saw no ghosts, could not bear to +trifle with such matters: to his companions it was a delight, as they +supped, to note the indication of nameless terrors, if it were only +in the starts and crackings of the timbers of the old place. To the +turbid spirits of that generation the midnight heaven itself was by +no means a restful companion; and many were the hours wasted by those +young astrophiles in puzzling out the threats, or the enigmatic +promises, of a starry sky. + +The fact that armed persons were still abroad, thieves or assassins, +lurking under many disguises, [75] might explain what happened on the +last evening of their time together, when they sat late at the open +windows as the night increased, serene but covered summer night, +aromatic, velvet-footed. What coolness it had was pleasant after the +wine; and they strolled out, fantastically muffled in certain old +heraldic dresses of parade, caught up in the hall as they passed +through, Gaston alone remaining to attend on his grandfather. In +about an hour's time they returned, not a little disconcerted, to +tell a story of which Gaston was reminded (seeing them again in +thought as if only half real, amid the bloomy night, with blood upon +their boyish flowers) as they crossed his path afterwards at three +intervals. Listening for the night-hawk, pushing aside the hedge-row +to catch the evening breath of the honeysuckle, they had sauntered +on, scarcely looking in advance, along the causeway. Soft sounds +came out of the distance, but footsteps on the hard road they had not +heard, when three others fronted them face to face--Jasmin, Amadée, +and Camille--their very selves, visible in the light of the lantern +carried by Camille: they might have felt the breath upon their +cheeks: real, close, definite, cap for cap, plume for plume, flower +for flower, a light like their own flashed up counter-wise, but with +blood, all three of them, fresh upon the bosom, or in the mouth. It +was well to draw the sword, be one's enemy carnal or spiritual; even +devils, [76] as wise men know, taking flight at its white glitter +through the air. Out flashed the brave youths' swords, still with +mimic counter-motion, upon nothing--upon the empty darkness before +them. + +Curdled at heart for an hour by that strange encounter, they went on +their way next morning no different. There was something in the mere +belief that peace was come at last. For a moment Huguenots were, or +pretended to be, satisfied with a large concession of liberty; to be +almost light of soul. The French, who can always pause in the very +midst of civil bloodshed to eulogise the reign of universal kindness, +were determined to treat a mere armistice as nothing less than +realised Utopia. To bear offensive weapons became a crime; and the +sense of security at home was attested by vague schemes of glory to +be won abroad, under the leadership of "The Admiral," the great +Huguenot Coligni, anxious to atone for his share in the unhappiness +of France by helping her to foreign conquests. Philip of Spain had +been watching for the moment when Charles and Catherine should call +the Duke of Alva into France to continue his devout work there. +Instead, the poetic mind of Charles was dazzled for a moment by the +dream of wrestling the misused Netherlands from Spanish rule +altogether. + +Under such genial conditions, then, Gaston set out towards those +south-west regions he had [77] always yearned to, as popular +imagination just now set thither also, in a vision of French ships +going forth from the mouths of the Loire and the Gironde, from +Nantes, Bordeaux, and La Rochelle, to the Indies, in rivalry of +Spanish adventure. The spasmodic gaiety of the time blent with that +of the season of the year, of his own privileged time of life, and +allowed the opulent country through which he was to pass all its +advantages. Ever afterwards that low ring of blue hills beyond La +Beauce meant more for him, not less, than of old. After the reign of +his native apple-blossom and corn, it was that of peach-blossom and +wine. Southwards to Orleans and the Loire then, with the course of +the sunny river, to Blois, to Amboise, to Tours, he traversed a +region of unquestioned natural charm, heightened greatly by the +mental atmosphere through which it reached him. Black Angers, white +Saumur, with its double in the calm broad water below, the melancholy +seigneurial woods of Blois, ranged themselves in his memory as so +many distinct types of what was dignified or pleasant in human +habitations. Frequently, along the great historic stream, as along +some vast street, contemporary genius was visible (a little +prematurely as time would show) in a novel and seductive +architecture, which, by its engrafting of exotic grace on homely +native forms, spoke of a certain restless aspiration to be what one +was not but might become--the old [78] Gaulish desire to be refined, +to be mentally enfranchised by the sprightlier genius of Italy. With +their terraced gardens, their airy galleries, their triumphal +chimney-pieces, their spacious stairways, their conscious provision +for the elegant enjoyment of all seasons in turn, here surely were +the new abodes for the new humanity of this new, poetic, picturesque +age. What but flawless bodies, duly appointed to typically developed +souls, could move on the daily business of life through these dreamy +apartments into which he entered from time to time, finding their +very garniture like a personal presence in them? Was there light +here in the earth itself? It was a landscape, certainly, which did +not merely accept the sun, but flashed it back gratefully from the +white, gracious, carven houses, that were like a natural part of it. +As he passed below, fancy would sometimes credit the outlook from +their lofty gables with felicities of combination beyond possibility. +What prospects of mountain and sea-shore from those aerial window- +seats! + +And still, as in some sumptuous tapestry, the architecture, the +landscape, were but a setting for the human figures: these palatial +abodes, never out of sight, high on the river bank, challenged +continual speculation as to their inhabitants--how they moved, read +poetry and romance, or wrote the memoirs which were like romance, +passed through all the hourly changes of their all- [79] +accomplished, intimate life. The Loire was the river pre-eminently +of the monarchy, of the court; and the fleeting human interests, fact +or fancy, which gave its utmost value to the liveliness of the +natural scene, found a centre in the movements of Catherine and her +sons, still roving, after the eccentric habit inherited from Francis +the First, from one "house of pleasure" to another, in the pursuit at +once of amusement and of that political intrigue which was the +serious business of their lives. Like some fantastic company of +strolling players amid the hushed excitement of a little town, the +royal family, with all its own small rivalries, would be housed for +the night under the same roof with some of its greater enemies--Henri +de Guise, Condé, "The Admiral," all alike taken by surprise--but +courteously, and therefore ineffectively. And Gaston, come thus by +chance so close to them, had the sense not so much of nearness to the +springs of great events, as of the likeness of the whole matter to a +stage-play with its ingeniously contrived encounters, or the +assortments of a game of chance. + +And in a while the dominant course of the river itself, the animation +of its steady, downward flow, even amid the sand-shoals and +whispering islets of the dry season, bore his thoughts beyond it, in +a sudden irresistible appetite for the sea; and he determined, +varying slightly from the prescribed route, to reach his destination +by way [80] of the coast. From Nantes he descended imperceptibly +along tall hedge-rows of acacia, till on a sudden, with a novel +freshness in the air, through a low archway of laden fruit-trees it +was visible--sand, sea, and sky, in three quiet spaces, line upon +line. The features of the landscape changed again, and the gardens, +the rich orchards, gave way to bare, grassy undulations: only, the +open sandy spaces presented their own native flora, for the fine +silex seemed to have crept into the tall, wiry stalks of the ixias, +like grasses the seeds of which had expanded, by solar magic, into +veritable flowers, crimson, green, or yellow patched with black. + +It was pleasant to sleep as if in the sea's arms, amid the low +murmurs, the salt odour mingled with the wild garden scents of a +little inn or farm, forlorn in the wide enclosure of an ancient +manor, deserted as the sea encroached--long ago, for the fig-trees in +the riven walls were tough and old. Next morning he must turn his +back betimes, with the freshness of the outlook still undimmed, all +colours turning to white on the shell-beach, the wrecks, the children +at play on it, the boat with its gay streamers dancing in the foam. +Bright as the scene of his journey had been, it had had from time to +time its grisly touches; a forbidden fortress with its steel-clad +inmates thrust itself upon the way; the village church had been +ruined too recently to count as picturesque; and at last, at the +meeting-point of [81] five long causeways across a wide expanse of +marshland, where the wholesome sea turned stagnant, La Rochelle +itself scowled through the heavy air, the dark ramparts still rising +higher around its dark townsfolk:--La Rochelle, the "Bastion of the +Gospel" according to John Calvin, the conceded capital of the +Huguenots. They were there, and would not leave it, even to share +the festivities of the marriage of King Charles to his little +Austrian Elizabeth about this time--the armed chiefs of +Protestantism, dreaming of a "dictator" after the Roman manner, who +should set up a religious republic. Serried closely together on +land, they had a strange mixed following on the sea. Lair of +heretics, or shelter of martyrs, La Rochelle was ready to protect the +outlaw. The corsair, of course, would be a Protestant, actually +armed perhaps by sour old Jeanne of Navarre--the ship he fell across, +of course, Spanish. A real Spanish ship of war, gay, magnificent, +was gliding even then, stealthily, through the distant haze; and +nearer lay what there was of a French navy. Did the enigmatic +"Admiral," the coming dictator, Coligni, really wish to turn it to +foreign adventure, in rivalry of Spain, as the proper patriotic +outcome of this period, or breathing-space, of peace and national +unity? + +Undoubtedly they were still there, even in this halcyon weather, +those causes of disquiet, like the volcanic forces beneath the +massive [82] chestnut-woods, spread so calmly through the breathless +air, on the ledges and levels of the red heights of the Limousin, +under which Gaston now passed on his way southwards. On his right +hand a broad, lightly diversified expanse of vineyard, of towns and +towers innumerable, rolled its burden of fat things down the slope of +the Gironde towards the more perfect level beyond. In the heady +afternoon an indescribable softness laid hold on him, from the +objects, the atmosphere, the lazy business, of the scene around. And +was that the quarter whence the dry daylight, the intellectual iron, +the chalybeate influence, was to come?--those coquettish, well-kept, +vine-wreathed towers, smiling over a little irregular old village, +itself half-hidden in gadding vine, pointed out by the gardeners (all +labourers here were gardeners) as the end of his long, pleasant +journey, as the abode of Monsieur Michel de Montaigne, the singular +but not unpopular gentleman living there among his books, of whom +Gaston hears so much over-night at the inn where he rests, before +delivering the great poet's letter, entering his room at last in a +flutter of curiosity. + +In those earlier days of the Renaissance, a whole generation had been +exactly in the position in which Gaston now found himself. An older +ideal moral and religious, certain theories of man and nature +actually in possession, still haunted humanity, at the very moment +when it was [83] called, through a full knowledge of the past, to +enjoy the present with an unrestricted expansion of its own +capacities.--Might one enjoy? Might one eat of all the trees?--Some +had already eaten, and needed, retrospectively, a theoretic +justification, a sanction of their actual liberties, in some new +reading of human nature itself and its relation to the world around +it.--Explain to us the propriety, on the full view of things, of this +bold course we have taken, or know we shall take! + +Ex post facto, at all events, that justification was furnished by the +Essays of Montaigne. The spirit of the essays doubtless had been +felt already in many a mind, as, by a universal law of reaction, the +intellect does supply the due theoretic equivalent to an inevitable +course of conduct. But it was Montaigne certainly who turned that +emancipating ethic into current coin. To Pascal, looking back upon +the sixteenth century as a whole, Montaigne was to figure as the +impersonation of its intellectual licence; while Shakespeare, who +represents the free spirit of the Renaissance moulding the drama, +hints, by his well-known preoccupation with Montaigne's writings, +that just there was the philosophic counterpart to the fulness and +impartiality of his own artistic reception of the experience of life. + +Those essays, as happens with epoch-marking books, were themselves a +life, the power which [84] makes them what they are having been +accumulated in them imperceptibly by a thousand repeated +modifications, like character in a person: at the moment when Gaston +presented himself, to go along with the great "egotist" for a season, +that life had just begun. Born here, at the place whose name he +took, Montaigne--the acclivity--of Saint Michael, just thirty-six +years before, brought up simply, earthily, at nurse in one of the +neighbouring villages, to him it was doubled strength to return +thither, when, disgusted with the legal business which had filled his +days hitherto, seeing that "France had more laws than all the rest of +the world," and was what one saw, he began the true work of his life, +a continual journey in thought, "a continual observation of new and +unknown things," his bodily self remaining, for the most part, with +seeming indolence at home. + +It was Montaigne's boast that throughout those invasive times his +house had lain open to all comers, that his frankness had been +rewarded by immunity from all outrages of war, of the crime war +shelters: and openness--that all was wide open, searched through by +light and warmth and air from the soil--was the impression it made on +Gaston, as he passed from farmyard to garden, from garden to court, +to hall, up the wide winding stair, to the uppermost chamber of the +great round tower; in which sun-baked place the studious man still +lingered over a late [85] breakfast, telling, like all around, of a +certain homely epicureanism, a rare mixture of luxury with a +preference for the luxuries that after all were home-grown and +savoured of his native earth. + +Sociable, of sociable intellect, and still inclining instinctively, +as became his fresh and agreeable person, from the midway of life, +towards its youthful side, he was ever on the alert for a likely +interlocutor to take part in the conversation, which (pleasantest, +truly! of all modes of human commerce) was also of ulterior service +as stimulating that endless inward converse from which the essays +were a kind of abstract. For him, as for Plato, for Socrates whom he +cites so often, the essential dialogue was that of the mind with +itself; but this dialogue throve best with, often actually needed, +outward stimulus--physical motion, some text shot from a book, the +queries and objections of a living voice.