The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales - Richard Garnett
"I approve thy advice," replied Bahram, "and in return will save thy life
by banishing thee from my dominions. When my august consort shall learn
that thou hast been the means of depriving her of her robe, she will
undoubtedly request that thou mayest be flayed, and thou knowest that I
can deny her nothing. I therefore counsel thee to depart with all possible
swiftness. Repair to the regions where the purple is produced, and if thou
returnest with an adequate supply, I undertake that my royal sceptre shall
be graciously extended to thee."
The philosopher forsook the royal presence with celerity, and his office of
chief examiner of court spikenard was bestowed upon another; as also his
house and his garden, his gold and his silver, his wives and his
concubines, his camels and his asses, which were numerous.
While the solitary adventurer wended his way eastward, a gorgeous embassy
travelled westward in the direction of Rome.
Arrived in the presence of Aurelian, and at the conclusion of his
complimentary harangue, the chief envoy produced a cedar casket, from which
he drew a purple robe of such surpassing refulgence, that, in the words of
the historian who has recorded the transaction, the purple of the emperor
and of the matrons appeared ashy grey in comparison. It was accompanied by
a letter thus conceived:
"Bahram to Aurelian: health! Receive such purple as we have in Persia."
"Persia, forsooth!" exclaimed Sorianus, a young philosopher versed in
natural science, "this purple never was in Persia, except as a rarity. Oh,
the mendacity and vanity of these Orientals!"
The ambassador was beginning an angry reply, when Aurelian quelled the
dispute with a look, and with some awkwardness delivered himself of a brief
oration in acknowledgment of the gift. He took no more notice of the
matter until nightfall, when he sent for Sorianus, and inquired where the
purple actually was produced.
"In the uttermost parts of India," returned the philosopher.
"Well," rejoined Aurelian, summing up the matter with his accustomed
rapidity and clearness of head, "either thou or the Persian king has lied
to me, it is plain, and, by the favour of the Gods, it is immaterial which,
seeing that my ground for going to war with him is equally good in either
case. If he has sought to deceive me, I am right in punishing him; if he
possesses what I lack, I am justified in taking it away. It would, however,
be convenient to know which of these grounds to inscribe in my manifesto;
moreover, I am not ready for hostilities at present; having first to
extirpate the Blemmyes, Carpi, and other barbarian vermin. I will therefore
despatch thee to India to ascertain by personal examination the truth about
the purple. Do not return without it, or I shall cut off thy head. My
treasury will charge itself with the administration of thy property during
thy absence. The robe shall meanwhile be deposited in the temple of Jupiter
Capitolinus. May he have it and thee in his holy keeping!"
Thus, in that age of darkness, were two most eminent philosophers reduced
to beggary, and constrained to wander in remote and insalubrious regions;
the one for advising a king, the other for instructing an emperor. But the
matter did not rest here. For Aurelian, having continued the visible deity
of half the world for one hundred and fifty days after the departure of
Sorianus, was slain by his own generals. To him succeeded Tacitus, who
sank oppressed by the weight of rule; to him Probus, who perished in a
military tumult; to him Carus, who was killed by lightning; to him Carinus,
who was assassinated by one whom he had wronged; to him Diocletian, who,
having maintained himself for twenty years, wisely forbore to tempt Nemesis
further, and retired to plant cabbages at Salona. All these sovereigns,
differing from each other in every other respect, agreed in a common desire
to possess the purple dye, and when the philosopher returned not,
successively despatched new emissaries in quest of it. Strange was the
diversity of fate which befell these envoys. Some fell into the jaws of
lions, some were crushed by monstrous serpents, some trampled by elephants
at the command of native princes, some perished of hunger, and some of
thirst; some, encountering smooth-browed and dark-tressed girls wreathing
their hair with the champak blossom or bathing by moonlight in
lotus-mantled tanks, forsook their quest, and led thenceforth idyllic lives
in groves of banian and of palm. Some became enamoured of the principles of
the Gymnosophists, some couched themselves for uneasy slumber upon beds of
spikes, weening to wake in the twenty-second heaven. All which romantic
variety of fortune was the work of a diminutive insect that crawled or
clung heedless of the purple it was weaving into the many-coloured web of
human life.
