Book I
. Sec. 196.]
Nitetis had understood his words. Inexpressible joy filled her heart, and before Croesus could answer the King she said in a low tone, in broken Persian, "How shall I thank the gods, who let me find favor in your eyes? I am not ignorant of the language of my lord, for this noble old man has instructed me in the Persian language during our long journey. Pardon me if I can answer in broken words only. My time for instruction was short, and my understanding is only that of a poor ignorant maiden."
The usually stern King smiled. His vanity was flattered by Nitetis's eagerness to gain his approbation, and this diligence in a woman seemed as strange as it was praiseworthy to the Persian, who was used to see women grow up in ignorance and idleness, thinking of nothing but dress and intrigue.
He therefore answered with evident satisfaction, "I am glad that I can speak to you without an interpreter. Continue to try to learn the beautiful language of my fathers. My companion Croesus shall remain your teacher in the future."
"Your command fills me with joy," said the old man, "for I could not desire a more grateful or more eager pupil than the daughter of Amasis."
"She confirms the ancient fame of Egyptian wisdom," returned the King; "and I think that she will soon understand and accept with all her soul the teachings of the magi, who will instruct her in our religion."
Nitetis looked down. The dreaded moment was approaching. She was henceforth to serve strange gods in place of the Egyptian deities.
Cambyses did not observe her emotion, and continued:--"My mother Cassandane shall initiate you in your duties as my wife. I will conduct you to her myself to-morrow. I repeat what you accidentally overheard: you please me. Look to it that you keep my favor. We will try to make you like our country; and because I am your friend I advise you to treat Boges, whom I sent to meet you, graciously, for you will have to obey him in many things, as he is the superintendent of the harem."
"He may be the head of the women's house," returned Nitetis. "But it seems to me that no mortal but you has a right to command your wife. Give but a sign and I will obey, but consider that I am a princess, and come from a land where weak woman shares the rights of strong men; that the same pride fills my breast which shines in your eyes, my beloved! I will gladly obey you the great man, my husband and ruler; but it is as impossible for me to sue for the favor of the unmanliest of men, a bought servant, as it is for me to obey his commands."
Cambyses's astonishment and satisfaction increased. He had never heard any woman save his mother speak like this, and the subtle way in which Nitetis unconsciously recognized and exalted his power over her whole existence satisfied his self-complacency. The proud man liked her pride. He nodded approvingly and said, "You are right. I will have a special house prepared for you. I alone will command you. The pleasant house in the hanging gardens shall be prepared for you to-day."
"I thank you a thousand times!" cried Nitetis. "If you but knew how you delight me by your gift! Your brother Bartja told me much of the hanging gardens, and none of the splendors of your great realm pleased us as much as the love of the king who built the green mountain."
"To-morrow you will be able to enter your new dwelling. Tell me how you and the Egyptians liked my envoys?"
"How can you ask! Who could become acquainted with noble Croesus without loving him? Who could help admiring the excellent qualities of the young heroes, your friends? They have become dear to our house, especially your beautiful brother Bartja, who won all hearts. The Egyptians are averse to strangers, but whenever Bartja appeared among them a murmur of admiration arose from the gaping throng."
At these words the King's face grew dark. He gave his horse a heavy blow, so that it reared, turned its head, galloped in front of his retinue, and in a few minutes reached the walls of Babylon....
The walls seemed perfectly impregnable, for they were two hundred cubits high, and their breadth was so great that two carriages could easily pass each other. Two hundred and fifty high towers surmounted and fortified this huge rampart. A greater number of these citadels would have been necessary if Babylon had not been protected on one side by impenetrable marshes. The enormous city lay on both sides of the Euphrates. It was more than nine miles in circumference, and the walls protected buildings which surpassed even the pyramids and the temples of Thebes and Memphis in size....
Nitetis looked with astonishment at this huge gate; with joyful emotion she gazed at the long wide street, which was festively decked in her honor.
JOSE ECHEGARAY
(1832-)
[Illustration: Jose Echegaray]
The period of political disorder and disturbance which followed the revolution of 1868 in Spain was also a period of disorder and decline for the Spanish stage. The drama--throwing off the fetters of French classicism that paralyzed inspiration at the beginning of the century--had revived for a time. But after its rejuvenescence of the glories of the Golden Age of Spanish literature, uniting a new beauty of form with truth to nature in the Classic-Romantic School, it sank into a debasement hitherto unknown. Meretricious sentiment, dullness, or buffoonery, chiefly of foreign production, occupied the scene before adorned by the imagination, the wisdom, and the wit, of a Zorilla, a Tamayo, a Ventura de la Vega.
It was at this period of dramatic decadence that Echegaray appeared to revive once more the romantic traditions of the Spanish stage, peopling it again with noble and heroic figures,--in whom, however, the chivalric spirit of the Middle Ages is at times strangely joined to the casuistic modern conscience. The explanation of this is perhaps to be found in part in the mental constitution of the dramatist, in whom the analytic and the imaginative faculties are united in marked degree, and who had acquired a distinguished reputation as a civil engineer long before he entered the lists as an aspirant for dramatic honors. Born in Madrid in 1832, his earlier years were passed in Murcia, where he took his degree of bachelor of arts, applying himself afterward with notable success to the study of the exact sciences. Returning to Madrid, after enlarging his knowledge of his profession of civil engineer by practical study in various provinces of Spain, he was appointed a professor in the School of Engineers, where he taught theoretical and applied mathematics, finding time however for the production of important scientific works, and for the study of political economy and general literature. On the breaking out of the revolution of 1868 he joined actively in the movement, taking office under the new government as Director of Public Works, and holding a ministerial portfolio. He took office a second time in 1872, and later filled the post of Minister of Finance, which he resigned on the proclamation of the Republic. Retiring from public life, he went to Paris; and while there wrote, being then a little past forty, his first dramatic work, 'The Check-Book,' a domestic drama in one act, which was represented anonymously in Madrid two years later, when the author for the third time held a ministerial portfolio.
'The Check-Book' was followed in rapid succession by a series of productions whose titles, 'La Esposa del Vengador' (The Avenger's Bride), 'La Ultima Noche' (The Last Night), 'En el Puno de la Espada' (In the Hilt of the Sword), 'Como Empieza y Como Acaba' (How it Begins and How it Ends), sufficiently indicate their character. They are of unequal merit, but all show dramatic power of a high order. But on the representation in 1877 of 'Locura o Santidad?' (Madman or Saint?), the fame of the statesman and the scientist was completely and finally eclipsed by that of the dramatist, in whom the press and public of Madrid unanimously recognized a new and vital force in the Spanish drama. In this tragedy the keynote of Echegaray's philosophy is clearly struck. Moral perfection, unfaltering obedience to the right, is the end and aim of man; and the catastrophe is brought about by the inability of the hero to make those nearest to him accept this ideal of life. "Then virtue is but a lie," he cries, when the conviction of his moral isolation is forced upon him; "and you, all of you whom I have most loved in this world, perceiving what I regarded as divinity in you, are only miserable egoists, incapable of sacrifice, a prey to greed and the mere playthings of passion! Then you are all of you but clay; you resolve yourselves to dust and let the wind of the tempest carry you off! ... Beings shaped without conscience or free-will are simply atoms that meet to-day and separate to-morrow. Such is matter--then let it go!"
But the punishment of sin, in Echegaray's moral code, is visited upon the innocent equally with the guilty; and the guilty are never allowed to escape the retributive consequences of their wrong-doing. The pessimistic coloring of the picture would be at times unendurably oppressive, were it not relieved and lightened by the moral dignity of the hero. Echegaray's pessimism is, so to say, altruistic, never egoistic; and the compensating sense of righteousness vindicated rarely fails to explain, if not to justify, his darkest scenes.
Judged by the canons of art, Echegaray's dramatic productions will be found to have many imperfections. But their defects are the defects of genius, not of mediocrity, and spring generally from an excess of imagination, not from poverty of invention or faulty insight. The plot is often overweighted with an accumulation of incidents, and the means employed to bring about the desired end are often lacking in verisimilitude. Synthetic rather than analytic in his methods, and a master in producing contrasts, Echegaray captivates the imagination by arts which the cooler judgment not seldom condemns. His characters too are not always inhabitants of the real world, and not infrequently act contrary to the laws which govern it. The secondary characters are too often carelessly drawn, sometimes being mere shadowy outlines, while an altogether disproportionate part of the development of the plot is intrusted to them.
On the other hand, in the world of the passions Echegaray treads with secure step. Its labyrinthine windings, its depths and its heights, are all familiar to him. Here every accent uttered is the accent of truth; every act is prompted by unerring instinct. Nothing is false; nothing is trivial; nothing is strained. The elemental forces of nature seem to be at work, and the catastrophe results as inevitably from their action as if decreed by fate.
The genius of Echegaray, which in its irregular grandeur and its ethical tendency has been not inaptly likened by a Spanish critic to that of Victor Hugo, rarely descends from the tragic heights on which it achieved its first and its greatest triumphs; but that its range has been limited by choice, not nature, is abundantly proved in the best of his lighter productions, 'Un Critico Incipiente' (An Embryo Critic). Of his achievement in tragedy the culminating point was reached--after a second series of noteworthy productions, among them 'Lo Que no Puede Decirse' (What Cannot be Told), 'Mar Sin Orillas' (A Shoreless Sea), and 'En el Seno de la Muerte' (In the Bosom of Death)--in 'El Gran Galeoto' (The Great Galeoto), represented in 1881 before an audience which hailed its author as a "prodigy of genius," a second Shakespeare. Other notable works followed,--'Conflicto entre Dos Deberes' (Conflict between Two Duties), 'Vida Alegre y Muerte Triste' (A Merry Life and a Sad Death), 'Lo Sublime en lo Vulgar' (The Sublime in the Commonplace); but 'El Gran Galeoto' has remained thus far its author's supreme dramatic achievement. In its title is personified the evil speaking which not always with evil intent, sometimes even with the best motives, slays, with a venom surer than that of the adder's tongue, the reputation which it attacks; turning innocence itself by its contaminating power into guilt.
FROM 'MADMAN OR SAINT?'
[Don Lorenzo, a man of wealth and position living in Madrid, has discovered that he is the son, not as he and all the world had supposed, of the lady whose wealth and name he has inherited, but of his nurse Juana, who dies after she has revealed to him the secret of his birth. In consequence he resolves publicly to renounce his name and his possessions, although by doing so he will prevent the marriage of his daughter Inez to Edward, the son of the Duchess of Almonte. The mother will consent to Don Lorenzo's renunciation of his possessions but not of his name, as this would throw a stigma on Inez's origin. He refuses to listen either to the reasoning or to the entreaties of his wife, the duchess, Edward, and Dr. Tomas. Finally they are persuaded that he is mad, and Dr. Tomas calls in a specialist to examine him. The specialist, with two keepers, arrives at the house at the same time with the notary, whom Don Lorenzo has sent for to make before him a formal act of renunciation of his name and possessions.]
Don Lorenzo _enters and stands listening to_ Inez
Don Lorenzo [_aside_]--"Die," she said!
_Edward_--You to die! No, Inez, not that; do not say that.
_Inez_--And why not? If I do not die of grief--if happiness could ever visit me again--I should die of remorse.
_Lorenzo_ [_aside_]--"Of remorse!" She! "If happiness could ever visit her again!" What new fatality floats in the air and hangs threateningly above my head? Remorse! I have surprised another word in passing! I traverse rooms and halls, and I go from one place to another, urged by intolerable anguish, and I hear words that I do not understand, and I meet glances that I do not understand, and tears greet me here and smiles there, and no one opposes me, and every one avoids me or watches me. [_Aloud._] What is this? What is this?
_Inez_ [_hurrying to him and throwing herself into his arms_]--Father!
_Lorenzo_--Inez! How pale you are! Why are your lips drawn as if with pain? Why do you feign smiles that end in sighs!--How lovely in her sorrow! And I am to blame for all!
_Inez_--No, father.
_Lorenzo_--How cruel I am! Ah! you think it, although you do not say it.
_Edward_--Inez is an angel. Rebellious thoughts can find no place in her heart; but who that sees her can fail to think it and to say it?
_Lorenzo_--No one; you are right.
_Edward_ [_with energy_]--If I am right, then you are wrong.
_Lorenzo_--I am right also. There is something more pallid than the pallid brow of a lovesick maiden; there is something sadder than the sad tears that fall from her beautiful eyes; something more bitter than the smile that contracts her lips; something more tragic than the death of her beloved.
_Edward_ [_with scornful vehemence_]--And what is that pallor, what are those tears, and what the tragedies you speak of?
_Lorenzo_--Insensate! [_Seizing him by the arm._] The pallor of crime, the tears of remorse, the consciousness of our own vileness.
_Edward_--And it would be vile, and criminal, and a source of remorse, to make Inez happy?
_Lorenzo_ [_despairingly_]--It ought not to be so--but it would! [_Pause._] And this it is that tortures me. This is the thought that is driving me mad!
_Inez_--No, father, do not say that! Follow the path you have marked out for yourself, without thought of me. What does it matter whether I live or die?
_Lorenzo_--Inez!
_Inez_--But do not vacillate--and above all, let no one see that you vacillate; let your speech be clear and convincing as it is now; let not anger blind you. Be calm, be calm, father; I implore it of you in the name of God.
_Lorenzo_--What do you mean by those words? I do not understand you.
_Inez_--Do I rightly know myself what I mean? There--I am going. I do not wish to pain you.
_Edward_ [_to Lorenzo_]--Ah, if you would but listen to your heart; if you would but silence the cavilings of your conscience.
_Inez_ [_to Edward_]--Leave him in peace--come with me; do not anger him, or you will make him hate you.
_Lorenzo_--Poor girl! She too struggles, but she too will conquer! [_With an outburst of pride._] She will show that she is indeed my daughter!
[_Inez and Edward go up the stage; passing the study door, Inez sees the keepers and gives a start of horror._]
_Inez_--What sinister vision affrights my gaze!--No, father, do not enter there.
_Edward_--Come, come, my Inez!
_Inez_ [_to her father_]--No, no, I entreat you!
_Lorenzo_ [_approaching her_]--Inez!
_Inez_--Those men there--look!
[_Inez stretches out her hand toward the study; Don Lorenzo stands and follows her gaze. At this moment the keepers, hearing her cry, show themselves between the curtains._]
_Edward_ [_leading Inez away_]--At last!
* * * * *
_Lorenzo_--Now I am more tranquil! The wound is mortal! I feel it here in my heart! I thank thee, merciful God!
Dr. Tomas _and_ Dr. Bermudez _enter and stop to observe_ Don Lorenzo.
_Dr. Tomas_--There he is--sitting in the arm-chair.
_Dr. Bermudez_--Unfortunate man!
_Lorenzo_ [_rising, aside_]--Ah, miserable being! Still cherishing impossible hopes. Impossible? And what if they honestly believe that I-- [_Despairingly_] Ah! If they loved me they would not believe it. [_Pause._] Did I not hear Inez--the child of my heart--speak of remorse? Why should she speak of remorse? [_Aloud, with increasing agitation._] They are all wretches! They would almost be glad that I should die. But no: I will not die until I have fulfilled my duty as an honorable man; until I have put the climax to my madness.
_Dr. Tomas_ [_laying his hand on Don Lorenzo's shoulder_]--Lorenzo--
_Lorenzo_ [_turning, recognizes him and draws back angrily_]--He!
_Dr. Tomas_--Let me present to you Dr. Bermudez, one of my best friends. [_Pause. Don Lorenzo regards both strangely._]
_Dr. Bermudez_ [_to Dr. Tomas, in a low voice_]--See the effort he makes to control himself; he is vaguely conscious of his condition--there is not a doubt left on my mind.
_Lorenzo_--One of your best friends--one of your best friends--
_Dr. Bermudez_ [_aside to Dr. Tomas_]--The idea is escaping him, and he is striving to retain it.
_Lorenzo_ [_ironically_]--If he is one of your best friends, then your loyalty is a guarantee for his.
_Dr. Bermudez_ [_aside, to Dr. Tomas_]--At last he has found the word. But notice how unnatural is the tone of his voice. [_Aloud._] I have come to be a witness, according to what Dr. Tomas tells me, of a very noble action.
_Lorenzo_--And of an act of base treachery also.
_Dr. Tomas_--Lorenzo!
_Dr. Bermudez_ [_aside, to Dr. Tomas_]--Let him go on talking.
_Lorenzo_--And of an exemplary punishment.
_Dr. Bermudez_ [_aside to Dr. Tomas_]--A serious case, my friend, a serious case.
_Lorenzo_ [_to Dr. Tomas_]--Call everybody: those of the household and strangers alike. Let them assemble here, and here await my orders, while I go to fulfill my duty yonder. What are you waiting for?
_Dr. Bermudez_ [_aside, to Dr. Tomas_]--Let him have his way; call them.
[_Dr. Tomas rings a bell; a servant enters, to whom he speaks in a low voice and who then goes out._]
_Lorenzo_--It is the final trial; I could almost feel pity for the traitors. Ah! I am sustained by the certainty of my triumph. Be still, my heart. There they are--there they are. I do not wish to see them. To treat me thus who loved them so dearly!--I do not wish, and yet my eyes turn toward them--seeking them--seeking them!
* * * * *
_Lorenzo_--Inez! It cannot be! She! no, no. It cannot be! My child!
[_Hurries towards her with outstretched arms. Inez runs to him._]
_Inez_--Father!
[_Dr. Bermudez hastens to interpose, and separates them forcibly._]
_Dr. Bermudez_--Come, come, Don Lorenzo; you might hurt your daughter seriously.
_Lorenzo_ [_seizing him by the arm and shaking him violently_]--Wretch! Who are you to part me from my child?
_Dr. Tomas_--Lorenzo!
_Edward_--Don Lorenzo!
