Part 3

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote the great master as a note, ‘this legend teacheth a lesson which may peradventure not be unto all quite so plain as a fly in a milk-pan, or the sun at noon-day, _oculis subjecta fidelibus_, or “before our werry eyes,” as the elder Weller hath it, or as intelligible as one-third of the sermon of Arlotto was to himself--_che n’intese lui_--for which reason, O refined reader, I will explain it to thee! The ancient godkin whom I did interview represents the practical wisdom of life as based on a narrow materialism which sees in all things only atoms and chance, and believes that nature does but carry out things to a certain extent when they fail, or roll the stone up a hill, whence it comes tumbling back on Sisyphus. Therefore his worshippers found in life only contradictions--and paradoxes without end. Now it is true that these abound in life, and are the soul of humour and of poetry, and exist from laughter up to sublimity in everything material--yet is this crude materialism far away different from that Evolution which I afterwards learned, which goes deeper than atoms, and believes in infinite progress from stage to stage, in ideals, and the ever-advancing power of volitional consciousness or human will. In the course of progress through the ages, paradoxes disappear, or else are succeeded by high and nobler and purer forms of the complex and contradictory.’

FLAXIUS AND ROOSEVELDT

‘When Julius Cæsar gave the deputies From Gaul their rights and treated them as men, All Rome roared out in rage, because in Rome All foreigners were held as vile and low: And thus it was that Cæsar showed himself Most perfectly the bravest of mankind, And fittest man of all to rule the state.’

_Comment by Miss Winifrede Orr, on the following chapter._

‘And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying: This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.’--_St. Luke_, xv. 2.

THE wise and great Flaxius in his steps from century to century did much to endear himself to the men of the present, who take a pride in their northern ancestry. For when no elegant Roman scholar would have given a rusty denarius to know what was going on in the whole world, north of Italy, our sage made himself intimate with Odin and Thor, not to mention the God Frey (whose name is yet borne by descendants of the old stock), had been favoured by Freya, had read the first edition of the Edda scraped in runes on birch-bark, had suggested emendations in it, and so on. He was a great friend of Olaf Tryggvason, whose true history, and it is a marvellous one, yet remains to be written. And here-and-thereing about, it happened that he came into the Netherlands, where he made acquaintance with King Gambrinus the inventor of beer. But, in fact, it was Flaxius who, having in India learned from Vishnu the art of brewing _Soma_, which is now generally agreed to have been India pale ale, taught him the secret. And not to digress, I would here note that Bass has his name from Bassaro, a place in Lydia, where Bacchus had a temple, which name is supposed to be derived from the Hebrew _Bassar_, to gather in a vintage, because in those days beer was regarded as a sort of wine, an idea still preserved by German poets, who call it barley-wine. As for ale, Flaxius affirms that it is found in the marvellous myth of Ale-sia, a city of Sicily, where there was a fountain, which foamed up joyously at the sound of music, so that the froth ran over the brim, just as Lager is believed to foam in the glass when students sing. For which the reader may consult Pliny (_lib._ 3), and Solinus. As for the Lager, I have witnessed that miracle myself--and hope to see it again. And it is also true, as it is lovely, that the beautiful, clear Pilsener beer, as well as that of Vienna, will leap up in joyous bubbles when it hears an orchestra play, as ye may see for yourselves, according to Puttuli, if you chance to be present when it occurs! And it is for this reason that the Cup of the Winds, which is before me as I write, a goblet of the tenth century, carved from wood, and undoubtedly a Lombard beer-cup, has on it the four Modes in music, each represented by a female figure playing on a musical instrument, and all their skirts blowing in a high wind, to signify _aria_ or melody, which is a pun in wood, even as the Catholic Church is one in stone. _Ergo bibamus!_

And while thus up-and-downing in the North, Flaxius came to Holland, which had at that time been but recently taken by the Dutch. Now at this particular period, or P. P., as a friend of mine used to denote the great dates in the margin of his history, the Netherlands were under the dominion of Siegfried the Dragon-killer (as you may learn from Wagner’s opera), who had for a wife eventually the fair Chriemhilde, so sweetly described in the _Book of Heroes_:

‘Her heart in beauty burning--a ruddy ruby shone. The gleaming of her eyelets was like the glowing moon. She clad herself in roses and pearls as bright and rare: Yet none came to the maiden to give her comfort there.

