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Title:      Confessional
Author:     Frank Harris(1856-1931)
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Language:   English
Date first posted:          April 2003
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Confessional
Author:     Frank Harris(1856-1931)





A VOLUME OF INTIMATE PORTRAITS SKETCHES & STUDIES

THE PANURGE PRESS NEW YORK, 1930
PRINTED IN  THE  UNITED  STATES OF  AMERICA

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: PERSONS
Columbus
Joan of Arc
Napoleon
Tolstoi's Last Days

PART TWO: PLACES
Great Cities of the World
Seville
Travel in France
Granada and the Alhambra

PART THREE: PRINCIPLES
Short Story Writing
The Art of Biography
Thoughts on Morals
Natural Religion

PART FOUR: PASSIONS
An Execution in Paris,
A Strange Story of Love




INTRODUCTION

The art of essay-writing is peculiar: some of the greatest have never
indulged in it and yet literature would be poorer without the essays
of Bacon, Montaigne, Emerson and Schopenhauer. I had never thought of
writing essays; but my friend Esar Levine, who knows my writings
better than I know them myself, insists that my fugitive attempts
are worthy of enduring form. Naturally I was easy to persuade and
they are now assembled in a book for my readers to judge.

I prefer Bacon's Essays to his larger works which indeed I have never
even read through; Schopenhauer's Essays also are more interesting to
me than his masterpiece, and surely everyone prefers Emerson's Essays
to his poetry though now and then he wears the singer's robe with a
certain majesty; but after all, Montaigne, nearly all of whose works
may be called essays, and Bacon are the true types of essayists and
the greatest masters of the art. Both appear to write any thing that
comes into their heads and they always find something interesting to
say.

If Anglo-Saxon prudes would read Montaigne's essay on "Love" they
might perhaps realize that truth demands freedom of speech, that the
very vesture of truth is the exact word. But Montaigne's object was
not to teach so much as to relieve his own feelings and pent-up
thoughts, and these essays of mine should be read in much the same
spirit.

I cannot resist the temptation to set forth here a few of the gems
which these masters have given us. Bacon says:

 "A man that studieth revenge, keepeth his own
  wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well."

This is wiser than the Italian proverb which says "revenge is a dish
which should be eaten cold." There is, however, a Creole proverb in
Mauritius, "Ca qui boude manze boudin" (He who sulks eats his own
belly), which shows insight equal to Bacon's. The worldly wisdom of
Bacon often astonishes me:

  "If a man will keep but of even hand, his ordinary expenses
  ought to be but to the half of his receipts; but if he think
  to wax rich, but to the third part. . . . He that is plentiful
  in expenses of all kinds, will hardly be preserved from decay."

And here is his best; one of the furthest throws of human thought,
finer even than the best of Pascal:

  "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness
  in the proportion."

But it is, I confess, in Montaigne that I am most interested. I have
always the feeling that he was the wisest and among the best of
Frenchmen and he reaches the heights without appearance of effort.
Here is a phrase equal to Bacon's best:

  "Our life consisteth partly in folly, partly in wisdom. He that
  writes of it but reverently and regularly omits the better half
  of it."

I often please myself by thinking that I am more akin to Montaigne
than to any other essayist. His views, even on the literary art, are
mine:

  "I had rather my child should learn to speak in a Taverne,
  than in the schools of well-speaking Art."

And again,

  "In my country and in my days, learning and bookishness
  doth much mend purses; but minds not at all."

And finally,

  "I refuse no words that are used in the frequented streets
  of France: those that will combat use and custom by the
  strict rules of grammar do but jest: I correct unadvised
  not customary errors. Speak I not so everywhere? Do I not
  lively display myself? That sufficeth."

That is my defense too.

On almost every page I find fruits of thought:

  "Love is not properly nor naturally in season, but in the
  age next unto infancy: no more is perfect beauty."

  "I accept truth as well when it helps me, as when it hurts me."

And how he makes fun of abstinence and prudery. He puts his contempt
in italics:

  "_Are we not most brutish to term that work beastly which
  begets and which maketh us_?"

No such wisdom in English.

In comparison with these masters, the English and American writers
such as Charles Lamb and Emerson are infinitely overrated. I would
rather spend an hour with Montaigne than five minutes with Emerson who
is too much the preacher, or one minute with Lamb who after all never
reaches the height of the argument.





PART ONE PERSONS

COLUMBUS

So far as we can learn, the outward appearance of Columbus was in no
wise remarkable. Tall he was, and of goodly presence, with a slightly
long face, and aquiline features. His eyes were light in color and his
hair auburn. Such a description tells us nothing, and yet these few
details comprise nearly the whole of what his contemporaries say of
the bodily peculiarities of the greatest man then living. What a pity
it is that no one who had eyes to see ever looked upon Columbus, or
rather, that no such person ever put on paper a description of the
man. Much that was extraordinary in the spirit of Columbus must have
left its imprint on his face and in his manner. Indomitable energy and
force not to be denied must have been written, one would think, on
this man's countenance. What calm, practical insight those eyes of his
must have had!--what latent fire of enthusiastic resolve! Yet no one
has so depicted him. Great men pass through this world unnoticed,
save by their peers, and the equal of Columbus was not to be
found at that time within the compass of the world.

But something of real import we do know in regard to him; we know that
throughout his life "he was very strict in all religious observances,
so diligent in prayers and fastings, that he might have been taken for
a monk." A servant of God, we should imagine, who cared little for
what men might think of him or of his actions. We do not know much of
the early life of Columbus, but nearly all that we do know of it is
significant. Born at Genoa in 1436, or, as some say, in 1435, of poor
parents, Columbus, after working for some time at his father's trade
of wool-combing, went to sea in his fifteenth year. How he fared
during the following quarter of a century is left chiefly to our
imagination. Now and then, indeed, the curtain lifts, and we hear of
him as captaining a Venetian galley, and displaying in the conflict
"desperate audacity"; we know, too, that he was wrecked at least once,
and that his sailors always "greatly marveled how that so bold a man
could waste so many hours in reading books and constructing charts."
But of the history of the man's spirit during this period we know
little or nothing of positive value. It is supposed that the idea of
the world's unexplored vastness came to Columbus, after years of
prolonged study, sometime in the year 1474.

At once he formed the resolve to devote his life to the discovery of
those parts of the world which were still unknown. It says much for
the patriotism of the man that he first offered his native town the
opportunity of turning his talents to account. But the Genoese Senate
would have nought to do with the mad idea. A sure five per cent seemed
to those worthies far more desirable than the chance of boundless
wealth and the prospect of immortal renown. On getting his answer,
Columbus made for Portugal and laid his project before King John. The
monarch was so struck with the plan that he conceived the idea of
reaping all the profit and winning all the glory of its realization
for himself. In secret he dispatched a frigate on the quest, but
"after a very short time the caravel returned to Lisbon, for the
sailors quickly lost heart in the enterprise." No, no, friend John,
Nature cannot be so cheated; the plan without the planner is
worthless; without a Columbus the New World is not discoverable. On
finding himself deceived, Columbus sent his brother Bartholomew to
Henry VII of England, and betook himself to Spain to try his powers of
persuasion. Here, we learn, "he quickly converted all men he met," and
so was forwarded at length to the king. But Ferdinand was not the man
to decide an important matter without long consultations with his
priests and they were as bigotedly superstitious as the king was weak.
And so, after keeping Columbus "in tow" for more than four weary
years, the monarch's advisers decided that his ideas were opposed to
the Scriptures and subversive of the teaching of the Fathers of the
Church. Oh, ye wise ones! who measure Eternity by Time, the whole by
its part. And so this man--whose hair, we are told, was gray at
thirty--was turned adrift once more after sixteen years of fruitless
labor. At fifty-four years of age Columbus had to begin the world
again.

Yet had he known it, the travail of his soul was about to bear fruit.
What we men call chance put him on the way to the accomplishment of
his desire. "_By chance_," we are told, Columbus fell in with one
Juan Feres, who had formerly been confessor to the Queen Isabella,
and Juan praised loudly the queen's wisdom and resolution. Then once
again Columbus used his powers, and the old cunning of brain and
tongue did not desert him. Before they parted for the night Juan was a
convert and had written a letter warmly commending Columbus to the
queen. Once again Columbus sets forth, this time towards Granada.
There he abode in the Christian camp which was besieging the city, and
there he witnessed the final downfall of the Moorish empire; eating
his heart out the while, we may be sure, in bitter disappointment. At
last, in January, 1492, he received a definite refusal. Forthwith he
put his scanty baggage in order, and on a wintry morning set out for
France. Bad fortune had manifestly no power of quelling this
indomitable spirit. He had spent eighteen years in fruitless prayers
and futile persuadings, in wanderings up and down the earth "wherever
men had journeyed," but he was still prepared to undergo fresh toil,
fresh humiliations of doubt and ridicule.