_Angela_--My God!
[_The women group themselves instinctively together, Inez in her mother's arms, the duchess beside them. Dr. Tomas and Edward hasten to free Bermudez from Don Lorenzo's grasp_.]
_Lorenzo_ [_aside, controlling himself_]--So! The imbeciles think it is another access of madness! Ha, ha, ha! [_Laughing with suppressed laughter. All watch him._]
_Dr. Bermudez_ [_aside to Dr. Tomas_]--It is quite clear.
_Angela_ [_aside_]--Oh, my poor Lorenzo!
_Inez_ [_aside_]--My poor father!
_Lorenzo_ [_aside_]--Now you shall see how my madness will end. Before I leave this house, with what pleasure will I turn that doctor out of it. Courage! The coming struggle inspires me with new strength. What! Is a man to be declared mad because he is resolved to do his duty? Ah, it cannot be! Humanity is neither so blind nor so base as that. Enough! I must be calm. Treachery has begun its work; then let the punishment begin too. [_Aloud._] The hour has come for me to perform a sacred duty, though a most painful one. It would be useless to ask you to witness formalities which the law requires, but which you would only find irksome. The representative of the law awaits me in yonder room; and in obedience to another and a higher law, I am going now to renounce a fortune which is not mine, and a name which neither I nor my family can conscientiously bear longer. After this is done I will return here, and with my wife, and--and my daughter--and let no one seek to dissuade me from my purpose, for it would be in vain--I will leave this house which has been for me in the past the abode of love and happiness, but which is to-day the abode of treachery and baseness. Gentlemen [_to Dr. Tomas and Dr. Bermudez_], lead the way; I beg you to do so.
[_All slowly enter the study. On the threshold Lorenzo casts a last look at Inez._]
Translation made for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Mary J. Serrano
FROM 'THE GREAT GALEOTO'
[In the scenes which are here cited the poison of slander begins to work. Don Severo, uttering the anonymous gossip of the world, has implanted in the mind of his middle-aged brother Don Julian the first suspicion of the honor of his young wife Teodora and the loyalty of his adopted son Ernest. Teodora, who has been warned by Mercedes, Don Severo's wife, overhears the accusing words of her brother-in-law, who is talking with her husband in an inner apartment; and horror-struck, is about to fly from the room.]
_Julian_ [_inside_]--Let me go!
_Mercedes_ [_inside_]--No, for Heaven's sake!
_Julian_--It is they. I will go!
_Teodora_ [_to Ernest_]--Go! go!
_Severo_ [_to Ernest_]--You shall give me satisfaction for this!
_Ernest_--I will not refuse it.
_Enter_ Julian, _pale and disordered; wounded and seemingly in a dying condition, supported by_ Mercedes. Don Severo _stations himself at the right_, Teodora _and_ Ernest _remain in the background_.
_Julian_--Together! Where are they going?--Stop them! They shun my presence! Traitors!
[_He makes a movement as if to rush toward them, but his strength fails him and he totters_.]
_Severo_ [_hurrying to his assistance_]--No, no.
_Julian_--They deceived me--they lied to me! Wretches! [_While he is speaking, Mercedes and Severo lead him to the arm-chair on the right._] There--look at them--she and Ernest! Why are they together?
_Teodora and Ernest_ [_separating_]--No!
_Julian_--Why do they not come to me? Teodora!
_Teodora_ [_stretching out her arms, but without advancing_]--My Julian!
_Julian_--Here, on my heart! [_Teodora runs to Julian and throws herself into his arms. He presses her convulsively to his breast. Pause._] You see!--You see! [_To his brother._] I know that she deceives me! I press her in my arms--I might kill her if I would--and she would deserve it--but I look at her--_I look at her_--and I cannot!
_Teodora_--Julian!
_Julian_--And he? [_Pointing to Ernest._]
_Ernest_--Sir!--
_Julian_--And I loved him! Be silent and come hither. [_Ernest advances._] You see she is still mine. [_Presses her closer._]
_Teodora_--Yours--yours!
_Julian_--Do not act a part! Do not lie to me!
_Mercedes_--For God's sake! [_Trying to calm him._]
_Severo_--Julian!
_Julian_ [_to both_]--Peace. Be silent. [_To Teodora._] I divined your secret. I know that you love him. [_Teodora and Ernest try to protest, but he will not let them._] Madrid knows it too--all Madrid!
_Ernest_--No, father.
_Teodora_--No.
_Julian_--They would still deny it! When it is patent to all! When I feel it in every fibre of my being, for the fever that consumes me has illuminated my mind with its flame!
_Ernest_--All these fancied wrongs are the offspring of a fevered imagination, of delirium! Hear me, sir--
_Julian_--You will lie to me again!
_Ernest_--She is innocent! [_Pointing to Teodora._]
_Julian_--I do not believe you.
_Ernest_--By my father's memory I swear it!
_Julian_--You profane his name and his memory by the oath.
_Ernest_--By my mother's last kiss--
_Julian_--It is no longer on your brow.
_Ernest_--By all you hold most sacred, father, I swear it, I swear it!
_Julian_--Let there be no oaths, no deceitful words, no protests.
_Ernest_--Well, then, what do you wish?
_Teodora_--What do you wish?
_Julian_--Deeds!
_Ernest_--What does he desire, Teodora? What would he have us do?
_Teodora_--I do not know. What can we do, what can we do, Ernest?
_Julian_ [_watching them with instinctive distrust_]--Ah, would you deceive me to my very face? You are laying your plans together, wretches! Do I not see it?
_Ernest_--These are the imaginings of fever.
_Julian_--Fever, yes! The fire of fever has consumed the bandage with which you both blindfolded me, and at last I see clearly! And now why do you gaze on each other? why, traitors? Why do your eyes shine, Ernest? Speak. Their brightness is not the brightness of tears. Come nearer--nearer still.
[_Draws Ernest to him, bends his head, and so forces him to his knees. Don Julian thus remains between Teodora, who stands at his side, and Ernest, who kneels at his feet. Don Julian passes his hand over Ernest's eyes._]
_Julian_--I was right--It is not with tears! They are dry!
_Ernest_--Pardon!--Pardon!
_Julian_--You ask my pardon? Then you confess your guilt.
_Ernest_--No!
_Julian_--Yes!
_Ernest_--It is not that!
_Julian_--Then look into each other's eyes before me.
_Severo_--Julian!
_Mercedes_--Sir!
_Julian_ [_to Teodora and Ernest_]--You are afraid, then? You do not love each other like brother and sister, then? If you do, prove it! Let your souls rise to your eyes and in my presence mingle their reflection there, that so I may see, watching them closely, if that brightness is the brightness of light or of fire. You too, Teodora--I will have it so. Come--both; nearer still!
[_Forces Teodora to kneel before him, draws their faces together, and compels them to look at each other._]
_Teodora_ [_freeing herself by a violent effort_]--Oh no!
_Ernest_ [_also tries to release himself, but Julian holds him in his grasp_]--I cannot!
_Julian_--You love each other! You love each other! I see it clearly! [_To Ernest._] Your life!
_Ernest_--Yes.
_Julian_--Your blood!
_Ernest_--All!
_Julian_ [_keeping him on his knees_]--Remain there.
_Teodora_--Julian! [_Restraining him._]
_Julian_--Ah, you defend him, you defend him.
_Teodora_--Not for his sake.
_Severo_--In Heaven's name--
_Julian_ [_to Severo_]--Silence! Bad friend! bad son! [_Holding him at his feet._]
_Ernest_--Father!
_Julian_--Disloyal! Treacherous!
_Ernest_--No, father.
_Julian_--Thus do I brand you as a traitor on the cheek--now with my hand, soon with my sword! [_With a supreme effort he raises himself and strikes Ernest on the face._]
_Ernest_ [_rises to his feet with a terrible cry and retreats, covering his face with his hands_]--Ah!
_Severo_--Justice! [_Stretching out his hand toward Ernest._]
_Teodora_--My God! [_Hides her face with her hands and falls into a chair._]
_Mercedes_ [_to Ernest, exculpating Julian_]--It was delirium!
[_These four exclamations in rapid succession. A moment of stupor; Julian still standing and regarding Ernest, Mercedes and Severo trying to calm him._]
_Julian_--It was not delirium, it was chastisement, by Heaven! What! Did you think your treachery would go unpunished, ingrate!
_Mercedes_--Let us go, let us go!
_Severo_--Come, Julian.
_Julian_--Yes, I am going.
[_Walks with difficulty toward his room, supported by Severo and Mercedes, stopping from time to time to look back at Ernest and Teodora._]
_Mercedes_--Quick, Severo!
_Julian_--Look at them, the traitors! It was justice! Was it not justice? So I believe.
_Severo_--For God's sake, Julian! For my sake!
_Julian_--You, you alone, of all the world, have loved me truly. [_Embraces him_.]
_Severo_--Yes, I alone!
_Julian_ [_stops near the door and looks at them again_]--She weeps for him--and does not follow me. She does not even look at me; she does not see that I am dying--yes, dying!
_Severo_--Julian!
_Julian_--Wait, wait! [_Pauses on the threshold._] Dishonor for dishonor!--Farewell, Ernest! [_Exeunt Julian, Severo, and Mercedes._]
Translation made for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Mary J. Serrano
THE EDDAS
(ICELANDIC; NINTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES)
BY WILLIAM H. CARPENTER
The fanciful but still commonly believed meaning of the word "Edda," which even many of the dictionaries explain as "great-grandmother," does not, after all, inaptly describe by suggestion the general character of the work to which it is given. The picture of an ancient dame at the fireside, telling tales and legendary lore of times whose memory has all but disappeared, is a by no means inappropriate personification, even if it has no other foundation. In point of fact, 'Edda' as the title of a literary work has nothing whatsoever to do with a great-grandmother, but means "the art of poetry," "poetics"; and only by an extension of its original use does it belong to all that is now included under it.
There are in reality two 'Eddas,' which are in a certain sense connected in subject-material, but yet in more ways than one are wholly distinct. As originally applied, the name now used collectively unquestionably belonged to the one, variously called, to distinguish it from the other, the 'Younger Edda,' on account of the relative age of its origin; the 'Prose Edda,' since in its greater part it is written in prose; and the 'Snorra Edda,' the Edda of Snorri, from the author of the work in its original form. In contradistinction to this, the other is called the 'Elder Edda,' the 'Poetical Edda,' and from the name of its once assumed author, the 'Saemundar Edda,' the Edda of Saemund.
Legitimately and by priority of usage, the name 'Edda' belongs to the first-named work alone. In the form in which it has ultimately come down to us, this is the compilation of many hands at widely different times; but in its most important and fundamental parts it was undoubtedly either written by the Icelander Snorri himself, or under his immediate supervision.
Snorri Sturluson, its author, both from the part he played in national politics in his day and from his literary legacy to the present, is altogether the most remarkable man in the history of Iceland. He was born in 1179, his father, Sturla Thordarson, being one of the most powerful chieftains of the island. As was the custom of the time, he was sent from home to be fostered, remaining away until his foster-father's death, or until he was nineteen years old; his own father in the meantime having died as well. He entered upon active life with but little more than his own ambition to further him; but through his brother's influence he made the following year a brilliant marriage, and thus laid the foundation of his power, which thereafter steadily grew. In 1215 Snorri was elected "Speaker of the Law" for the Commonwealth. At the expiration of his term of service in the summer of 1218 he went to Norway, where he was received with extraordinary hospitality both by King Hakon, who made him his liegeman, and by the King's father-in-law, Earl Skuli. On the authority of some of the sagas, he is said to have promised the latter at this time to use his influence to bring Iceland under the dominion of Norway. Two years later he returned to Iceland, taking back with him as a present from the King a ship and many other valuable gifts. In 1222 he was again made "Speaker of the Law," which post he now held continuously for nine years.
Iceland, as the Commonwealth neared its end, was torn apart by the jealous feuds of the chieftains. A long series of complications had aroused a bitter hostility to Snorri among his own relatives. In 1229, he found it necessary to ride to the Althing at the head of eight hundred men. The matter did not then come to an open rupture, but in 1239 it finally resulted in a regular battle, in which Snorri's faction was worsted. To avoid consequences he immediately after fled to Norway. Unwisely, he here gave his adherence to Earl Skuli, now at odds with the King, and thereby incurred the active displeasure of the latter; who, evidently fearing the use of Snorri's power against him, forbade him by letter to return to Iceland. The command was disregarded, however, and he presently was back again in his native land. In 1240 Skuli was slain, and shortly afterward King Hakon seems to have resolved upon Snorri's death. Using Arni, a son-in-law of the Icelander, as a willing messenger, he sent a letter to Gissur, another son-in-law, between whom and his father-in-law an active feud was on foot, demanding that he send the latter a prisoner to Norway, or if that were impossible, to kill him. Gissur accordingly, with seventy men at his back, came to Snorri's farmstead Reykjaholt on the night of the 22d of September, 1241, when the old chieftain was mercilessly slain in the cellar, where he had taken refuge, by an unknown member of the band.
In spite of his political life, Snorri found opportunity for abundant literary work. The 'Icelandic Annals' say that he "compiled the 'Edda' and many other books of historical learning, and Icelandic sagas." Of these, however, only two have come down to us: his 'Edda' and the sagas of the Norse kings, known since the seventeenth century as the 'Heimskringla,' the best piece of independent prose literature, and in its bearing the most important series of sagas, of all the number that are left to attest the phenomenal literary activity of the Icelanders.
Snorri's 'Edda'--both as he, the foremost poet of his day, originally conceived it, and with its subsequent additions--is a handbook for poets, an _Ars poetica_, as its name itself signifies. That it served its purpose as a recognized authority is discoverable from the references to it in later Icelandic poets, where "rules of Edda," "laws of Edda," "Eddic art," and "Edda" are of frequent occurrence, as indicating an ideal of poetical expression striven for by some and deprecated by others. As Snorri wrote it, the 'Edda' was an admirably arranged work in three parts: the 'Gylfaginning,' a compendium of the old mythology, the knowledge of which in Snorri's day was fast dying out; the 'Skaldskaparmal,' a dictionary of poetical expressions, many of which, contained in ancient poems, were no longer intelligible; and the 'Hattatal,' a poem or rather series of poems, exemplifying in its own construction the use and kinds of metre. As it has come down to us, it has been greatly added to and altered. A long preface filled with the learning of the Middle Ages now introduces the whole; the introductions and conclusions of the parts of the work have been extended; several old poems have been included; a Skaldatal, or list of skalds, has been added, as have also several grammatical and rhetorical tracts,--some of which are of real historical value.
With regard to matter and manner, the parts of Snorri's 'Edda' are as follows:--The 'Gylfaginning' (the Delusion of Gylfi) is a series of tales told in answer to the questions of Gylfi, a legendary Swedish king, who comes in disguise to the gods in Asgard to learn the secret of their power. By way of illustration it quotes, among other poetical citations, verses from several of the lays of the 'Elder Edda.' The 'Skaldskaparmal' (Poetical Diction) is also in great part in the form of questions and answers. It contains under separate heads the periphrases, appellatives, and synonyms used in ancient verse, which are often explained by long tales; and like the preceding part, it also is illustrated by numerous poetical quotations here, particularly from the skalds. The 'Hattatal' (Metres), finally, consists of three poems: the first an encomium on the Norwegian king Hakon, and the others on Earl Skuli. It exemplifies in not fewer than one hundred and two strophes the use of as many kinds of metre, many of them being accompanied by a prose commentary of greater or less length.
That Snorri really wrote the work as here described seems to be undoubted, although there is no trace of it as a whole until after his death. At what period of his career it arose, can however merely be conjectured. We only know with certainty the date of the 'Hattatal'; that may not unlikely have been the nucleus of the whole, which falls undoubtedly between 1221 and 1223, shortly after the return from the first visit to Norway. The oldest manuscript of the 'Snorra Edda,'--now in the University Library at Upsala, Sweden,--which was written before 1300, assigns the work to him by name; and the 'Icelandic Annals,' as has already been stated, under the year of his death corroborate the statement of his authorship of "the Edda"--that is, of course, of this particular 'Edda,' for there can be no thought of the other.
Snorri's poetical work outside of the 'Edda' is represented only by fugitive verses. An encomium that he wrote on the wife of Earl Hakon has been lost. As a poet, Snorri undoubtedly stands upon a lower plane than that which he occupies as a historian. He wrote at a time when poetry was in its decline in Iceland; and neither in the 'Hattatal' nor in his other verse, except in form and phraseology, of which he had a wonderful control, does he rise to the level of a host of earlier skalds. It is his critical knowledge of the old poetry of Norway and Iceland that makes his 'Edda' of such unique value, and
## particularly as no small part of the material accessible to him has
since been irrevocably lost. Snorri's 'Edda,' in its very conception, is a wonderful book to have arisen at the time in which it was written, and in no other part of the Germanic North in the thirteenth century had such a thing been possible. It is not only, however, as a commentary on old Norse poetry that it is remarkable. Its importance as a compendium of the ancient Northern mythology is as great,--one whose loss nothing could supplant. As a whole, it is of incalculable value to the entire Germanic race for the light that it sheds upon its early intellectual life, its ethics, and its religion.
The history of the 'Elder Edda' does not go back of the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1643 the Icelandic bishop Brynjolf Sveinsson sent as a present to Frederick III. of Denmark several old Icelandic vellums, among which was the manuscript, dating, according to the most general assignment, from not earlier than 1350; since called the 'Codex Regius' of the 'Edda.' Not a word is known about its previous history. As to when it came into the hands of the bishop, or where it was discovered, he has given us no clew whatsoever. He had nevertheless not only a name ready for it, but a distinct theory of its authorship, for he wrote on the back of a copy that he had made, "Edda Saemundi Multiscii" (the Edda of Saemund the Wise).