II
Some thirty years after the departure of the Persian embassy to Aurelian,
two travellers met at the bottom of a dell in trans-Gangetic India, having
descended the hill-brow by opposite paths. It was early morning; the sun
had not yet surmounted the timbered and tangled sides of the little valley,
so that the bottom still lay steeped in shadow, and glittering with large
pearls of limpid dew, while the oval space of sky circumscribed by the
summit glowed with the delicate splendour of the purest sapphire. Songs of
birds resounded through the brake, and the water lilies which veiled the
rivulet trickling through the depths of the retreat were unexpanded still.
One of the wayfarers was aged, the other a man of the latest period of
middle life. Their raiment was scanty and soiled; their frames and
countenances alike bespoke fatigue and hardship; but while the elder one
moved with moderate alacrity, the other shuffled painfully along by the
help of a staff, shrinking every time that he placed either of his feet on
the ground.
They exchanged looks and greetings as they encountered, and the more active
of the two, whose face was set in an easterly direction, ventured a
compassionate allusion to the other's apparent distress.
'I but suffer from the usual effects of crucifixion,' returned the other;
and removing his sandals, displayed two wounds, completely penetrating each
foot.
The Cross had not yet announced victory to Constantine, and was as yet no
passport to respectable society. The first traveller drew back hastily, and
regarded his companion with surprise and suspicion.
"I see what is passing in thy mind," resumed the latter, with a smile; "but
be under no apprehension. I have not undergone the censure of any judicial
tribunal. My crucifixion was merely a painful but necessary incident in my
laudable enterprise of obtaining the marvellous purple dye, to which end I
was despatched unto these regions by the Emperor Aurelian."
"The purple dye!" exclaimed the Persian, for it was he. "Thou hast obtained
it?"
"I have. It is the product of insects found only in a certain valley
eastward from hence, to obtain access to which it is before all things
needful to elude the vigilance of seven dragons."
"Thou didst elude them? and afterwards?" inquired Marcobad, with eagerness.
"Afterwards," repeated Sorianus, "I made my way into the valley, where I
descried the remains of my immediate predecessor prefixed to a cross."
"Thy predecessor?"
"He who had last made the attempt before me. Upon any one's penetrating the
Valley of Purple, as it is termed, with the design I have indicated, the
inhabitants, observant of the precepts of their ancestors, append him to a
cross by the feet only, confining his arms by ropes at the shoulders, and
setting vessels of cooling drink within his grasp. If, overcome with
thirst, he partakes of the beverage, they leave him to expire at leisure;
if he endures for three days, he is permitted to depart with the object of
his quest. My predecessor, belonging, as I conjecture, to the Epicurean
persuasion, and consequently unable to resist the allurements of sense, had
perished in the manner aforesaid. I, a Stoic, refrained and attained."
"Thou didst bear away the tincture? thou hast it now?" impetuously
interrogated the Persian.
"Behold it!" replied the Greek, exhibiting a small flask filled with the
most gorgeous purple liquid. "What seest thou here?" demanded he
triumphantly, holding it up to the light. "To me this vial displays the
University of Athens, and throngs of fair youths hearkening to the
discourse of one who resembles myself."
"To my vision," responded the Persian, peering at the vial, "it rather
reveals a palace, and a dress of honour. But suffer me to contemplate it
more closely, for my eyes have waxed dim by over application to study."
So saying, he snatched the flask from Sorianus, and immediately turned to
fly. The Greek sprang after his treasure, and failing to grasp Marcobad's
wrist, seized his beard, plucking the hair out by handfuls. The infuriated
Persian smote him on the head with the crystal flagon. It burst into
shivers, and the priceless contents gushed forth in a torrent over the
uncovered head and uplifted visage of Sorianus, bathing every hair and
feature with the most vivid purple.
The aghast and thunderstricken philosophers remained gazing at each other
for a moment.
"It is indelible!" cried Sorianus in distraction, rushing down, however, to
the brink of the little stream, and plunging his head beneath the waters.
They carried away a cloud of purple, but left the purple head stained as
before.
The philosopher, as he upraised his glowing and dripping countenance from
the brook, resembled Silenus emerging from one of the rivers which Bacchus
metamorphosed into wine during his campaign in India. He resorted to
attrition and contrition, to maceration and laceration; he tried friction
with leaves, with grass, with sedge, with his garments; he regarded himself
in one crystal pool after another, a grotesque anti-Narcissus. At last he
flung himself on the earth, and gave free course to his anguish.
The grace of repentance is rarely denied us when our misdeeds have proved
unprofitable. Marcobad awkwardly approached.