In this temper, "the stouthearted one" left Granada one January
morning, scornfully shaking the dust of the city from his feet. What
must have been his thoughts as his mule paced slowly away from the
place in which he had expended fruitlessly so much insight and intense
earnestness. "These people," he must have said to himself in
bitterness of soul, "in order to conquer the Moors, whose civilisation
was higher than their own, and to annex a few square miles of mountain
range and valley, which must ere long have fallen without an effort
under their lordship, have spent millions of money and sacrificed
thousands of valuable lives. On the other hand, here am I offering
them a whole New World of marvelous wealth and beauty, and in order to
insure the possession of it they will not put to hazard a thousand
beggarly pieces of silver." Columbus was mistaken. Queen Isabella was
of high and ambitious temper, gifted, too, with all the quick insight
pertaining to her sex, and she had been impressed, in spite of the
ridicule cast upon him, by the enthusiasm of the strange man at least
as much as by the reasonableness of his deductions.  Scarcely had he
left the camp before she repented of the decision that had been taken,
and resolved to rescind it. Forthwith she dispatched messengers to
bring back the Genoese to her presence and these messengers overtook
Columbus on the simple stone Bridge of Pines, barely six miles north
of Granada, a spot thenceforth forever memorable in the history of the
world.

The end of it was that on the 17th of April he was commissioned by
their Catholic Majesties, as a mark of their high favor, to take his
life in his hand and sail westwards over unknown seas in quest of an
unknown land. But although this kindness was not shown him till the
ardor of youth was long past, and the vigor of manhood well-nigh
exhausted, still even in his fifty-sixth year, the war-worn and
wave-worn hero was ready, for at length the supreme hour had struck,
and with sternest resolution Columbus went forth to put the ambition
of a lifetime to the test. No delays were to be feared on his part.
Quickly he chartered and equipped three small vessels which today
would not be considered seaworthy fishing-smacks, and then got crews
together, in all barely one hundred and twenty men. And such men!
Before a quarter of their task was done they rose in revolt against
their commander. They wanted to put back, and could scarcely be
induced to continue, even by Columbus. And this scene was repeated
again and again. Surely such crazy craft and such currish crews have
never before, and never since, accomplished so wonderful an
undertaking. But Columbus went with them, and it was the presence and
power of a very great man alone which could assure success. In this
voyage all his powers were proved to the uttermost. Not in vain now
had he been a sailor from his youth up, for storm after storm was
encountered which tested all his seamanship. Not in vain now was it
that he had formerly calculated reckonings and constructed charts, for
even to steer a direct course was in those days a matter of the
extremest difficulty.  Nay, more, his powers of persuasion, which had
been developed in twenty years of solicitations and pleadings, found
full employment in disposing his crews to continually renewed efforts.

But the chief element in his success was my doubtedly one which in our
days is all too generally decried. For forty-odd years Columbus had,
to use a significant phrase, walked with God, and accustomed himself
to believe implicitly in what he could not see. To use the words of a
heroic English navigator in similar circumstances, one upheld, too, by
as grand a faith, Columbus felt that God was as near him by sea as by
land. And so his faith in the New World never failed or faltered till
at last the desire of his heart was fulfilled. At ten o'clock at
night, on October 11th, after seventy days' sailing, Columbus
perceived and pointed out a light ahead. Think of it! The old man was
assuredly not the keenest sighted on board the ships but still he was
the first to see the light by passion of faith and as a reward of
wisdom. At two o'clock next morning Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor on the
smallest of the three ships, sighted land. The land, called by
Columbus San Salvador, was an island, and probably the one we know now
by the name of Watling Island. The next morning Columbus landed,
richly clad, and bearing the royal banner of Spain. He was accompanied
by the greater portion of his crews, some of whom took with them the
banner devised by Columbus himself--a Green Cross. How, on landing,
they gave thanks to God, kneeling upon the shore and kissing the
ground with tears of joy for "the great mercy received," and how the
men who had shown themselves mutinous sought the pardon of Columbus
with passionate tears, have we not all read a thousand times? This
moment was, perhaps, the most joyful in the whole life of Columbus.

We do not purpose to give here the details of his further voyages and
discoveries. Of course we all know that he did later discover the
mainland of South America, and that he established colonies in various
parts of the New World. But our concern is chiefly with the man
himself, and therefore we cannot dwell upon what were, after all,
insignificant incidents in his life. On his return home, his progress
to the court was a sort of triumphal procession, the title of Don was
conferred upon him and his brothers, and a coat of arms was made out
for him, whereon the royal castle and lion of Castile and Leon kept
peaceful company with the four anchors of his old escutcheon. But
although Columbus only reached Spain in March, 1493, we find him
leaving it again with a new expedition in September of the same year.
This second voyage was as successful as the first.  On it he
discovered many of the West Indian Islands, and founded the city and
settlement of Isabella. But then came vexations, miseries, insults, to
increase great physical infirmities, and to take the place of

  "All that should accompany old age,
  Such as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends."

>From now to the close of his life, Columbus suffered agonies from gout
and ophthalmia; besides, his colonies did not prosper, and the kingly
favor did not long stand disappointments. The rest can all be summed
up in one story.

In the year 1500, while engaged successfully in bringing tranquillity
and order into a colony, Columbus was superseded in the government of
it by Bobadilla, an emissary of the King of Spain, and by him was sent
back to Spain in chains. On the voyage home the captain of the
caravel, we are told, struck with admiration of his high bearing,
offered to remove the chains, but that Columbus would in no wise
consent. He would wear them, he said, until the king, by whose orders
they had been affixed, should command their removal, and he would
keep them ever afterwards as "memorials of the reward of his
services." And so he did. Ever afterwards, his son tells us, Columbus
kept these chains in his study, and by his will they were buried with
him in his coffin.

It ought to be universally understood that the man who discovered a
continent, and who thus enlarged the boundaries of civilisation
itself, must have possessed genius of a high order besides
extraordinary force of character. But in the case of Columbus this is
not even generally recognized. Most people think of his unparalleled
achievement as due rather to chance and luck than to his exceptional
ability, and the heroic qualities of his manhood. This common
misconception it was which induced me to lay stress upon the fact that
Columbus was not only a great seaman, but also a student, who, while
working hard for his living, yet found time to master much of the best
knowledge of his age. No ordinary seaman in the fifteenth century knew
that the world was round, and from this imperfectly known fact to
reach and realise the conception that portions of the earth's surface
probably did exist which were then unknown, shows mental intuition of
a very high order.

How "high" we must rank the sheer intellect in Columbus becomes clear
when we consider one or two facts. It is certain that the earliest
astronomers regarded the earth as round. Eratosthenes even seems to
have had some idea of the principle by which its exact configuration
has been in quite modern days determined. But from the time of the
Alexandrian physicist, who lived towards the close of the third
century of our era, little or no progress had been made in this
department of knowledge for twelve centuries. How dense the general
ignorance was even at the end of the fifteenth century, may be gauged
from the fact that Fernel, a French astronomer and geodesist, who
flourished at this time, and whose fame has survived to our days, knew
no better method of measuring a meridian than by leaving Paris in a
coach for the South, and counting the number of revolutions made by a
wheel of his carriage. Even a century later, Galileo was imprisoned,
and his books condemned, because he taught the "damnable heresy" that
the earth moved round the sun. But if the mere conception of the idea
denoted great mental power, what shall be said of the force of
character and energy necessary to its realization? Between knowing and
doing in all departments of life there is a gulf fixed.

Great strength of character is very rare--rarer, we think, than high
intelligence--but the union of both it is which entitles Columbus to
the noblest reputation. In his case, as in that of all other great
men, the truth obtains that the doer is always greater than the work
he does.

Strange irony of fate! Columbus, the pauper enthusiast, endowed the
Spanish monarchy with the most magnificent possession that has ever
changed hands, and yet Columbus, who had given the king and queen a
world, lived to beg of them, as he himself once said in high disdain,
"enough ground for a grave." Posterity has partly atoned for the
injustice. The name of Columbus today stands immeasurably higher than
the names of Isabella and Ferdinand. And this is the only reward on
which genius can surely reckon, even to this day. Was it not wisely
said once, "He that is greatest among you let him be as the younger,
and he that is chief as he that doth serve"?  And, after all, what
higher reward can there be for a noble soul than the consciousness of
great services rendered to humanity?