Both Bishop Brynjolf's title for the work and his assumption as to the name of its author--for both are apparently his--are open to criticism. The name 'Edda' belongs, as we have seen, to Snorri's book; to which it was given, if not by himself, certainly by one of his immediate followers. It is not difficult, however, to explain its new application. Snorri's 'Edda' cites, as has been mentioned, a number of single strophes of ancient poems, many of which were now found to be contained in Brynjolf's collection in a more or less complete form. This latter was, accordingly, not unnaturally looked upon as the source of the material of Snorri's work; and since its subject-matter too was the old poetry, it was consequently an earlier 'Edda.' Subsequently the title was extended to include a number of poems in the same manner found elsewhere; and 'Edda' has since been irretrievably the title both of the old Norse lays and of the old Norse _Ars poetica_, to which it more appropriately belongs.
The attribution of the work to Saemund was even less justifiable. Saemund Sigfusson was an Icelandic priest, who lived from 1056 to 1133. As a young man he studied in Germany, France, and Italy, but came back to Iceland about 1076. Afterward he settled down as priest and chieftain, as was his father before him, on the paternal estate Oddi in the south of Iceland, where he lived until his death. Among his contemporaries and subsequently he was celebrated for his great learning, the memory of which has even come down to the present day in popular legend, where like learned men elsewhere he is made an adept in the black art, and many widely spread tales of supernatural power have clustered locally about his name. Saemund is the first writer among the Icelanders of whom we have any information; and besides poems, he is reputed to have written some of the best of the sagas and other historical works. It is not unlikely that he did write parts of the history of Iceland and Norway in Latin, but nothing has come down to us that is with certainty to be attributed to him. There is however no ancient reference whatsoever to Saemund as a poet, and it is but a legend that connects him in any way with the Eddie lays. Internal criticism readily yields the fact that they are not only of widely different date of origin, but are so unlike in manner and in matter that it is idle to suppose a single authorship at all. Nor is it possible that Saemund, as Bishop Brynjolf may have supposed was the case, even collected the lays contained in this 'Edda.' It is on the contrary to be assumed that the collection, of which Brynjolf's manuscript is but a copy, arose during the latter half of the twelfth century, in the golden age of Icelandic literature; a time when attention was most actively directed to the past, when many of the sagas current hitherto only as oral tradition were given a permanent form, and historical works of all sorts were written and compiled.
The fact of the matter is, that here is a collection of old Norse poems, the memory of whose real time and place of origin has disappeared, and whose authorship is unknown. Earlier commentators supposed them to be of extreme age, and carried them back to the very childhood of the race. Modern criticism has dispelled the illusions of any such antiquity. It has been proved, furthermore, that the oldest of the poems does not go back of the year 850, and that the youngest may have been written as late as 1200. As to their place of origin, although all have come to us from Iceland, by far the greater number of them apparently originated in Norway; several arose in the Norse colonies in Greenland; and although the whole collection was made in Iceland, where alone many of them had been remembered, but two are undoubtedly of distinct Icelandic parentage. With regard to their authorship, results are less direct. Folk-songs they are not in the proper sense of the word, in that in their present shape they are the work of individual poets, who made over in versified form material already existing in oral tradition. Only a small part of the ancient poetry that arose in this way has been preserved. From prose interpolations which supply breaks in the continuity of the lays in the 'Elder Edda' itself, as well as from isolated strophes of old poems, else unknown, quoted in Snorri's 'Edda,' and from the citation and use of such poetical material in sagas and histories,--we know for a certainty that many other lays in the ancient manner once existed that have now been for all time lost.
Brynjolf's manuscript contains, whole or in part, as they are now considered to exist, thirty-two poems. From other sources six poems have since been added, presumably as ancient as the lays of the 'Codex Regius,' so that the 'Elder Edda' is made up of thirty-eight poems, not all of which, however, are even reasonably complete. In form they are in alliterative verse, but three different metres being represented, all the simplest and least artificial of the many kinds used by the Norsemen. In content the lays fall under three heads: they are mythic, in that they contain the myths of the old heathen religion of the Norsemen; ethic, in that they embody their views of life and rules of living; or they are heroic, in that they recount the deeds of legendary heroes of the race.
The mythic poems of the 'Edda,' taken together, give us a tolerably complete picture of the Northern mythology in the Viking Age; although some of them were not written until after the introduction of Christianity, and are therefore open to the imputation of having been to a greater or less extent affected by its teachings. The oldest poems of the collection are mythical in character. In some of them a
## particular god is the principal figure. Several of them, like the
'Vafthrudnismal,' the 'Grimnismal,' 'Baldrs Draumar,' and the 'Harbardsljod,' in this way are particularly devoted to Odin, whose supremacy they show over all other beings, and whose part they describe in the government of the universe; in others, like the 'Hymiskvida,' the 'Thrymskvida,' and the 'Alvismal,' Thor occupies the prominent part in his strife with the giants; single ones have other gods as their principal actors, like Skirnir, the messenger of Frey, in the 'Skirnismal,' Loki, the god of destruction, in the 'Lokasenna,' or Heimdall, the guardian of the rainbow bridge which stretched from heaven to earth, in the 'Rigsthula.' A few of them are both mythic and heroic at the same time, like the 'Lay of Voelund,' which tells of the fearful revenge of the mythical smith upon the Swedish king; or the 'Song of Grotti,' the magical mill, which ground what was wished, first peace and gold for its owner, King Frodi of Denmark, but later so much salt on the ship of Mysing, who had conquered the king and taken it away, that all together sunk into the sea, which henceforth was salt. By far the greater of the mythic lays is the long but fragmentary poem 'Voeluspa,' the 'Prophecy of the Sibyl,' which is entitled to stand not only at the head of the Eddic songs but of all old Germanic poetry, for the beauty and dignity of its style, its admirable choice of language, and the whole inherent worth of its material. Its purpose is to give a complete picture, although only in its most essential features, of the whole heathen religion. It contains in this way the entire history of the universe: the creation of the world out of chaos; the origin of the giants, the dwarfs, of gods, and of men; and ends with their destruction and ultimate renewal. The Sibyl is represented at the beginning in an assemblage of the whole human race, whom she bids be silent in order that she may be heard. Many of the strophes, even in translation, retain much of their inherent dignity and poetic picturesqueness:--
"There was in times of old where Ymir dwelt, nor land nor sea, nor gelid waves; earth existed not, nor heaven above; there was a chaotic chasm, and verdure nowhere.
"Before Bur's sons raised up heaven's vault, they who the noble mid-earth shaped, the sun shone from the south on the structure's rocks; then was the earth begrown with green herbage.
"The sun from the south, the moon's companion, her right hand cast round the heavenly horses: the sun knew not where she had a dwelling: the moon knew not what power he possessed; the stars knew not where they had station."
The gods thereupon gave the heavenly bodies names, and ordained the times and seasons. This was the golden age of the young world, before guilt and sin had come into it; a time of joy and beneficent activity. A deed of violence proclaimed its approaching end, and out of the slain giants' blood and bones the dwarfs were created. The gods then made the first man and woman, for whom the Norns established laws and allotted life and destiny. The use of gold was introduced, and with it its attendant evils; the Valkyries come, and the first warfare occurs in the world; the gods' stronghold is broken, and Odin hurls his spear among the people. In rapid succession follow the pictures of the awful ills that happen to gods and men, which finally end in Ragnaroek, the twilight of the gods, and the conflagration of the universe. This however is not the end. The Sibyl describes the reappearance of the green earth from the ocean. The gods again come back, and a new golden age begins of peace and happiness which shall endure forever.
Scarcely inferior to the 'Voeluspa' for the importance of its material is the ethical poem or rather collection of poems called the 'Havamal,' the 'Speech of the High One,'--that is, of Odin the supreme god. The poem consists of sententious precepts and epigrammatic sayings, which ultimately have been set together to form a connected, though scarcely systematic, philosophy of life. The whole is naturally attributed to Odin, the source of all wisdom, the father and giver of all things. A part of the poem is the oldest of all the Eddic lays, and the whole of it was at hand early in the tenth century. Although many of its maxims show a primitive state of society, as a whole they are the experience of a people more advanced in culture than we are apt to fancy the Norsemen of the Viking Age, who could nevertheless philosophize at home as sturdily as they fought abroad. The morality of the 'Havamal' is not always our morality, but many of its maxims are eternally true. Its keynote, again and again repeated, is the perishability of all earthly possessions, and the endurance alone of fairly won fame:--
"Cattle die, kindred die, we ourselves also die; but the fair fame never dies of him who has earned it."
The heroic poems of the 'Elder Edda' recount as if belonging to a single legendary cycle what originally belonged to two; the one of Northern origin, the other the common property of the whole Germanic race. They are the Helgi poems on the one hand, and the Voelsung poems on the other. Together they tell the "Story of the North," and come nearest to forming its greatest epic; it is the same story which Wagner has set to music as immortal in his 'Ring of the Nibelung,'--although the principal source of his material is the prose 'Voelsunga Saga' and not the 'Edda,'--and which in a form much later than the Icelandic versions is also told in the German 'Nibelungenlied.'
The Helgi poems are only loosely connected with the story of Sigurd the Voelsung, and originally, but without doubt long before they were committed to writing, had no connection with it at all. As they now stand at the head of the heroic lays they are made to tell the deeds of early members of the Voelsung race; namely, of Helgi Hjoervard's son, and Helgi Hundingsbane, who is said to have been named after him. The latter the 'Edda' makes the son of Sigmund the Voelsung, and consequently an elder brother of Sigurd, the hero of the subsequent cycle of poems. To these last they are joined by a prose piece ending with a description of Sigurd's parentage and birth, and his own personality, which the poems themselves do not give at length.
The remaining poems, fifteen in all, tell the old Germanic story of Sigurd, the Siegfried of the Nibelungenlied, in the most ancient form in which it has come down to us. As contained in the 'Edda' it is a picture of great deeds, painted in powerful strokes which gain in force by the absence of carefully elaborated detail. In various ways it is unfortunate that the lays composing the cycle are not more closely consecutive; a difficulty that was felt by the earliest editors of the manuscript, who endeavored to bring the poems and fragments of poems then extant into some sort of connection, by the interpolation of prose passages of various lengths wherever it was considered necessary to the intelligibility of the story. As it is however there is even yet, and cannot help but be, on account of the differences in age, authorship, and place of origin of the lays, an inherent lack of correlation. Many of the poems overlap, and parts of the action are told several times and in varying form.
The Sigurd poems belong to a time prior to the introduction of Christianity, as is incontestably proved by the genuine heathen spirit that throughout pervades them. Their action is in the early days, when the gods walked upon earth and mixed themselves in human affairs. The real theme of the epic which the lays form is the mythical golden hoard, and with it the fated ring of the Nibelung, owned originally by the dwarf Andvari, from whom it is wrung by the gods in their extremity. Andvari curses it to its possessors, and it is cursed again by the gods who are forced to deliver it up to Hreidmar as blood-money for his son, whom Loki had slain. Fafnir and Regin, the brothers of the slain Ottur, demand of their father their share of the blood-fine, and when this is refused, Hreidmar is killed while asleep, and Regin is driven away by Fafnir, who then in the guise of a dragon lies upon the golden hoard to guard it. Egged on by Regin, Sigurd slays Fafnir, and Regin also when he learns that he intends treachery.
Sigurd gives the ring of Andvari, taken from the hoard, to the Valkyrie Brynhild, as a pledge of betrothal; and when in the likeness of Gunnar the Nibelung,--having by wiles forgotten his former vows,--he rides to her through the fire, the ring is given back to him by Brynhild, who does not recognize him. The fatal ring is now given by Sigurd to his wife, Gudrun the Nibelung, who in a moment of anger shows it to Brynhild and taunts her with a recital of his history. Brynhild cannot bear to see the happiness of Gudrun, and does not rest until Sigurd is slain; and in slaying him, Guthorm, the youngest of the Nibelungs, is killed, struck down by the sword of the dying Sigurd. Brynhild, who will not outlive Sigurd, perishes on her own sword. Gudrun is subsequently, against her will, wedded to Atli the Hun. Gunnar and Hoegni, her brothers, the two remaining Nibelungs, are invited to visit Atli, when they are straightway fallen upon, their followers are killed, and they are bound. They are asked to give up the golden hoard, whose hiding-place was known to them alone; but Gunnar first demands the death of his brother Hoegni, and then triumphantly tells Atli that the treasure is forever hidden in the Rhine,--where, he only knows. He is cast into a serpent pit, and dies. Atli's sons and Gudrun's are slain by their mother, changed by the madness of grief at the slaughter of her brothers into an avenging Fury, and Atli himself and his men are burned in the hall. Carried then by the sea, into which she has hurled herself, Gudrun comes to the land of King Jonakr, who makes her his wife. Swanhild, the daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun, had been married to King Joermunrek, but coming under unjust suspicion, is trodden to death by horses; and Gudrun dies of a broken heart, with a prayer to Sigurd upon her lips. Last of all, the sons of Gudrun and Jonakr, who, incited by their mother, had been sent out to avenge their sister, are stoned to death; and the curse only ceases to work when there is nothing more left for it to wreak itself upon.
It is a story of great deeds, whose motives are the bitter passions of that early time before the culture of Christianity had softened the hearts of men. The psychological truthfulness of its characters, however, in spite of their distance from to-day, is none the less unmistakable; and we watch the action with bated breath, as they are hurried on by a fate as relentless and inevitable as any that ever pursued an Oedipus. They are not the indistinct and shadowy forms which in many early literatures seem to grope out toward us from the mists of the past, whose clinging heaviness the present is unable wholly to dispel, but are human men and women who live and act; and the principal characters, particularly, in this way become the realities of history, instead of what they actually are, the creations of legend and myth.
Many of the poems of the 'Edda' have been several times translated into English. Notable renderings are those by Dean Herbert, and by William Morris in the translation of the 'Voelsunga Saga,' by Magnusson and Morris. The only metrical version of all the lays is that of Benjamin Thorpe (London, 1866). A literal translation of the entire extant old poetry of the North is contained in Vigfusson's monumental work, the 'Corpus Poeticum Boreale.' The 'Snorra Edda' has been translated by G.W. Dasent (Stockholm, 1842); by I.A. Blackwell in 'Northern Antiquities' (London, 1847); and by R. B. Anderson (Chicago, 1880).
[Illustration: Signature of Wm. H. Carpenter]
FROM THE 'SNORRA EDDA'
THOR'S ADVENTURES ON HIS JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF THE GIANTS
From 'Northern Antiquities': Bohn's Library (London), 1878
One day the god Thor set out, in his car drawn by two he-goats, and accompanied by Loki, on a journey. Night coming on, they put up at a peasant's cottage, when Thor killed his goats, and after flaying them put them in the kettle. When the flesh was sodden, he sat down with, his fellow-traveler to supper, and invited the peasant and his family to partake of the repast. The peasant's son was named Thjalfi, and his daughter Roeska. Thor bade them throw all the bones into the goats' skins, which were spread out near the fireplace; but young Thjalfi broke one of the shank-bones with his knife, to come at the marrow. Thor having passed the night in the cottage, rose at the dawn of day; and when he was dressed took his mallet Mjoelnir, and lifting it up, consecrated the goats' skins, which he had no sooner done than the two goats reassumed their wonted form, only that one of them now limped in one of its hind legs. Thor, perceiving this, said that the peasant or one of his family had handled the shank-bone of this goat too roughly, for he saw clearly that it was broken. It may readily be imagined how frightened the peasant was, when he saw Thor knit his brows, and grasp the handle of his mallet with such force that the joints of his fingers became white from the exertion. Fearing to be struck down by the very looks of the god, the peasant and his family made joint suit for pardon, offering whatever they possessed as an atonement for the offense committed. Thor, seeing their fear, desisted from his wrath and became more placable, and finally contented himself by requiring the peasant's children, Thjalfi and Roeska, who became his bond-servants, and have followed him ever since.
Leaving his goats with the peasant, Thor proceeded eastward on the road to Joetunheim, until he came to the shores of a vast and deep sea, which having passed over, he penetrated into a strange country along with his companions, Loki, Thjalfi, and Roeska. They had not gone far before they saw before them an immense forest, through which they wandered all day. Thjalfi was of all men the swiftest of foot. He bore Thor's wallet, but the forest was a bad place for finding anything eatable to stow in it. When it became dark, they searched on all sides for a place where they might pass the night, and at last came to a very large hall, with an entrance that took up the whole breadth of one of the ends of the building. Here they chose them a place to sleep in; but towards midnight were alarmed by an earthquake, which shook the whole edifice. Thor, rising up, called on his companions to seek with him a place of safety. On the right they found an adjoining chamber, into which they entered; but while the others, trembling with fear, crept into the furthest corner of this retreat, Thor remained at the doorway with his mallet in his hand, prepared to defend himself whatever might happen. A terrible groaning was heard during the night, and at dawn of day Thor went out and observed lying near him a man of enormous bulk, who slept and snored pretty loudly. Thor could now account for the noise they had heard over night, and girding on his Belt of Prowess, increased that divine strength which he now stood in need of. The giant, awakening, rose up, and it is said that for once in his life Thor was afraid to make use of his mallet, and contented himself by simply asking the giant his name.
"My name is Skrymir," said the other; "but I need not ask thy name, for I know thou art the god Thor. But what hast thou done with my glove?" And stretching out his hand Skrymir picked up his glove, which Thor then perceived was what they had taken over night for a hall, the chamber where they had sought refuge being the thumb. Skrymir then asked whether they would have his fellowship, and Thor consenting, the giant opened his wallet and began to eat his breakfast. Thor and his companions having also taken their morning repast, though in another place, Skrymir proposed that they should lay their provisions together, which Thor also assented to. The giant then put all the meat into one wallet, which he slung on his back and went before them, taking tremendous strides, the whole day, and at dusk sought out for them a place where they might pass the night, under a large oak-tree. Skrymir then told them that he would lie down to sleep. "But take ye the wallet," he added, "and prepare your supper."