She was right fair of figure and slender in the waist, Like to a golden lustre, naught in her form misplaced; Her hands and fingers perfect, each unto either trim; Her nails so white and shining, you could see yourself therein.

Her hair was bound in beauty with noble silken twine, She let it flow a-downward, that lovely maiden fine. She wore a crown with jewels, and all of gold so red. Of Elberich the Dwarfling she had in truth great need.

And in that crown bright shining lay a carbùncle stone, Which even in the palace like a bright topaz shone. Upon her head the ringlets in glossy masses lay; They gleamed as clear and brightly as doth the sun by day.

She stood alone, unheeded, right sorrowful her mood. How beautiful her colour, it was like milk and blood; And through her locks so purely the neck shone white as snow. Ah! Elberich the Little felt deep the maiden’s woe.’

Then in time her sorrow was relieved, and amid the conflicting jar of legendary songs, it appeared that she married Siegfried. But her great deed was to lay out a glorious and wonderful garden of roses, or Rooseveldt, in German Rosengarten, of which Carlyle writes:

‘Chriemhild, whose altered history makes such a figure in the _Nibelungen_, had, it would seem, a rose-garden some seven English miles in circuit, fenced only by a silk thread, wherein, however, she maintained twelve stout fighting men, and these, so unspeakable was their prowess, sufficed to defend the silk-thread garden against all mortals. A good antiquary, Von der Hagen, imagines that this rose-garden in the primæval tradition glances obliquely at the Ecliptic, with its Twelve signs, at Jupiter’s fight with the Titans, and we know not what confused skirmishing in the Utgard, Asgard, or Midgard of the Scandinavians.’

Of the great battle of all the heroes of the North about or in this rose-field, I will say nothing. Suffice it to write that in time the fair Chriemhilde had a son by Siegfried, ‘though history passes it over, oh,’ and this offspring grew up to be a glorious youth, who was known as the Lord of the Rooseveldt, from his patrimony, being often called simply Roosevelt, for brevity’s sake. And he was a credit to his highly respectable ancestry, first making himself famous in learning and letters, then in council, holding divers offices, and yet again in a war with Spain, wherein he gained great renown, till in the fulness of time he governed Holland, or had a kingdom therein, which he administered with wisdom and grace.

Now there are some folk who are brave in one way, and some in another; some braving-mad when drunk, and others only bold while sober, or to show off, or to gratify temper; but Roosevelt was brave all round, having not only physical, but in the highest degree moral courage, for he had that of his Opinions, which is the noblest of all. And Flaxius to his great joy observed this.

The king had soon seen in the Sage great wisdom and a genial spirit, and had therefore made of him a friend. It came to pass one day that as they were riding near the Rhine, they saw seated by the road-side a poor man, of very dark colour, yet one who seemed as if he might be far better than his looks.

‘Whence camest thou?’ asked the king.

‘With the sun whose livery I wear, from the South. I am of the dark races, and was brought here a captive.’

‘What hast thou seen?’

‘I have seen sorrow, and felt oppression, heard curses, tasted bitterness, and smelt the air of dungeons, and all because of my colour, for God knows my soul is white enough, and were my skin the same I should be called learned, and, perhaps, something more. Yet at this minute I am hungry, and few, indeed, are they who would give me food, and none who would eat with me.’