JOAN OF ARC


Men have been writing about Joan of Arc ever since she reached the
King's Court at Chinon, in March, 1429, and it is only now, five
centuries after her death, that it is perhaps possible to see her
fairly or write of her in the right spirit. It may be worth our while
briefly to trace how Joan has risen in the esteem and admiration of
men during these last five hundred years. After her first astounding
successes in the field, she was treated like a queen and ennobled
under the name of du Lis (taken from the lilies of her banner); but
even in those summer days the sunshine hours were few and fleeting,
and the praise of one here and there was quickly overborne in the
storm of detraction and hatred that followed on defeat.

For many long years the prophet was without honor in her own country.
No Frenchman ever wrote about her. Shakespeare gives us an inkling of
the common view entertained of her by the English in his day, and
though he was very young when he offended, his offense, as I have
said, still remains as the greatest blot upon his literary fame.
Nearly two centuries later Voltaire poured scurrilous contempt upon
"The Maid" and her mission, and thus enabled us to measure his short"
comings as in a mirror. A little later Schiller wrote the play in
which he pictured Joan with admiration as a heroine, while saying
little or nothing about her mission and the supernatural visitants
who, as she believed, guided her to victory.

Then came, about 1850, the historical research of Quicherat, and the
essay founded on this knowledge which was written by Sainte-Beuve.
This work, though greatly praised, is not as good as it might be.
Sainte-Beuve does not recognise the saint and mystic in Joan; but he
does realise in her the hero and woman. He shows us how wittily,
gayly, she can answer the coarse pleasantries of the soldiers whom
she meets on her way to the king, and he shows, too, the deathless
courage which carried her triumphantly through the long trial and the
fire-agony. No one else has done anything as good as this.

Anatole France tells us of the "voices" indeed, and of Joan's talks
with Gabriel and Michael and other Archangels; but he writes as a mere
reporter, and he leaves the subject without attempting to realise for
us Joan's perfect sincerity. Sainte-Beuve has done more in thirty
pages than Anatole France has done in six hundred, and Sainte-Beuve's
firm, scrupulous French style is a finer frame than the elaborate
aloofness of the great writer who seems afraid to show us the pure
humanity in Joan as Sainte-Beuve shows it; in fact, France does not
realize her at all, whether as girl or hero, or saint or mystic; he
talks about her and about, and interests us more in La Hire, and in
her soldier lover, than in the incomparable Maid.

The sooner one forgets this book and reads again Sainte-Beuve's essay
the better; or better still, let us take up again the account of her
trial in Quicherat, and read that through, if indeed one can read it
for tears.

It is curious that all the good Fathers of divinity, from St.
Augustine to Newman, have been great because of a certain skepticism
in them, a certain revolt; but, however it may be with the saints,
faith is an absolute necessity to the artist. No one must write of
Joan of Arc today who cannot believe as implicitly as she believed
in supernatural guidance. "But 'science' has changed our life," one
cries, "and skepticism has got into our blood, and . .." But science
is no enemy of truth, and if Joan of Arc told the truth, it must stand
today as it stood in the fifteenth century and be explicable to every
soul of man now as it was then. She heard "voices," she said, which
directed her; and again and again she waited for their direction, and
followed it at once. But in the great crises of life which of us has
not waited for higher spiritual promptings, and at least in youth,
heard the "voices" which Joan heard? True, we do not all think that
Michael is speaking to us, or Gabriel or some other Archangel; but the
voices are there, articulate-clear, and they do not come from
self-interest or our lower nature, and it is often difficult for us to
obey them. But this girl obeyed them implicitly for years and years;
and when one success after another, one miracle after another, had
resulted from their guiding, was it not natural for Joan to be filled
with the ineffable assurance that the powers of good were lifting her
as on angel wings to ultimate triumph? But whether natural or not, it
is at least sure that only one possessed of the same conviction can
catch even a glimpse of that heroic soul.

It seems to me that the position of the writer, in face of so high and
so difficult a task, is something like that of Joan herself. "Someone
must do it," he will say to himself, thrilling with the unearthly
splendor of the achievement; "but not I," he will add, appalled by the
immediate difficulty, "not I; someone who has lived a great life, and
is all given to immortal longings; someone, too, who has seen the veil
between the possible and the impossible, the natural and the
miraculous, rent and tossed aside again and again; some divine
personality who . . ." But still the voices prompt and urge, growing
more and more insistent, till at length the doubting soul takes
courage, and turns to the work. Then the long preparation--for in such
work as this success can only come by prayer and fasting and
indefatigable endeavor--and then the writing. Do not think the danger
is all to the hero who faces the swords and arrows; the writer, too,
has his foes to face, and they are just as real as English bowmen and
just as hurtful.

The writer who approached the task in this spirit would, I think, have
to begin by painting the girl in her upbringing and peasant
surroundings.

When Joan came to her teens--she was born on January 6th, 1412, to
Jean, a laborer--the state of France was desperate, the monarchy of
France fallen to contempt. By the Treaty of Troyes, signed in 1420,
Henry V, King of England, was given peaceable possession of
Aquitaine, Normandy, and Brittany. The Duke of Burgundy held not only
the great province of Burgundy itself, but Paris and the Ile de
France, and he was an ally of the English. Provence even was in
revolt. After the defeats of Crevant-sur-Yonne and Verneuil, the cause
of Charles, the Dauphin, seemed hopeless. His kingdom was shrunken to
the little duchy of Berry. In derision he was called the "King of
Bourges." It looked as if France must become English.

As a child Joan was noted for her high spirits, restless activity and
vivacity as well as for her piety and eagerness to leam. We are told
that she was the best needlewoman in the whole countryside, and the
favorite of the priests who taught her; she would have nothing to do
with the young men of the village who sought her favors. More and more
she lived to herself and gave her hours to solitude and prayer.

She was still quite young when she first heard the old prediction of
the enchanter Merlin that the calamities which should befall France
through the depravity of a woman would all be removed by a virgin. In
the country of Joan the tradition was current that this virgin would
come out of the forest of Domremy, where Joan tended her father's
sheep. What more natural than that this extraordinary spirit should
take the tradition to herself. The noble strain was in her blood; her
mother had made the pilgrimage to Rome, and bore the sacred surname,
Romee; might it not be that she, Joan, was set apart for something
great and difficult? Certain it is that while still hardly more than a
child she began to live to the high enterprise.

We know that it was a passionate love of country which set her soul
aflame. A band of Burgundian pillagers raided the district in which
she lived, and murdered some of the inhabitants. France lay like a
fair woman at the mercy of foreign ruffians. Throbbing with pity and
indignation, Joan besought her patron Saint Michael, the Archangel,
and the Saints Margaret and Catherine to rescue France from the hands
of the savage English. For some time her prayers remained unanswered;
but her fervor grew with her growth, and soon her beloved saints came
to her in visions, and spoke to her with distinct voices. From the
bottom of her garden she could see the church .and in the great window
were her saints pictured. Time and again they came down to her; ever
more imperiously they ordered her to drive the English out of
France--to "bouter l'Anglais _hors de France_" and to anoint the
Dauphin Charles as King in Rheims.

One morning, after spending the whole night pleading her own
unworthiness, she ventured to tell her uncle, Andre Laxart, of her
mission. At first the good man would have nothing to do with it. She
must be mad, he said. But bit by bit Joan's earnestness won him, and
at length he consented to conduct her to the Sire de Baudricourt, who
was the governor of the nearest fortress, which happened to be
Vaucouleurs. The good knight laughed the mad notion to scorn, and
advised Laxart to take the girl back to her father and get her whipped
into a saner mind. "A prophet is not without honor--"

Joan was forced to return to Domremy, but there was no rest for her in
her native place. The visions grew ever clearer, the voices more
insistent. She returned alone to Vaucouleurs and saw Baudricourt, and
told him that she must see her king. "Before mid-Lent," she cried, "I
must be face to face with the king, if I have to wear my legs to the
knees to get to him." Baudricourt got a priest to examine her and she
said she was a virgin and good but the captain still refused, though
Joan shook him to hesitation. She then made a pilgrimage to Saint
Nicholas-du-Port, and on the way won three gentlemen to faith in her
divine mission. Their names were Bertrand de Foulangy, Jean de
Sonnecourt, and Jean de Metz.

With this backing Joan returned to Baudricourt again, and at length
prevailed. Baudricourt bought her a horse that cost a hundred and
sixty livres, or say, one thousand dollars; gave her, besides, a suit
of armor, and a pair of spurs.