Skrymir soon fell asleep, and began to snore strongly, but incredible though it may appear, it must nevertheless be told that when Thor came to open the wallet he could not untie a single knot, nor render a single string looser than it was before. Seeing that his labor was in vain, Thor became wroth, and grasping his mallet with both hands while he advanced a step forward, launched it at the giant's head. Skrymir, awakening, merely asked whether a leaf had not fallen on his head, and whether they had supped and were ready to go to sleep. Thor answered that they were just going to sleep, and so saying, went and laid himself down under another oak-tree. But sleep came not that night to Thor, and when he remarked that Skrymir snored again so loud that the forest re-echoed with the noise, he arose, and grasping his mallet launched it with such force that it sunk into the giant's skull up to the handle. Skrymir, awakening, cried out:--
"What's the matter? did an acorn fall on my head? How fares it with thee, Thor?"
But Thor went away hastily, saying that he had just then awoke, and that as it was only midnight, there was still time for sleep. He however resolved that if he had an opportunity of striking a third blow, it should settle all matters between them. A little before daybreak he perceived that Skrymir was again fast asleep, and again grasping his mallet, dashed it with such violence that it forced its way into the giant's cheek up to the handle. But Skrymir sat up, and stroking his cheek, said:--
"Are there any birds perched on this tree? Methought when I awoke some moss from the branches fell on my head. What! art thou awake, Thor? Methinks it is time for us to get up and dress ourselves; but you have not now a long way before you to the city called Utgard. I have heard you whispering to one another that I am not a man of small dimensions; but if you come into Utgard you will see there many men much taller than myself. Wherefore I advise you, when you come there, not to make too much of yourselves, for the followers of Utgard-Loki will not brook the boasting of such mannikins as ye are. The best thing you could do would probably be to turn back again; but if you persist in going on, take the road that leads eastward, for mine now lies northward to those rocks which you may see in the distance."
Hereupon he threw his wallet over his shoulders and turned away from them into the forest, and I could never hear that Thor wished to meet with him a second time.
Thor and his companions proceeded on their way, and towards noon descried a city standing in the middle of a plain. It was so lofty that they were obliged to bend their necks quite back on their shoulders, ere they could see to the top of it. On arriving at the walls they found the gateway closed, with a gate of bars strongly locked and bolted. Thor, after trying in vain to open it, crept with his companions through the bars, and thus succeeded in gaining admission into the city. Seeing a large palace before them, with the door wide open, they went in and found a number of men of prodigious stature sitting on benches in the hall. Going further, they came before the King, Utgard-Loki, whom they saluted with great respect. Their salutations were however returned by a contemptuous look from the King, who after regarding them for some time said with a scornful smile:--
"It is tedious to ask for tidings of a long journey, yet if I do not mistake me, that stripling there must be Aku-Thor. Perhaps," he added, addressing himself to Thor, "thou mayest be taller than thou appearest to be. But what are the feats that thou and thy fellows deem yourselves skilled in? for no one is permitted to remain here who does not in some feat or other excel all men."
"The feat I know," replied Loki, "is to eat quicker than any one else; and in this I am ready to give a proof against any one here who may choose to compete with me."
"That will indeed be a feat," said Utgard-Loki, "if thou performest what thou promisest; and it shall be tried forthwith."
He then ordered one of his men, who was sitting at the further end of the bench, and whose name was Logi, to come forward and try his skill with Loki. A trough filled with flesh-meat having been set on the hall floor, Loki placed himself at one end and Logi at the other, and each of them began to eat as fast as he could, until they met in the middle of the trough. But it was soon found that Loki had only eaten the flesh, whereas his adversary had devoured both flesh and bone, and the trough to boot. All the company therefore adjudged that Loki was vanquished.
Utgard-Loki then asked what feat the young man who accompanied Thor could perform. Thjalfi answered that he would run a race with any one who might be matched against him. The King observed that skill in running was something to boast of, but that if the youth would win the match he must display great agility. He then arose and went with all who were present to a plain where there was good ground for running on, and calling a young man named Hugi, bade him run a match with Thjalfi. In the first course, Hugi so much outstripped his competitor that he turned back and met him, not far from the starting-place.
"Thou must ply thy legs better, Thjalfi," said Utgard-Loki, "if thou wilt win the match; though I must needs say that there never came a man here swifter of foot than thou art."
In the second course, Thjalfi was a full bow-shot from the goal when Hugi arrived at it.
"Most bravely dost thou run, Thjalfi," said Utgard-Loki, "though thou wilt not, methinks, win the match. But the third course must decide."
They accordingly ran a third time, but Hugi had already reached the goal before Thjalfi had got half-way. All who were present then cried out that there had been a sufficient trial of skill in this kind of exercise.
Utgard-Loki then asked Thor in what feats he would choose to give proofs of that dexterity for which he was so famous. Thor replied that he would begin a drinking match with any one. Utgard-Loki consented, and entering the palace, bade his cup-bearer bring the large horn which his followers were obliged to drink out of, when they had trespassed in any way against established usage. The cup-bearer having presented it to Thor, Utgard-Loki said:--
"Whoever is a good drinker will empty that horn at a single draught, though some men make two of it; but the most puny drinker of all can do it at three."
Thor looked at the horn, which seemed of no extraordinary size, though somewhat long; however, as he was very thirsty, he set it to his lips, and without drawing breath, pulled as long and as deeply as he could, that he might not be obliged to make a second draught of it; but when he set the horn down and looked in, he could scarcely perceive that the liquor was diminished.
"'Tis well drunken," exclaimed Utgard-Loki, "though nothing much to boast of; and I would not have believed, had it been told me, that Asa-Thor could not take a greater draught; but thou no doubt meanest to make amends at the second pull."
Thor without answering went at it again with all his might; but when he took the horn from his mouth it seemed to him as if he had drunk rather less than before, although the horn could now be carried without spilling.
"How now! Thor," said Utgard-Loki: "Thou must not spare thyself more, in performing a feat, than befits thy skill; but if thou meanest to drain the horn at the third draught thou must pull deeply; and I must needs say that thou wilt not be called so mighty a man here as thou art among the AEsir, if thou showest no greater powers in other feats than methinks will be shown in this."
Thor, full of wrath, again set the horn to his lips and exerted himself to the utmost to empty it entirely; but on looking in, found that the liquor was only a little lower; upon which he resolved to make no further attempt, but gave back the horn to the cup-bearer.
"I now see plainly," said Utgard-Loki, "that thou art not quite so stout as we thought thee; but wilt thou try any other feat?--though methinks thou art not likely to bear any prize away with thee hence."
"I will try another feat," replied Thor; "and I am sure such draughts as I have been drinking would not have been reckoned small among the AEsir; but what new trial hast thou to propose?"
"We have a very trifling game here," answered Utgard-Loki, "in which we exercise none but children. It consists in merely lifting my cat from the ground; nor should I have dared to mention such a feat to Asa-Thor, if I had not already observed that thou art by no means what we took thee for."
As he finished speaking, a large gray cat sprang on the hall floor. Thor, advancing, put his hand under the cat's belly, and did his utmost to raise him from the floor; but the cat, bending his back, had--notwithstanding all Thor's efforts--only one of his feet lifted up; seeing which, Thor made no further attempt.
"This trial has turned out," said Utgard-Loki, "just as I imagined it would; the cat is large, but Thor is little in comparison with our men."
"Little as ye call me," answered Thor, "let me see who amongst you will come hither, now I am in wrath, and wrestle with me."
"I see no one here," said Utgard-Loki, looking at the men sitting on the benches, "who would not think it beneath him to wrestle with thee: let somebody, however, call hither that old crone, my nurse Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her if he will. She has thrown to the ground many a man not less strong and mighty than this Thor is."
A toothless old woman then entered the hall, and was told by Utgard-Loki to take hold of Thor. The tale is shortly told. The more Thor tightened his hold on the crone the firmer she stood. At length, after a very violent struggle, Thor began to lose his footing, and was finally brought down upon one knee. Utgard-Loki then told them to desist, adding that Thor had now no occasion to ask any one else in the hall to wrestle with him, and it was also getting late. He therefore showed Thor and his companions to their seats, and they passed the night there in good cheer.
The next morning, at break of day, Thor and his companions dressed themselves and prepared for their departure. Utgard-Loki then came and ordered a table to be set for them, on which there was no lack of either victuals or drink. After the repast Utgard-Loki led them to the gate of the city, and on parting asked Thor how he thought his journey had turned out, and whether he had met with any men stronger than himself. Thor told him that he could not deny but that he had brought great shame on himself. "And what grieves me most," he added, "is that ye call me a man of little worth."
"Nay," said Utgard-Loki, "it behoves me to tell thee the truth, now thou art out of the city; which so long as I live and have my way thou shalt never re-enter. And by my troth, had I known beforehand that thou hadst so much strength in thee, and wouldst have brought me so near to a great mishap, I would not have suffered thee to enter this time. Know, then, that I have all along deceived thee by my illusions: first in the forest, where I arrived before thee, and there thou wert not able to untie the wallet, because I had bound it with iron wire, in such a manner that thou couldst not discover how the knot ought to be loosened. After this, thou gavest me three blows with thy mallet; the first, though the least, would have ended my days had it fallen on me, but I brought a rocky mountain before me which thou didst not perceive, and in this mountain thou wilt find three glens, one of them remarkably deep. These are the dints made by thy mallet. I have made use of similar illusions in the contests ye have had with my followers. In the first, Loki, like hunger itself, devoured all that was set before him; but Logi was in reality nothing else than ardent fire, and therefore consumed not only the meat but the trough which held it. Hugi, with whom Thjalfi contended in running, was Thought; and it was impossible for Thjalfi to keep pace with that. When thou in thy turn didst try to empty the horn, thou didst perform, by my troth, a deed so marvelous that had I not seen it myself I should never have believed it. For one end of that horn reached the sea, which thou wast not aware of, but when thou comest to the shore thou wilt perceive how much the sea has sunk by thy draughts, which have caused what is now called the ebb. Thou didst perform a feat no less wonderful by lifting up the cat; and to tell thee the truth, when we saw that one of his paws was off the floor, we were all of us terror-stricken; for what thou tookest for a cat was in reality the great Midgard serpent that encompasseth the whole earth, and he was then barely long enough to inclose it between his head and tail, so high had thy hand raised him up towards heaven. Thy wrestling with Elli was also a most astonishing feat, for there was never yet a man, nor ever shall be, whom Old Age--for such in fact was Elli--will not sooner or later lay low if he abide her coming. But now, as we are going to part, let me tell thee that it will be better for both of us if thou never come near me again; for shouldst thou do so, I shall again defend myself by other illusions, so that thou wilt never prevail against me."
On hearing these words, Thor in a rage laid hold of his mallet and would have launched it at him; but Utgard-Loki had disappeared, and when Thor would have returned to the city to destroy it, he found nothing around him but a verdant plain. Proceeding therefore on his way, he returned without stopping to Thrudvang.
Translation of I.A. Blackwell.
THE LAY OF THRYM
From the 'Elder Edda'
Wroth was Vingthor, when he awoke, and his hammer missed; his beard he shook, his forehead struck, the son of earth felt all around him;
And first of all these words he uttered:-- "Hear now, Loki! what I now say, which no one knows anywhere on earth, nor in heaven above: the As's hammer is stolen!"
They went to the fair Freyja's dwelling, and he these words first of all said:-- "Wilt thou me, Freyja, thy feather-garment lend, that perchance my hammer I may find?"
FREYJA
"That I would give thee, although of gold it were, and trust it to thee, though it were of silver."
Flew then Loki-- the plumage rattled-- until he came beyond the AEsir's dwellings, and came within the Joetun's land.
On a mound sat Thrym, the Thursar's lord; for his greyhounds plaiting gold bands, and his horses' manes smoothing.
THRYM
"How goes it with the AEsir? How goes it with the Alfar? Why art thou come alone to Joetunheim?"
LOKI
"Ill it goes with the AEsir, Ill it goes with the Alfar. Hast thou Hlorridi's hammer hidden?"
THRYM
"I have Hlorridi's hammer hidden eight rasts beneath the earth; it shall no man get again, unless he bring me Freyja to wife."
Flew then Loki-- the plumage rattled-- until he came beyond the Joetun's dwellings, and came within the AEsir's courts; there he met Thor, in the middle court, who these words first of all uttered:--
"Hast thou had success, as well as labor? Tell me from the air the long tidings. Oft of him who sits are the tales defective, and he who lies down utters falsehood."
LOKI
"I have had labor and success: Thrym has thy hammer, the Thursar's lord. It shall no man get again, unless he bring him Freyja to wife."
They went the fair Freyja to find; and he those words first of all said:-- "Bind thee, Freyja, in bridal raiment: we two must drive to Joetunheim."
Wroth then was Freyja, and with anger chafed; all in AEsir's hall beneath her trembled; in shivers flew the famed Brisinga necklace: "Know me to be of women lewdest, if with thee I drive to Joetunheim."
Straightway went the AEsir all to council, and the Asynjur all to hold converse; and deliberated the mighty gods, how they Hlorridi's hammer might get back.
Then said Heimdall, of AEsir brightest-- he well foresaw like other Vanir-- "Let us clothe Thor with bridal raiment, let him have the famed Brisinga necklace.
"Let by his side keys jingle, and woman's weeds fall round his knees, but on his breast place precious stones, and a neat coif set on his head."
Then said Thor, the mighty As:-- "Me the AEsir will call womanish, if I let myself be clad in bridal raiment."
Then spake Loki, Laufey's son:-- "Do thou, Thor! refrain from such-like words; forthwith the Joetuns will Asgard inhabit, unless thy hammer thou gettest back."
Then they clad Thor in bridal raiment, and with the noble Brisinga necklace; let by his side keys jingle, and woman's weeds fall round his knees; and on his breast placed precious stones, and a neat coif set on his head.
Then said Loki, Laufey's son:-- "I will with thee as a servant go; we two will drive to Joetunheim."
Straightway were the goats homeward driven, hurried to the traces; they had fast to run. The rocks were shivered, the earth was in a blaze; Odin's son drove to Joetunheim.
Then said Thrym, the Thursar's lord:-- "Rise up, Joetuns! and the benches deck, now they bring me Freyja to wife, Njoerd's daughter, from Noatun.
"Hither to our court let bring gold-horned cows, all-black oxen, for the Joetuns' joy. Treasures I have many, necklaces many; Freyja alone seemed to me wanting."
In the evening they early came, and for the Joetuns beer was brought forth. Thor alone an ox devoured, salmons eight, and all the sweetmeats women should have. Sif's consort drank three salds of mead.
Then said Thrym, the Thursar's prince:-- "Where hast thou seen brides eat more voraciously? I never saw brides feed more amply, nor a maiden drink more mead."
Sat the all-crafty serving-maid close by, who words fitting found against the Joetun's speech:-- "Freyja has nothing eaten for eight nights, so eager was she for Joetunheim."
Under her veil he stooped, desirous to salute her, but sprang back along the hall:-- "Why are so piercing Freyja's looks? Methinks that fire burns from her eyes."
Sat the all-crafty serving-maid close by, who words fitting found against the Joetun's speech:-- "Freyja for eight nights has not slept, so eager was she for Joetunheim."
In came the Joetun's luckless sister; for a bride-gift she dared to ask:-- "Give me from thy hands the ruddy rings, if thou wouldst gain my love, my love and favor all."
Then said Thrym, the Thursar's lord:-- "Bring the hammer in, the bride to consecrate; lay Mjoellnir on the maiden's knee; unite us each with other by the hand of Voer."
Laughed Hlorridi's soul in his breast, when the fierce-hearted his hammer recognized. He first slew Thrym, the Thursar's lord, and the Joetun's race all crushed;
He slew the Joetun's aged sister, her who a bride-gift had demanded; she a blow got instead of skillings, a hammer's stroke for many rings. So got Odin's son his hammer back.
Translation of Benjamin Thorpe in 'The Edda of Saemund the Learned'
OF THE LAMENTATION OF GUDRUN OVER SIGURD DEAD
FIRST LAY OF GUDRUN
Gudrun of old days Drew near to dying, As she sat in sorrow Over Sigurd; Yet she sighed not Nor smote hand on hand, Nor wailed she aught As other women.
Then went earls to her, Full of all wisdom, Fain help to deal To her dreadful heart: Hushed was Gudrun Of wail, or greeting, But with heavy woe Was her heart a-breaking.
Bright and fair Sat the great earls' brides, Gold-arrayed Before Gudrun; Each told the tale Of her great trouble, The bitterest bale She erst abode.
Then spake Giaflaug, Giuki's sister:-- "Lo, upon earth I live most loveless, Who of five mates Must see the ending, Of daughters twain And three sisters, Of brethren eight, And abide behind lonely."
Naught gat Gudrun Of wail or greeting, So heavy was she For her dead husband; So dreadful-hearted For the King laid dead there.
Then spake Herborg, Queen of Hunland:-- "Crueler tale Have I to tell of, Of my seven sons Down in the Southlands, And the eighth man, my mate, Felled in the death-mead.
"Father and mother, And four brothers, On the wide sea The winds and death played with; The billows beat On the bulwark boards.
"Alone must I sing o'er them, Alone must I array them, Alone must my hands deal with Their departing; And all this was In one season's wearing, And none was left For love or solace.
"Then was I bound A prey of the battle, When that same season Wore to its ending; As a tiring-may Must I bind the shoon Of the duke's high dame, Every day at dawning.
"From her jealous hate Gat I heavy mocking; Cruel lashes She laid upon me; Never met I Better master Or mistress worser In all the wide world."