--"My thoughts sleep, if I +sit still." Neither "thoughts," nor "dialogues," exclusively, but +thoughts still partly implicate in the dialogues which had evoked +them, and therefore not without many seemingly arbitrary transitions, +many links of connexion to be supposed by the reader, constituting +their characteristic difficulty, the Essays owed their actual +publication at last to none of the usual literary motives--desire for +fame, to instruct, to amuse, to sell--but to the sociable desire for +a still wider range of conversation with others. [86] He wrote for +companionship, "if but one sincere man would make his acquaintance"; +speaking on paper, as he "did to the first person he met."--"If there +be any person, any knot of good company, in France or elsewhere, who +can like my humour, and whose humours I can like, let them but +whistle, and I will run!" + +Notes of expressive facts, of words also worthy of note (for he was a +lover of style), collected in the first instance for the help of an +irregular memory, were becoming, in the quaintly labelled drawers, +with labels of wise old maxim or device, the primary, rude stuff, or +"protoplasm," of his intended work, and already gave token of its +scope and variety. "All motion discovers us"; if to others, so also +to ourselves. Movement, rapid movement of some kind, a ride, the +hasty survey of a shelf of books, best of all a conversation like +this morning's with a visitor for the first time,--amid the +felicitous chances of that, at some random turn by the way, he would +become aware of shaping purpose: the beam of light or heat would +strike down, to illuminate, to fuse and organise the coldly +accumulated matter, of reason, of experience. Surely, some +providence over thought and speech led one finely through those +haphazard journeys! But thus dependent to so great a degree on +external converse for the best fruit of his own thought, he was also +an efficient evocator of the thought of another--himself an original +spirit more than tolerating [87] the originality of others,--which +brought it into play. Here was one who (through natural +predilection, reinforced by theory) would welcome one's very self, +undistressed by, while fully observant of, its difference from his +own--one's errors, vanities, perhaps fatuities. Naturally eloquent, +expressive, with a mind like a rich collection of the choice things +of all times and countries, he was at his best, his happiest, amid +the magnetic contacts of an easy conversation. When Gaston years +afterwards came to read the famous Essays, he found many a delightful +actual conversation re-set, and had the key we lack to their +surprises, their capricious turns and lapses.--Well! Montaigne had +opened the letter, had forthwith passed his genial criticism on the +writer, and then, characteristically, forgetting all about it, turned +to the bearer as if he had been intimate with him from childhood. +And the feeling was mutual. Gaston in half an hour seemed to have +known his entertainer all his life. + +In unimpeded talk with sincere persons of what quality soever--there, +rather than in shadowy converse with even the best books--the flower, +the fruit, of mind was still in life-giving contact with its root. +With books, as indeed with persons, his intercourse was apt to be +desultory. Books!--He was by way of asserting his independence of +them, was their very candid friend:--they were far from being [88] +an unmixed good. He would observe (the fact was its own scornful +comment) that there were more books upon books than upon any other +subject. Yet books, more than a thousand volumes, a handsome library +for that day, nicely representative not only of literature but of the +owner's taste therein, lay all around; and turning now to this, now +to that, he handled their pages with nothing less than tenderness: it +was the first of many inconsistencies which yet had about them a +singularly taking air, of reason, of equity. Plutarch and Seneca +were soon in the foreground: they would "still be at his elbow to +test and be tested": masters of the autumnal wisdom that was coming +to be his own, ripe and placid--from the autumn of old Rome, of life, +of the world, the very genius of second thoughts, of exquisite tact +and discretion, of judgment upon knowledge. + +But the books dropped from his hands in the very midst of +enthusiastic quotation; and the guest was mounting a little turret +staircase, was on the leaden roof of the old tower, amid the fat, +noonday Gascon scenery. He saw, in bird's-eye view, the country he +was soon to become closely acquainted with, a country (like its +people) of passion and capacity, though at that moment emphatically +lazy. Towards the end of life some conscientious pangs seem to have +touched Montaigne's singularly humane and sensitive spirit, when he +looked back on the [89] long intellectual entertainment he had had, +in following, as an inactive spectator, "the ruin of his country," +through a series of chapters, every one of which had told +emphatically in his own immediate neighbourhood. With its old and +new battlefields, its business, its fierce changes, and the old +perennial sameness of men's ways beneath them all, it had been +certainly matter of more assiduous reading than even those choice, +incommensurable, books, of ancient Greek and Roman experience. The +variableness, the complexity, the miraculous surprises of man, +concurrent with the variety, the complexity, the surprises of nature, +making all true knowledge of either wholly relative and provisional; +a like insecurity in one's self, if one turned thither for some ray +of clear and certain evidence; this, with an equally strong sense all +the time of the interest, the power and charm, alike of man and +nature and of the individual mind;--such was the sense of this open +book, of all books and things. That was what this quietly +enthusiastic reader was ready to assert as the sum of his studies; +disturbingly, as Gaston found, reflecting on his long unsuspicious +sojourn there, and detaching from the habits, the random traits of +character, his concessions and hints and sudden emphatic statements, +the soul and potency of the man. + +How imperceptibly had darkness crept over them, effacing everything +but the interior of [90] the great circular chamber, its book-shelves +and enigmatic mottoes and the tapestry on the wall,--Circe and her +sorceries, in many parts--to draw over the windows in winter. Supper +over, the young wife entered at last. Always on the lookout for the +sincerities of human nature (sincerity counting for life-giving form, +whatever the matter might be) as he delighted in watching children, +Montaigne loved also to watch grown people when they were most like +children; at their games, therefore, and in the mechanical and +customary parts of their existence, as discovering the real soul in +them. Abstaining from the dice himself, since for him such "play was +not play enough, but too grave and serious a diversion," and +remarking that "the play of children is not performed in play, but to +be judged as their most serious action," he set Gaston and the +amiable, unpedantic, lady to play together, where he might observe +them closely; the game turning still, irresistibly, to conversation, +the last and sweetest if somewhat drowsy relics of this long day's +recreations.--Was Circe's castle here? If Circe could turn men into +swine, could she also release them again? It was frailty, certainly, +that Gaston remained here week after week, scarce knowing why; the +conversation begun that morning lasting for nine months, over books, +meals, in free rambles chiefly on horseback, as if in the waking +intervals of a long day-sleep. + + + +V. SUSPENDED JUDGMENT + +[91] The diversity, the undulancy, of human nature!--so deep a sense +of it went with Montaigne always that himself too seemed to be ever +changing colour sympathetically therewith. Those innumerable +differences, mental and physical, of which men had always been aware, +on which they had so largely fed their vanity, were ultimate. That +the surface of humanity presented an infinite variety was the tritest +of facts. Pursue that variety below the surface!--the lines did but +part further and further asunder, with an ever-increasing divergency, +which made any common measure of truth impossible. Diversity of +custom!--What was it but diversity in the moral and mental view, +diversity of opinion? and diversity of opinion, what but radical +diversity of mental constitution? How various in kind and degree had +he found men's thoughts concerning death, for instance, "some (ah +me!) even running headlong upon it, with [92] a real affection"? +Death, life; wealth, poverty; the whole sum of contrasts; nay! duty +itself,--the relish of right and wrong"; all depend upon the opinion +each one has of them, and "receive no colour of good or evil but +according to the application of the individual soul." Did Hamlet +learn of him that "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking +makes it so"?--What we call evil is not so of itself: it depends only +upon us, to give it another taste and complexion.--Things, in respect +of themselves, have peradventure their weight, measure, and +conditions; but when once we have taken them into us, the soul forms +them as she pleases.--Death is terrible to Cicero, courted by Cato, +indifferent to Socrates.--Fortune, circumstance, offers but the +matter: 'tis the soul adds the form.--Every opinion, how fantastic +soever to some, is to another of force enough to be espoused at the +risk of life." + +For opinion was the projection of individual will, of a native +original predilection. Opinions!--they are like the clothes we wear, +which warm us, not with their heat, but with ours. Track your way +(as he had learned to do) to the remote origin of what looks like +folly; at home, on its native soil, it was found to be justifiable, +as a proper growth of wisdom. In the vast conflict of taste, +preference, conviction, there was no real inconsistency. It was but +that the soul looked "upon things with [93] another eye, and +represented them to itself with another kind of face; reason being a +tincture almost equally infused into all our manners and opinions; +though there never were in the world two opinions exactly alike." +And the practical comment was, not as one might have expected, +towards the determination of some common standard of truth amid that +infinite variety, but to this effect rather, that we are not bound to +receive every opinion we are not able to refute, nor to accept +another's refutation of our own; these diversities being themselves +ultimate, and the priceless pearl of truth lying, if anywhere, not in +large theoretic apprehension of the general, but in minute vision of +the particular; in the perception of the concrete phenomenon, at this +particular moment, and from this unique point of view--that for you, +this for me--now, but perhaps not then. + +Now; and not then! For if men are so diverse, not less disparate are +the many men who keep discordant company within each one of us, +"every man carrying in him the entire form of human condition." +"That we taste nothing pure:" the variancy of the individual in +regard to himself: the complexity of soul which there, too, makes +"all judgments in the gross" impossible or useless, certainly +inequitable, he delighted to note. Men's minds were like the +grotesques which some artists of that day loved to joint together, or +like one of his own [94] inconstant essays, never true for a page to +its proposed subject. "Nothing is so supple as our understanding: it +is double and diverse; and the matters are double and diverse, too." + +Here, as it seemed to Gaston, was one for whom exceptions had taken +the place of law: the very genius of qualification followed him +through all his keen, constant, changeful consideration of men and +things. How many curious moral variations he had to show!--"vices +that are lawful": vices in us which "help to make up the seam in our +piecing, as poisons are useful for the conservation of health": +"actions good and excusable that are not lawful in themselves": "the +soul discharging her passions upon false objects where the true are +wanting": men doing more than they propose, or they hardly know what, +at immense hazard, or pushed to do well by vice itself, or working +for their enemies: "condemnations more criminal than the crimes they +condemn": the excuses that are self-accusations: instances, from his +own experience, of a hasty confidence in other men's virtue which +"God had favoured": and how, "even to the worst people, it is sweet, +their end once gained by a vicious act, to foist into it some show of +justice." In the presence of this indefatigable analyst of act and +motive all fixed outlines seemed to vanish away. The healthful +pleasure of motion, of thoughts in motion!--Yes! Gaston felt them, +the oldest of [95] them, moving, as he listened, under and away from +his feet, as if with the ground he stood on. And this was the vein +of thought which oftenest led the master back contemptuously to +emphasise the littleness of man.