"Go ahead, my girl," he said, "come what may come." He appointed her,
besides, as escort, a gentleman, Colin de Vienne, whom he charged with
a written letter to the king; an archer named Richard, too, and a
servant, Julian. Joan spent the night in thanksgiving and prayer, and
early next morning, February 24, 1429, started with her little band of
six to drive the English out of France. She was not yet seventeen
years of age. Was there ever a more insane adventure?

There were more than eighty leagues to cover, across a country
infested by marauding bands of English and Burgundians. By something
like a miracle Joan and her escort met with no hindrance, and arrived
at Chinon ten days later, on March 6th. The little band had used all
haste, had covered twenty-five miles a day in wintry weather, over bad
roads, Joan always in the front, her heart burning within her. It is
the bare truth to say that she had turned her followers into
passionate enthusiasts before the journey's end. Within an hour of
reaching Chinon, Colin de Vienne sent his message to the king, whom he
was unable to see; but Charles replied that he would see the girl on
March 9th.

Up to that time the little shepherdess had never seen the king, who
was then twenty-six years old. Everyone knows the story of how, in
order to test her, he concealed himself among his courtiers, and how
Joan went to him at once, and, kneeling before him, told him what the
angel-voices had told her. Her passionate earnestness brought the
little Dauphin almost to belief. He consented to see her in private.
She assured him that he was legitimate, a thing which his own
courtiers at the time doubted greatly.

The Dauphin was won to hope, if not to faith. But naturally the
courtiers and churchmen were against the girl. They had her examined
spiritually by the prelates of Courthay, and physically by some
matrons of Poitiers, for an old saying had got about that only a
virgin would be able to save the crown of France. The spiritual test
was severer than one would imagine. But Joan's innocent sincerity and
native good-sense turned the obstacles into stepping-stones. A certain
Abbe Seguin, from Perigord, in the extreme south of France, pushed his
skepticism to the point of asking her whether in the talks she had had
with St. Michael, the Archangel had spoken to her in French or in
Latin--Latin, of course, being the language of the Church and of the
educated. Joan looked at him, and replied: "In French, Monsieur
l'Abbe--better French than yours." And everyone laughed in delight,
for Seguing French accent was as strong as the garlic he loved.

Joan returned to Chinon in triumph, and the Dauphin at once accorded
her such an establishment as might have been given to a Prince of the
blood. Joan ordered her armor at Tours, and her standard at Blois.
Behind the altar of the little church at Fierbois her "voices" told
her to find her sword. The Duke d'Alencon gave her a great war-horse,
and without practice she mounted it at once in such fashion that the
Bastard of Orleans, le Comte de Richemont, the old soldiers
Xaintrailles, La Hire, and the Marechal Derais became enthusiastic
partisans.

Early in April, after praying the whole night, Joan began the campaign
of the Loire "with a shining face." On April 29th she made her entry
into Orleans, and summoned the English to leave the forts and ramparts
which they were occupying. They replied to her with foul jests and
insults. On May 4th she carried the fort of St. Loup by assault, on
the morrow the fort of the Tournelles. Joan, who insisted on putting
up the first scaling-ladder, had her shoulder pierced by an English
arrow, which stuck out more than a foot behind her back. She broke the
arrow off with her own hands and pulled it out of the wound. The women
who were attending her burst into tears as they saw the blood spurt
out. The heroic child cried to them: "Do not weep, good people; it
isn't blood, but glory!" Orleans was delivered, the English driven
back upon Paris, the first part of Joan's mission concluded.

After these miracles is it difficult to believe that this girl,
enskied and sainted in her passion, was compassed about through all
that earthly pilgrimage of hers by innumerable choirs of angels? Call
them how we will, the unseen powers which make for good were with her,
and she trusted them.

It now remained for Joan to crown the Dauphin in Rheims. Flaming
still with eagerness, she turned, and took Jargeau, Beaugency, Meung,
and, as the crowning glory, gained! the great battle of Patay. Not for
a hundred years had the English been beaten by the French on a fair
field.

But the opposition increased with Joan's suecess, envy and hatred
seething about her feet. She had the politicians against her always,
the time-servers La Tremouille and Regnault de Chartres. They
slandered her from morning till night, and scoffed at her pretensions,
and at length decided the king not to follow her to Rheims. As usual,
Joan at this check spent the night on her knees. What was she to do?
What should she do? What did the voices counsel? At first she prayed
in vain. For some time past the visions had not shown themselves
clearly to her, the voices had been faint. Once again Joan's sincerity
conquered. Towards morning Michael himself appeared to her. "You were
told to go to Rheims," he said. "Go, then." At break of day, she
mounted her horse, unfurled her standard, and set forth. The people
crowded after her, and before noon the king was fain to follow humbly
enough. His army soon swelled to twelve thousand men, and on the way
they took Troyes and Chalons almost without striking a blow.

On July 17th, Charles VII was crowned king in the great cathedral at
Rheims. The standard of Joan was the only one unfurled before the
altar. "After going through the danger," she said, "the least one can
do is to allow it to share in the honor."

In these golden summer days Soissons, Vitry, Epernay, Laon,
Montmirail, Provins, and a dozen other strong places caught fire from
Joan's enthusiasm and returned to their allegiance. The Duke of
Lorraine tendered his submission to the king. The campaign was
over--the miracle of miracles accomplished. In less than six months a
girl of seventeen, without friends or help, had freed France from the
English. Let us pause here for a moment to ask: What was the secret of
Joan's success? What gave her the mysterious irresistible influence
over rude warriors depressed and embittered by continual defeats, and
over wily, ambitious churchmen, all sour with suspicion of the absurd
girl-rival? The secret of her strength was that she had lived much in
soul-communion with God. There is no other way of winning influence
over men. For years she had thought of what was right and just, and
talked with heavenly ministers, and when she came among men she spoke
with singular authority, for her lips were still hot with the divine
fire.

Her mission ended, Joan begged the king to allow her to return to
Domremy. Her work was done, she said. Think of her sincerity: at the
top-most golden hour of triumph, when Heaven itself seemed open to
her, even as she stood beside her king in the great cathedral at
Rheims, of a sudden hell yawned at her feet; her "voices" left her;
she listens and cannot hear them; she prays and prays, in an agony of
entreaty; she begs her saints to intercede for her--all to no purpose:
the angelic voices have gone silent and she is too honest to pretend
to the guidance which is no longer hers. She questions everyone: is
the purpose of her life fulfilled in these fleeting months? No more
triumphs? Ought she to be content with this half-success? Her prayers
find no answer; her agony no response. The tragedy of it! But the king
would not have it.  He appealed to her: Would she abandon him now,
with the victory half completed? Paris was still in Burgundian hands.

All around her now perfect confidence and hope: "Lead us to Paris,
where you will, it will still be victory," the nobles and knights
cried, and in her heart the cold dread, and about her the shrouding
silence. Joan insisted that her work was done. The Dauphin would not
be refused. The appeal to the woman to give still was irresistible.
In her loneliness she yielded to her king and her officers, and went
on without her heavenly guides to failure and capture. She failed in
her attacks on Paris, and was made a prisoner at Compiegne on May 24,
1430, and a little later was sold to the English, who took her as a
prisoner to Rouen.

Always in her trial she said her punishment was deserved, because she
went on without her "voices"; she took shame to herself for her pride
and disobedience; but as there had never been a hint of personal
ambition or personal seeking in all her life and labor, so now she was
not left to utter ruin. In the dread hour of her utmost need her
"voices" returned to her: her heavenly visitants!

The passion of the noblest woman in the world lasted for a whole year.
The Bishop of Beauvais, Cauchon, was the president of the infamous
tribunal which spent ten months in seeking to condemn a girl to death
and dishonor a saint. He had promised his English paymasters a "good
outcome."

On April 13th, Joan was made to hear her accusation, which consisted
of a dozen articles. She was possessed of devils, was a witch, a liar,
blasphemous, thirsting for human blood, a murderess, an impious
idolatress, a schismatic; they even went so far as to charge her with
filial impiety. She was declared, too, to have "relapsed," because, by
taking away her woman's garments, they had compelled her to clothe
herself in men's clothes which they left in the cell for her.

Her demeanor before her judges, her wise simple answers, her
confessions of mistake, and her calm assurance that, since her
"voices" had come back to her, all would still be well with her, no
matter what the executioner might do; all this is of the highest. Of
the highest, too, the way she bore the cross-questionings, and coarse
browbeatings of the bishop-judge; the blows and insults of the
soldiers in the prison, and the scorn, contumely and hatred of the
mob.