Naught gat Gudrun Of wail or greeting, So heavy was she For her dead husband; So dreadful-hearted For the King laid dead there.
Then spake Gullrond, Giuki's daughter:-- "O foster-mother, Wise as thou mayst be, Naught canst thou better The young wife's bale." And she bade uncover The dead King's corpse.
She swept the sheet Away from Sigurd, And turned his cheek Toward his wife's knees:-- "Look on thy loved one, Lay lips to his lips, E'en as thou wert clinging To thy King alive yet!"
Once looked Gudrun-- One look only, And saw her lord's locks Lying all bloody, The great man's eyes Glazed and deadly, And his heart's bulwark Broken by sword-edge.
Back then sank Gudrun, Back on the bolster; Loosed was her head-array, Red did her cheeks grow, And the rain-drops ran Down over her knees.
Then wept Gudrun, Giuki's daughter, So that the tears flowed Through the pillow; As the geese withal That were in the home-field, The fair fowls the may owned, Fell a-screaming.
Then spake Gullrond, Giuki's daughter:-- "Surely knew I No love like your love Among all men, On the mold abiding; Naught wouldst thou joy in Without or within doors, O my sister, Save beside Sigurd."
Then spake Gudrun, Giuki's daughter:-- "Such was my Sigurd Among the sons of Giuki, As is the king leek O'er the low grass waxing, Or a bright stone Strung on band, Or a pearl of price On a prince's brow.
"Once was I counted By the king's warriors Higher than any Of Herjan's mays; Now am I as little As the leaf may be, Amid wind-swept wood, Now when dead, he lieth.
"I miss from my seat, I miss from my bed, My darling of sweet speech. Wrought the sons of Giuki, Wrought the sons of Giuki, This sore sorrow; Yea, for their sister Most sore sorrow.
"So may your lands Lie waste on all sides, As ye have broken Your bounden oaths! Ne'er shalt thou, Gunnar, The gold have joy of; The dear-bought rings Shall drag thee to death, Whereon thou swarest Oath unto Sigurd.
"Ah, in the days bygone, Great mirth in the home-field, When my Sigurd Set saddle on Grani, And they went their ways For the wooing of Brynhild! An ill day, an ill woman, And most ill hap!"
Then spake Brynhild, Budli's daughter:-- "May the woman lack Both love and children, Who gained greeting For thee, O Gudrun! Who gave thee this morning Many words!"
Then spake Gullrond, Giuki's daughter:-- "Hold peace of such words, Thou hated of all folk! The bane of brave men Hast thou been ever; All waves of ill Wash over thy mind; To seven great kings Hast thou been a sore sorrow, And the death of good-will To wives and women."
Then spake Brynhild, Budli's daughter:-- "None but Atli Brought bale upon us; My very brother, Born of Budli.
"When we saw in the hall Of the Hunnish people The gold a-gleaming On the kingly Giukings; I have paid for that faring Oft and fully, And for the sight That then I saw."
By a pillar she stood And strained its wood to her; From the eyes of Brynhild, Budli's daughter, Flashed out fire, And she snorted forth venom, As the sore wounds she gazed on Of the dead-slain Sigurd.
William Morris in 'The Story of the Voelsungs and Niblungs': translated by Magnusson and Morris, London, 1870
THE WAKING OF BRUNHILDE ON THE HINDFELL BY SIGURD
From 'The Story of Sigurd the Voelsung,' by William Morris
He looketh, and loveth her sore, and he longeth her spirit to move, And awaken her heart to the world, that she may behold him and love. And he toucheth her breast and her hands, and he loveth her passing sore; And he saith, "Awake! I am Sigurd;" but she moveth never the more.
Then he looked on his bare bright blade, and he said, "Thou--what wilt thou do? For indeed as I came by the war-garth thy voice of desire I knew." Bright burnt the pale blue edges, for the sunrise drew anear, And the rims of the Shield-burg glittered, and the east was exceeding clear: So the eager edges he setteth to the Dwarf-wrought battle-coat Where the hammered ring-knit collar constraineth the woman's throat; But the sharp Wrath biteth and rendeth, and before it fail the rings, And, lo, the gleam of the linen, and the light of golden things; Then he driveth the blue steel onward, and through the skirt, and out, Till naught but the rippling linen is wrapping her about; Then he deems her breath comes quicker and her breast begins to heave, So he turns about the War-Flame and rends down either sleeve, Till her arms lie white in her raiment, and a river of sun-bright hair Flows free o'er bosom and shoulder and floods the desert bare.
Then a flush cometh over her visage and a sigh upheaveth her breast, And her eyelids quiver and open, and she wakeneth into rest; Wide-eyed on the dawning she gazeth, too glad to change or smile, And but little moveth her body, nor speaketh she yet for a while; And yet kneels Sigurd moveless, her wakening speech to heed, While soft the waves of the daylight o'er the starless heavens speed, And the gleaming rims of the Shield-burg yet bright and brighter grow, And the thin moon hangeth her horns dead-white in the golden glow. Then she turned and gazed on Sigurd, and her eyes met the Voelsung's eyes, And mighty and measureless now did the tide of his love arise. For their longing had met and mingled, and he knew of her heart that she loved, As she spake unto nothing but him, and her lips with the speech-flood moved:--
"Oh, what is the thing so mighty that my weary sleep hath torn, And rent the fallow bondage, and the wan woe over-worn?"
He said, "The hand of Sigurd and the Sword of Sigmund's son, And the heart that the Voelsungs fashioned, this deed for thee have done."
But she said, "Where then is Odin that laid me here alow? Long lasteth the grief of the world, and man-folk's tangled woe!"
"He dwelleth above," said Sigurd, "but I on the earth abide, And I came from the Glittering Heath the waves of thy fire to ride."
But therewith the sun rose upward and lightened all the earth, And the light flashed up to the heavens from the rims of the glorious girth;...
Then they turned and were knit together; and oft and o'er again They craved, and kissed rejoicing, and their hearts were full and fain.
ALFRED EDERSHEIM
(1825-1889)
Among writers on Biblical topics Dr. Alfred Edersheim occupies a unique place. Bred in the Jewish faith, he brought to his writings the traditions of his ancestry. The history of the Children of Israel was a reality to him, who had known the Talmud and the Old Testament through the lessons of his boyhood, and had been taught to reverence the Hebrew sacred rites handed down through the ages. All the intangible, unconscious religious influences of his youth entered into the work of his manhood. And although this converted Rabbi wrote as a Christian, yet the Bible stories were colored and vivified for him by his Jewish sympathies. Thus his work had the especial value of a double point of view.
Born in Vienna in 1825 of German parents, he studied at the university of his native city and in Berlin, finishing his theological education in Edinburgh. He became a minister of the Free Church of Scotland in 1849, passing over to the Church of England in 1875. In 1881 he received from Oxford an honorary A.M., and was for a time lecturer on the Septuagint at the university. He died in Mentone, France, on March 16th, 1889.
The earlier writings of Dr. Edersheim consist almost entirely of translations from the German, and of Jewish stories written for educational purposes. Of his later works the most important are--'The Bible History,' his largest work, in seven volumes; 'The Temple, its Ministers and Services as they were at the Time of Christ'; 'Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ'; and a 'History of the Jewish Nation after the Destruction of Jerusalem under Titus.' From the evangelical point of view, his 'Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah' is of final authority, brilliantly exemplifying his peculiar fitness to be the interpreter of Jewish life and thought at the period of the rise of Christianity. He presents not only the story of the Christ of the Gospels, but draws a picture of the whole political and social life of the Jews, and of their intellectual and religious condition--a picture which his Rabbinical learning and his race sympathies make authentic. He wrote English with unaffected directness, embodying in the simplest forms the results of his wide scholarship. His books have a very wide and constant sale.
THE WASHING OF HANDS
From 'The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah'
The externalism of all these practices [ceremonial practices of the Hebrews] will best appear from the following account which the Talmud gives of "a feast." As the guests enter, they sit down on chairs, and water is brought to them, with which they wash one hand. Into this the cup is taken, when each speaks the blessing over the wine partaken of before dinner. Presently they all lie down at table. Water is again brought them, with which they now wash both hands, preparatory to the meal, when the blessing is spoken over the bread, and then over the cup, by the chief person at the feast, or else by one selected by way of distinction. The company respond by _Amen_, always supposing the benediction to have been spoken by an Israelite, not a heathen, slave, nor law-breaker. Nor was it lawful to say it with an unlettered man, although it might be said with a Cuthaean (heretic, or Samaritan,) who was learned. After dinner the crumbs, if any, are carefully gathered--hands are again washed, and he who first had done so leads in the prayer of thanksgiving. The formula in which he is to call on the rest to join him by repeating the prayers after him is prescribed, and differs according to the number of those present. The blessing and the thanksgiving are allowed to be said not only in Hebrew, but in any other language.
In regard to the position of the guests, we know that the uppermost seats were occupied by the Rabbis. The Talmud formulates it in this manner: That the worthiest lies down first, on his left side, with his feet hanging down. If there are two "cushions" (divans), the next worthiest lies at his feet; if there are three cushions, the third worthiest lies above the first (at his left), so that the chief person is in the middle. The water before eating is first handed to the worthiest, and so in regard to the washing after meat. But if a very large number are present, you begin after dinner with the least worthy till you come to the last five, when the worthiest in the company washes his hands, and the other four after him. The guests being thus arranged, the head of the house, or the chief person at table, speaks the blessing and then cuts the bread. By some it was not deemed etiquette to begin till after he who had said the prayer had done so, but this does not seem to have been the rule among the Palestinian Jews. Then, generally, the bread was dipped into salt or something salted, etiquette demanding that where there were two they should wait one for the other, but not where there were three or more.
This is not the place to furnish what may be termed a list of _menus_ at Jewish tables. In earlier times the meal was no doubt very simple. It became otherwise when intercourse with Rome, Greece, and the East made the people familiar with foreign luxury, while commerce supplied its requirements. Indeed, it would scarcely be possible to enumerate the various articles which seem to have been imported from different, and even distant, countries.
To begin with: The wine was mixed with water, and indeed, some thought that the benediction should not be pronounced till the water had been added to the wine. According to one statement two parts, according to another three parts, of water were to be added to the wine. Various vintages are mentioned: among them a red wine of Saron, and a black wine. Spiced wine was made with honey and pepper. Another mixture, chiefly used for invalids, consisted of old wine, water, and balsam; yet another was "wine of myrrh"; we also read of a wine in which capers had been soaked. To these we should add wine spiced either with pepper or with absinthe, and what is described as vinegar, a cooling drink made either of grapes that had not ripened, or of the lees. Besides these, palm wine was also in use. Of foreign drinks, we read of wine from Ammon and from the province Asia, the latter a kind of "must" boiled down. Wine in ice came from Lebanon; a certain kind of vinegar from Idumaea; beer from Media and Babylon; barley wine (_zythos_) from Egypt. Finally, we ought to mention Palestinian apple cider, and the juice of other fruits. If we adopt the rendering of some, even liqueurs were known and used.
Long as this catalogue is, that of the various articles of food, whether native or imported, would occupy a much larger space. Suffice it that as regarded the various kinds of grain, meat, fish, and fruits, either in their natural state or preserved, it embraced almost everything known to the ancient world. At feasts there was an introductory course, consisting of appetizing salted meat, or of some light dish. This was followed by the dinner itself, which finished with dessert (_aphikomon_ or _terugima_), consisting of pickled olives, radishes and lettuce, and fruits, among which even preserved ginger from India is mentioned. The most diverse and even strange statements are made as to the healthiness, or the reverse, of certain articles of diet, especially vegetables. Fish was a favorite dish, and never wanting at a Sabbath meal. It was a saying that both salt and water should be taken at every meal, if health was to be preserved. Condiments, such as mustard or pepper, were to be sparingly used. Very different were the meals of the poor. Locusts--fried in flour or honey, or preserved--required, according to the Talmud, no blessing; since the animal was really among the curses of the land. Eggs were a common article of food, and sold in the shops. Then there was a milk dish, into which people dipped their bread. Others who were better off had a soup made of vegetables, especially onions, and meat; while the very poor would satisfy the cravings of hunger with bread and cheese, or bread and fruit, or some vegetables, such as cucumbers, lentils, beans, peas, or onions.
At meals the rules of etiquette were strictly observed, especially as regarded the sages. Indeed, there are added to the Talmud two tractates, one describing the general etiquette, the other that of "sages," of which the title may be translated as 'The Way of the World' (_Derech Erez_), being a sort of code of good manners. According to some, it was not good breeding to speak while eating. The learned and most honored occupied not only the chief places, but were sometimes distinguished by a double portion. According to Jewish etiquette, a guest should conform in everything to his host, even though it were unpleasant. Although hospitality was the greatest and most prized social virtue, which, to use a rabbinic expression, might make every home a sanctuary and every table an altar, an unbidden guest, or a guest who brought another guest, was proverbially an unwelcome apparition. Sometimes, by way of self-righteousness, the poor were brought in, and the best part of the meal ostentatiously given to them. At ordinary entertainments, people were to help themselves. It was not considered good manners to drink as soon as you were asked, but you ought to hold the cup for a little in your hand. But it would be the height of rudeness either to wipe the plates, to scrape together the bread, as though you had not had enough to eat, or to drop it, to the inconvenience of your neighbor. If a piece were taken out of a dish, it must of course not be put back; still less must you offer from your cup or plate to your neighbor. From the almost religious value attaching to bread, we scarcely wonder that these rules were laid down: not to steady a cup or plate upon bread, nor to throw away bread, and that after dinner the bread was to be carefully swept together. Otherwise, it was thought, demons would sit upon it. 'The Way of the World' for sages lays down these as the marks of a rabbi: that he does not eat standing; that he does not lick his fingers; that he sits down only beside his equals--in fact, many regarded it as wrong to eat with the unlearned; that he begins cutting the bread where it is best baked, nor ever breaks off a bit with his hand; and that when drinking, he turns away his face from the company. Another saying was, that the sage was known by four things: at his cups, in money matters, when angry, and in his jokes. After dinner, the formalities concerning hand-washing and prayer, already described, were gone through, and then frequently aromatic spices burnt, over which a special benediction was pronounced. We have only to add that on Sabbaths it was deemed a religious duty to have three meals, and to procure the best that money could obtain, even though one were to save and fast for it all the week. Lastly, it was regarded as a special obligation and honor to entertain sages.
We have no difficulty now in understanding what passed at the table of the Pharisee. When the water for purification was presented to him, Jesus would either refuse it, or if, as seems more likely at a morning meal, each guest repaired by himself for the prescribed purification, he would omit to do so, and sit down to meat without this formality. No one who knows the stress which Pharisaism laid on this rite would argue that Jesus might have conformed to the practice. Indeed, the controversy was long and bitter between the Schools of Shammai and Hillel, on such a point as whether the hands were to be washed _before_ the cup was filled with wine, or _after_ that, and where the towel was to be deposited. With such things the most serious ritual inferences were connected on both sides. A religion which spent its energy on such trivialities must have lowered the moral tone. All the more that Jesus insisted so earnestly, as the substance of his teaching, on that corruption of our nature which Judaism ignored and on that spiritual purification which was needful for the reception of his doctrine,--would he publicly and openly set aside ordinances of man which diverted thoughts of purity into questions of the most childish character. On the other hand, we can also understand what bitter thoughts must have filled the mind of the Pharisee whose guest Jesus was, when he observed his neglect of the cherished rite. It was an insult to himself, a defiance of Jewish law, a revolt against the most cherished traditions of the synagogue. Remembering that a Pharisee ought not to sit down to a meal with such, he might feel that he should not have asked Jesus to his table.
MARIA EDGEWORTH
(1767-1849)
[Illustration: MARIA EDGEWORTH]
The famous author of Irish novels and didactic tales was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and his first wife Anna Ehrs, and was born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, January 1st, 1767. When she was twelve years old the family settled on the estate at Edgeworth's-town, County Longford, Ireland, which was her home during the remainder of her long life. It was a singularly happy family circle, of which Maria was the centre. Her father married four times, and had twenty-two children, on whom he exercised his peculiar educational ideas. He devoted himself most particularly to Maria's training, and made her his most confidential companion. Several of her works were written in conjunction with her father, and over almost all he exercised a supervision which doubtless hindered the free expression of her genius. Her first publication, 'Letters to Literary Ladies,' on the education of women, appeared in 1795. This was followed by educational and juvenile works illustrating the theories of Mr. Edgeworth: 'The Parent's Assistant,' 'Practical Education' (a joint production), supplemented later by 'Early Lessons'; 'Rosamond,' 'Harry and Lucy,' and a sequel to the 'Parent's Assistant.' In 1800 appeared 'Castle Rackrent,' the first of her novels of Irish life, and her best known work; soon followed by 'Belinda,' and the well-known 'Essay on Irish Bulls,' by her father and herself. Miss Edgeworth's reputation was now established, and on a visit to Paris at this time she received much attention. Here occurred the one recorded romance of her life, the proposal of marriage from Count Edelcrantz, a Swedish gentleman. On her return she wrote 'Leonora.' In 1804 she published 'Popular Tales'; in 1809 the first series of 'Fashionable Tales.' These tales include 'Almeria' and 'The Absentee,' considered by many critics her masterpiece. 'Patronage' was begun years before as 'The Freeman Family.' In 1817 she published 'Harrington' and 'Ormond,' which rank among her best works. In the same year her father died, leaving to her the completion of his 'Memoirs,' which appeared in 1820. Her last novel, 'Helen,' published in 1834, shows no diminution of her charm and grace. With occasional visits to Paris and London, and a memorable trip to Scotland in 1823, when she was entertained at Abbotsford, she lived serene and happy at Edgeworth's-town until her sudden death, May 21st 1849.