--"I think we can never be despised +according to our full desert." + +By way of counterpoise, there were admirable surprises in man. That +cross-play of human tendencies determined from time to time in the +forces of unique and irresistible character, "moving all together," +pushing the world around it to phenomenal good or evil. For such as +"make it their business to oversee human actions, it seems impossible +they should proceed from one and the same person." Consolidation of +qualities supposed, this did but make character, already the most +attractive, because the most dynamic, phenomenon of experience, more +interesting still. So tranquil a spectator of so average a world, a +too critical minimiser, it might seem, of all that pretends to be of +importance, Montaigne was constantly, gratefully, announcing his +contact, in life, in books, with undeniable power and greatness, with +forces full of beauty in their vigour, like lightning, the sea, the +torrents:--overpowering desire augmented, yet victorious, by its very +difficulty; the bewildering constancy of martyrs; single-hearted +virtue not to be resolved into anything less surprising than itself; +the devotion of that famed, so companionable, wife, dying cheerfully +[96] by her own act along with the sick husband "who could do no +better than kill himself"; the grief, the joy, of which men suddenly +die; the unconscious Stoicism of the poor; that stern self-control +with which Jacques Bonhomme goes as usual to his daily labour with a +heart tragic for the dead child at home; nay! even the boldness and +strength of "those citizens who sacrifice honour and conscience, as +others of old sacrificed their lives, for the good of their country." +So carefully equable, his mind nevertheless was stored with, and +delighted in, incidents, personalities, of barbarous strength--Esau, +in all his phases--the very rudest children or "our great and +powerful mother, nature." As Plato had said, "'twas to no purpose +for a sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy," or, if truth +were spoken, of any other high matter of doing or making. That was +consistent with his sympathetic belief in the capability of mere +impetuous youth as such. Even those unexpected traits in ordinary +people which seem to hint at larger laws and deeper forces of +character, disconcerting any narrow judgment upon them, he welcomed +as akin to his own indolent, but suddenly kindling, nature:--the mere +self-will of men, the shrewd wisdom of an unlettered old woman, the +fount of goodness in a cold or malicious heart. "I hear every day +fools say things far from foolish." Those invincible prepossessions +of humanity, or of the [97] individual, which Bacon reckoned "idols +of the cave," are no offence to him; are direct informations, it may +be, beyond price, from a kindly spirit of truth in things. + +For him there had been two grand surprises, two pre-eminent +manifestations of the power and charm of man, not to be explained +away,--one, within the compass of general and public observation: the +other, a matter of special intimacy to himself. There had been the +greatness of the old Greek and Roman life, so greatly recorded: there +had been the wisdom and kindness of Etienne de la Boetie, as made +known in all their fulness to him alone. That his ardent devotion to +the ancients had been rewarded with minute knowledge concerning them, +was the privilege of the age in which he was born, late in the +Revival of Letters. But the classical reading, which with others was +often but an affectation, seducing them from the highest to a lower +degree of reality, from men and women to their mere shadows in old +books, had been for him nothing less than personal contact. "The +qualities and fortunes" of the old Romans, especially, their +wonderful straight ways through the world, the straight passage of +their armies upon them, the splendour of their armour, of their +entire external presence and show, their "riches and embellishments," +above all, "the suddenness of Augustus," in that grander age for +which decision was justifiable because really [98] possible, had ever +been "more in his head than the fortunes of his own country." If "we +have no hold even on things present but by imagination," as he loved +to observe,--then, how much more potent, steadier, larger, the +imaginative substance of the world of Alexander and Socrates, of +Virgil and Caesar, than that of an age, which seemed to him, living +in the midst of it, respectable mainly by its docility, by an +imitation of the ancients which after all left untouched the real +sources of their greatness. They had been indeed great, at the least +dramatically, redeemed in part by magnificent courage and tact, in +their very sins. "Our force is no more able to reach them in their +vicious than in their virtuous qualities; for both the one and the +other proceed from a vigour of soul which was without comparison +greater in them than in us." + +And yet, thinking of his friendship with the "incomparable Etienne de +la Boetie, so perfect, inviolate and entire, that the like is hardly +to be found in story," he had to confess that the sources of +greatness must still be quick in the world. That had remained with +him as his one fixed standard of value in the estimate of men and +things. On this single point, antiquity itself had been surpassed; +the discourses it had left upon friendship seeming to him "poor and +flat in comparison of the sense he had of it." For once, his +sleepless habit of analysis had been checked by the inexplicable, the +absolute; [99] amid his jealously guarded indifference of soul he had +been summoned to yield, and had yielded, to the magnetic power of +another. "We were halves throughout, so that methinks by outliving +him I defraud him of his part. I was so grown to be always his +double in all things that methinks I am no more than half of myself. +There is no action or thought of mine wherein I do not miss him, as I +know that he would have missed me." Tender yet heroic, impulsive yet +so wise, he might have done what the survivor (so it seemed to +himself) was but vainly trying to do. It was worth his while to +become famous, if that hapless memory might but be embalmed in one's +fame. It had been better than love,--that friendship! to the +building of which so much "concurrence" had been requisite, that +"'twas much if fortune brought the like to pass once in three ages." +Actually, we may think, the "sweet society" of those four years, in +comparison with which the rest of his so pleasant life "was but +smoke," had touched Montaigne's nature with refinements it might +otherwise have lacked. He would have wished "to speak concerning it, +to those who had experience" of what he said, could such have been +found. In despair of that, he loved to discourse of it to all +comers,--how it had come about, the circumstances of its sudden and +wonderful growth. Yet after all were he pressed to say why he had so +loved Etienne de la Boetie, he [100] could but answer, "Because it +was He! Because it was I!" + +And the surprises there are in man, his complexity, his variancy, +were symptomatic of the changefulness, the confusion, the surprises, +of the earth under one's feet, of the whole material world. The +irregular, the unforeseen, the inconsecutive, miracle, accident, he +noted lovingly: it had a philosophic import. It was habit rather +than knowledge of them that took away the strangeness of the things +actually about one. How many unlikely matters there were, testified +by persons worthy of faith, "which, if we cannot persuade ourselves +to believe, we ought at least to leave in suspense.--Though all that +had arrived by report of past time should be true, it would be less +than nothing in comparison of what is unknown." + +On all sides we are beset by the incalculable--walled up suddenly, as +if by malign trickery, in the open field, or pushed forward +senselessly, by the crowd around us, to good-fortune. In art, as in +poetry, there are the "transports" which lift the artist out of, as +they are not of, himself; for orators also, "those extraordinary +motions which sometimes carry them above their design." Himself, "in +the necessity and heat of combat," had sometimes made answers, that +went "through and through," beyond hope. The work, by its own force +and fortune, sometimes outstrips the workman. And then, in [101] +defiance of the proprieties, whereas poets sometimes "flag, and +languish in a prosaic manner," prose will shine with the lustre, +vigour and boldness, with "the fury" of poetry. + +And as to "affairs,"--how spasmodic the mixture, collision or +coincidence, of the mechanic succession of things with men's +volition! Mere rumour, so large a factor in events,--who could trace +out its ways? Various events (he was never tired of illustrating the +fact) "followed from the same counsel." Fortune, chance, that is to +say, the incalculable contribution of mere matter to man, "would +still be mistress of events"; and one might think it no un-wisdom to +commit everything to fortuity. But no! "fortune too is oft-times +observed to act by the rule of reason: chance itself comes round to +hold of justice;" war, above all, being a matter in which fortune was +inexplicable, though men might seem to have made it the main business +of their lives. If "the force of all counsel lies in the occasion," +that is because things perpetually shift. If man--his taste, his +very conscience--change with the habit of time and place, that is +because habit is the emphatic determination, the tyranny, of changing +external and material circumstance. So it comes about that every one +gives the name of barbarism to what is not in use round about him, +excepting perhaps the Greeks and Romans, somewhat conventionally; and +Montaigne was fond of assuring people, [102] suddenly, that could we +have those privileged Greeks and Romans actually to sit beside us for +a while, they would be found to offend our niceties at a hundred +points. We have great power of taking ourselves in, and "pay +ourselves with words." Words too, language itself, and therewith the +more intimate physiognomy of thought, "slip every day through our +fingers." With his eye on his own labour, wistfully, he thought on +the instability of the French language in particular--a matter, after +all, so much less "perennial than brass." In no respect was nature +more stable, more consecutive, than man. + +In nature, indeed, as in one's self, there might be no ultimate +inconsequence: only, "the soul looks upon things with another eye, +and represents them to itself with another kind of face: for +everything has many faces and several aspects. There is nothing +single and rare in respect of itself, but only in respect of our +knowledge, which is a wretched foundation whereon to ground our +rules, and one that represents to us a very false image of things." +Ah! even in so "dear" a matter as bodily health, immunity from +physical pain, what doubts! what variations of experience, of learned +opinion! Already, in six years of married life, of four children +treated so carefully, never, for instance, roughly awaked from sleep, +"wherein," he would observe, "children are much more profoundly +involved than we,"--of four children, [103] two were dead, and one +even now miserably sick. Seeing the doctor depart one morning a +little hastily, on the payment of his fee, he was tempted to some +nice questions as to the money's worth. "There are so many maladies, +and so many circumstances, presented to the physician, that human +sense must soon be at the end of its lesson:--the many complexions in +a melancholy person; the many seasons in winter; the many nations in +the French; the many ages in age; the many celestial mutations in the +conjunction of Venus and Saturn; the many parts in man's body, nay, +in a finger. And suppose the cure effected, how can we assure +ourselves that it was not because the disease was arrived at its +period, or an effect of chance, or the operation of something else +that the child had eaten, drunk, or touched that day, or by virtue of +his mother's prayers? We suppose we see one side of a thing when we +are really looking at another. As for me, I never see all of +anything; neither do they who so largely promise to show it to +others. Of the hundred faces that everything has I take one, and am +for the most part attracted by some new light I find in it." + +And that new light was sure to lead him back very soon to his +"governing method, ignorance"--an ignorance "strong and generous, and +that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an ignorance, +which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive [104] +knowledge itself"--a sapient, instructed, shrewdly ascertained +ignorance, suspended judgment, doubt everywhere.--Balances, very +delicate balances; he was partial to that image of equilibrium, or +preponderance, in things. But was there, after all, so much as +preponderance anywhere? To Gaston there was a kind of fascination, +an actually aesthetic beauty, in the spectacle of that keen-edged +intelligence, dividing evidence so finely, like some exquisite steel +instrument with impeccable sufficiency, always leaving the last word +loyally to the central intellectual faculty, in an entire +disinterestedness. If on the one hand he was always distrustful of +things that he wished, on the other he had many opinions he would +endeavour to make his son dislike, if he had one. What if the truest +opinions were not always the most commodious to man, "being of so +wild a composition"? He would say nothing to one party that he might +not on occasion say to the other, "with a little alteration of +accent." Yes! Doubt, everywhere! doubt in the far background, as +the proper intellectual equivalent to the infinite possibilities of +things: doubt, shrewdly economising the opportunities of the present +hour, in the very spirit of the traveller who walks only for the +walk's sake,--"every day concludes my expectation, and the journey of +my life is carried on after the same fashion": doubt, finally, as +"the best of pillows to sleep on." And in fact Gaston did sleep well +after [105] those long days of physical and intellectual movement, in +that quiet world, till the spring came round again. + +But beyond and above all the various interests upon which the +philosopher's mind was for ever afloat, there was one subject always +in prominence--himself. His minute peculiarities, mental and +physical, what was constitutional with him as well as his transient +humours, how things affected him, what they really were to him, +Michael, much more than man, all this Gaston came to know, as the +world knew it afterwards in the Essays, often amused, sometimes +irritated, but never suspicious of postures, or insincerity. +Montaigne himself admitted his egotism with frank humour:--"in favour +of the Huguenots, who condemn our private confession, I confess +myself in public." And this outward egotism of manner was but the +symptom of a certain deeper doctrinal egotism:--"I have no other end +in writing but to discover myself." And what was the purport, what +the justification, of this undissembled egotism? It was the +recognition, over against, or in continuation of, that world of +floating doubt, of the individual mind, as for each one severally, at +once the unique organ, and the only matter, of knowledge,--the +wonderful energy, the reality and authority of that, in its absolute +loneliness, conforming all things to its law, without witnesses as +without judge, without appeal, save to itself. [106] Whatever truth +there might be, must come for each one from within, not from without. +To that wonderful microcosm of the individual soul, of which, for +each one, all other worlds are but elements,--to himself,--to what +was apparent immediately to him, what was "properly of his own having +and substance": he confidently dismissed the inquirer. His own +egotism was but the pattern of the true intellectual life of every +one. "The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he +is his own. If the world find fault that I speak too much of myself, +I find fault that they do not so much as think of themselves." How +it had been "lodged in its author":--that, surely, was the essential +question, concerning every opinion that comes to one man from +another. + +Yet, again, even on this ultimate ground of judgment, what undulancy, +complexity, surprises!--"I have no other end in writing but to +discover myself, who also shall peradventure be another thing to- +morrow." The great work of his life, the Essays, he placed "now +high, now low, with great doubt and inconstancy." "What are we but +sedition? like this poor France, faction against faction, within +ourselves, every piece playing every moment its own game, with as +much difference between us and ourselves as between ourselves and +others. Whoever will look narrowly into his own bosom will hardly +find himself twice in the same condition. [107] I give to myself +sometimes one face and sometimes another, according to the side I +turn to. I have nothing to say of myself, entirely and without +qualification. One grows familiar with all strange things by time. +But the more I frequent myself and the better I know myself, the less +do I understand myself. If others would consider themselves as I do, +they would find themselves full of caprice. Rid myself of it I +cannot without making myself away. They who are not aware of it have +the better bargain. And yet I know not whether they have or no!" + +One's own experience!