On May 30, 1431, she was delivered over by the priests to the
executioners and burnt on the public place. As they tied her to the
stake she cried to Cauchon: "It is through you that I am brought to
death!" Desiring to make his infamy as complete as possible, Cauchon
on the morrow paid men to throw her ashes into the Seine.

So Joan died in the third year of her great adventure, before she
was twenty years of age. Of a surety this girl had been called and
chosen to the work which ended in the market place at Rouen. Or,
rather, which did not end there; which, indeed, does not seem likely
to end for a thousand thousand years to come, being as it is the
greatest and noblest thing which France has yet produced; more
magical in example, indeed, and miraculous in conquest of difficulty
than any thing yet seen in Christendom--a portent which flames and
reverberates through all our life still.

Now, what is the lesson of her life to us, the meaning of her failure?
The tragedy of Joan's life is just as simple as the secret of her
success. The virtue she had amassed in those hours of solitary
communion with the Archangel Michael and with Saint Catherine in
Domremy carried her irresistibly to her achievement; but no one
lives in the world without being affected by common views and common
desires. Gradually Joan's stock of primitive virtue wore away. After
Rheims she ought to have returned to Domremy, and in solitary
communion with the highest again filled her soul with the perfume of
the Ineffable. Had she done so, she would have been the greatest of
the Christian saints, dowered with the gentleness of Francis and with
more than the courage of Dominic: as simply human as St. Elisabeth, as
devoted as St. Teresa, she would have enlarged our conception of the
possibilities of womanhood.

That was not to be. Joan was to make mistakes like other mortals, and
like others she was to fall short of the highest, and to be punished
finally, not for her shortcomings, but for her glorious achievement.
So in the public square at Rouen, where all the fiends of the Pit
seemed loosed against her in hootings and hellish laughter, the brave
woman-soul went again to God, and the mortal put on immortality.




NAPOLEON


It is interesting to notice how great men come up again and again to
be written about, generation after generation, and then suddenly
seem to lose their interest. The truth is that at first they are being
classed and their gift to mankind is being assimilated. They can
only be judged by their peers, consequently their valuation takes time
in exact proportion to their greatness. Shakespeare seemed of little
interest to the first generations that succeeded him: to Pepys he
appeared unimportant, but towards the end of the eighteenth century
some of his peers happened to be born, notably Goethe in Germany and
Coleridge in England, and at once he became a center of interest,
every fact about him was collected, every theory eagerly canvassed.
The last half of the nineteenth century was more his true mother-age
than the last half of the sixteenth: the Hamlet-problems, thanks to
Darwinism, had become the problems of the hour and Shakespeare had to
be finally appraised. As soon as this exact valuation is finished the
great man takes his place in the firmament as a fixed star and excites
no further controversy.

Ever since his first success at Toulon in 1793, when he jumped almost
in a day from being a Captain of Artillery to place and power as a
General of Brigade, Napoleon has been an object of universal interest
and almost uninterrupted discussion; but I cannot help thinking that
his final valuation, if not completed, is near at hand.

The works of Masson and others have told us all that can ever be known
now of his childhood and youth, and from his twenty-fourth year on he
lived in such a blase of light that everything he said and did is
known and can be judged.

Masson is merely a dry-as-dust compiler of facts and nearly all of his
facts and nearly all his discoveries need to be brought into true
relation to the great man and his consequent achievements; but that,
too, is in process of accomplishment. It may be interesting here a
century after Napoleon's death to draw attention to the most important
of the new discoveries about his early years, for as Goethe said, it
is the period of development in a man that is of the highest interest.

It cannot be denied that Masson has brought to light three or four
facts of extraordinary significance: "Napoleon described himself in
his childhood as being combative, adroit, lively and extremely
vivacious. He had a complete mastery of his older brother Joseph, whom
he first persecuted and then complained of to his mother before poor
Joseph had time to open his mouth or collects his wits." The mother
admits that Napoleon was the most mischievous of all her children (le
plus diable de tous), though the same disposition showed itself in
all the others and made it necessary to unf urnish a large room to
serve them for a playground. "Napoleon," she adds, "for whom I had
bought a drum and sword, was only happy when painting on the walls
lines of soldiers arranged in battle."

Napoleon as a boy was anything but a brilliant pupil. After making
every allowance for the fact that the language in which he was taught
was not his mother tongue, his shortcomings were extraordinary. His
French pronunciation remained that of an Italian long after his school
days were over and his mischievous schoolfellows at Brienne gave him
the nickname of "Straw-in-the-nose" (paille au nez) from the Italian
way he pronounced his own name--_Napoglione: paille au nez_.

He had left school at 16 before he could pronounce the French "u,"
and indeed he wrote it as "ou" very much later. We have five lines of
poetry written by him at fifteen after five years of schooling in
Brienne, where French grammar and orthography were taught for two
hours daily and in the five lines which he had doubtless learned by
heart there are eight or ten blunders in spelling, which show
astonishing ignorance of French verbs and French cases. When he has to
write Pindar, the Greek poet, he writes not "Pinde," as he should
write, but peon, a word that is not even French. We know from letters
written late in life that he never mastered French prosody. On the
other hand, he was good in mathematics and fair in history and
geography, and his masters now spoke of him as "docile, kind and
grateful," and the Public Examiner, the Chevalier de Keralio, at whose
instance he was selected to complete his training at the Military
School in Paris, is said to have remarked in him "a spark of something
extraordinary that cannot be fostered too earnestly."

After leaving school at sixteen Napoleon took up the task of
self-education very seriously: for some three or four years he read
ancient and modern history, geography and natural sciences
assiduously, but he never overcame his faults in spelling and all his
life he spoke even Italian incorrectly. He was notoriously unable to
read Latin, and though he spent many hours studying German and much
time later in Germany, he never understood German.

How came it that while still a young man he was a master of French, a
writer of prose compared by the best critics with Pascal, one of the
great stylists? Sainte-Beuve put him even higher, declared that he
was the author of "the most magnificent phrases that the talent of a
writer has ever invented" and in his eulogy Sainte-Beuve was within
the truth.

His very ignorance of the usual written language helped him. He
seldom used ordinary phrases and the common platitudes of practiced
writers never came to him. No image was too daring for him, no
suggestion too farfetched: he had his eyes on the fact and his
speeches have more than the imperial brevity of Caesar (_imperatoris
lorevitas_). From the beginning his style is his own
and owes nothing to any teaching. Napoleon had not been in Egypt a
month: he had only just seen a camel when he called it "the ship of
the desert," a painting phrase which has passed into every European
language. And this is only one of hundreds of instances I could give
of his extraordinary genius for speech. Some of his letters in his
last campaign are the finest letters in French.

At the Military School in Paris, which he re-entered at fifteen in
October, 1784, he made one bitter enemy and the story of their hatred
is enthralling. It really looks as if Napoleon at the very beginning
had found a foeman worthy of his steel.

His name was Le Picard de Phelippeaux, a Poitevin, the son of an
officer who had died young. He was two years older than Napoleon and
had been two years longer in the school. One can hardly account for
the reciprocal hatred which existed between him and Bonaparte.
Monsieur Picot, their Sergeant Major, relates that he attempted
during their hours of study to stop their acts of enmity against each
other, but the number of kicks which he intercepted under the table
caused him to give up his project and spare him self bruises. The
mutual enmity can be accounted for in part by their political
prejudices: Napoleon, the Corsican and republican, the dreamer of
national independence--and the Vendeen, the fanatic royalist, which
Phelippeaux proved himself to be all his life.

They left the school at the same time: Phelippeaux, in spite of his
four years' training, gaining only a step above Napoleon. He was
sent to join a regiment at Besancon and in July, 1789, being attached
to the army called for the _coup d'etat_, took up his position with
his battery on Louis XV Square and there waited in vain for the order
to fire, trembling the while with passionate rage. A little later he
left this regiment in favor of the Prince's army and later still went
to the army of Conde.

In 1795 he was nominated to serve under M. le Veneur, Commander in
Berry, Touraine and Orleans. He began at once isolated attacks
against police forces, which resembled brigandage rather than war. He
succeeded in taking possession of Sancerre, but the forces sent
against him were too strong and he was forced to abandon his plan. He
proceeded to disband his men and with incredible audacity
established himself at Orleans.  There he was arrested on the 12th of
June, 1796, but while being conducted to Bourges for trial he managed
to escape; he remained in France till Fructidor and then joined the
army of Conde.