Miss Edgeworth was extremely small, not beautiful; but a brilliant talker and a great favorite in the exclusive society to which she everywhere had access. Her greatest success was in the new field opened in her Irish stories, full of racy, rollicking Irish humor, and valuable pictures of bygone conditions, for the genial peasant of her pages is now rarely found. Not the least we owe her is the influence which her national tales had on Sir Walter Scott, who declared that her success led him to do the same for his own country in the Waverley Novels. Miss Edgeworth's style is easy and animated. Her tales show her extraordinary power of observation, her good sense, and remarkable skill in dialogue, though they are biased by the didactic purpose which permeates all her writings. As Madame de Stael remarked, she was "lost in dreary utility." And doubtless this is why she just missed greatness, and has been consigned to the ranks of "standard" authors who are respectfully alluded to but seldom read. The lack of tenderness and imagination was perhaps the result of her unusual self-control, shown in her custom of writing in the family sitting-room, and so concentrating her mind on her work that she was deaf to all that went on about her. Surely some of the creative power of her mind must have been lost in that strenuous effort. Her noble character, as well as her talents, won for her the friendship of many distinguished people of her day. With Scott she was intimate, Byron found her charming, and Macaulay was an enthusiastic admirer. In her recently edited letters are found many interesting and valuable accounts of the people she met in the course of her long life.
Miss Edgeworth's life has been written by Helen Zimmern and Grace A. Oliver; her 'Life and Letters,' edited by Augustus J. C. Hare, appeared in 1895. 'Pen Portraits of Literary Women,' by Helen Gray Cone and Jeannette L. Gilder, contains a sketch of her.
SIR CONDY'S WAKE
From 'Castle Rackrent'
When they were made sensible that Sir Condy was going to leave Castle Rackrent for good and all, they set up a whillaluh that could be heard to the farthest end of the street; and one fine boy he was, that my master had given an apple to that morning, cried the loudest; but they all were the same sorry, for Sir Condy was greatly beloved among the childher, for letting them go a-nutting in the demesne without saying a word to them, though my lady objected to them. The people in the town, who were the most of them standing at their doors, hearing the childher cry, would know the reason of it; and when the report was made known the people one and all gathered in great anger against my son Jason, and terror at the notion of his coming to be landlord over them, and they cried, "No Jason! no Jason! Sir Condy! Sir Condy! Sir Condy Rackrent forever!" and the mob grew so great and so loud I was frightened, and made my way back to the house to warn my son to make his escape or hide himself, for fear of the consequences. Jason would not believe me till they came all round the house and to the windows with great shouts; then he grew quite pale, and asked Sir Condy what had he best do? "I'll tell you what you'd best do," said Sir Condy, who was laughing to see his fright: "finish your glass first; then let's go to the window and show ourselves, and I'll tell 'em, or you shall if you please, that I'm going to the lodge for change of air for my health, and by my own desire, for the rest of my days." "Do so," said Jason who never meant it should have been so, but could not refuse him the lodge at this unseasonable time. Accordingly Sir Condy threw up the sash and explained matters, and thanked all his friends, and bid 'em look in at the punch-bowl, and observe that Jason and he had been sitting over it very good friends; so the mob was content, and he sent 'em out some whisky to drink his health, and that was the last time his Honor's health was ever drunk at Castle Rackrent.
The very next day, being too proud, as he said to me, to stay an hour longer in a house that did not belong to him, he sets off to the lodge, and I along with him not many hours after. And there was great bemoaning through all O'Shaughlin's Town, which I stayed to witness, and gave my poor master a full account of when I got to the lodge. He was very low and in his bed when I got there, and complained of a great pain about his heart; but I guessed it was only trouble, and all the business, let alone vexation, he had gone through of late; and knowing the nature of him from a boy, I took my pipe, and while smoking it by the chimney, began telling him how he was beloved and regretted in the county, and it did him a deal of good to hear it. "Your Honor has a great many friends yet, that you don't know of, rich and poor in the country," says I; "for as I was coming along the road, I met two gentlemen in their own carriages, who asked after you, knowing me, and wanted to know where you was, and all about you, and even how old I was: think of that!" Then he wakened out of his doze, and began questioning me who the gentlemen were. And the next morning it came into my head to go, unknown to anybody, with my master's compliments, round to many of the gentlemen's houses where he and my lady used to visit, and people that I knew were his great friends, and would go to Cork to serve him any day in the year, and I made bold to try to borrow a trifle of cash from them. They all treated me very civil for the most part, and asked a great many questions very kind about my lady and Sir Condy and all the family, and were greatly surprised to learn from me Castle Rackrent was sold, and my master at the lodge for health; and they all pitied him greatly, and he had their good wishes, if that would do, but money was a thing they unfortunately had not any of them at this time to spare. I had my journey for my pains, and I, not used to walking, nor supple as formerly, was greatly tired, but had the satisfaction of telling my master, when I got to the lodge, all the civil things said by high and low.
"Thady," says he, "all you've been telling me brings a strange thought into my head: I've a notion I shall not be long for this world anyhow, and I've a great fancy to see my own funeral afore I die." I was greatly shocked at the first speaking, to hear him speak so light about his funeral, and he to all appearances in good health, but recollecting myself answered:--"To be sure it would be as fine a sight as one could see, I dared to say, and one I should be proud to witness; and I did not doubt his Honor's would be as great a funeral as ever Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin's was, and such a one as that had never been known in the county before or since." But I never thought he was in earnest about seeing his own funeral himself, till the next day he returns to it again. "Thady," says he, "as far as the wake goes, sure I might without any great trouble have the satisfaction of seeing a bit of my own funeral." "Well, since your Honor's Honor's so bent upon it," says I, not willing to cross him, and he in trouble, "we must see what we can do." So he fell into a sort of a sham disorder, which was easy done, as he kept his bed and no one to see him; and I got my shister, who was an old woman very handy about the sick, and very skillful, to come up to the lodge to nurse him; and we gave out, she knowing no better, that he was just at his latter end, and it answered beyond anything; and there was a great throng of people, men, women, and children, and there being only two rooms at the lodge, except what was locked up full of Jason's furniture and things, the house was soon as full and fuller than it could hold, and the heat and smoke and noise wonderful great; and standing among them that were near the bed, but not thinking at all of the dead, I was startled by the sound of my master's voice from under the greatcoats that had been thrown all at top, and I went close up, no one noticing. "Thady," says he, "I've had enough of this; I'm smothering, and can't hear a word of all they're saying of the deceased." "God bless you, and lie still and quiet," says I, "a bit longer; for my shister's afraid of ghosts and would die on the spot with fright, was she to see you come to life all on a sudden this way without the least preparation." So he lays him still, though well-nigh stifled, and I made all haste to tell the secret of the joke, whispering to one and t'other, and there was a great surprise, but not so great as we had laid out it would. "And aren't we to have the pipes and tobacco, after coming so far to-night?" said some; but they were all well enough pleased when his Honor got up to drink with them, and sent for more spirits from a shebean-house, where they very civilly let him have it upon credit. So the night passed off very merrily, but to my mind Sir Condy was rather upon the sad order in the midst of it all, not finding there had been such a great talk about himself after his death as he had always expected to hear.
SIR MURTAGH RACKRENT AND HIS LADY
From 'Castle Rackrent'
Now it was that the world was to see what was _in_ Sir Patrick. On coming into the estate he gave the finest entertainment ever was heard of in the country; not a man could stand after supper but Sir Patrick himself, who could sit out the best man in Ireland, let alone the three kingdoms itself. He had his house, from one year's end to another, as full of company as ever it could hold, and fuller; for rather than be left out of the parties at Castle Rackrent, many gentlemen, and those men of the first consequence and landed estates in the country,--such as the O'Neils of Ballynagrotty, and the Moneygawls of Mount Juliet's Town, and O'Shannons of New Town Tullyhog,--made it their choice often and often, when there was no moon to be had for love nor money, in long winter nights, to sleep in the chicken-house, which Sir Patrick had fitted up for the purpose of accommodating his friends and the public in general, who honored him with their company unexpectedly at Castle Rackrent; and this went on I can't tell you how long: the whole country rang with his praises--long life to him! I'm sure I love to look upon his picture, now opposite to me; though I never saw him, he must have been a portly gentleman--his neck something short, and remarkable for the largest pimple on his nose, which by his particular desire is still extant in his picture, said to be a striking likeness though taken when young. He is said also to be the inventor of raspberry whisky; which is very likely, as nobody has ever appeared to dispute it with him, and as there still exists a broken punch-bowl at Castle Rackrent in the garret, with an inscription to that effect--a great curiosity. A few days before his death he was very merry; it being his Honor's birthday, he called my grandfather in, God bless him! to drink the company's health, and filled a bumper himself, but could not carry it to his head on account of the great shake in his hand; on this he cast his joke, saying:--"What would my poor father say to me if he was to pop out of the grave and see me now? I remember when I was a little boy, the first bumper of claret he gave me after dinner, how he praised me for carrying it so steady to my mouth. Here's my thanks to him--a bumper toast." Then he fell to singing the favorite song he learned from his father for the last time, poor gentleman; he sung it that night as loud and as hearty as ever, with a chorus:--
"He that goes to bed, and goes to bed sober, Falls as the leaves do, Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October; But he that goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow, Lives as he ought to do. Lives as he ought to do, and dies an honest fellow."
Sir Patrick died that night: just as the company rose to drink his health with three cheers, he fell down in a sort of fit, and was carried off; they sat it out, and were surprised, on inquiry in the morning, to find that it was all over with poor Sir Patrick. Never did any gentleman live and die more beloved in the country by rich and poor. His funeral was such a one as was never known before or since in the county! All the gentlemen in the three counties were at it; far and near, how they flocked! My great-grandfather said that to see all the women even in their red cloaks, you would have taken them for the army drawn out. Then such a fine whillaluh! you might have heard it to the farthest end of the county, and happy the man who could get but a sight of the hearse! But who'd have thought it? just as all was going on right, through his own town they were passing, when the body was seized for debt: a rescue was apprehended from the mob, but the heir, who attended the funeral, was against that for fear of consequences, seeing that those villains who came to serve acted under the disguise of the law; so, to be sure, the law must take its course, and little gain had the creditors for their pains. First and foremost, they had the curses of the country; and Sir Murtagh Rackrent, the new heir, in the next place, on account of this affront to the body, refused to pay a shilling of the debts, in which he was countenanced by all the best gentlemen of property, and others of his acquaintance. Sir Murtagh alleging in all companies, that he all along meant to pay his father's debts of honor, but the moment the law was taken of him there was an end of honor to be sure. It was whispered (but none but the enemies of the family believed it) that this was all a sham seizure to get quit of the debts, which he had bound himself to pay in honor.
It's a long time ago, there's no saying how it was, but this for certain: the new man did not take at all after the old gentleman; the cellars were never filled after his death, and no open house or anything as it used to be; the tenants even were sent away without their whisky. I was ashamed myself, and knew not what to say for the honor of the family; but I made the best of a bad case, and laid it all at my lady's door, for I did not like her anyhow, nor anybody else; she was of the family of the Skinflints, and a widow; it was a strange match for Sir Murtagh; the people in the country thought he demeaned himself greatly, but I said nothing: I knew how it was; Sir Murtagh was a great lawyer, and looked to the great Skinflint estate; there however he overshot himself; for though one of the co-heiresses, he was never the better for her, for she outlived him many's the long day--he could not see that, to be sure, when he married her. I must say for her, she made him the best of wives, being a very notable stirring woman, and looking close to everything. But I always suspected she had Scotch blood in her veins; anything else I could have looked over in her from a regard to the family. She was a strict observer for self and servants of Lent, and all fast days, but not holy days. One of the maids having fainted three time the last day of Lent, to keep soul and body together we put a morsel of roast beef in her mouth, which came from Sir Murtagh's dinner,--who never fasted, not he; but somehow or other it unfortunately reached my lady's ears, and the priest of the parish had a complaint made of it the next day, and the poor girl was forced as soon as she could walk to do penance for it, before she could get any peace or absolution, in the house or out of it. However, my lady was very charitable in her own way. She had a charity school for poor children, where they were taught to read and write gratis, and where they were kept well to spinning gratis for my lady in return; for she had always heaps of duty yarn from the tenants, and got all her household linen out of the estate from first to last; for after the spinning, the weavers on the estate took it in hand for nothing, because of the looms my lady's interest could get from the linen board to distribute gratis. Then there was a bleach-yard near us, and the tenant dare refuse my lady nothing, for fear of a law suit Sir Murtagh kept hanging over him about the water-course.
With these ways of managing, 'tis surprising how cheap my lady got things done, and how proud she was of it. Her table, the same way, kept for next to nothing,--duty fowls, and duty turkeys, and duty geese came as fast as we could eat 'em, for my lady kept a sharp lookout, and knew to a tub of butter everything the tenants had, all round. They knew her way, and what with fear of driving for rent and Sir Murtagh's lawsuits, they were kept in such good order, they never thought of coming near Castle Rackrent without a present of something or other--nothing too much or too little for my lady: eggs, honey, butter, meal, fish, game, grouse, and herrings, fresh or salt, all went for something. As for their young pigs, we had them, and the best bacon and hams they could make up, with all young chickens in spring; but they were a set of poor wretches, and we had nothing but misfortunes with them, always breaking and running away. This, Sir Murtagh and my lady said, was all their former landlord Sir Patrick's fault, who let 'em all get the half-year's rent into arrear; there was something in that, to be sure. But Sir Murtagh was as much the contrary way; for let alone making English tenants of them, every soul, he was always driving and driving and pounding and pounding, and canting and canting and replevying and replevying, and he made a good living of trespassing cattle; there was always some tenant's pig, or horse, or cow, or calf, or goose trespassing, which was so great a gain to Sir Murtagh that he did not like to hear me talk of repairing fences. Then his heriots and duty work brought him in something; his turf was cut, his potatoes set and dug, his hay brought home, and in short, all the work about his house done for nothing; for in all our leases there were strict clauses heavy with penalties, which Sir Murtagh knew well how to enforce: so many days' duty work of man and horse from every tenant he was to have, and had, every year; and when a man vexed him, why, the finest day he could pitch on, when the cratur was getting in his own harvest, or thatching his cabin, Sir Murtagh made it a principle to call upon him and his horse; so he taught 'em all, as he said, to know the law of landlord and tenant.
As for law, I believe no man, dead or alive, ever loved it so well as Sir Murtagh. He had once sixteen suits pending at a time, and I never saw him so much himself; roads, lanes, bogs, wells, ponds, eel weirs, orchards, trees, tithes, vagrants, gravel pits, sand pits, dung-hills, and nuisances,--everything upon the face of the earth furnished him good matter for a suit. He used to boast that he had a law suit for every letter in the alphabet. How I used to wonder to see Sir Murtagh in the midst of the papers in his office! Why, he could hardly turn about for them. I made bold to shrug my shoulders once in his presence, and thank my stars I was not born a gentleman to so much toil and trouble; but Sir Murtagh took me up short with his old proverb, "Learning is better than house or land." Out of forty-nine suits which he had, he never lost one but seventeen; the rest he gained with costs, double costs, treble costs sometimes; but even that did not pay. He was a very learned man in the law, and had the character of it; but how it was I can't tell, these suits that he carried cost him a power of money: in the end he sold some hundreds a year of the family estate: but he was a very learned man in the law, and I know nothing of the matter, except having a great regard for the family; and I could not help grieving when he sent me to post up notices of the sale of the fee-simple of the lands and appurtenances of Timoleague. "I know, honest Thady," says he to comfort me, "what I'm about better than you do; I'm only selling to get the ready money wanting to carry on my suit with spirit with the Nugents of Carrickashaughlin."
He was very sanguine about that suit with the Nugents of Carrickashaughlin. He could have gained it, they say, for certain, had it pleased Heaven to have spared him to us, and it would have been at the least a plump two thousand a year in his way; but things were ordered otherwise,--for the best, to be sure. He dug up a fairy mount against my advice, and had no luck afterward. Though a learned man in the law, he was a little too incredulous in other matters. I warned him that I heard the very Banshee that my grandfather heard under Sir Patrick's window a few days before his death. But Sir Murtagh thought nothing of the Banshee, nor of his cough with a spitting of blood,--brought on, I understand, by catching cold in attending the courts, and overstraining his chest with making himself heard in one of his favorite causes. He was a great speaker, with a powerful voice; but his last speech was not in the courts at all. He and my lady, though both of the same way of thinking in some things, and though she was as good a wife and great economist as you could see, and he the best of husbands as to looking into his affairs, and making money for his family,--yet I don't know how it was, they had a great deal of sparring and jarring between them. My lady had her privy purse, and she had her weed ashes, and her sealing money upon the signing of all the leases, with something to buy gloves besides; and besides, again, often took money from the tenants, if offered properly, to speak for them to Sir Murtagh about abatements and renewals. Now the weed ashes and the glove money he allowed her clear perquisites; though once when he saw her in a new gown saved out of the weed ashes, he told her to my face (for he could say a sharp thing) that she should not put on her weeds before her husband's death. But in a dispute about an abatement, my lady would have the last word, and Sir Murtagh grew mad; I was within hearing of the door, and now I wish I had made bold to step in. He spoke so loud the whole kitchen was out on the stairs. All on a sudden he stopped, and my lady too. Something has surely happened, thought I--and so it was, for Sir Murtagh in his passion broke a blood-vessel, and all the law in the land could do nothing in that case. My lady sent for five physicians, but Sir Murtagh died, and was buried. She had a fine jointure settled upon her, and took herself away, to the great joy of the tenantry. I never said anything one way or the other, while she was part of the family, but got up to see her go at three o'clock in the morning. "It's a fine morning, honest Thady," says she; "good-by to ye," and into the carriage she stepped, without a word more, good or bad, or even half a crown; but I made my bow, and stood to see her safe out of sight, for the sake of the family.