‘By Frey and all the gods!’ cried Roosevelt in anger, ‘come thou with me, friend, and we will see whether no man will keep thy company! For I am lord of all this land, and I swear that this day thou shalt dine with me in my palace, sitting at my table with me, and may Loki and Svanttowit, Teuston, Vith, and Busteric, Chrodo, Swackenhammer, Irminsul, Hela, Hellwolf, Zernebock,[1] and the whole gang, do their worst with me, if I stand not by thee!’

So they went to the palace, and the pilgrim was bathed and clad in seemly garments; and when the horn was blown for dinner, and the band struck up, lo! there sat the dark man at the royal table, and Roosevelt treated him as he did the other guests.

But the dark man behaved modestly, like any other gentleman, conversing chiefly with Flaxius about foreign countries.

‘There will be a row about this,’ said Flaxius to Breitmann, a northern warrior, who spoke a barbarous Dutch, and who was something of a bard, because he had sung a ‘bardy.’ He was Poet Laureate.

‘You pet all you got on it,’ was the reply. ‘All de small minds who had rader live in a liddle country dan in a pig von, will pe hoppin’ mad. And efery man who has nodding boot a white colour to make him resbectaple, and a crate many pious beople among dem, will fluke and coorse and damn der Roosevelt; for peing too moosh like de Lord Jesus, who did in his vay de fery same ding. I shall have to sing a song apout dis.’

It is certainly true that what Breitmann (who as a poet was also something of a prophet) predicted, came to pass. For there was great rage all over the land, and people cursed, and ‘swore in high Dutch,’ and abused their lord for being morally brave and good; and it was noticed withal that everybody in the land who came of a race which had ever grunted and groaned because it had been ‘persecuted’--and there were a great many of these--all cried out the loudest against ‘the nigger,’ to show their social superiority. But the king, knowing that he had done right before God and man, cared not one broken straw for them all.

‘Go thy ways, O King,’ said Flaxius admiringly, ‘for the best and noblest, kindest and bravest man who ever sat on a throne, and had the least fear to do what is right. Others have been of good descent and brave, some again brave and learned, others as bold and honest, but of them all, thou alone art all, and with it the only one who dared be a friend to the downtrodden and oppressed. Now for this, God bless thee, Roosevelt, and thou shalt be blessed! And even if the future has no more great or glorious deeds for thee, rest content. Thou hast shown more true courage than any monarch before thee ever did, saving Christ, the Lord of all the world.’

Then it came to pass in the year 1901....

But here the chronicle abruptly ends.

History repeats itself.

* * * * *

Now the Laureate kept his word, and made a song, which he sang to a harp, which song travelled from Scheveningen up the Rhine, till it arrived, about a month later, at Cologne. It was thence transferred to Heidelberg by a wandering Minne-singer to Constance, which lies on the Bodensee, as is affirmed in a very ancient ballad, which consists of nothing else but this fact repeated fifty times in different forms, in which it bears a great resemblance to much modern intellectual effort, as displayed in political speeches, sermons, and the like. And from the Bodensee it was colported by divers wandering students and Handwerksburschen through German Switzerland, till one warm day it crossed the Alps and got to Verona or Berne in Lombardy, where I believe it stopped, albeit there is a passage or two in the _Divina Commedia_, which indicate that Dante had possibly come across some rude Italian version of it. And this was the _Lied_, which I have followed closely:

DER NOBLE ROOSEVELT

‘It is writ in many a shtory which came from olden time, In legends full of glory, in many a minstrel’s rhyme; Dot he who acted kindly since history began, And gently to all beople, was der truest gentleman.

And among de very truest of dis kind in der Welt, As die Rose among de Ritters, I put der Roosevelt; For brave in dis, or dat, in deed, is many a king or knight, But Roosevelt’s der only von dot’s brave in all dot’s right.

Grand in der crash of pattle among de cavaliers, Grand in der rush of warriors among de breakin’ spears, Vhen Odin to de Northmen his help in glory brings, Und de Spaniards fly before dem all shkared like avery-dings.