--that, at least, was one's own: low and earthy, +it might be; still, the earth was, emphatically, good, good-natured; +and he loved, emphatically, to recommend the wisdom, amid all doubts, +of keeping close to it. Gaston soon knew well a certain threadbare +garment worn by Montaigne in all their rides together, sitting +quaintly on his otherwise gallant appointments,--an old mantle that +had belonged to his father. Retained, as he tells us, in spite of +its inconvenience, "because it seemed to envelope me in him," it was +the symbol of a hundred natural, perhaps somewhat material, pieties. +Parentage, kinship, relationship through earth,--the touch of that +was everywhere like a caress to him. His fine taste notwithstanding, +he loved, in those long rambles, to partake of homely fare, paying +largely for it. Everywhere it was as if the earth in him turned +kindly to [108] earth. "Under the sun," the sturdy purple thistles, +the blossoming burrs also, were worth knowing. Let us grow together +with you! they seem to say. Himself was one of those whom he thought +"Heaven favoured" in making them die, so naturally, by degrees. "I +shall be blind before I am sensible of the decay of my sight, with +such kindly artifice do the Fatal Sisters entwist our lives. I melt, +and steal away from myself. How variously is it no longer I!" It +was not he who would carry a furry robe at midsummer, because he +might need it in the winter.--"In fine, we must live among the +living, and let the river flow under the bridge without our care, +above all things avoiding fear, that great disturber of reason. The +thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear." + +And still, health, the invincible survival of youth, "admonished him +to a better wisdom than years and sickness." Was there anything +better, fairer, than the beautiful light of health? To be in health +was itself the sign, perhaps the essence, of wisdom--a wisdom, rich +in counsels regarding all one's contacts with the earthy side of +existence. And how he could laugh!--at that King of Thrace, for +instance, who had a religion and a god all to himself, which his +subjects might not presume to worship; at that King of Mexico, who +swore at his coronation not only to keep the laws, but also to make +the sun run his annual course; at those followers [109] of Alexander, +who all carried their heads on one side as Alexander did. The +natural second-best, the intermediate and unheroic virtue (even the +Church, as we know, by no means requiring "heroic" virtue), was +perhaps actually the best, better than any kind of heroism, in an age +whose very virtues were apt to become insane; an age "guilty and +extravagant" in its very justice; for which, as regards all that +belongs to the spirit, the one thing needful was moderation. And it +was characteristic of Montaigne, a note of the real helpfulness there +was in his thoughts, that he preferred to base virtue on low, safe, +ground. "The lowest walk is the safest: 'tis the seat of constancy." +The wind about the tower, coming who knows whence and whither?--could +one enjoy its music, unless one knew the foundations safe, twenty +feet below-ground? Always he loved to hear such words as "soften and +modify the temerity of our propositions." To say less than the truth +about it, to dissemble the absoluteness of its claim, was agreeable +to his confidence in the natural charm, the gaiety, of goodness, +"that fair and beaten path nature has traced for us," over against +any difficult, militant, or chimerical virtue.--"Never had any morose +and ill-looking physician done anything to purpose." In that age, it +was a great thing to be just blameless. Virtue had its bounds, +"which once transgressed, the next step was into the territories +[110] of vice." "All decent and honest means of securing ourselves +from harm, were not only permitted but commendable." Any man who +despises his own life, might "always be master of that of another." +He would not condemn "a magistrate who sleeps; provided the people +under his charge sleep as well as he." Though a blundering world, +in collusion with a prejudiced philosophy, has "a great suspicion of +facility," there was a certain easy taking of things which made life +the richer for others as well as for one's self, and was at least an +excellent makeshift for disinterested service to them. With all his +admiration for the antique greatness of character, he would never +commend "so savage a virtue, and one that costs so dear," as that, +for instance, of the Greek mother, the Roman father, who assisted to +put their own erring sons to death. More truly commendable was the +custom of the Lacedaemonians, who when they went to battle sacrificed +always to the Muses, that "these might, by their sweetness and +gaiety, soften martial fury." How had divine philosophy herself been +discredited by the sour mask, the sordid patches, with which, her +enemies surely! had sent her abroad into the world. "I love a gay +and civil philosophy. There is nothing more cheerful than wisdom: I +had like to have said more wanton." + +Was that why his conversation was sometimes coarse? "All the +contraries are to be found in [111] me, in one corner or another"; if +delicacy, so also coarseness. Delicacy there was, certainly,--a +wonderful fineness of sensation. "To the end," he tells us, "that +sleep should not so stupidly escape from me, I have caused myself to +be disturbed in my sleep, so that I might the better and more +sensibly taste and relish it.--Of scents, the simple and natural seem +to me the most pleasing, and I have often observed that they cause an +alteration in me, and work upon my spirits according to their several +virtues. In excessive heats I always travel by night, from sunset to +sunrise. I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to +sing and whistle in the shrouds, the forerunners of the storm.--When +I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are for a while +taken up with foreign occurrences, I some part of the time call them +back again to my walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of the +solitude, and to myself.--There is nothing in us either purely +corporeal, or purely spiritual. 'Tis an inhuman wisdom that would +have us despise and hate the culture of the body. 'Tis not a soul, +'tis not a body, we are training up, but a man; and we ought not to +divide him. Of all the infirmities we have, the most savage is to +despise our being." + +There was a fineness of sensation in these unpremeditated thoughts, +which to Gaston seemed to connect itself with the exquisite words he +had found to paint his two great affections, for his [112] father and +for Etienne de la Boetie,--a fineness of sensation perhaps quite +novel in that age, but still of physical sensation: and in pursuit of +fine physical sensation he came, on his broad, easy, indifferent +passage through the world, across the coarsest growths which also +thrive "under the sun," and was not revolted. They were akin to that +ruder earth within himself, of which a kind of undissembled greed was +symptomatic; the love of "meats little roasted, very high, and even, +as to several, quite gone"; while, in drinking, he loved "clear +glass, that the eye might taste too, according to its capacity"; akin +also to a certain slothfulness:--"Sleeping," he says, "has taken up a +great part of my life." And there was almost nothing he would not +say: no fact, no story, from his curious half-medical reading, he +would not find some plausible pretext to tell. Man's kinship to the +animal, the material, and all the proofs of it:--he would never blush +at them! In truth, he led the way to the immodesty of French +literature; and had his defence, a sort of defence, ready. "I know +very well that few will quarrel with the licence of my writings, who +have not more to quarrel with in the licence of their own thoughts." + +Yet when Gaston, twenty years afterwards, heard of the seemingly +pious end of Monsieur de Montaigne, he recalled a hundred, always +quiet but not always insignificant, acts of devotion, noticeable in +those old days, on passing a village [113] church, or at home, in the +little chapel--superstitions, concessions to others, strictly +appropriate recognitions rather, as it might seem, of a certain great +possibility, which might lie among the conditions of so complex a +world. That was a point which could hardly escape so reflective a +mind as Gaston's: and at a later period of his life, at the harvest +of his own second thoughts, as he pondered on the influence over him +of that two-sided thinker, the opinion that things as we find them +would bear a certain old-fashioned construction, seemed to have been +the consistent motive, however secret and subtle in its working, of +Montaigne's sustained intellectual activity. A lowly philosophy of +ignorance would not be likely to disallow or discredit whatever +intimations there might be, in the experience of the wise or of the +simple, in favour of a venerable religion, which from its long +history had come to seem like a growth of nature. Somewhere, among +men's seemingly random and so inexplicable apprehensions, might lie +the grains of a wisdom more precious than gold, or even its priceless +pearl. That "free and roving thing," the human soul--what might it +not have found out for itself, in a world so wide? To deny, at all +events, would be only "to limit the mind, by negation." + +It was not however this side of that double philosophy which +recommended itself just now to Gaston. The master's wistful +tolerance, so [114] extraordinary a characteristic in that age, +attracted him, in his present humour, not so much in connexion with +those problematic heavenly lights that might find their way to one +from infinite skies, as with the pleasant, quite finite, objects and +experiences of the indubitable world of sense, so close around him. +Over against the world's challenge to make trial of it, here was that +general licence, which his own warm and curious appetite just then +demanded of the moral theorist. For so pronounced a lover of +sincerity as Monsieur de Montaigne, there was certainly a strange +ambiguousness in the result of his lengthy inquiries, on the greatest +as well as on the lightest matters, and it was inevitable that a +listener should accept the dubious lesson in his own sense. Was this +shrewd casuist only bringing him by a roundabout way to principles he +would not have cared to avow? To the great religious thinker of the +next century, to Pascal, Montaigne was to figure as emphatically on +the wrong side, not merely because "he that is not with us, is +against us." It was something to have been, in the matter of +religious tolerance, as on many other matters of justice and +gentleness, the solitary conscience of the age. But could one really +care for truth, who never even seemed to find it? Did he fear, +perhaps, the practical responsibility of getting to the very bottom +of certain questions? That the actual discourse of so keen a thinker +appeared often inconsistent or inconsecutive, might be a [115] hint +perhaps that there was some deeper ground of thought in reserve; as +if he were really moving, securely, over ground you did not see. +What might that ground be? As to Gaston himself,--had this kindly +entertainer only been drawing the screws of a very complex piece of +machinery which had worked well enough hitherto for all practical +purposes?--Was this all that had been going on, while he lingered +there, week after week, in a kind of devout attendance on theories, +and, for his part, feeling no reverberation of actual events around +him, still less of great events in preparation? These were the +questions Gaston had in mind, as, at length, he thanked his host one +morning with real regret, and took his last look around that +meditative place, the manuscripts, the books, the emblems,--the house +of Circe on the wall. + + + +VI. SHADOWS OF EVENTS + +[116] We all feel, I suppose, the pathos of that mythic situation in +Homer, where the Greeks at the last throb of battle around the body +of Patroclus find the horror of supernatural darkness added to their +other foes; feel it through some touch of truth to our own experience +how the malignancy of the forces against us may be doubled by their +uncertainty and the resultant confusion of one's own mind--blindfold +night there too, at the moment when daylight and self-possession are +indispensable. + +In that old dream-land of the Iliad such darkness is the work of a +propitiable deity, and withdrawn at its pleasure; in life, it often +persists obstinately. It was so with the agents on the terrible Eve +of St. Bartholomew, 1572, when a man's foes were those of his own +household. An ambiguity of motive and influence, a confusion of +spirit amounting, as we approach the centre of action, to physical +madness, encompasses [117] those who are formally responsible for +things; and the mist around that great crime, or great "accident," in +which the gala weather of Gaston's coming to Paris broke up, leaving +a sullenness behind it to remain for a generation, has never been +penetrated. The doubt with which Charles the Ninth would seem to +have left the world, doubt as to his own complicity therein, as well +as to the precise nature, the course and scope, of the event itself, +is still unresolved. So it was with Gaston also. The incident in +his life which opened for him the profoundest sources of regret and +pity, shaped as it was in a measure by those greater historic +movements, owed its tragic significance there to an unfriendly shadow +precluding knowledge how certain facts had really gone, a shadow +which veiled from others a particular act of his and the true +character of its motives. + +For, the scene of events being now contracted very closely to Paris, +the predestined actors therein were gradually drawn thither as into +some narrow battlefield or slaughter-house or fell trap of destiny, +and Gaston, all unconsciously, along with them--he and his private +fortunes involved in those larger ones. Result of chance, or fate, +or cunning prevision, there are in the acts great and little--the +acts and the words alike--of the king and his associates, at this +moment, coincidences which give them at least superficially the +colour of an elaborate conspiracy. [118] Certainly, as men looked +back afterwards, all the seemingly random doings of those restless +months ending in the Noces Vermeilles marriage of Henry of Navarre +with Margaret of France, lent themselves agreeably to the theory of a +great plot to crush out at one blow, in the interest of the reigning +Valois, not the Huguenots only but the rival houses of Guise and +Bourbon. The word, the act, from hour to hour through what presented +itself at the time as a long-continued season of frivolity, suggested +in retrospect alike to friend and foe the close connexion of a +mathematical problem. And yet that damning coincidence of date, day +and hour apparently so exactly timed, in the famous letter to the +Governor of Lyons, by which Charles, the trap being now ready, seems +to shut all the doors upon escaping victims, is admitted even by +Huguenot historians to have been fortuitous. Gaston, recalling to +mind the actual mien of Charles as be passed to and fro across the +chimeric scene, timid, and therefore constitutionally trustful +towards older persons, filially kissing the hand of the grim Coligni- +-Mon père! Mon père!