His regiment was ordered to Russia: not wishing to go, Phelippeaux
returned to Paris. There he succeeded in effecting the escape of
Sydney Smith, the redoubtable English admiral, from the Temple Prison.
The story reads like a romance. Phelippeaux dressed himself in an
officer's uniform and produced a forged order to hand over Sydney
Smith; the concierge obeyed the order and Phelippeaux conducted Smith
across France to England. There they were acclaimed as heroes, and the
Ministry made the Frenchman a colonel.

When Sydney Smith began his famous cruises in the Mediterranean his
French savior accompanied him and took part in all his battles. At
the very moment that Bonaparte was marching on Saint-Jean-d'Acre,
Phelippeaux hurried to the town, improvised an armament with cannon
taken from the French fleet, built up new fortifications as soon as
the old ones were forced, and by himself alone opposed the army
commanded by Bonaparte, the army victorious at the Pyramids, Mount
Tabor, Jaffa and Nazareth, repulsed all assaults, killed thousands of
Frenchmen, and arrested the victorious career of Napoleon.

The French were forced to raise the siege and retreat. Phelippeaux to
complete his triumph planned to pursue and destroy them, but his
astounding exertions proved too much for him and he died of exhaustion
in a couple of days. Had it not been for his untimely death no
Frenchman of the Syrian army would ever have entered Cairo, and no
history of Napoleon would ever have been written.

The rivalry with Phelippeaux is one of the most interesting episodes
in Napoleon's life.

But for one such enemy the young Corsican had a dozen unfriendly
critics and dislike, though painting only in shadows, often
accomplishes vivid portraits. Take this one: M. de Romain, in his
work, "Les Souvenirs d'un officier royaliste," refers to Bonaparte
thus: "He was younger than I was, but he came as a comrade to us and
one officer after the other invited him to dinner in the ordinary
courteous fashion. I must confess his face did not please me and I
disliked his character; his mentality and manner were so dry and
dictatorial for a young man of nineteen and a French officer that I
had no inclination to make a friend of him. My knowledge of ancient
and modern history and government was too meager to be able to discuss
his favorite topic with him. So when my turn came to invite him to
dine with me, three or four times in the course of the year, I left
the table immediately after coffee, handing him over to the company of
one of our captains more capable than I of meeting him on his own
level.

"My friends, like myself, could only find in him a ridiculous
assumption of superiority and pedantry. We believed that the
dictatorial tone which he adopted was merely put on until one day he
argued so strongly for the rights of nations in general, even bringing
forward his own, that we were all struck dumb with amazement:
'_Stupete gentes_.' Speaking of the Assemblies of State in Corsica he
declared 'that it was surprising that the Minister should dream of
depriving the islanders of the opportunity to discuss their own rights
and interests,' adding in a menacing tone that 'he (the Minister) does
not know the Corsicans but he will see what they are capable of.' This
showed Bonaparte to us all in his true light. One of our comrades
replied, 'Would you use your sword upon the representative of your
king?' He did not answer. . . . We separated coldly and naturally it
was the last time that this strange comrade honored me with his
presence at my table."

This snapshot of M. de Remain shows the young Napoleon in his habit as
he lived, but I must still cite his own account of the massacre of the
Swiss Guards on the 10th of August, 1792, which taught him how the
insurrection of that date broke out.

"At the sound of the alarm and at the news that they were making an
assault on the Tuileries," he said, "I ran to the Carrousel to the
house of Fauvelet, the brother of Bourrienne, who kept a furniture
shop there. He had been my comrade at the Military School of Brienne:
It was from this house that I was able to witness in safety all the
events of the day. Before I reached the Carrousel I was met in the
street by a group of hideous-looking men carrying a head at the end
of a spear. Seeing me nicely dressed and with the air of a gentleman
they came to me to make me cry, 'Vive la Nation!' which I readily did,
as you will easily imagine.

"The Chateau was attacked by the vilest mob (la plus vile canaille).
For his defense assuredly the king had as many troops as we had
afterwards on the 13th Vendemiaire, and the enemies of our Convention
were much better disciplined and much more to be feared. The greater
part of the national guard was for the king: one owes it this justice.
. . .

"After the palace had been forced and the king brought into the
Assembly I penetrated into the garden. Never, since, has any one of my
battle-fields presented a spectacle of so many corpses as the masses
of Swiss Guards which I then beheld--whether this was due to the
limited space, or to the fact of its being my first experience of the
kind, I cannot say. I saw women, _well dressed women, committing the
vilest indecencies on the bodies of the murdered Guards_....

"I went from one cafe to another in the neighborhood of the
Assembly; everywhere the irritation was extreme and rage and hatred
showed on every face, although the people I saw were not of the lowest
class. I was ordinarily dressed, but probably because I preserved a
calm attitude I excited many hostile and defiant looks."

On the same day Napoleon wrote his brother Joseph a detailed account
of what he had seen. Here is the principal point: "If Louis XVI had
appeared on horseback at the head of his Guards the victory would have
been his."

A couple of years later the chance came to Napoleon. When the sections
rebelled against the Convention he turned the cannon in the Tuileries
garden on the insurgents and in five minutes blew the French
Revolution out of existence. He had had his lesson in the weak
surrender of the king. Talking long afterwards of that dreadful 10th
of August, Napoleon said that he bit his fingers with rage (Je me suis
mange les poings) while watching the needless massacre of the brave
Swiss Guards!

It is a fine saying of Disraeli: "A man's brains may be judged by the
way he appreciates me"; but far truer if said of Napoleon. The
Corsican started lower still upon the social ladder than Disraeli,
climbed higher and left to the after-world enduring moments that
testify to his greatness of soul.

Great men are usually blessed in this one respect--that they usually
have some contemporary who understands them and can bear witness to
their genius. Jesus had many disciples and, above all, Paul.
Shakespeare had several good witnesses and, above all, Ben Jonson,
with his incomparable testimony to Shakespeare's sweetness of disposition,
generosity and wealth of imaginative fancy. Napoleon had Henri Beyle,
better known as Stendhal. Stendhal, however, only wrote a few
preliminary chapters of his life of Napoleon Bonaparte, a mere
outline, just enough to tantalize us and show us that he could have
given us the true man had he so wished.

Why he didn't I cannot imagine. He became supremely interested in his
own work and perhaps preferred to write one of the greatest novels
ever written, "Le Rouge et le Noir," rather than a Life of Napoleon;
and I am sure that in this he did right; but he also wrote "La
Chartreuse de Parme" and other books, and I would have preferred a
Life of Napoleon by him to second-rate work. Nevertheless I shall take
certain things from Stendhal's book.

It is Stendhal who first makes Napoleon's greatness plain to us. After
his feat at Toulon of driving the English ships out of the harbor he
was sent to command at Nice, thanks to the brother of Robespierre, who
was one of the Commissaires for the Army of Italy.

This French army was then under the command of Massena, a tried
general of distinguished skill whom Napoleon always called one of the
ablest of his assistants, but the army was in a state of total
indiscipline and disarray.

The revolutionary forces had only some fifty thousand men on the
Italian frontier, without uniforms, almost without shoes and
scantily provisioned. Stendhal tells us how some of the officers,
invited a little later to a ball in Milan, had to black their toes
that were peeping through their boots--a painting way of telling us
how hard-up the rank and file must have been.

Massena, though born in Nice and intimately acquainted with the local
conditions, had already informed the revolutionary committee that
unless he got pay for the army, proper material of all sorts and at
least another hundred thousand men, he could do nothing against the
Austrian army, well disciplined and well provided for in every
respect, which held fortified heights on the frontier against him,
while the British fleet controlled the seas and swept the coast road
into Italy.

Napoleon came to Nice with no knowledge of the country or conditions,
but within a week he informed the revolutionary committee that by
following a road through the mountains he could take the Austrian army
in the rear, overwhelm it, and soon drive the British fleet from the
harbors as he had already driven them out of Toulon. Massena
reluctantly admitted that by this plan success was possible but most
unlikely. There was no morale in the army and he did not know how one
man could supply it. Napoleon knew. He called the officers together
and addressed them. He spoke to the men, regiment after regiment,
telling them that they were apostles of the religion of Humanity, and
led them against the Austrians as Trotsky led the Red Army in our own
day, aflame with a new passion.

The result justified Napoleon's forecast. The Austrians, taken in
flank, assaulted everywhere by wild-eyed enthusiasts, broke and fled.
In six weeks Napoleon made good his boast and was received as a hero
with open arms by the radicals of Milan.