ANNE CHARLOTTE LEFFLER EDGREN
(1849-1892)
Anne Charlotte Leffler Edgren, afterwards Duchess of Cajanello, was born in Stockholm, October 1st, 1849. She was the most prominent among contemporary women writers of Sweden, and won for herself an eminent position in the world of letters, not only for the truthfulness of her delineation of life, but for the brilliancy of her style and her skill in using her material. The circumstances of her early life were comfortable and commonplace. She was the only daughter of a Swedish rector, and from her mother, also the daughter of a clergyman, she inherited her literary tendencies. From her parents and her three devoted brothers she received every encouragement, but with wise foresight they restrained her desire to publish her early writings; and it was not until her talent was fully developed that her first book, a collection of stories entitled 'Haendelsvis' (By Chance), appeared in 1869, under the pseudonym of "Carlot." In 1872 she was married to Gustav Edgren, secretary of the prefecture in Stockholm; and though fitting and harmonious, this marriage was undoubtedly one of convenience, brought about by the altered circumstances of her life.
In 1873 she published the drama 'Skadespelerskan' (The Actress), which held the stage in Stockholm for an entire winter, and this was followed by 'Pastorsadjunkten' (The Curate), 1876, and 'Elfvan' (The Elf), 1880, the latter being even more than usually successful. Her equipment as a dramatist was surprisingly slender, as until the time of her engagement to Mr. Edgren she had never visited the theatre, and necessarily was absolutely ignorant of the technique of the stage. Nevertheless, her natural dramatic instincts supplied the defects of a lack of training, and her plays met with almost universal success. The theme of all her dramas, under various guises, is the same,--the struggle of a woman's individuality with the conventional environment of her life. Mrs. Edgren herself laments that she was born a woman, when nature had so evidently intended her for a man.
Her first work to be published under her own name was in 1882,--a collection of tales entitled 'Ur Lifvet' (From Life), which were received with especial applause. Her works were translated into Danish, Russian, and German, and she now became widely known as one of the most talented of Swedish writers. In 1883 appeared a second volume of 'From Life'; and still later, in 1889, yet another under the same title. These later stories betrayed a boldness of thought and expression not before evinced, and placed the author in the ranks of the radicals. The drama 'Sanna Kvinnor' (Ideal Women) appeared in 1883; 'Huru Man Goer Godt' (How We do Good) in 1885; and in 1888, in collaboration with Sonya Kovalevsky, 'Kampen foer Lyckan' (The Struggle for Happiness).
In company with her brother, Professor Mittag-Leffler, she attended a Mathematical Congress in Algiers, in the early part of the year 1888; and upon the return journey through Italy she made the acquaintance of Signor Pasquale del Pezzo, subsequently Duke of Cajanello, a mathematician and friend of her brother, and professor in the University of Naples. Mrs. Edgren was married to the Duke of Cajanello in 1890, after the dissolution of her marriage with Mr. Edgren. After this event she published a romance which attracted a great deal of attention, called 'Kvinlighet och Erotik' (Womanliness and Erotics), 1890, and among others the drama 'Familjelycka' (Domestic Happiness), and 'En Raeddende Engel' (A Rescuing Angel), with which last she achieved her greatest dramatic success. Her last work was a biography of her intimate friend Sonya Kovalevsky. While in the midst of her literary labors, and in the fullness of her powers, she died suddenly at Naples, October 21st, 1893.
The subjects of her writings are the deepest questions of life. Her special theme is the relation between men and women, and in her studies of the question she has given to the world a series of types of wonderful vividness and accuracy. The life that she knows best is the social life of the upper classes; and in all her work, but
## particularly in her dramas, she treats its problems with a masculine
vigor and strength. Realism sometimes overshadows poetry, but the faithfulness of her work is beyond question.
OPEN SESAME
"It was once upon a time"--so the fairy stories begin.
At that particular time there was a government clerk, not precisely young, and a little moth-eaten in appearance, who was on his way home from the office the day after his wedding.
On the wedding day itself he had also sat in the office and written until three o'clock. After this he had gone out, and as usual eaten his frugal midday meal at an unpretending restaurant in a narrow street, and then had gone home to his upper chamber in an old house in the Oesterlanggata, in order to get his somewhat worn dress coat, which had done good and faithful service for twelve years. He had speculated a good deal about buying a new coat for his wedding day, but had at last arrived at the conclusion that, all in all, it would be a superfluous luxury.
The bride was a telegraph operator, somewhat weakly, and nervous from labor and want, and of rather an unattractive exterior. The wedding took place in all quietness at the house of the bride's old unmarried aunt, who lived in Soeder. The bride had on a black-silk dress, and the newly married pair drove home in a droschke.
So the wedding day had passed, but now it was the day after. From ten o'clock on he had sat in his office, just as on all other days. Now he was on the way home--his own home!
That was a strange feeling; indeed, it was such an overpowering feeling that he stood still many times on the way and fell into a brown study.
A memory of childhood came into his mind.
He saw himself as a little boy, sitting at his father's desk in the little parsonage, reading fairy tales. How many times had he read, again and again, his favorite story out of the Arabian Nights of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves!' How his heart had beaten in longing suspense, when he stood with the hero of the story outside the closed door of the mountain and called, first gently and a little anxiously, afterwards loudly and boldly: "Sesame, Sesame! Open Sesame!"
And when the mountain opened its door, what splendor! The poor room of the parsonage was transformed into the rich treasure chamber of the mountain, and round about on the walls gleamed the most splendid jewels. There were, besides horses and carriages, beautifully rigged ships, weapons, armor--all the best that a child's fantasy could dream. His old father looked in astonishment at his youngest child, it was so long since he himself had been a child, and all the others were already grown up. He did not understand him, but asked him half reprovingly what he was thinking about, that his eyes glistened so.
Thus he also came to think about his youth, about his student years at Upsala. He was a poet, a singer; he had the name of being greatly gifted, and stood high in his comrades' estimation. What if any one had told him at that time that he should end as a petty government clerk, be married to a telegraph operator, and live in the Repslagaregata in Soeder! Bah! Life had a thousand possibilities. The future's perspective was illimitable. Nothing was impossible. No honor was so great that he could not attain it; no woman so beautiful that he could not win her. What did it signify that he was poor, that he was only named Andersson, and that he was the eighth child of a poor parson, who himself was peasant-born? Had not most of the nation's gifted men sprung from the ranks of the people? Yes, his endowments, they were the magic charm, the "Open Sesame!" which were to admit him to all the splendors of life.
As to how things, later on, had gone with him, he did not allow himself to think. Either his endowments had not been as great as he had believed, or the difficulties of living had stifled them, or fortune had not been with him: enough, it had happened to him as to Ali Baba's wicked brother Casim, who stood inside the mountain only to find out to his horror that he had forgotten the magic charm, and in the anguish of death beat about in his memory to recall it. That was a cruel time--but it was not worth while now to think about it longer.
Rapidly one thought followed upon another in his mind. Now he came to think upon the crown princess, who had made a royal entrance into the capital just at this time. He had received permission to accompany his superiors and stand in the festal pavilion when she landed. That was a glorious moment. The poet's gifts of his youth were not far from awakening again in the exaltation of the moment; and had he still been the young applauding poet of earlier days, instead of the neglected government clerk, he would probably have written a festal poem and sent it to the Post.
For it was fine to be the Princess Victoria at that moment. It was one of the occasions that life has not many of. To be nineteen years old, newly married to a young husband, loved and loving, and to make a ceremonious entry into one's future capital, which is in festal array and lies fabulously beautiful in the autumn sun, to be greeted with shouts of joy by countless masses of men, and to be so inexperienced in life that one has no presentiment of the shadows which hide themselves back of this bright picture--yes, that might indeed be an unforgettable moment; one of those that only fall to the lot of few mortals, so that they seem to belong more to the world of fable than to reality! Had the magic charm, "Open Sesame!" conjured up anything more beautiful?
And yet! yet!--The government clerk had neared his home and stood in front of his own door. No, the crown prince was surely not happier when he led his bride into his rejoicing capital, than was he at this moment. He had found again the long-lost magic charm. The little knob there on the door--that was his "Open Sesame!" He needed only to press upon it, when the mountain would again open its treasures to him--not weapons and gleaming armor as in his childhood--not honors and homage and social position as in his youth--no, something better than all these. Something that forms the kernel itself of all human happiness, upon the heights of life as well as in its most concealed hiding-places--a heart that only beat for him, his own home, where there was one who longed for him--a wife! Yes, a wife whom he loved, not with the first passion of youth, but with the tenderness and faithfulness of manhood.
He stood outside his own door; he was tired and hungry, and his wife waited for him at the midday meal; that was, to be sure, commonplace and unimportant--and yet it was so wonderfully new and attractive.
Gently, cautiously as a child who had been given a new plaything, he pressed upon the little knob on the door--and then he stood still with restrained breath and listened for the light quick step that approached.
It was just as though in his childhood he stood outside the mountain and called, first gently and half in fear, and then loudly and with a voice trembling with glad expectation, "Sesame, Sesame! Open Sesame!"
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature' by William H. Carpenter
A BALL IN HIGH LIFE
From 'A Rescuing Angel'
The counselor's wife sat down on the sofa with her hands folded in her lap. Arla remained standing a little farther away, so that the green lamp-shade left her face in shadow.
"My little girl," began her mother in a mild voice, "do not feel hurt, but I must make a few remarks on your behavior to-night. First of all, you will have to hold yourself a little straighter when you dance. This tendency to droop the head looks very badly. I noticed it especially when you danced with Captain Lagerskioeld--and do you know, it looked almost as if you were leaning your head against his shoulder."
Arla blushed; she did not know why, but this reproach hurt her deeply.
"The dancing-teacher always said that to dance well one must lean toward one's partner," she objected in a raised voice.
"If that is so, it is better not to dance so well," answered her mother seriously. "And another thing. I heard you ask Mr. Oern to excuse you. And you danced the cotillon after all."
"I suppose one has a right to dance with whom one pleases."
"One never has a right to hurt others; and besides, you said to Mr. Oern that you were tired out and not able to dance again. How could you then immediately after--"
"Captain Lagerskioeld leads so well," she said, lifting her head, and her mother saw that her eyes were shining. "To dance with him is no exertion."
Her mother seemed inclined to say something, but hesitated.
"Come a little nearer," she said. "Let me look at you."
Arla came up, knelt down on a footstool, hid her face in her mother's dress, and began to cry softly.
"I shall have to tell you, then," said her mother, smoothing her hair. "Poor child, don't give yourself up to these dreams. Captain Lagerskioeld is the kind of a man that I should have preferred never to have asked to our house. He is a man entirely without character and principles--to be frank, a bad man."
Arla raised her tear-stained face quickly.
"I know that," she said almost triumphantly. "He told me so himself."
Her mother was silent with astonishment, and Aria continued, rising, "He has never had any parents nor any home, but has always been surrounded with temptations. And," she went on in a lower voice, "he has never found any one that he could really love, and it is only through love that he can be rescued from the dark powers that have ruled his life."
She repeated almost word for word what he had said. He had expressed himself in so commonplace a way, and she was so far from suspecting what his confession really meant, that she would not have been able to clothe them in her own words. She had only a vague impression that he was unhappy and sinful--and that she should save him. Sinful was to her a mere abstract idea: everybody was full of sin, and his sin was very likely that he lived without God. He had perhaps never learned to pray, and maybe he never went to church or took the communion. She knew that there were men who never did. And then perhaps he had been engaged to Cecilia, and had broken the engagement when he saw that he did not really love her.
"And all this he has told you already!" exclaimed her mother, when she got over her first surprise. "Well then, I can also guess what he said further. Do you want me to tell you? You are the first girl he has really loved--you are to be his rescuing angel--"
Arla made a faint exclamation.
"You do not suppose I have been listening?" asked her mother. "I know it without that; men like this always speak so when they want to win an innocent girl. When I was young I had an admirer of this kind--that is not an uncommon experience."
Not uncommon! These words were not said to her only; other men had said the same before this to other young girls! Oh! but not in the same way, at any rate! thought Arla. As he had said them--with such a look--such a voice--no, nobody else could ever have done that.
"And you didn't understand that a man who can make a young girl a declaration of love the first time he sees her must be superficial and not to be trusted?" continued her mother.
"Mamma does not know what love is," thought Aria. "She does not know that it is born in a moment and lasts for life. She has of course never loved papa; then they would not be so matter-of-fact now."
"And what did you answer?" asked her mother.
Arla turned away. "I answered nothing," she said in a low voice.
The mother's troubled face grew a little brighter.
"That was right," she said, patting her on the cheek. "Then you left him at once."
Arla was on the point of saying, "Not at once," but she could not make this confession. Other questions would then follow, and she would be obliged to describe what had happened. Describe a scene like this to her mother, who did not know what love was! That was impossible! So she said yes, but in so weak and troubled a voice that her mother at once saw it was not true. This was not Arla's first untruth; on the contrary, she had often been guilty of this fault when a child. She was so shy and loving that she could not stand the smallest reproach, and a severe look was enough to make her cry; consequently she was always ready to deny as soon as she had made the slightest mistake. But when her mother took her face between her hands and looked straight into her eyes, she saw at once how matters stood, for the eyes could hide nothing. And since Arla grew older she had fought so much against this weakness that she had almost exaggerated her truthfulness. She was now as quick to confess what might bring displeasure on herself, as if she were afraid of giving temptation the slightest room.
The mother, who with deep joy had noticed her many little victories over herself, was painfully impressed by this relapse. She could not now treat Arla as she had done when she was a little girl. Instead of this, she opened the Bible by one of the many book-marks, with a somewhat trembling hand.
"Although it is late, shall we not read a chapter together, as we always do before we go to bed?" she asked, and looked up at her daughter.
Arla stepped back, and cast an almost frightened glance at the little footstool where she had been sitting at her mother's knee every evening since she was a little girl. All this seemed now so strange--it was no longer herself, it was a little younger sister, who used to sit there and confess to her mother all her dreams and all her little sorrows.
"I don't want to--I cannot read to-night."
Her mother laid the book down again, gave her daughter a mild, sad look and said, "Then remember, my child, that this was the consequence of your first ball."
Arla bent her head and left the room slowly. Her mother let her go; she found it wisest to leave her to herself until her emotion had somewhat worn itself out. Aria would not go into her own room; she dreaded Gurli's chatter; she had to be alone to get control over her thoughts. In the drawing-room she found her father.
"Is mamma in her room?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Is she alone? Are the children asleep?"
"Yes, mamma is alone."
"Well! Good-night, my girl." He kissed her lips and went into the bedroom.
Arla opened a window in the drawing-room to let out the hot air, and then began to walk up and down wrapped in a large shawl, enjoying the clear cold winter moonlight, which played over the snow and hid itself behind the trees in the park outside the window. There they were to meet to-morrow! Oh, if only he had said now, at once! If only she could slip out now in her thin gown, and he could wrap his cape around her to keep her warm--she did not remember that the men of to-day did not wear capes like Romeo--and if then they could have gone away together--far, far away from this prosaic world, where nobody understood that two hearts could meet and find each other from the first moment.
She was not left alone long; a door was opened, light steps came tripping, and a white apparition in night-gown stood in the full light of the moonbeam.
"But Arla, are you never, never coming?"
"Why, Gurli dear, why aren't you asleep long ago?"
"Eh? do you think I can sleep before I have heard something about the ball? Come in now; how cold it is here!"
She was so cold that she shivered in her thin night-gown, but clung nevertheless to her sister, who was standing by the window.
"Go; you are catching cold."
"I don't care," she said, chattering. "I am not going till you come."
Arla was, as usual, obliged to give in to the younger sister's strong will. She closed the window and they went into their room, where Gurli crept into bed again and drew the cover up to her very chin. Arla began to unfasten her dress and take the flowers out of her hair.
"Well, I suppose you had a divine time," came a voice from the bed behind chattering teeth. There was nothing to be seen out on the floor. "Then you are much more of a schoolgirl than I. Is there perhaps any man who has told you that he loves you? Is there?"
"Oh, but Gurli, what nonsense," said Arla laughing outright. "Has really one of Arvid's friends--"
"Arvid's friends!" repeated Gurli with an expression of indescribable contempt. "Do you think such little boys would dare? Ph! I would give them a box on the ear,--that would be the quickest way of getting rid of such little whipper-snappers. No indeed; it is a man, a real _man_--a man that any girl would envy me."
She was so pretty as she stood there in her white gown, with her dancing eyes and thick hair standing like a dark cloud around her rosy young face, that a light broke on Arla, and a suspicion of the truth flashed through her mind.
"It is not possible that you mean--of course you don't mean--him--that you just spoke of--Captain Lagerskioeld?"
"And what if it _were_ he!" cried Gurli, who in her triumph forgot to keep her secret. Arla's usual modest self-possession left her completely at this news.
"Captain Lagerskioeld has told you that he loves you!" she cried with a sharp and cutting voice, unlike her usual mild tone. "Oh, how wicked, how wicked!"
She hid her face in her hands and burst out crying.
Gurli was frightened at her violent outbreak. She must have done something awful, that Arla, who was always so quiet, should carry on so. She crept close up to her sister, half ashamed and half frightened, and whispered:--"He has only said it once. It was the day before yesterday, and I ran away from him at once--I thought it was so silly, and--"
"Day before yesterday!" cried Arla and looked up with frightened, wondering eyes. "Day before yesterday he told you that he loved you?"
"Yes; if only you will not be so awfully put out, I will tell you all about it. He used to come up to the coasting-hill a great deal lately, and then we walked up and down in the park and talked, and when I wanted to coast he helped me get a start, and drew my sleigh up-hill again. At first I did not notice him much, but then I saw he was very nice--he would look at me sometimes for a long, long time--and you can't imagine how he does look at one! And then day before yesterday he began by of Gurli but a pair of impatient dark eyes, under a wilderness of brown hair.