--all his câlineries in that age of courtesy and +assassinations--would wonder always in time to come, as the more +equitable sort of historians have done, what amount of guilty +foresight the young king had carried in his bosom. And this +ambiguity regarding the nearest agent in so great a crime, adding +itself to the general mystery of life, touched Gaston duly with a +sense [119] of the dim melancholy of man's position in the world. It +might seem the function of some cruel or merely whimsical power, +thus, by the flinging of mere dust through the air, to double our +actual misfortunes. However carefully the critical intelligence in +him might trim the balance, his imagination at all events would never +be clear of the more plausible construction of events. In spite of +efforts not to misjudge, in proportion to the clearness with which he +recalled the visible footsteps of the "accursed" Valois, he saw them, +irresistibly, in connexion with the end actually reached, moving to +the sounds of wedding music, through a world of dainty gestures, amid +sonnets and flowers, and perhaps the most refined art the world has +seen, to their surfeit of blood. + +And if those "accursed" Valois might plead to be judged refinedly, so +would Gaston, had the opportunity come, have pleaded not to be +misunderstood. Of the actual event he was not a spectator, and his +sudden absence from Paris at that moment seemed to some of those he +left there only a cruelly characteristic incident in the great +treachery. Just before that delirious night set in, the news that +his old grandfather lay mortally sick at Deux-manoirs had snatched +him away to watch by the dying bed, amid the peaceful ministries of +the religion which was even then filling the houses of Paris with +blood. But the yellow-haired woman, light of soul, whose husband he +had become by dubious and [120] irregular Huguenot rites, the +religious sanction of which he hardly recognised--flying after his +last tender kiss, with the babe in her womb, from the ruins of her +home, and the slaughter of her kinsmen, supposed herself +treacherously deserted. For him, on the other hand, "the pity of +it," the pity of the thing supplied all that had been wanting in its +first consecration, and made the lost mistress really a wife. His +recoil from that damaging theory of his conduct brought home to a +sensitive conscience the fact that there had indeed been a measure of +self-indulgent weakness in his acts, and made him the creature for +the rest of his days of something like remorse. + +The gaiety, the strange devils' gaiety of France, at least in all +places whither its royalty came, ended appropriately in a marriage--a +marriage of "The Reform" in the person of Prince Henry of Navarre, to +Catholicism in the person of Margaret of Valois, Margaret of the +"Memoirs," Charles's sister, in tacit defiance of, or indifference +to, the Pope. With the great Huguenot leaders, with the princes of +the house of Guise, and the Court, like one united family, all in +gaudy evidence in its streets, Paris, ever with an eye for the chance +of amusement, always preoccupied with the visible side of things, +always Catholic--was bidden to be tolerant for a moment, to carry no +fire-arms under penalties, "to renew no past [121] quarrels," and +draw no sword in any new one. It was the perfect stroke of +Catherine's policy, the secret of her predominance over her sons, +thus, with a flight of purchaseable fair women ever at command, to +maintain perpetual holiday, perpetual idleness, with consequent +perpetual, most often idle, thoughts about marriage, amid which the +actual conduct of affairs would be left to herself. Yet for Paris +thus Catholic, there was certainly, even if the Pope were induced to +consent, and the Huguenot bride-groom to "conform," something illicit +and inauspicious about this marriage within the prohibited degrees of +kinship. In fact, the cunningly sought papal dispensation never +came; Charles, with apparent unconcern, fulfilled his threat, and did +without it; must needs however trick the old Cardinal de Bourbon into +performing his office, not indeed "in the face of the Church," but in +the open air outside the doors of the cathedral of Notre-Dame, the +Catholics quietly retiring into the interior, when that starveling +ceremony was over, to hear the nuptial mass. Still, the open air, +the August sunshine, had lent the occasion an irresistible physical +gaiety in this hymeneal Assumption weather. Paris, suppressing its +scruples, its conscientious and unconscientious hatreds, at least for +a season, had adorned herself as that fascinating city always has +been able to adorn herself, if with something of artifice, certainly +[121] with great completeness, almost to illusion. Whatever gloom +the Middle Age with its sins and sorrows might have left there, was +under gallant disguise to-day. In the train of the young married +people, jeunes premiers in an engagement which was to turn out almost +as transitory as a stage-play, a long month of masquerade meandered +night and day through the public places. His carnality and hers, so +startling in their later developments, showed now in fact but as the +engaging force of youth, since youth, however unpromising its +antecedents, can never have sinned irretrievably. Yet to curious +retrospective minds not long afterwards, these graceful follies would +seem tragic or allegoric, with an undercurrent of infernal irony +throughout. Charles and his two brothers, keeping the gates of a +mimic paradise in the court of the Louvre, while the fountains ran +wine--were they already thinking of a time when they would keep those +gates, with iron purpose, while the gutters ran blood? + +If Huguenots were disgusted with the frivolities of the hour, passing +on the other side of the street in sad attire, plotting, as some have +thought, as their enemies will persuade the Pope, a yet more terrible +massacre of their own, only anticipated by the superior force and +shrewdness of the Catholics, on the very eve of its accomplishment-- +they did but serve just now to relieve the predominant white and red, +[123] and thereby double the brilliancy, of a gay picture. Yet a +less than Machiavellian cunning might perhaps have detected, amid all +this sudden fraternity--as in some unseasonably fine weather signs of +coming distress--a risky element of exaggeration in those +precipitately patched-up amities, a certain hollow ring in those +improbable religious conversions, those unlikely reconciliations in +what was after all an age of treachery as a fine art. With Gaston, +however, the merely receptive and poetic sense of life was abundantly +occupied with the spectacular value of the puissant figures in motion +around him. If he went beyond the brilliancy of the present moment +in his wonted pitiful equitable after-thoughts, he was still +concerned only with the more general aspects of the human lot, and +did not reflect that every public movement, however generous in its +tendency, is really flushed to active force by identification with +some narrower personal or purely selfish one. Coligni, "the +Admiral," centre of Huguenot opposition, just, kind, grim, to the +height of inspired genius, the grandest character his faith had yet +produced--undeterred by those ominous voices (of aged women and the +like) which are apt to beset all great actions, yielded readily to +the womanish endearments of Charles, his filial words and fond +touching of the hands, the face, aged at fifty-five--just this +portion of his conduct let us hope being exclusive of his precise +share [124] in the "conspiracy." And the opportune death in Paris of +the Huguenot Queen of Navarre only stirred question for a moment: +autopsy revealed no traces of unfair play, though at a time credulous +as to impossible poisoned perfumes and such things, romantic in its +very suspicions. + +Delirium was in the air already charged with thunder, and laid hold +on Gaston too. It was as if through some unsettlement in the +atmospheric medium the objects around no longer acted upon the senses +with the normal result. Looking back afterwards, this singularly +self-possessed person had to confess that under its influence he had +lost for a while the exacter view of certain outlines, certain real +differences and oppositions of things in that hotly coloured world of +Paris (like a shaken tapestry about him) awaiting the Eve of Saint +Bartholomew. Was the "undulant" philosophy of Monsieur de Montaigne, +in collusion with this dislocating time, at work upon him, that, +following with only too entire a mobility the experience of the hour, +he found himself more than he could have thought possible the toy of +external accident? Lodged in Abelard's quarter, he all but repeats +Abelard's typical experience. His new Heloise, with capacities +doubtless, as he reflected afterwards regretfully, for a refined and +serious happiness, although actually so far only a man's plaything, +sat daintily amid her posies and painted potteries in the [125] +window of a house itself as forbidding and stern as her kinsmen, busy +Huguenot printers, well-to-do at a time not only fertile in new books +and new editions, but profuse of tracts, sheets, satiric handbills +for posting all over France. Gaston's curiosity, a kind of +fascination he finds in their dark ways, takes him among them on +occasion, to feel all the more keenly the contrast of that picture- +like prettiness in this framing of their grim company, their grim +abode. Her frivolity is redeemed by a sensitive affection for these +people who protect her, by a self-accusing respect for their +religion, for the somewhat surly goodness, the hard and unattractive +pieties into which she cannot really enter; and she yearns after her +like, for those harmless forbidden graces towards which she has a +natural aptitude, loses her heart to Gaston as he goes to and fro, +wastes her days in reminiscence of that bright passage, notes the +very fineness of his linen. To him, in turn, she seems, as all +longing creatures ever have done, to have some claim upon him--a +right to consideration--to an effort on his part: he finds a sister +to encourage: she touches him, clings where she touches. The gloomy, +honest, uncompromising Huguenot brothers interfere just in time to +save her from the consequence of what to another than Gaston might +have counted as only a passing fondness to be soon forgotten; and the +marriage almost forced upon him seemed under its actual conditions no +binding sacrament. [126] A marriage really indissoluble in itself, +and for the heart of Colombe sacramental, as he came afterwards to +understand--for his own conscience at the moment, the transaction +seemed to have but the transitoriness, as also the guilt of a vagrant +love. A connexion so light of motive, so inexpressive of what seemed +the leading forces of his character, he might, but for the sorrow +which stained its actual issue, have regarded finally as a mere +mistake, or an unmeaning accident in his career. + +Coligni lay suffering in the fiery August from the shot of the +ambiguous assassin which had missed his heart, amid the real or +feigned regrets of the Guises, of the royal family, of his true +friends, wondering as they watched whether the bullet had been a +poisoned one. The other Huguenot leaders had had their warnings to +go home, as the princes of the house of Navarre, Condé and Henry of +Bearn, would fain have done--the gallant world about them being come +just now to have certain suspicious resemblances to a prison or a +trap. Under order of the king the various quarters of Paris had been +distributed for some unrevealed purpose of offence or defence. To +the officers in immediate charge it was intimated that "those of the +new religion" designed "to rise against the king's authority, to the +trouble of his subjects and the city of Paris. For the prevention of +which conspiracy the king enjoined the Provost to possess himself +[127] of the keys of the various city gates, and seize all boats +plying on the river, to the end that none might enter or depart." +And just before the lists close around the doomed, Gaston has bounded +away on his road homeward to the bed of the dying grandfather, after +embracing his wife, anxious, if she might, to share his journey, with +some forecast of coming evil among those dark people. + +The white badges of Catholicism had been distributed, not to every +Catholic (a large number of Catholics perished), to some Huguenots +such as La Rochefoucauld, brave guerrier et joyeux compagnon, dear to +Charles, hesitating still with some last word of conscience in his +ear at the very gate of the Louvre, when a random pistol-shot, in the +still undisturbed August night, rousing sudden fear for himself, +precipitates the event, and as if in delirium he is driven forth on +the scent of human blood. He had always hunted like a madman. It +was thus "the matins of Paris" began, in which not religious zealots +only assisted, but the thieves, the wanton, the unemployed, the +reckless children, les enfants massacreurs like those seen dragging +an insulted dead body to the Seine, greed or malice or the desire for +swift settlement of some long-pending law-suit finding here an +opportunity. A religious pretext had brought into sudden evidence +all the latent ferocities of a corrupt though dainty civilisation, +and while the stairways of the Louvre, the streets, [128] the vile +trap-doors of Paris, run blood, far away at Deux-manoirs Gaston +watches as the light creeps over the silent cornfields, the last +sense of it in those aged eyes now ebbing softly away. The village +priest, almost as aged, assists patiently with his immemorial +consolations at this long, leisurely, scarce perceptible ending to a +long, leisurely life, on the quiet double-holiday morning.* + +The wild news of public disaster, penetrating along the country roads +now bristling afresh with signs of universal war, seemed of little +consequence in comparison with that closer grief at home, which made +just then the more effective demand on his sympathy, till the thought +came of the position of Colombe--his wife left behind there in Paris. +Immediate rumour, like subsequent history, gave variously the number- +-the number of thousands--who perished. The great Huguenot leader +was dead, one party at least, the royal party, safe for the moment +and in high spirits. As Charles himself put it, the ancient private +quarrel between the houses of Guise and Chatillon was ended by the +decease of the chief of the latter, Coligni de Châtillon--a death so +saintly after its new fashion that the long-delayed vengeance of +Henri de Guise on the presumed instigator of the murder of his father +seemed a martyrdom. And around that central barbarity the slaughter +had spread over Paris in widening [129] circles. With conflicting +thoughts, in wild terror and grief, Gaston seeks the footsteps of +Colombe, of her people, from their rifled and deserted house to the +abodes of their various acquaintance, like the traces of wrecked men +under deep water. Yet even amid his private distress, queries on +points of more general interest in the event would not be excluded. +With whom precisely, in whose interest had the first guilty motion +been?