But vhere he show der grandest and rise to der Beyond, On de oder side of Jordan, above dis eart’ly pond, Is when he knows he’s in der right he’s efer at his ease, Und in spite of all de tyfels, will do yoost what he blease.

So Gott be-help him onwards unto a glorious end! For de trodden-down and lowly efer find in him a friend. Votefer snobs and copperheads against his name may bring, Heaven pless dee for dy nople heart, O Roosevelt, my king!

[1] _Zernebock._ It was over this deity that George Borrow came to grief when he ridiculed Walter Scott for making an old Saxon witch swear by him. For the Saxons did adopt Zernebock, though he was the _Cerneboh_ or black god of their Slavonic neighbours.

FLAXIUS AND HAMLET

SHOWING HOW THE PRINCE OF DENMARK, WHEN AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WITTENBERG, LISTENED TO THE LECTURE ON ROMAN HISTORY BY THE LEARNED FLAXIUS, AND WAS TAKEN BY THE LATTER TO A BALL, AND INTRODUCED TO THE FAIRY QUEEN.

‘O valiant Hamlet, and worthy of immortal fame, who, being shrewdly armed with feint of folly, covered a wisdom too high for human wit under a marvellous disguise of want of sense, and in that subtlety found means whereby he did protect himself, and yet revenge the murder of his father long before.’--_Saxo Grammaticus_, Lib. 3.

IT happened once, amid the blaze, the splendour, and the symmetry of the centuries, as they whirled magnificently on--many ere this of ours, yet many more after wise Flaxius had his natal day--that the scholar went to the University of Wittenberg to see what he could pick up in the way of ideas. For, with all his experience and erudition, he was always learning something new, as any man may at any hour in this world school, if he be not too proud to note facts; as somebody’s wisdom hath it in Latin: ‘_Ea est vera nominis existimatio quæ non ex sermonibus, sed ex rebus istis deducitur_’; or, as an Englishman more concisely expressed it: ‘There’s nothing like facts to learn from.’

And being a man of marked, yet modest mien, who conversed in Latin with singular purity, and one who, when he so pleased, could construct his whole discourse out of nothing but quotations from the classics--or from the works of his auditors, which was even more agreeable to them--he was soon held in great esteem. And having read in public a paper, _De vera Essentia Verborum_, in which he demonstrated from A. Artemidorus down to Z. Zoilus, that words have souls, he came to be regarded as _clericus vel addiscens_, almost a professor.

So it befel one day, when a certain teacher named Brunkenstrorphius was incapacitated--owing to fourteen bottles of Rhenish wine the night before--from lecturing, that Flaxius kindly took his place, and read to his class in Roman history, the subject for that day being Nero.

Now, as Flaxius had had the great advantage of having been long personally acquainted with this emperor--to whom he was introduced by Seneca--and had been present by special invitation at the brilliant reception which was lighted by a whole congregation of early Christians rolled in pitch and ignited, had talked with Locusta, and seen the stupendous spectacle of the burning of Rome with an Imperial orchestra of one, and received an estate for exclaiming, ‘_Artes omnes novit Cæsar!_’ and was finally in at the death of that remarkable artist, he had almost as good a conception of the true character of the latter as sundry modern novelists and immoralists, who have so black- or white-washed him by turns that his memory seems to be like the Cathedral of Florence, or a zebra, or a chequer board, or a bad photograph, or what the Liberal and Conservative press in turn declared of G.O.M.--that is to say, an alternation of ebony and ivory, of coal and alabaster, the raven and blanche dove, or a Prussian sentry-box, or a cup jewelled in niello, or Saint Paul’s, or a cardinal’s conscience....