"Brother," he whispered, "I will restore the tincture of which I have
deprived thee, and add thereto an antidote, if such may be found. Await my
return under this camphor tree."
So saying, he hastened up the path by which Sorianus had descended, and was
speedily out of sight.
III
Sorianus tarried long under the camphor tree, but at last, becoming weary,
resumed his travels, until emerging from the wilderness he entered the
dominions of the King of Ayodhya. His extraordinary appearance speedily
attracted the attention of the royal officers, by whom he was apprehended
and brought before his majesty.
"It is evident," pronounced the monarch, after bestowing his attention on
the case, "that thou art in possession of an object too rare and precious
for a private individual, of which thou must accordingly be deprived. I
lament the inconvenience thou wilt sustain. I would it had been thy hand or
thy foot."
Sorianus acknowledged the royal considerateness, but pleaded the
indefeasible right of property which he conceived himself to have acquired
in his own head.
"In respect," responded the royal logician, "that thy head is conjoined to
thy shoulders, it is thine; but in respect that it is purple, it is mine,
purple being a royal monopoly. Thy claim is founded on anatomy, mine on
jurisprudence. Shall matter prevail over mind? Shall medicine, the most
uncertain of sciences, override law, the perfection of human reason? It is
but to the vulgar observation that thou appearest to have a head at all; in
the eye of the law thou art acephalous."
"I would submit," urged the philosopher, "that the corporal connection of
my head with my body is an essential property, the colour of it a
fortuitous accident."
"Thou mightest as well contend," returned the king, "that the law is bound
to regard thee in thy abstract condition as a human being, and is disabled
from taking cognisance of thy acquired capacity of smuggler--rebel, I
might say, seeing that thou hast assumed the purple."
"But the imputation of cruelty which might attach to your majesty's
proceedings?"
"There can be no cruelty where there is no injustice. If any there be, it
must be on thy part, since, as I have demonstrated, so far from my
despoiling thee of thy head, it is thou who iniquitously withholdest mine.
I will labour to render this even clearer to thy apprehension. Thou art
found, as thou must needs admit, in possession of a contraband article
forfeit to the crown by operation of law. What then? Shall the intention of
the legislature be frustrated because thou hast insidiously rendered the
possession of _my_ property inseparable from the possession of _thine_?
Shall I, an innocent proprietor, be mulcted of my right by thy fraud and
covin? Justice howls, righteousness weeps, integrity stands aghast at the
bare notion. No, friend, thy head has not a leg to stand on. Wouldst thou
retain it, it behoves thee to show that it will be more serviceable to the
owner, namely, myself, upon thy shoulders than elsewhere. This may well be.
Hast thou peradventure any subtleties in perfumery? any secrets in
confectionery? any skill in the preparation of soup?"
"I have condescended to none of these frivolities, O king. My study hath
ever consisted in divine philosophy, whereby men are rendered equal to the
gods."
"And yet long most of all for purple!" retorted the monarch, "as I conclude
from perceiving thou hast after all preferred the latter. Thy head must
indeed be worth the taking."
"Thy taunt is merited, O king! I will importune thee no longer. Thou wilt
indeed render me a service in depriving me of this wretched head, hideous
without, and I must fear, empty within, seeing that it hath not prevented
me from wasting my life in the service of vanity and luxury. Woe to the
sage who trusts his infirm wisdom and frail integrity within the precincts
of a court! Yet can I foretell a time when philosophers shall no longer run
on the futile and selfish errands of kings, and when kings shall be
suffered to rule only so far as they obey the bidding of philosophers.
Peace, Knowledge, Liberty--"
The King of Ayodhya possessed, beyond all princes of his age, the art of
gracefully interrupting an unseasonable discourse. He slightly signed to a
courtier in attendance, a scimitar flashed for a moment from its scabbard,
and the head of Sorianus rolled on the pavement; the lips murmuring as
though still striving to dwell with inarticulate fondness upon the last
word of hope for mankind.
It soon appeared that the principle of life was essential to the
resplendence of the Purple Head. Within a few minutes it had assumed so
ghastly a hue that the Rajah himself was intimidated, and directed that it
should be consumed with the body.
The same full-moon that watched the white-robed throng busied with the
rites of incremation in a grove of palms, beheld also the seven dragons
contending for the body of Marcobad. But, for many a year, the maids and
matrons of Rome were not weary of regarding, extolling, and coveting the
priceless purple tissue that glowed in the fane of Jupiter Capitolinus.