Arla was sitting at the toilet-table, her back to her sister.
"Oh yes," she said.
"I see on your card that you danced two dances with Captain Lagerskioeld. I suppose he dances awfully well, eh?"
"Do you know him?" asked Arla, and turned on the chair.
"Oh yes, I do. Didn't he ask for me?"
"Yes, now I remember. He said he had seen you with the children on the coasting-hill. You must have been a little rude to him?"
The whole head came out above the cover now.
"Rude! how?"
"He said something about your being so pert."
"Pert? Oh, _what_ a fib you do tell!" cried Gurli, and sat up in bed with a jump.
"I don't usually tell stories," said Arla with wounded dignity, but blushed at the same time.
"Oh yes, you do now, I am sure you do. I don't believe you, if you don't tell me word for word what he said. Who began talking of me? And what did he say? And what did you say?"
"You had better tell me why you are so much interested in him," said Arla in the somewhat superior tone of the elder sister.
"That is none of your business. I will tell you that I am no longer a little girl, as you seem to think. And even though I am treated like a child here at home, there are others who--who--"
"Are you not a child?" said Arla. "You are not confirmed yet."
"Oh, is that it? That 'confirmation' is only a ceremony, which I submit to for mamma's sake. And don't imagine that it is confirmation which makes women of us; no indeed, it is something else."
"What then?" asked Arla, much surprised.
"It is--it is--love," burst out Gurli, and hid her head under the covers.
"Love! But Gurli, how you do talk! What do you know about that? You, a little schoolgirl!"
"Don't say 'little schoolgirl'--that makes me furious," cried Gurli, as she pushed the cover aside with both hands and jumped saying that I had such pretty eyes--and then he said that such a happy little sunbeam as I could light up his whole life, and that if he could not meet me, he would not know what to do--"
"Gurli!" cried Arla, and grasped her sister's arm violently. "Do you love him?"
Gurli let her eyes wander a little, and looked shy.
"I think I do--I have read in the novels Arvid borrowed in school--only don't tell mamma anything about it; but I have read that when you are in love you always have such an awful palpitation of the heart when _he_ comes--and when I merely catch sight of him far off on the hill in Kommandoersgatan, I felt as if I should strangle."
"Captain Lagerskioeld is a bad, bad man!" sobbed Arla, and rushed out of the room, hiding her face in her hands.
The counselor's wife was still up and was reading, while her husband had gone to bed. A tall screen standing at the foot of the bed kept the light away from the sleeper. The counselor had just had a talk with his wife, which most likely would keep her awake for the greater part of the night; but he had fallen asleep as soon as he had spoken to the point.
"You must forgive me that I cannot quite approve your way of fulfilling your duties as hostess," he had said when he came in to her.
His wife crossed her hands on the table and looked up at him with a mild and patient face.
"You show your likes and dislikes too much," he continued, "and think too little of the claims of social usage. For instance, to pay so much attention to Mrs. Ekstroem and her daughters--"
"It was because nobody else paid any attention to them."
"But even so, my dear, a drawing-room is not a charity institution, I take it. Etiquette goes before everything else. And then you were almost rude to Admiral Hornfeldt's wife, who is one of the first women in society."
"Forgive me; but I cannot be cordial to a woman for whom I have no respect."
The counselor shrugged his shoulders with a gesture of great impatience.
"I wish you could learn to see how wrong it is to let yourself be influenced by these moral views in society."
His wife was silent; it was her usual way of ending a conversation which she knew could lead to no result, since each kept his own opinion after all.
"Did you notice Arla?" asked the counselor.
"Yes. Why?"
"Did you not see that she made herself conspicuous by taking such an interest in this outlived Lagerskioeld?"
"I asked you not to invite Captain Lagerskioeld," said his wife mildly.
"The trouble is not there," interrupted her husband; "but the trouble is that your daughter is brought up to be a goose who understands nothing. That is the result of your convent system. Girls so guarded are always ready to fall into the arms of the first man who knows somewhat how to impress them."
This was the counselor's last remark before he fell asleep. It awakened a feeling of great bitterness and hopelessness in his wife. Her heart felt heavy at the thought of all the frivolity, all the impurity into which her girls were to be thrown one after another. When Arla, in whose earnestness and purity of character she had so great a confidence, had shown herself so little proof against temptation, what then would become of Gurli, who had such dangerous tendencies? And the two little ones who were now sleeping soundly in the nursery?
"To what use is then all the striving and all the prayers?" she asked herself. "What good then does it do to try to protect the children from evil, if just this makes them more of a prey to temptation?"
She laid her arms on the table and rested her forehead on her hands. The awful question "What is the use of it? what is the use of it?" lay heavy upon her.
Then there came a soft knock at her door; it was opened a little, and a timid voice whispered, "Is mamma alone? May I come in?"
A ray of happiness came into the mother's face.
"Come in, my child," she whispered, and stretched out her hands toward her. "Papa sleeps so soundly, you need not be afraid of waking him."
Arla came in on tiptoe, dressed in white gown and dressing-sack and with her hair loose. There were red spots on her cheeks, and her eyes were swollen from crying. She knelt down gently beside her mother, hid her face in her mother's dress, and whispered in a voice trembling with suppressed tears, "Will you read to me now, mamma?"
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature' by Olga Flinch
JONATHAN EDWARDS
(1703-1758)
BY EGBERT C. SMYTH
[Illustration: JONATHAN EDWARDS]
Probably for most persons the influence of Edwards will longest survive through his wonderful personality. "From the days of Plato," says a writer in the Westminster Review, "there has been no life of more simple and imposing grandeur." There are four memoirs. The earliest is from Samuel Hopkins, D.D., a pupil and intimate friend. It "has the quaint charm of Walton's Lives." The second, by Sereno Edwards Dwight, D. D., is much more complete. He first brought to light the remarkable early papers on topics in physics, natural history, and philosophy. Dr. Samuel Miller's, in Sparks's 'Library of American Biography,' is mainly a brief compend. The latest Life is by Professor Alexander V. E. Allen, D. D. It endeavors to show "what he [Edwards] thought, and how he came to think as he did," and is an interesting and important contribution to a critical study of his works. There is still need of an adequate biography, which can only be written in connection with a thorough study of the manuscripts. A more full and critical edition of Edwards's writings is also much to be desired.
Edwards's first publication (1731) was a sermon preached in Boston on 'God Glorified in Man's Dependence.' The conditions under which it was produced afford striking contrasts to those attendant upon Schleiermacher's epoch-making 'Reden ueber Religion'; but the same note of absolute dependence upon God is struck by each with masterly power. A yet more characteristic and deeply spiritual utterance was given in the next published discourse, entitled 'A Divine and Supernatural Light Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shown to be both a Scriptural and Rational Doctrine' (1734). These two sermons are of primary significance for a right understanding of their author's teaching. All is of God; faith is sensibleness of what is real in the work of redemption; this reality is divinely and transcendently excellent; this quality of it is revealed to the soul by the Holy Spirit, and becomes the spring of all holiness. "The central idea of his system," says Henry B. Smith, "is that of spiritual life (holy love) as the gift of divine grace." All of Edwards's other writings may be arranged in relation to this principle,--as introductory, explicative, or defensive.
When the sermon on the 'Reality of Spiritual Light' was delivered, the movement had begun which, as afterwards extended from Northampton to many communities in New England and beyond, is known as "The Great Awakening." The preaching of Edwards was a prominent instrumentality in its origination, and he became its most effective promoter and champion, and no less its watchful observer and critic. Among the published (1738) sermons which it occasioned should be specially mentioned those on 'Justification by Faith Alone,' 'The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners,' 'The Excellency of Jesus Christ,' 'The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, applied to that uncommon operation that has lately appeared on the minds of many of the people of New England: with a particular consideration of the extraordinary circumstances with which this work is attended' (1741). The same year (1741) appeared the sermon on 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.' Some five years previous, moved by the notice taken in London by Dr. Watts and Dr. Guise of the religious revival in Northampton and several other towns, and by a special request from Rev. Dr. Colman of Boston, Edwards prepared a careful 'Narrative,' which, with a preface by the English clergymen just named, was published in London in 1737, and the year following in Boston. The sermon on the 'Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the True Spirit of God' was followed by the treatise entitled 'Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion, and the way in which it ought to be acknowledged and promoted' (1742); and four years later, by the elaborate work on 'Religious Affections.' The latter sums up all that Edwards had learned, through his participation in the movement whose beginnings and early stages are described in the 'Narrative,' and by his long-continued and most earnest endeavor to determine the true hopes of the spiritual life which had enlisted and well-nigh absorbed all the powers of his mind and soul. It is a religious classic of the highest order, yet, like the 'De Imitatione Christi,' suited only to those who can read it with independent insight. They who can thus use it will find it inexhaustible in its strenuous discipline and spiritual richness, light, and sweetness. Its chief defect lies in its failure to discover and unfold the true relation between the natural and the spiritual, and to recognize the stages of Christian growth, the genuineness and value of what is still "imperfect Christianity."
The "revival," with the endeavor to discover and apply the tests of a true Christian life, brought into prominence as a practical issue the old question of the proper requirements for church membership. The common practice failed to emphasize the necessity of spiritual regeneration and conversion, as upheld by Edwards and his followers. The controversy became acute at Northampton, and combined with other issues, resulted in his dismissal from his pastorate. His meek yet lofty bearing during this season of partisan strife and bitter animosity has commanded general admiration. Before he closed the contest he published two works which, in the Congregational churches, settled the question at issue in accordance with his principles--viz., 'An Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God concerning the Qualifications requisite to a Complete Standing and Full Communion in the Visible Christian Church,' and 'Misrepresentations Corrected and Truth Vindicated in a Reply to the Rev. Solomon Williams's Book,' etc.
The reply to Williams was written and published after Edwards's removal to Stockbridge. The period of his residence there (1751-1758, January) was far from tranquil. His conscientious resistance to schemes of pecuniary profit in the management of the Indian Mission there, brought upon him bitter opposition. For six months he was severely ill. In the French and Indian war a frontier town like Stockbridge was peculiarly exposed to alarm and danger. Yet at this time Edwards prepared the treatises on the 'Freedom of the Will,' the 'Ultimate End of Creation,' the 'Nature of Virtue,' and 'Original Sin.' The first was published in 1754, the others after his death (1758), as were many of his sermons, the 'History of Redemption,' and extracts from his note-book ('Miscellaneous Observations,' 'Miscellaneous Remarks'). Early in 1758, having accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey, he removed to Princeton, where he died March 22d.
That with enfeebled health, and under the conditions of his life at Stockbridge, he should have prepared such works as those just enumerated, is a striking evidence of his intellectual discipline and power. It would probably have been impossible even for him, but for the practice he had observed from youth of committing his thoughts to writing, and their concentration on the subjects handled in these treatises. A careful study of his manuscript notes would probably be of service for new and critical editions, and would seem to be especially appropriate, since only the work on the 'Freedom of the Will' was published by its author.
It is impossible in the space of this sketch to analyze these elaborate treatises, or to attempt a critical estimate of their value. Foregoing this endeavor, I will simply add a few suggestions occasioned principally by some recent studies, either of the originals or copies of unpublished manuscripts.
Edwards's published works consist of compositions prepared with reference to some immediate practical aim. When called to Princeton he hesitated to accept, lest he should be interrupted in the preparation of "a body of divinity in an entire new method, being thrown into the form of a history." It was on his "mind and heart," "long ago begun," "a great work." The beginnings of it are preserved in the 'History of Redemption' posthumously published, but this was written as early as 1739, as a series of sermons, and without thought of publication. The volume of miscellanies, also published after his death, are extracts from his note-book, arranged by the editor. Nowhere has Edwards himself given a systematic exposition of his conception of Christianity. The incompleteness of even the fullest edition of his works increases the liability of misconstruction. It would not be suspected, for instance, to what extent his mind dealt with the conception of God as triune, or with the Incarnation.
His published works show on their face his relation to the religious questions uppermost in men's minds during his lifetime. "He that would know," writes Mr. Bancroft, "the workings of the New England mind in the middle of the last century and the throbbings of its heart, must give his days and nights to the study of Jonathan Edwards." And Professor Allen justly adds, "He that would understand ... the significance of later New England thought, must make Edwards the first object of his study." Besides these high claims to attention, one more may be made. The greatness of Edwards's character implies a contact of his mind with permanent and the highest truth--a profound knowledge and consciousness of God. Human and therefore imperfect, colored by inherited prepossessions, and run into some perishable molds, his thought is pervaded by a spiritual insight which has an original and undying worth. It is not unlikely that the future will assign him a higher rank than the past.
In one of the earliest, if not the first of his private philosophical papers, the essay entitled 'Of Being,' may be found the key to his fundamental conceptions. An exposition of his system, wrought out from this point of view, will show that he has a secure and eminent position among those who have contributed to that spiritual apprehension of nature and man, of matter and mind, of the universe and God, which has ever marked the thinking and influence of the finest spirits and highest teachers of our race.
Edwards was born October 5th, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut. He was the son of Rev. Timothy and Esther Stoddard Edwards; was graduated at Yale College in 1720; studied theology at New Haven; from August 1722 to March 1723 preached in New York; from 1724 to 1726 was a tutor at Yale; on the 15th of February, 1727, was ordained at Northampton, Massachusetts; in 1750 was dismissed from the church there, and in 1751 removed to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He was called to Princeton in 1757, and died there March 22d, 1758.
[Illustration: Signature of Egbert C. Smyth.]
FROM NARRATIVE OF HIS RELIGIOUS HISTORY
From about that time I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him. An inward sweet sense of these things at times came into my heart, and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in him....
Not long after I first began to experience these things, I gave an account to my father of some things that had passed in my mind. I was pretty much affected by the discourse we had together; and when the discourse was ended I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father's pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there and looking upon the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God as I know not how to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction; majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet, and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness.
After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered; there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and stars, in the clouds and blue sky, in the grass, flowers, trees, in the water and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time, and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things; in the meantime singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce anything among all the works of nature was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunder-storm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, if I may so speak, at the first appearance of a thunder-storm; and used to take the opportunity at such times to fix myself in order to view the clouds and see the lightnings play and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder, which oftentimes was exceedingly entertaining, leading me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God. While thus engaged it always seemed natural for me to sing or chant forth my meditations, or to speak my thoughts in soliloquies with a singing voice.
My sense of divine things seemed gradually to increase, till I went to preach at New York, which was about a year and a half after they began; and while I was there I felt them very sensibly, in a much higher degree than I had done before. My longings after God and holiness were much increased. . . .
Holiness, as I then wrote down some of my contemplations on it, appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, charming, serene, calm nature, which brought an inexpressible purity, brightness, peacefulness, and ravishment to the soul. In other words, that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant flowers; enjoying a sweet calm and the gently vivifying beams of the sun. The soul of a true Christian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing as it were in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly in the midst of other flowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms, to drink in the light of the sun. There was no part of creature-holiness, that I had so great a sense of its loveliness, as humility, brokenness of heart, and poverty of spirit; and there was nothing that I so earnestly longed for. My heart panted after this--to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be All; that I might become as a little child.
RESOLUTIONS
"Resolved, Never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God; nor be nor suffer it, if I can possibly avoid it."
"Resolved, To live with all my might while I do live."
"Resolved, When I think of any theorem in divinity to be solved, immediately to do what I can towards solving it, if circumstances do not hinder."
"Resolved, To endeavor to my utmost to deny whatever is not most agreeable to a good and universally sweet and benevolent, quiet, peaceable, contented and easy, compassionate and generous, humble and meek, submissive and obliging, diligent and industrious, charitable and even, patient, moderate, forgiving and sincere temper; and to do at all times what such a temper would lead me to; and to examine strictly, at the end of every week, whether I have so done."
"On the supposition that there was never to be but one individual in the world, at any one time, who was properly a complete Christian, in all respects of a right stamp, having Christianity always shining in its true lustre, and appearing excellent and lovely, from whatever part and under whatever character viewed: Resolved, To act just as I would do, if I strive with all my might to be that one, who should live in my time."
"I observe that old men seldom have any advantage of new discoveries, because they are beside the way of thinking to which they have been so long used: Resolved, If ever I live to years, that I will be impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and receive them if rational, how long soever I have been used to another way of thinking. My time is so short that I have not time to perfect, myself in all studies: Wherefore resolved, to omit and put off all but the most important and needful studies."
WRITTEN ON A BLANK LEAF IN 1723
They say there is a young lady [in New Haven] who is beloved of that Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on him--that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight forever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness, and universal benevolence of mind; especially after this great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her.
THE IDEA OF NOTHING
From 'Of Being'
A state of absolute nothing is a state of absolute contradiction. Absolute nothing is the aggregate of all the absurd contradictions in the world; a state wherein there is neither body nor spirit, nor space, neither empty space nor full space, neither little nor great, narrow nor broad, neither infinitely great space nor finite space, nor a mathematical point, neither up nor down, neither north nor south (I do not mean as it is with respect to the body of the earth or some other great body, but no contrary point nor positions or directions), no such thing as either here or there, this way or that way, or only one way. When we go about to form an idea of perfect nothing we must shut out all these things; we must shut out of our minds both space that has something in it, and space that has nothing in it. We must not allow ourselves to think of the least part of space, never so small. Nor must we suffer our thoughts to take sanctuary in a mathematical point. When we go to expel body out of our thoughts, we must cease not to leave empty space in the room of it; and when we go to expel emptiness from our thoughts, we must not think to squeeze it out by anything close, hard, and solid, but we must think of the same that the sleeping rocks dream of; and not till then shall we get a complete idea of nothing.
THE NOTION OF ACTION AND AGENCY ENTERTAINED BY MR. CHUBB AND OTHERS
From the 'Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will,'