According to Flaxius the emperor was in himself something such a combination, well nigh beyond all the analysis of our modern moral chemistry, the wondrous product of a monstrous age, a terrible Thought elaborated with agony from a mighty but corrupt world, one who, in the true spirit of history, was more a symbol than a man; mere bronze medal from the iron die of his time. The lecturer could well nigh believe that no Nero, _per se_, had ever existed at all, but had been a mere _simulacrum_ or phantom set up in a high place, wherewith the Mighty Powers who rule the world had mocked or lessoned man; a Pharos, or beacon-tower with an effulgent burning-head, standing deeply footed in the freezing-cold, damp, roaring sea--a giant giving light in agony, and warning ships not to approach, and, like old Pharos, fearful in his pride.

There was a kind of daïs or higher range of seats and desks, at which sat only the young noblemen who were studying at the University, and among these was one who, to Flaxius--who was a marvellous reader of men, not only by metoposcopia, or physiognomy, but by all which was indicative of the soul?--seemed to be as far beyond all his fellows as an eagle would be amid the dullest, pettiest featherlings of a barnyard. Yet, though very quietly dignified, he was devoid of that arrogance of rank which displayed itself so conspicuously in every detail of dress, every gesture, and in the very intonation of every word of the aristocracy of that time; for he was truly too much above them to affect even their superiority--a thing in which the German noble of the present day hath still almost everything to learn, especially in Prussia. For even yet among these good folk, well nigh all the joy of life, and mental life itself, consists in the happy reflection that a majority of mankind are (by law, at least) their _inferiors_; which stupendous idea (it being generally their only possible one) they contemplate even as a Hindu saint contemplates God, to the exclusion of all other conception. This reflection has been concisely made into a law of ethical science by one of their number, an Austrian named Von Mannteufel, in the words, ‘_Humanity, properly speaking, begins with the rank of count._’

This young nobleman was, indeed, so elevated in rank that he could well afford to dispense with vanity, since he was heir-apparent to the throne of Denmark. His name was Hamlet, and there was that in his appearance which would indicate--to even a less clairvoyant eye than that of Flaxius--an original character of the strongest type, devoid of the eccentricity which attracts comment, learned in philosophy without pedantry, endowed with a personal grace of manner suggesting natural courtesy and a marvellous observation by a quiet eye--all of which might be seen in him by all. But Flaxius noted in him something far deeper: a soul which, if not yet risen, was rapidly rising above the storm and whirl of all things in life and time, be they great or small, so as to behold in them all the mere passing show of a drama, yet feeling all the time that _in that drama_ there would be incidents which would wreck this mere mortal life and wrench his soul with agony. He who has this tremendous dual action to undergo in life--that of being a true philosopher, yet a great sufferer--will assuredly have a strange foreboding of it, and to such a mind the idea of Nero, as presented by Flaxius, in its similar doubleness, was a marvellous revelation. He had long suffered from that problem which a great poet has expressed by saying that--

‘Not in that strife, Wherefrom I take strange lore and read it deep, Can I find reason why _I_ should be thus: No--nowhere can unriddle, though I search And pore on Nature’s universal scroll Even to swooning, why Divinities, The first born of all shaped and palpable gods, Should cower beneath what, in comparison, Is untremendous Might.’

All of which Flaxius the immortal, who could read the soul in the glance, and who saw that he had before him one into whose essence Immortality had cast its brightest rays, deeply divined. So it came that he lectured to Hamlet alone, rising far beyond the rest of the audience. And, mindful of his man, who, he felt, was thirsting to think, he made good long pauses, which his auditors deemed were to give himself rests to make new bounds.

The lecture was at an end, and Hamlet, by a sign, intimated to his friends that he would fain be left alone. When all were departed, he, with courtesy beyond the time, arose and approached the professor, and said:

‘Learned master, thou hast touched with such unerring hand the harp-strings of my heart, and drawn from it such marvellous chords that I would gladly have them combined in more coherent melody. Even as a bee in a bewildered flight, driven by the wind, at chance may light upon----’

‘A flower,’ said Flaxius, ‘which gives him rest.’

‘And in which, too, he finds a honey-store, such as he never found in flight before,’ subjoined the prince gently.