Of course the Austrians returned to the charge and after having to
abandon his palace at Milan Napoleon was compelled to give up the city
and take to the field again. But this time his troops had tasted
success and the wine of it went to their heads and hearts and they
soon drove the Austrians to the confines of the Tyrol.

Napoleon returned to Milan a conqueror for the second time, to find
that the palace in which he had collected many treasures of art had
been looted in his absence. He had arranged a great reception and ball
beforehand and when he found that all his pictures and statues had
been stolen, he went about among his guests declaring in his Corsican
Italian, his mother tongue, that all Italians were thieves.
Whereupon a fair lady, the Countess Caracciolo of Sicily, remarked to
him with delicious wit:

"Not all, sir, not all: _ma buona pane_"--a good part--with a play
upon his name that made everyone smile. Even in his temper Napoleon
had humor enough to enjoy the jest.

But the fame of Napoleon is founded on surer foundations than the
exploits of a general, which depend on team-work and conditions beyond
one man's control.

Caesar's writings on the war in Gaul and his arbitrary provision that
all creditors in Rome must be satisfied with three-quarters of their
debt did more to establish his reputation than his triumphs on the
Rhine or in Egypt. And Napoleon was not ony a great general and great
writer but a great lawgiver also, and reformer.

He was the first to link up the series of French provincial
universities with their center in Paris, and on this model the Germans
have since builded. He constructed also a modern code of laws, and in
both these great reforms he picked an almost unknown man to help him
who is now regarded as a genius of the first order; he chose Joubert
as adviser before anyone had heard of him: brains selecting brains,
almost involuntarily as mediocrity selects mediocrity, as Wilson
selected Lansing and Burleson _et hoc genus omne_.

One instance of Napoleon's humanity may suffice. The lawyers were
discussing the bankruptcy law and had copied a provision from the old
Roman law which is terribly harsh on the debtor, for all his property
can practically be taken by the creditors. Napoleon said at once:
"This bankruptcy act must not apply to officers in the army and
navy; men who have risked their lives for their country should not be
shamed because of debt." At once officers of the army and navy were
withdrawn from the penalties of the bankruptcy act. But Joubert
quietly remarked: "Sir, men of science also work for ideal ends and
should not be judged harshly as tradesmen who work for nothing but
their own advantage; artists, too, and men of letters are working for
the good of humanity rather than for their own pecuniary advantage.
Surely they, too, might be free from this dishonoring statute."

At once Napoleon agreed. And even now it is impossible in France to
make an artist or man of letters or scientist or officer in the army
or navy a bankrupt.

That in itself would be enough to lift the Code Napoleon above every
other code of laws yet framed among civilised men.

Napoleon, too, built the great-roads that furrow France, enlarged
the canal system, instituted a forestry department, and in fact did
more for the French than all their kings and rulers put together.

I have put no shadows into this sketch, though they are numerous and
dark enough: Napoleon not only lied habitually but habitually
attributed his own blunders to his best generals as Bernadotte; he
couldn't help drinking coffee though it gave him acute indigestion; he
was too readily familiar with pretty girls who would allow liberties
or even beg for them. Graver accusations of this sort have been
brought against him. The story went that he was intimate with Hortense
de Beauharnais who was afterwards married to his brother Luis. Later
still, he was said to be intimate with his lovely sister, Pauline,
whose picture by Canova is well known. I have studied the whole
accusation with some care. It was founded on some letters of Pauline
which nobody seems to have seen, much less possess, but several have
heard of them and two have quoted titbits from them. From the whole of
Napoleon's subsequent conduct I feel certain that there is no truth in
the accusation. Pauline was simply a lovely, engaging, temperamental
woman, who was almost the only one of the family to repay the constant
kindnesses of Napoleon to his brothers and sisters with some
equivalent generosity. Before the Waterloo campaign she handed him
over her diamonds to defray some of his expenses, but time and again
he preaches to her in letters in such a way as to render the
accusation of intimacy absolutely incredible. That Napoleon's morals
were very loose no one would attempt to deny: but the graver
accusations should be attributed to his great position. We know of no
one who was so constantly kind--more even than kind--to all his
brothers and sisters.

Perhaps the most marked trait in his character from youth to age was
his love of books. When a youth at Brienne he annoyed the college
librarian by his incessant requests for books.  "When I was a
lieutenant of artillery," he told the royalties assembled at Erfurt,
"I cared little for society, but luckily I lodged near a learned and
obliging bookseller and spent my time reading books."

Napoleon never set out on a campaign without laying in a stock of
books, and Barbier, his librarian, tells us that these always included
standard works in history and literature. Even at Waterloo he had six
great cases of books which contained the Bible, Homer, Bossuet, his
favorite Ossian and all Voltaire.

At the crisis of his fate at Malmaison after Waterloo, Queen Hortense
visited him. "I don't understand the Emperor," she said; "instead of
coming to some decision about his departure, he's reading a novel."

Naturally enough he loved the people who had followed him with
passionate devotion and given their blood to his service. On his tomb
in Paris, the words can still be read that he himself wrote a century
ago:

"_Je veux que mes cendres rejposent aux bords de la Seine au milieu de
ce peuple Francois que_ _j'ai tant dime_." (I wish my ashes to rest
forever on the banks of the Seine in the midst of the French people I
have loved so well.)

And here in all state his mortal remains still rest as Foch said the
other day, "a perpetual encouragement and an inspiration forever."
Victor Hugo wrote his greatest odes in his honor; Beethoven dedicated
to him his Heroic Symphony; and so he passed, having enlarged our
conception of what a man can be and do.





TOLSTOI'S LAST DAYS


Till the appearance of Boulgakov's journal: "Tolstoi in the Last Year
of His Life," we knew little or nothing of what had driven the great
writer to leave his home at 82 years of age and wander out to die in
the little railway station of Astapova.

True, Tchertkov, his confidant and literary executor, has written a
book entitled "Tolstoi's Flight," but the author's manifest
partisanship prevented one from accepting all his statements.
Moreover, the story he told was too far-fetched, too improbable to be
immediately welcomed. We were asked to believe that Tolstoi's wife,
who had lived with him for 48 years and borne him a swarm of children,
suddenly became jealous of his chosen friend Tchertkov, made constant
rows with him first and then with her husband till she drove the old
writer from his home. The story seemed unreasonable, too preposterous
to be true.  But from the later work we get the t's crossed, so to
speak, and the dots on the i's.

Tolstoi's private secretary, Boulgakov, kept a journal and noted in it
everything that happened of any importance at Yasnaia Poliana,
particularly in the last year 1910 from June till that October
night when Tolstoi fled from his home only to perish miserably among
strangers a few days later.

The ground of the quarrel is given at length, though it does not
appear sufficient to justify the tragic outcome. It appears that
Tolstoi had confided his "Memoirs" from 1900 on to his friend
Tchertkov and Madame Tolstoi insisted on having them. Boulgakov
begins by speaking of Madame Tolstoi's hysteria and insane jealousy of
Tchertkov: "There were constant disputes," he says, "and terrible
scenes ever since Tchertkov had invited Tolstoi to pay him a visit and
had not included Madame Tolstoi in his invitation or at least had not
treated her with sufficient courtesy; had neglected to assure her, for
instance, that she would have a room entirely for herself."

As soon as Tolstoi returned to Yasnaia from Tchertkov's place, Madame
Tolstoi gave vent to her hysterical irritation against her husband.
Tolstoi did his best to calm her and sat up with her far into the
night and when he came away begged his daughter Alexandra "to be very
careful," adding, "it is impossible to be silent and very dangerous
to speak."

On the first day of July, Boulgakov tells us that the row continued: a
quarrel broke out between Madame Tolstoi and Tchertkov as to who
should keep the famous "Memoirs." Even the daughter Alexandra took
sides against her mother saying that if one trusted her with the
documents, she would certainly suppress whatever she did not like in
the text. Tolstoi was just as firmly opposed to confiding the text
to his wife. Boulgakov's comment is: "the atmosphere is troubled."
And it was more and more troubled from July to November.

In all literature there is no such story of insensate jealousy.
Madame Tolstoi is driving with Boulgakov on the 12th of July; "She
wept all the way," he tells us; "she is infinitely to be pitied: she
has begged me to get Tchertkov to give her the Mss. Memoirs; he can
copy them," she added, "and recopy them, but all the earlier Memoirs
are in my care; why should I not have these? Let him give them to me
and I will be friends with him."

The request seemed reasonable enough and Boulgakov went to Tchertkov
and told him what Madame Tolstoi had said; but met with a blank
refusal. When he informs Madame Tolstoi of the result of his mission,
she blames Tolstoi and at length declares that she will poison herself
or drown herself if he denies her prayer.