THE FIREFLY
A certain Magician had retired for the sake of study to a cottage in a
forest. It was summer in a hot country. In the trees near the cottage dwelt
a most beautiful Firefly. The light she bore with her was dazzling, yet
soft and palpitating, as the evening star, and she seemed a single flash of
fire as she shot in and out suddenly from under the screen of foliage, or
like a lamp as she perched panting upon some leaf, or hung glowing from
some bough; or like a wandering meteor as she eddied gleaming over the
summits of the loftiest trees; as she often did, for she was an ambitious
Firefly. She learned to know the Magician, and would sometimes alight and
sit shining in his hair, or trail her lustre across his book as she crept
over the pages. The Magician admired her above all things:
"What eyes she would have if she were a woman!" thought he.
Once he said aloud, "How happy you must be, you rare, beautiful, brilliant
creature!"
"I am not happy," rejoined the Firefly; "what am I, after all, but a flying
beetle with a candle in my tail? I wish I were a star."
"Very well," said the Magician, and touched her with his wand, when she
became a beautiful star in the twelfth degree of the sign Pisces.
After some nights the Magician asked her if she was content.
"I am not," replied she. "When I was a Firefly I could fly whither I would,
and come and go as I pleased. Now I must rise and set at certain times, and
shine just so long and no longer. I cannot fly at all, and only creep
slowly across the sky. In the day I cannot shine, or if I do no one sees
me. I am often darkened by rain, and mist, and cloud. Even when I shine my
brightest I am less admired than when I was a Firefly, there are so many
others like me. I see, indeed, people looking up from the earth by night
towards me, but how do I know that they are looking at me?"
"The laws of nature will have it so," returned the Magician.
"Don't talk to me of the laws of Nature," rejoined the Firefly. "I did not
make them, and I don't see why I should be compelled to obey them. Make me
something else."
"What would you be?" demanded the accommodating Magician.
"As I creep along here," replied the Star, "I see such a soft pure track of
light. It proceeds from the lamp in your study. It flows out of your window
like a river of molten silver, both cool and warm. Let me be such a lamp."
"Be it so," answered the Magician: and the star became a lovely alabaster
lamp, set in an alcove in his study. Her chaste radiance was shed over his
page as long as he continued to read. At a certain hour he extinguished her
and retired to rest.
Next morning the Lamp was in a terrible humour.
"I don't choose to be blown out," she said.
"You would have gone out of your own accord else," returned the Magician.
"What!" exclaimed the Lamp, "am I not shining by my own light?"
"Certainly not: you are not now a Firefly or a Star. You must now depend
upon others. You would be dark for ever if I did not rekindle you by the
help of this oil."
"What!" cried the Lamp, "not shine of my own accord! Never! Make me an
everlasting lamp, or I will not be one at all."
"Alas, poor friend," returned the Magician sadly, "there is but one place
where aught is everlasting. I can make thee a lamp of the sepulchre."
"Content," responded the Lamp. And the Magician made her one of those
strange occult lamps which men find ever and anon when they unseal the
tombs of ancient kings and wizards, sustaining without nutriment a
perpetual flame. And he bore her to a sepulchre where a great king was
lying embalmed and perfect in his golden raiment, and set her at the head
of the corpse. And whether the poor fitful Firefly found at last rest in
the grave, we may know when we come thither ourselves. But the Magician
closed the gates of the sepulchre behind him, and walked thoughtfully home.
And as he approached his cottage, behold another Firefly darting and
flashing in and out among the trees, as brilliantly as ever the first had
done. She was a wise Firefly, well satisfied with the world and everything
in it, more particularly her own tail. And if the Magician would have made
a pet of her no doubt she would have abode with him. But he never looked at
her.
PAN'S WAND
Iridion had broken her lily. A misfortune for any rustic nymph, but
especially for her, since her life depended upon it.
From her birth the fate of Iridion had been associated with that of a
flower of unusual loveliness--a stately, candid lily, endowed with a
charmed life, like its possessor. The seasons came and went without leaving
a trace upon it; innocence and beauty seemed as enduring with it, as
evanescent with the children of men. In equal though dissimilar loveliness
its frolicsome young mistress nourished by its side. One thing alone, the
oracle had declared, could prejudice either, and this was an accident to
the flower. From such disaster it had long been shielded by the most
delicate care; yet in the inscrutable counsels of the Gods, the dreaded
calamity had at length come to pass. Broken through the upper part of the
stem, the listless flower drooped its petals towards the earth, and seemed
to mourn their chastity, already sullied by the wan flaccidity of decay.