--Gaston on the morrow asked in vain as the historian asks +still. And more and more as he picked his way among the direful +records of the late massacre, not the cruelty only but the obscurity, +the accidental character, yet, alas! also the treachery, of the +public event seemed to identify themselves tragically with his own +personal action. Those queries, those surmises were blent with the +enigmatic sense of his own helplessness amid the obscure forces +around him, which would fain compromise the indifferent, and had made +him so far an accomplice in their unfriendly action that he felt +certainly not quite guiltless, thinking of his own irresponsible, +self-centered, passage along the ways, through the weeks that had +ended in the public crime and his own private sorrow. Pity for those +unknown or half-known neighbours whose faces he must often have +looked on--ces pauvres morts!--took an almost remorseful character +from his grief for the delicate creature whose vain longings had been +perhaps but a rudimentary aptitude for the [130] really high things +himself had represented to her fancy, the refined happiness to which +he might have helped her. The being whose one claim had lain in her +incorrigible lightness, came to seem representative of the suffering +of the whole world in its plenitude of piteous detail, in those +unvalued caresses, that desire towards himself, that patient half- +expressed claim not to be wholly despised, poignant now for ever. +For he failed to find her: and her brothers being presumably dead, +all he could discover of a certainty from the last survivor of her +more distant kinsmen was the fact of her flight into the country, +already in labour it was thought, and in the belief that she had been +treacherously deserted, like many another at that great crisis. In +the one place in the neighbourhood of Paris with which his knowledge +connected her he seeks further tidings, but hears only of her passing +through it, as of a passage into vague infinite space; a little +onward, dimly of her death, with the most damaging view of his own +conduct presented with all the condemnatory resources of Huguenot +tongues, but neither of the place nor the circumstances of that +event, nor whether, as seemed hardly probable, the child survived. +It was not till many years afterwards that he stood by her grave, +still with no softening of the cruel picture driven then as with fire +into his soul; her affection, her confidence in him still contending +with the suspicions, the ill-concealed [131] antipathy to him of her +hostile brothers, the distress of her flight, half in dread to find +the husband she was pursuing with the wildness of some lost child, +who seeking its parents begins to suspect treacherous abandonment. +That most mortifying view of his actions had doubtless been further +enforced on her by others, the worst possible reading, to her own +final discomfiture, of a not unfaithful heart. + +NOTES + +128. *Sunday, August 24, Feast of St. Bartholomew. + + + +VII. THE LOWER PANTHEISM + + Jetzo, da ich ausgewachsen, + Viel gelesen, viel gereist, + Schwillt mein Herz, und ganz von Herzen, + Glaub' ich an den Heilgen Geist.--HEINE.+ + +[132] Those who were curious to trace the symmetries of chance or +destiny felt now quite secure in observing that, of nine French kings +of the name, every third Charles had been a madman. Over the exotic, +nervous creature who had inherited so many delicacies of +organisation, the coarse rage or rabies of the wolf, part, doubtless, +of an inheritance older still, had asserted itself on that terrible +night of Saint Bartholomew, at the mere sight, the scent, of blood, +in the crime he had at least allowed others to commit; and it was not +an unfriendly witness who recorded that, the fever once upon him, for +an hour he had been less a man than a beast of prey. But, +exemplifying that exquisite fineness of cruelty proper to an ideal +tragedy, with the [133] work of his madness all around him, he awoke +sane next day, to remain so--aged at twenty-one--seeking for the few +months left him to forget himself in his old out-of-door amusements, +rending a consumptive bosom with the perpetual horn-blowing which +could never rouse again the gay morning of life. + +"I have heard," says Brantome, of Elisabeth, Charles's queen, "that +on the Eve of Saint Bartholomew, she, having no knowledge of the +matter, went to rest at her accustomed hour, and, sleeping till the +morning, was told, as she arose, of the brave mystery then playing. +'Alas!' she cried; 'the king! my husband! does he know it?' 'Ay! +Madam,' they answered; 'the king himself has ordained it.' 'God!' +she cried; 'how is this? and what counsellors be they who have given +him this advice? O God, be pitiful! for unless Thou art pitiful I +fear this offence will never be pardoned unto him;' and asking for +her 'Hours,' suddenly betook herself to prayer, weeping." + +Like the shrinking, childish Elisabeth, the Pope also wept at that +dubious service to his Church from one who was, after all, a Huguenot +in belief; and Huguenots themselves pitied his end.--"Ah! ces +pauvres morts! que j'ai eu un meschant conseil! Ah! ma nourrice! ma +mie, ma nourrice! que de sang, et que de meurtres!" + +It was a peculiarity of the naturally devout [134] Gaston that, +habituated to yield himself to the poetic guidance of the Catholic +Church in her wonderful, year-long, dramatic version of the story of +redemption, he had ever found its greatest day least evocative of +proportionate sympathy. The sudden gaieties of Easter morning, the +congratulations to the Divine Mother, the sharpness of the recoil +from one extreme of feeling to the other, for him never cleared away +the Lenten pre-occupation with Christ's death and passion: the empty +tomb, with the white clothes lying, was still a tomb: there was no +human warmth in the "spiritual body": the white flowers, after all, +were those of a funeral, with a mortal coldness, amid the loud +Alleluias, which refused to melt at the startling summons, any more +than the earth will do in the March morning because we call it +Spring. It was altogether different with that other festival which +celebrates the Descent of the Spirit, the tongues, the nameless +impulses gone all abroad, to soften slowly, to penetrate, all things, +as with the winning subtlety of nature, or of human genius. The +gracious Pentecostal fire seemed to be in alliance with the sweet, +warm, relaxing winds of that later, securer, season, bringing their +spicy burden from unseen sources. Into the close world, like a +walled garden, about him, influences from remotest time and space +found their way, travelling unerringly on their long journeys, as +[135] if straight to him, with the assurance that things were not +wholly left to themselves; yet so unobtrusively that, a little later, +the transforming spiritual agency would be discernible at most in the +grateful cry of an innocent child, in some good deed of a bad man, or +unlooked-for gentleness of a rough one, in the occasional turning to +music of a rude voice. Through the course of years during which +Gaston was to remain in Paris, very close to other people's sins, +interested, all but entangled, in a world of corruption in flower +(pleasantly enough to the eye), those influences never failed him. +At times it was as if a legion of spirits besieged his door: "Open +unto me! Open unto me! My sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled!" +And one result, certainly, of this constant prepossession was, that +it kept him on the alert concerning theories of the divine assistance +to man, and the world,--theories of inspiration. On the Feast of +Pentecost, on the afternoon of the thirtieth of May, news of the +death of Charles the Ninth had gone abroad promptly, with large +rumours as to the manner of it. Those streams of blood blent +themselves fantastically in Gaston's memory of the event with the +gaudy colours of the season--the crazy red trees in blossom upon the +heated sky above the old grey walls; like a fiery sunset, it might +seem, as he looked back over the ashen intervening years. To +Charles's successor (he and [136] the Queen-mother now delightfully +secure from fears, however unreasonable, of Charles's jerking dagger) +the day became a sweet one, to be noted unmistakably by various pious +and other observances, which still further fixed the thought of that +Sunday on Gaston's mind, with continual surmise as to the tendencies +of so complex and perplexing a scene. + +The last words of Charles had asserted his satisfaction in leaving no +male child to wear his crown. But the brother, whose obvious kingly +qualities, the chief facts really known of him so far, Charles was +thought to have envied--the gallant feats of his youth, de ses Jeunes +guerres, his stature, his high-bred beauty, his eloquence, his almost +pontifical refinement and grace,--had already promptly deserted the +half-barbarous kingdom, his acceptance of which had been but the mask +of banishment; though he delayed much on his way to the new one, +passing round through the cities of Venice and Lombardy, seductive +schools of the art of life as conceived by Italian epicures, of which +he became only too ready a student. On Whit-Monday afternoon, while +Charles "went in lead," amid very little private or public concern, +to join his kinsfolk at Saint-Denys, Paris was already looking out +for its new king, following, through doubtful rumour, his circuitous +journey to the throne, by Venice, Padua, Ferrara, Mantua, Turin, over +Mont Cenis, by Lyons, to French [137] soil, still building +confidently on the prestige of his early manhood. Seeing him at +last, all were conscious in a moment of the inversion of their hopes. +Had the old witchcrafts of Poland, the old devilries of his race, +laid visible hold on the hopeful young man, that he must now take +purely satiric estimate of so great an opportunity, with a programme +which looked like formal irony on the kingly position, a premeditated +mockery of those who yielded him, on demand, a servile reverence +never before paid to any French monarch? Well! the amusement, or +business, of Parisians, at all events, would still be that of +spectators, assisting at the last act of the Valois tragedy, in the +course of which fantastic traits and incidents would naturally be +multiplied. Fantastic humour seemed at its height in the institution +of a new order of knighthood, the enigmatic splendours of which were +to be a monument of Henry's superstitious care, or, as some said, of +his impious contempt, of the day which had made him master of his +destiny,--that great Church festival, towards the emphatic marking of +which he was ever afterwards ready to welcome any novel or striking +device for the spending of an hour. + +It was on such an occasion, then,--on a Whitsunday afternoon, amid +the gaudy red hues of the season, that Gaston listened to one, who, +as if with some intentional new version of the sacred event then +commemorated, had a great [138] deal to say concerning the Spirit; +above all, of the freedom, the indifference, of its operations; and +who would give a strangely altered colour, for a long time to come, +to the thoughts, to the very words, associated with the celebration +of Pentecost. The speaker, though understood to be a brother of the +Order of Saint Dominic, had not been present at the mass--the daily +University red mass, De Spiritu Sancto, but said to-day according to +the proper course of the season in the chapel of the Sorbonne, with +much pomp, by the Italian Bishop of Paris. It was the reign of the +Italians just then, a doubly refined, somewhat morbid, somewhat ash- +coloured, Italy in France, more Italian still. What our Elisabethan +poets imagined about Italian culture--forcing all they knew of Italy +to an ideal of dainty sin such as had never actually existed there,-- +that the court of Henry, so far as in it lay, realised in fact. Men +of Italian birth, "to the great suspicion of simple people," swarmed +in Paris, already "flightier, less constant, than the girouettes on +its steeples"; and it was love for Italian fashions that had brought +king and courtiers here this afternoon, with great éclat, as they +said, frizzed and starched, in the beautiful, minutely considered, +dress of the moment, pressing the learned University itself into the +background; for the promised speaker, about whom tongues had been +busy, not only in the Latin quarter, had [139] come from Italy. In +an age in which all things about which Parisians much cared must be +Italian, there might be a hearing for Italian philosophy. Courtiers +at least would understand Italian; and this speaker was rumoured to +possess in perfection all the curious arts of his native language. +And of all the kingly qualities of Henry's youth, the single one +which had held by him was that gift of eloquence he was able also to +value in others; an inherited gift perhaps, for amid all contemporary +and subsequent historic gossip about his mother, the two things +certain are, that the hands credited with so much mysterious ill- +doing were fine ones, and that she was an admirable speaker. + +Bruno himself tells us, long after he had withdrawn himself from it, +that the monastic life promotes the freedom of the intellect by its +silence and self-concentration. The prospect of such freedom +sufficiently explains why a young man who, however well-found in +worldly and personal advantages, was above all conscious of great +intellectual possessions, and of fastidious spirit also, with a +remarkable distaste for the vulgar, should have espoused poverty, +chastity, and obedience, in a Dominican cloister. What liberty of +mind may really come to, in such places, what daring new departures +it may suggest even to the strictly monastic temper, is exemplified +by the dubious and dangerous mysticism of men like John of Parma and +[140] Joachim of Flora, the reputed author of a new "Everlasting +Gospel"; strange dreamers, in a world of sanctified rhetoric, of that +later dispensation of the Spirit, in which all law will have passed +away; or again by a recognised tendency, in the great rival Order of +Saint Francis, in the so-called "spiritual" Franciscans, to +understand the dogmatic words of faith, with a difference. + +The three convents in which successively Bruno had lived, at Naples, +at Città di Campagna, and finally the Minerva at Rome, developed +freely, we may suppose, all the mystic qualities of a genius, in +which, from the first, a heady southern imagination took the lead. +But it was from beyond monastic bounds that he would look for the +sustenance, the fuel, of an ardour born or bred within them. Amid +such artificial religious stillness the air itself becomes generous +in undertones. The vain young monk (vain, of course) would feed his +vanity by puzzling the good, sleepy heads of the average sons of +Dominic with his neology, putting new wine into old bottles, teaching +them their own business, the new, higher, truer sense of the most +familiar terms, of the chapters they read, the hymns they sang; above +all, as it happened, every word that referred to the Spirit, the +reign of the Spirit, and its excellent freedom. He would soon pass +beyond the utmost possible limits of his brethren's sympathy, beyond +the [141] largest and freest interpretation such words would bear, to +words and thoughts on an altogether different plane, of which the +full scope was only to be felt in certain old pagan writers,--pagan, +though approached, perhaps, at first, as having a kind of natural, +preparatory, kinship with Scripture itself. The Dominicans would +seem to have had well-stocked, and liberally-selected, libraries; and +this curious youth, in that age of restored letters, read eagerly, +easily, and very soon came to the kernel of a difficult old author, +Plotinus or Plato,--to the real purpose of thinkers older still, +surviving by glimpses only in the books of others, Empedocles, for +instance, and Pythagoras, who had been nearer the original sense of +things; Parmenides, above all, that most ancient assertor of God's +identity with the world. The affinities, the unity, of the visible +and the invisible, of earth and heaven, of all things whatever, with +one another, through the consciousness, the person, of God the +Spirit, who was at every moment of infinite time, in every atom of +matter, at every point of infinite space; aye! was everything, in +turn: that doctrine--l'antica filosofia Italiana--was in all its +vigour there, like some hardy growth out of the very heart of nature, +interpreting itself to congenial minds with all the fulness of +primitive utterance. A big thought! yet suggesting, perhaps, from +the first, in still, small, immediately practical, voice, a freer way +of taking, a possible modification [142] of, certain moral precepts. +A primitive morality,--call it! congruous with those larger primitive +ideas, with that larger survey, with the earlier and more liberal +air. + +Returning to this ancient "pantheism," after the long reign of a +seemingly opposite faith, Bruno unfalteringly asserts "the vision of +all things in God" to be the aim of all metaphysical speculation, as +of all enquiry into nature. The Spirit of God, in countless variety +of forms, neither above, nor in any way without, but intimately +within, all things, is really present, with equal integrity and +fulness, in the sunbeam ninety millions of miles long, and the +wandering drop of water as it evaporates therein. The divine +consciousness has the same relation to the production of things as +the human intelligence to the production of true thoughts concerning +them. Nay! those thoughts are themselves actually God in man: a loan +to man also of His assisting Spirit, who, in truth, is the Creator of +things, in and by His contemplation of them. For Him, as for man in +proportion as man thinks truly, thought and being are identical, and +things existent only in so far as they are known. Delighting in +itself, in the sense of its own energy, this sleepless, capacious, +fiery intelligence, evokes all the orders of nature, all the +revolutions of history, cycle upon cycle, in ever new types. And God +the Spirit, the soul of the world, being therefore really identical +with the [143] soul of Bruno also, as the universe shapes itself to +Bruno's reason, to his imagination, ever more and more articulately, +he too becomes a sharer of the divine joy in that process of the +formation of true ideas, which is really parallel to the process of +creation, to the evolution of things. In a certain mystic sense, +which some in every age of the world have understood, he, too, is the +creator; himself actually a participator in the creative function. +And by such a philosophy, Bruno assures us, it was his experience +that the soul is greatly expanded: con questa filosofia l'anima mi +s'aggrandisce: mi se magnifica l'intelletto! + +For, with characteristic largeness of mind, Bruno accepted this +theory in the whole range of its consequences. Its more immediate +corollary was the famous axiom of "indifference," of "the coincidence +of contraries." To the eye of God, to the philosophic vision through +which God sees in man, nothing is really alien from Him. The +differences of things, those distinctions, above all, which schoolmen +and priests, old or new, Roman or Reformed, had invented for +themselves, would be lost in the length and breadth of the +philosophic survey: nothing, in itself, being really either great or +small; and matter certainly, in all its various forms, not evil but +divine. Dare one choose or reject this or that? If God the Spirit +had made, nay! was, all things indifferently, then, matter and +spirit, the spirit and the flesh, heaven and earth, freedom [144] and +necessity, the first and the last, good and evil, would be +superficial rather than substantial differences. Only, were joy and +sorrow also, together with another distinction, always of emphatic +reality to Gaston, for instance, to be added to the list of phenomena +really "coincident," or "indifferent," as some intellectual kinsmen +of Bruno have claimed they should? + +The Dominican brother was at no distant day to break far enough away +from the election, the seeming "vocation," of his youth, yet would +remain always, and under all circumstances, unmistakably a monk in +some predominant qualities of temper. At first it was only by way of +thought that he asserted his liberty--delightful, late-found, +privilege!--traversing, in strictly mental journeys, that spacious +circuit, as it broke away before him at every moment upon ever-new +horizons. Kindling thought and imagination at once, the prospect +draws from him cries of joy, of a kind of religious joy, as in some +new "canticle of the creatures," some new hymnal, or antiphonary. +"Nature" becomes for him a sacred term.--"Conform thyself to Nature! +"with what sincerity, what enthusiasm, what religious fervour, he +enounces that precept, to others, to himself! Recovering, as he +fancies, a certain primeval sense of Deity broadcast on things, a +sense in which Pythagoras and other "inspired" theorists of early +Greece had abounded, in his hands philosophy becomes a poem, a [145] +sacred poem, as it had been with them. That Bruno himself, in "the +enthusiasm of the idea," drew from his axiom of the "indifference of +contraries" the practical consequence which is in very deed latent +there, that he was ready to sacrifice to the antinomianism, which is +certainly a part of its rigid logic, the austerities, the purity of +his own youth, for instance, there is no proof. The service, the +sacrifice, he is ready to bring to the great light that has dawned +for him, occupying his entire conscience with the sense of his +responsibilities to it, is the sacrifice of days and nights spent in +eager study, of plenary, disinterested utterance of the thoughts that +arise in him, at any hazard, at the price, say! of martyrdom. The +work of the divine Spirit, as he conceives it, exalts, inebriates +him, till the scientific apprehension seems to take the place of +prayer, oblation, communion. It would be a mistake, he holds, to +attribute to the human soul capacities merely passive or receptive. +She, too, possesses initiatory power as truly as the divine soul of +the world, to which she responds with the free gift of a light and +heat that seem her own. + +Yet a nature so opulently endowed can hardly have been lacking in +purely physical or sensuous ardours. His pantheistic belief that the +Spirit of God is in all things, was not inconsistent with, nay! might +encourage, a keen and restless eye for the dramatic details of life +and character [146] however minute, for humanity in all its visible +attractiveness, since there too, in truth, divinity lurks. From +those first fair days of early Greek speculation, love had occupied a +large place in the conception of philosophy; and in after days Bruno +was fond of developing, like Plato, like the Christian Platonists, +combining something of the peculiar temper of each, the analogy +between the flights of intellectual enthusiasm and those of physical +love, with an animation which shows clearly enough the reality of his +experience in the latter. The Eroici Furori, his book of books, +dedicated to Philip Sidney, who would be no stranger to such +thoughts, presents a singular blending of verse and prose, after the +manner of Dante's Vita Nuova. The supervening philosophic comment +reconsiders those earlier, physically erotic, impulses which had +prompted the sonnet in voluble Italian, entirely to the advantage of +their abstract, incorporeal, theoretic, equivalents. Yet if it is +after all but a prose comment, it betrays no lack of the natural +stuff out of which such mystic transferences must be made. That +there is no single name of preference, no Beatrice, or Laura, by no +means proves the young man's earlier desires to have been merely +Platonic; and if the colours of love inevitably lose a little of +their force and propriety by such deflexion from their earlier +purpose, their later intellectual purpose as certainly finds its +opportunity thereby, in the [147] matter of borrowed fire and wings. +A kind of old scholastic pedantry creeping back over the ardent youth +who had thrown it off so defiantly (as if love himself went in now +for a University degree), Bruno developes, under the mask of amorous +verse, all the various stages of abstraction, by which, as the last +step of a long ladder, the mind attains actual "union." For, as with +the purely religious mystics, "union," the mystic union of souls with +one another and their Lord, nothing less than union between the +contemplator and the contemplated--the reality, or the sense, or at +least the name of such union--was always at hand. Whence that +instinctive tendency towards union if not from the Creator of things +Himself, who has doubtless prompted it in the physical universe, as +in man? How familiar the thought that the whole creation, not less +than the soul of man, longs for God, "as the hart for the water- +brooks"! To unite oneself to the infinite by largeness and lucidity +of intellect, to enter, by that admirable faculty, into eternal life- +-this was the true vocation of the spouse, of the rightly amorous +soul. A filosofia è necessario amore. There would be degrees of +progress therein, as of course also of relapse: joys and sorrows, +therefore. And, in interpreting these, the philosopher, whose +intellectual ardours have superseded religion and physical love, is +still a lover and a monk. All the influences of the convent, the +sweet, heady [148] incense, the pleading sounds, the sophisticated +light and air, the grotesque humours of old gothic carvers, the thick +stratum of pagan sentiment beneath all this,--Santa Maria sopra +Minervam!--are indelible in him. Tears, sympathies, tender +inspirations, attraction, repulsion, zeal, dryness, recollection, +desire:--he finds a place for them all: knows them all well in their +unaffected simplicity, while he seeks the secret and secondary, or, +as he fancies, the primary, form and purport of each. + +Whether as a light on actual life, or as a mere barren scholastic +subtlety, never before had the pantheistic doctrine been developed +with such completeness, never before connected with so large a sense +of nature, so large a promise of the knowledge of it as it really is. +The eyes that had not been wanting to visible humanity turned now +with equal liveliness on the natural world, in that region of his +birth, where all the colour and force of nature are at least two- +fold. Nature is not only a thought or meditation in the divine mind; +it is also the perpetual energy of that mind, which, ever identical +with itself, puts forth and absorbs in turn all the successive forms +of life, of thought, of language even. What seemed like striking +transformations of matter were in truth only a chapter, a clause, in +the great volume of the transformations of the divine Spirit. The +mystic recognition that all is indeed divine had accompanied a +realisation [149] of the largeness of the field of concrete +knowledge, the infinite extent of all there was actually to know. +Winged, fortified, by that central philosophic faith, the student +proceeds to the detailed reading of nature, led on from point to +point by manifold lights, which will surely strike on him by the way, +from the divine intelligence in it, speaking directly, +sympathetically, to a like intelligence in him. The earth's +wonderful animation, as divined by one who anticipates by a whole +generation the Baconian "philosophy of experience": in that, those +bold, flighty, pantheistic speculations become tangible matter of +fact. Here was the needful book for man to read; the full +revelation, the story in detail, of that one universal mind, +struggling, emerging, through shadow, substance, manifest spirit, in +various orders of being,--the veritable history of God. And nature, +together with the true pedigree and evolution of man also, his +gradual issue from it, was still all to learn. The delightful tangle +of things!--it would be the delightful task of man's thoughts to +disentangle that. Already Bruno had measured the space which Bacon +would fill, with room, perhaps, for Darwin also. That Deity is +everywhere, like all such abstract propositions, is a two-edged +force, depending for its practical effect on the mind which admits it +on the peculiar perspective of that mind. To Dutch Spinosa, in the +next century, faint, consumptive, with a naturally [150] faint hold +on external things, the theorem that God was in all things whatever, +annihilating their differences, suggested a somewhat chilly +withdrawal from the contact of all alike. But in Bruno, eager and +impassioned, an Italian of the Italians, it awoke a constant, +inextinguishable appetite for every form of experience,--a fear, as +of the one sin possible, of limiting, for one's self or another, the +great stream flowing for thirsty souls, that wide pasture set ready +for the hungry heart. + +Considered from the point of view of a minute observation of nature, +the Infinite might figure as "the infinitely little"; no blade of +grass being like another, as there was no limit to the complexities +of an atom of earth,--cell, sphere, within sphere. And the earth +itself, hitherto seemingly the privileged centre of a very limited +universe, was, after all, but an atom in an infinite world of starry +space, then lately divined by candid intelligence, which the +telescope was one day to present to bodily eyes. For if Bruno must +needs look forward to the future, to Bacon, for adequate knowledge of +the earth, the infinitely little, he could look backwards also +gratefully to another daring mind which had already put that earth +into its modest place, and opened the full view of the heavens. If +God is eternal, then, the universe is infinite and worlds +innumerable. Yes! one might well have divined what reason now +demonstrated, indicating those endless [151] spaces which a real +sidereal science would gradually occupy. + +That the stars are suns: that the earth is in motion: that the earth +is of like stuff with the stars:--now the familiar knowledge of +children--dawning on Bruno as calm assurance of reason on appeal from +the prejudice of the eye, brought to him an inexpressibly +exhilarating sense of enlargement in the intellectual, nay! the +physical atmosphere. And his consciousness of unfailing unity and +order did not desert him in that broader survey, which made the +utmost one could ever know of the earth seem but a very little +chapter in the endless history of God the Spirit, rejoicing so +greatly in the admirable spectacle that it never ceases to evolve +from matter new conditions. The immoveable earth, as we term it, +beneath one's feet!--Why, one almost felt the movement, the +respiration, of God in it. And yet how greatly even the physical +eye, the sensible imagination (so to term it) was flattered by the +theorem. What joy in that motion, in the prospect, the music! "The +music of the spheres!"