Not one had fallen as yet, and Iridion felt no pain or any symptom of
approaching dissolution, except, it may be, the unwonted seriousness with
which, having exhausted all her simple skill on behalf of the languishing
plant, she sat down to consider its fate in the light of its bearing upon
her own.
Meditation upon an utterly vague subject, whether of apprehension or of
hope, speedily lapses into reverie. To Iridion, Death was as indefinable an
object of thought as the twin omnipotent controller of human destiny, Love.
Love, like the immature fruit on the bough, hung unsoliciting and
unsolicited as yet, but slowly ripening to the maiden's hand. Death, a
vague film in an illimitable sky, tempered without obscuring the sunshine
of her life. Confronted with it suddenly, she found it, in truth, an
impalpable cloud, and herself as little competent as the gravest
philosopher to answer the self-suggested inquiry, "What shall I be when I
am no longer Iridion?" Superstition might have helped her to some definite
conceptions, but superstition did not exist in her time. Judge, reader, of
its remoteness.
The maiden's reverie might have terminated only with her existence, but for
the salutary law which prohibits a young girl, not in love or at school,
from sitting still more than ten minutes. As she shifted her seat at the
expiration of something like this period, she perceived that she had been
sitting on a goatskin, and with a natural association of ideas--
"I will ask Pan," she exclaimed.
Pan at that time inhabited a cavern hard by the maiden's dwelling, which
the judicious reader will have divined could only have been situated in
Arcadia. The honest god was on excellent terms with the simple people; his
goats browsed freely along with theirs, and the most melodious of the
rustic minstrels attributed their proficiency to his instructions. The
maidens were on a more reserved footing of intimacy--at least so they
wished it to be understood, and so it was understood, of course. Iridion,
however, decided that the occasion would warrant her incurring the risk
even of a kiss, and lost no time in setting forth upon her errand, carrying
her poor broken flower in its earthen vase. It was the time of day when the
god might be supposed to be arousing himself from his afternoon's siesta.
She did not fear that his door would be closed against her, for he had no
door.
The sylvan deity stood, in fact, at the entrance of his cavern, about to
proceed in quest of his goats. The appearance of Iridion operated a change
in his intention, and he courteously escorted her to a seat of turf erected
for the special accommodation of his fair visitors, while he placed for
himself one of stone.
"Pan," she began, "I have broken my lily."
"That is a sad pity, child. If it had been a reed, now, you could have made
a flute of it."
"I should not have time, Pan," and she recounted her story. A godlike
nature cannot confound truth with falsehood, though it may mistake
falsehood for truth. Pan therefore never doubted Iridion's strange
narrative, and, having heard it to the end, observed, "You will find plenty
more lilies in Elysium."
"Common lilies, Pan; not like mine."
"You are wrong. The lilies of Elysium--asphodels as they call them
there--are as immortal as the Elysians themselves. I have seen them in
Proserpine's hair at Jupiter's entertainment; they were as fresh as she
was. There is no doubt you might gather them by handfuls--at least if you
had any hands--and wear them to your heart's content, if you had but a
heart."
"That's just what perplexes me, Pan. It is not the dying I mind, it's the
living. How am I to live without anything alive about me? If you take away
my hands, and my heart, and my brains, and my eyes, and my ears, and above
all my tongue, what is left me to live in Elysium?"
As the maiden spake a petal detached itself from the emaciated lily, and
she pressed her hand to her brow with a responsive cry of pain.
"Poor child!" said Pan compassionately, "you will feel no more pain
by-and-by."
"I suppose not, Pan, since you say so. But if I can feel no pain, how can I
feel any pleasure?
"In an incomprehensible manner," said Pan.
"How can I feel, if I have no feeling? and what am I to do without it?"
"You can think!" replied Pan. "Thinking (not that I am greatly given to it
myself) is a much finer thing than feeling; no right-minded person doubts
that. Feeling, as I have heard Minerva say, is a property of matter, and
matter, except, of course, that appertaining to myself and the other happy
gods, is vile and perishable--quite immaterial, in fact. Thought alone is
transcendent, incorruptible, and undying!"