--he could listen to it in a perfection such as +had never been conceded to Plato, to Pythagoras even.-- + + Veni, Creator Spiritus, + Mentes tuorum visita, + Imple superna gratia, + Quae tu creasti pectora.+ + +Yes! The grand old Christian hymns, perhaps [152] the grandest of +them all, seemed to lend themselves in the chorus, to be deepened +immeasurably under this new intention. It is not always, or often, +that men's abstract ideas penetrate the temperament, touch the animal +spirits, affect conduct. It was what they did with Bruno. The +ghastly spectacle of the endless material universe--infinite dust, in +truth, starry as it may look to our terrestrial eyes--that prospect +from which the mind of Pascal recoiled so painfully, induced in Bruno +only the delightful consciousness of an ever-widening kinship and +sympathy, since every one of those infinite worlds must have its +sympathetic inhabitants. Scruples of conscience, if he felt such, +might well be pushed aside for the "excellency" of such knowledge as +this. To shut the eyes, whether of the body or the mind, would be a +kind of sullen ingratitude;--the one sin to believe, directly or +indirectly, in any absolutely dead matter anywhere, as being +implicitly a denial of the indwelling spirit.--A free spirit, +certainly, as of old! Through all his pantheistic flights, from +horizon to horizon, it was still the thought of liberty that +presented itself, to the infinite relish of this "prodigal son" of +Dominic. God the Spirit had made all things indifferently, with a +largeness, a beneficence, impiously belied by any theory of +restrictions, distinctions, of absolute limitation. Touch! see! +listen! eat freely of all the trees of the garden of Paradise, with +the voice of the [153] Lord God literally everywhere!--here was the +final counsel of perfection. The world was even larger than youthful +appetite, youthful capacity. Let theologian and every other theorist +beware how he narrowed either. "The plurality of worlds!"--How petty +in comparison seemed those sins, the purging of which was men's chief +motive in coming to places like this convent, whence Bruno, with vows +broken, or for him obsolete, presently departed. A sonnet, +expressive of the joy with which he returned to so much more than the +liberty of ordinary men, does not suggest that he was driven from it. +Though he must have seemed to those who surely had loved so loveable +a creature there to be departing, like the "prodigal" of the Gospel, +into the farthest of possible far countries, there is no proof of +harsh treatment on their part, or even of an effort to detain him. + +It happens most naturally of course that those who undergo the shock +of spiritual or intellectual change sometimes fail to recognise their +debt to the deserted cause:--How much of the heroism, or other high +quality, of their rejection has really been the product of what they +reject? Bruno, the escaped monk, is still a monk; and his +philosophy, impious as it might seem to some, a religion; very new +indeed, yet a religion. He came forth well-fitted by conventual +influences to play upon men as he had been played upon. A challenge, +a war-cry, an [154] alarum, everywhere he seemed to be but the +instrument of some subtly materialised spiritual force, like that of +the old Greek prophets, that "enthusiasm" he was inclined to set so +high, or like impulsive Pentecostal fire. His hunger to know, fed +dreamily enough at first within the convent walls, as he wandered +over space and time, an indefatigable reader of books, would be fed +physically now by ear and eye, by large matter-of-fact experience, as +he journeys from university to university; less as a teacher than a +courtier, a citizen of the world, a knight-errant of intellectual +light. The philosophic need to try all things had given reasonable +justification to the stirring desire for travel common to youth, in +which, if in nothing else, that whole age of the later Renaissance +was invincibly young. The theoretic recognition of that mobile +spirit of the world, ever renewing its youth, became the motive of a +life as mobile, as ardent, as itself, of a continual journey, the +venture and stimulus of which would be the occasion of ever-new +discoveries, of renewed conviction. + +The unity, the spiritual unity, of the world:--that must involve the +alliance, the congruity, of all things with one another, of the +teacher's personality with the doctrine he had to deliver, of the +spirit of that doctrine with the fashion of his utterance, great +reinforcements of sympathy. In his own case, certainly, when Bruno +confronted his audience at Paris, himself, his theme, [155] his +language, were alike the fuel of one clear spiritual flame, which +soon had hold of his audience also; alien, strangely alien, as that +audience might seem from the speaker. It was intimate discourse, in +magnetic touch with every one present, with his special point of +impressibility; the sort of speech which, consolidated into literary +form as a book, would be a dialogue according to the true Attic +genius, full of those diversions, passing irritations, unlooked-for +appeals, in which a solicitous missionary finds his largest range of +opportunity, and takes even dull wits unaware. In Bruno, that +abstract theory of the perpetual motion of the world was become a +visible person talking with you. + +And as the runaway Dominican was still in temper a monk, so he +presented himself to his audience in the comely Dominican habit. The +reproachful eyes were to-day for the most part kindly observant, +registering every detail of that singular company, all the +physiognomic effects which come, by the way, on people, and, through +them, on things,--the "shadows of ideas" in men's faces--his own +pleasantly expressive with them, in turn. De Umbris Idearum: it was +the very title of his discourse. There was "heroic gaiety" there: +only, as usual with gaiety, it made the passage of a peevish cloud +seem all the chillier. Lit up, in the agitation of speaking, by many +a harsh or scornful beam, yet always sinking, in moments of repose, +to an [156] expression of high-bred melancholy, the face was one that +looked, after all, made for suffering,--already half pleading, half +defiant, as of a creature you could hurt, but to the last never shake +a hair's-breadth from its estimate of yourself. + +Like nature, like nature in that opulent country of his birth which +the "Nolan," as he delighted to call himself, loved so well that, +born wanderer as he was, he must perforce return thither sooner or +later at the risk of life, he gave plenis manibus, but without +selection, and was hardly more fastidious in speech than the +"asinine" vulgar he so deeply contemned. His rank, un-weeded +eloquence, abounding in play of words, rabbinic allegories, verses +defiant of prosody, in the kind of erudition he professed to despise, +with here and there a shameless image,--the product not of formal +method, but of Neapolitan improvisation--was akin to the heady wine, +the sweet, coarse odours, of that fiery, volcanic soil, fertile in +such irregularities as manifest power. Helping himself indifferently +to all religions for rhetoric illustration, his preference was still +for that of the soil, the old pagan religion, and for the primitive +Italian gods, whose names and legends haunt his speech, as they do +the carved and pictorial work of that age of the Renaissance. To +excite, to surprise, to move men's minds, like the volcanic earth as +if in travail, and, according to the Socratic fancy, [157] to bring +them to the birth, was after all the proper function of the teacher, +however unusual it might seem in so ancient a university. +"Fantastic!"--from first to last, that was the descriptive epithet; +and the very word, carrying us to Shakespeare, reminds one how +characteristic of the age such habit was, and that it was pre- +eminently due to Italy. A man of books, he had yet so vivid a hold +on people and things, that the traits and tricks of the audience +seemed to strike from his memory all the graphic resources of his old +readings. He seemed to promise some greater matter than was then +actually exposed by him; to be himself enjoying the fulness of a +great outlook, the vague suggestion of which did but sustain the +curiosity of the listeners. And still, in hearing him speak you +seemed to see that subtle spiritual fire to which he testified +kindling from word to word. What Gaston then heard was, in truth, +the first fervid expression of all those contending views out of +which his written works would afterwards be compacted, of course with +much loss of heat in the process. Satyric or hybrid growths, things +due to hybris,+ insult, insolence, to what the old satyrs of fable +embodied,--the volcanic South is kindly prolific of these, and Bruno +abounded in mockery; though it was by way of protest. So much of a +Platonist, for Plato's genial humour he had nevertheless substituted +the harsh laughter of Aristophanes. Paris, teeming, beneath a [158] +very courtly exterior, with mordant words, in unabashed criticism of +all real or suspected evil, provoked his utmost powers of scorn for +the "Triumphant Beast," the "installation of the ass," shining even +there amid the university folk,--those intellectual bankrupts of the +Latin Quarter, who had so long passed between them, however gravely, +a worthless "parchment and paper" currency. In truth, Aristotle, the +supplanter of Plato, was still in possession, pretending, as Bruno +conceived, to determine heaven and earth by precedent, hiding the +proper nature of things from the eyes of men. "Habit"--the last word +of his practical philosophy--indolent habit! what would this mean, in +the intellectual life, but just that sort of dead judgments which, +because the mind, the eye, were no longer really at work in them, are +most opposed to the essential quickness and freedom of the spirit? + +The Shadows of Ideas: De Umbris Idearum: such, in set terms, have +been the subject of Bruno's discourse, appropriately to the still +only half emancipated intellect of his audience:--on approximations +to truth: the divine imaginations, as seen, darkly, more bearably by +weaker faculties, in words, in visible facts, in their shadows +merely. According to the doctrine of "Indifference," indeed, there +would be no real distinction between substance and shadow. In regard +to man's feeble wit, however, varying degrees of knowledge +constituted such a distinction. [159] "Ideas, and Shadows of Ideas": +the phrase recurred often; and, as such mystic phrases will, fixed +itself in Gaston's fancy, though not quite according to the mind of +the speaker; accommodated rather to the thoughts which just then +preoccupied his own. As already in his life there had been the +Shadows of Events,--the indirect yet fatal influence there of deeds +in which he had no part, so now, for a time, he seemed to fall under +the spell, the power, of the Shadows of Ideas, of Bruno's Ideas; in +other words, of those indirect suggestions, which, though no +necessary part of, yet inevitably followed upon, his doctrines. +What, for instance, might be the proper practical limitations of that +telling theory of "the coincidence, the indifference, of opposites"? + +To that true son of the Renaissance, in the light of his large, +antique, pagan ideas, the difference between Rome and the Reform +would figure, of course, as but an insignificant variation upon some +deeper and more radical antagonism, between two tendencies of men's +minds. But what about an antagonism deeper still? Between Christ +and the world, say!--Christ and the flesh!--or about that so very +ancient antagonism between good and evil. Was there any place really +left for imperfection, moral or otherwise, in a world, wherein the +minutest atom, the lightest thought, could not escape from God's +presence? Who should note the crime, the sin, [160] the mistake, in +the operation of that eternal spirit, which was incapable of mis- +shapen births? In proportion as man raised himself to the ampler +survey of the divine work around him, just in that proportion did the +very notion of evil disappear. There were no weeds, no "tares," in +the endless field. The truly illuminated mind, discerning +spiritually, might do what it would. Even under the shadow of +monastic walls, that had sometimes been the precept, which larger +theories of "inspiration" had bequeathed to practice. "Of all the +trees of the garden thou mayest freely eat!--If ye take up any deadly +thing, it shall not hurt you!--And I think that I, too, have the +spirit of God." + +Bruno, a citizen of the world, Bruno at Paris, was careful to warn +off the vulgar from applying the decisions of philosophy beyond its +proper speculative limits. But a kind of secrecy, an ambiguous +atmosphere, encompassed, from the first, alike the speaker and the +doctrine; and in that world of fluctuating and ambiguous characters, +the alerter mind certainly, pondering on this novel "reign of the +spirit"--what it might actually be--would hardly fail to find in +Bruno's doctrines a method of turning poison into food, to live and +thrive thereon; an art, to Paris, in the intellectual and moral +condition of that day, hardly less opportune than had it related to +physical poisons. If Bruno himself was cautious not to suggest the +ethic or practical [161] equivalent to his theoretic positions, there +was that in his very manner of speech, in that rank, un-weeded +eloquence of his, which seemed naturally to discourage any effort at +selection, any sense of fine difference, of nuances or proportion, in +things. The loose sympathies of his genius were allied to nature, +nursing, with equable maternity of soul, good, bad, and indifferent +alike, rather than to art, distinguishing, rejecting, refining. +Commission and omission! sins of the former surely had the natural +preference. And how would Paolo and Francesca have read this lesson? +How would Henry, and Margaret of the "Memoirs," and other susceptible +persons then present, read it, especially if the opposition between +practical good and evil traversed diametrically another distinction, +the "opposed points" of which, to Gaston for instance, could never by +any possibility become "indifferent,"--the distinction, namely, +between the precious and the base, aesthetically; between what was +right and wrong in the matter of art? + +NOTES: + +132. +From Aus der Harzreise, "Bergidylle 2": "Tannenbaum, mit grünen +Fingern," Stanza 10. E-text editor's translation: "Now that I have +grown to maturity, / Have read and traveled much, / My whole heart +expands / With my belief in the Holy Spirit." + +151. +The beginning of a hymn used by the Catholic Church to +commemorate solemn occasions. Dryden's translation: "Creator Spirit, +by whose aid / The world's foundations first were laid, / Come visit +every pious mind, Come pour Thy joys on human kind." + +157. +Transliteration: hybris. Liddell and Scott definition: "wanton +violence, arising from the pride of strength, passion, etc." + +THE END + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Gaston de Latour, by Walter Pater + diff --git a/4062-8.zip b/4062-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..940aaa5 --- /dev/null +++ b/4062-8.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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