On the 14th of July, Tolstoi writes her a conciliatory letter
begging her not to torment herself; she has only done herself more
harm than anyone else, and he adds that he lies awake listening to
every sound that comes from her room, till night itself is only a
torture. Finally, he promises to do what she wishes.

Next day he sends his daughter Alexandra to Tchertkov to get back the
original Mss. Tchertkov and his friends copy out the Memoirs and
especially every passage that refers however remotely to Madame
Tolstoi and then hand the original Mss. back to her daughter. When
Alexandra returns with it, the mother throws herself upon it, tears it
open, and a son-in-law who happens to be present has to help Alexandra
or the wild creature would have torn up the Mss. in her mad
excitement.

Then Tolstoi determines to seal up the Memoirs and confides them for
safety to his bank.

On this Madame Tolstoi begs Tchertkov to pay her a visit again, while
Tolstoi writes him to take the greatest care and say nothing about the
Memoirs, nor even speak to Madame Tolstoi in private.

About the 19th of July, Tolstoi wrote the end of the "Fragments of a
Journal" which appeared in some papers. Tchertkov, it seemed, sent the
stuff to be published and Tolstoi left him the responsibility. While
he was writing about this to Tchertkov, Madame Tolstoi came in, and
seeing the letter in his hand, wanted to know if she could not copy
it. Why not send her copy to Tchertkov? Why give him the original?
Another scene and at length Tolstoi summed it all up by saying: "As
soon as Tchertkov comes in question she loses her common sense."

The doctors have to be sent for to calm the hysterical woman and at
length Tolstoi sends Boulgakov to Tchertkov to tell him not to come to
Yasnaia till Madame Tolstoi has won back to sanity: "Tell him that for
a time at least I must keep away from him though the absence hurts.
What else can I do: my wife's threats of suicide unman me!"

The doctors decide that Madame Tolstoi is suffering from paranoia and
so give the ill they cannot cure, a name.

On that day, the 22nd of July, Tolstoi made his will, secretly giving
all his works to the Russian public and naming his daughter
Alexandra as executrix. This was just what Madame Tolstoi most feared
and to cap all Tchertkov called at Yasnaia in spite of Tolstoi's
prohibition and sat with him for some time on the balcony of his
writing room. In the late afternoon everyone went to tea on the
terrace, even Madame Tolstoi. According to Boulgakov: "She was in a
terrible state of nervous excitement; she was rude and provocative to
everyone, especially to Tchertkov; it was so unpleasant that we all
drank our tea in hurried silence and separated as soon as possible."

Tolstoi's only remark was that it was necessary as the Gospel said to
love one's enemies and those who hate you. But he added sadly: "I am
far from that perfection."

In August, the situation went from bad to worse. After a "disagreeable
talk" with her husband on the first, Madame Tolstoi kept to her bed
the whole day of the second, and like a giant refreshed made an
awful scene on the evening of the third. Boulgakov assures us that she
called her husband all sorts of names, going beyond all limits of
decency, inventing insane accusations (_des choses folles_) to justify
her hatred of Tchertkov.

Suddenly she sees Tolstoi hurry away pale with horror, into his
bedroom, which he locks behind him and then into his workroom where he
locks the door leading into the drawing-room, barricading himself as
in a fortress.

A moment later his unhappy wife went from door to door begging for
admittance and asking for forgiveness: "Leo darling, I won't say it
any more!"

Tolstoi did not answer or open to her; but next day admits that he
thinks of going away: "It is impossible," he says, "to treat a great
many people as reasonable beings (and he waved his hand towards his
wife's apartment). One must regard them as children, that is, love
them, respect them, protect them but never put them on a level with
oneself, nor expect from them an understanding beyond their capacity.
The worst of it is that these grown-up children have no desire to
learn as real children have and no childish sincerity; they are
indifferent to argument, contemptuous of reason, disagreeably
self-centered. And how many of them we have about us!" he added. "I
want you to put all this down in my journal," he went on, and then
although he was all gray and bent, he climbed up a ladder and took
from a drawer, ostensibly filled with books, the Mss. of his Memoirs,
which he had hidden there from his wife.

A week later Boulgakov recalls a sentence of Tolstoi on Maupassant's
story entitled "Solitude"; "the fundamental idea," he says, "is true,
but not pushed far enough, not so far as Schopenhauer pushes the
thought when he says, 'in solitude one must understand the being who
is oneself, with whom one lives.' In Maupassant there is no such
self-analysis; his development was not complete; but in many persons
such development has not even begun: they are mere children even when
grown-up, even when advanced in years. . . ."

Madame Tolstoi kept on interrupting Tolstoi while he made these
remarks: evidently she did not agree with him on a single point.
Schopenhauer's idea that this abstract intelligence which is always
beside one and able to judge one's own idiosyncrasies as against
perfection, was God, the highest spiritual principle in Man; and this
was also the belief of Tolstoi, indeed the fundamental conviction of
his life and the base of all his ideas. Madame Tolstoi would not
accept this for a moment: to her husband's face she sneered at it as
an "_ingenieuse plaisanterie_" (ingenious pleasantry).

At this Tolstoi got up and went into his bedroom and when Boulgakov
followed him he said: "As a weak man, I went away; it is impossible to
talk on such a serious subject with my wife: she will not or cannot
think."

September is even worse than August. On the 14th, Boulgakov declares
that "she is absolutely insane!" ("tout _a fait folle_").

She shows him a passage in the earlier "Memoirs" "which explains,"
she says, "her insane jealousy of Tchertkov." Boulgakov won't read the
passage. "I respect, I love Tolstoi so profoundly," he says to her,
"that I would rather not read anything that might do him harm in my
eyes." Madame Tolstoi said she understood his sentiment.

On the 18th of September, there was a terrible scene with a chance
visitor: Madame Tolstoi horrified him with tales of Tchertkov so that
at length he fled from the house. On the 21st comes a letter to
Boulgakov from the daughter Alexandra who is paying a visit at
Kotchety with her father saying that at length Tolstoi has made up his
mind not to give in again to his wife. "_II ne pent plus tendre le dos
davantage_." On the 16th, Tolstoi wrote to Tchertkov that at last he
saw there must be a resolve not to yield to mere bully ing; but to do
one's duty before one's conscience and God: he adds, "I am going to do
this."

On the 22nd, Boulgakov goes to Yasnaia to await Tolstoi's arrival. He
says that Madame Tolstoi was extremely worked up, not only against
Tchertkov, but against her husband. She declared publicly that "she no
longer loved him, and that she regarded him as almost a stranger." She
awaited him, she said, "without any feeling of joy." And her meeting
with her husband was very cold. She hardly spoke to him and followed
him in silence to their apartment. A little later she returned and
said to her daughter Alexandra, "Your father wants you" and
disappeared into her own room. Alexandra and Boulgakov went to Tolstoi
who greeted them with the words: "Always the same; she is in a state
of extreme nervousness. Oh! the unhappy woman!"

On the anniversary of their marriage forty eight years before, Madame
Tolstoi put on an elegant white dress, but when Boulgakov
congratulated her she cried out: "Why congratulate an unhappy woman!"
and burst into tears.

Then his daughter makes a scene with Tolstoi because he yields to her
mother and the poor old man puts his head on his arms and sobs. The
daughter begs forgiveness and they cry in each other's arms.

A little later Tolstoi speaks freely to Boulgakov: "I ought to be
content with the fame I have won," he began, "but really I cannot
understand why everyone wishes to see in me a specially gifted
individual; I am just a man like all others, with all the ordinary
human weaknesses. And yet they won't accept my liking and esteem
simply, as that of one near and dear to them, but they are resolved to
set on my liking a special value!"

And then he gave Boulgakov a masterly letter to copy that he had
written to Grote, the brother of the famous Greek historian, a letter
of such youth and power and joy that it filled Boulgakov with
admiration.

Immediately afterwards Madame Tolstoi burst in like a whirlwind
screaming that her husband is determined to kill her, for he has hung
up a new portrait of Tchertkov and she is going to burn it, and a few
minutes later she comes back with "the portrait that she has torn into
shreds."

An hour later they are horrified by a shot in her room; they run to
her only to find that she has not hurt anything. "She missed," she
says.

Later more shots are heard and they find Madame Tolstoi has hit a
chest of drawers. A little later another outburst and Madame Tolstoi
declares that her daughter Alexandra must leave the house. Nothing
loath, the daughter goes bag and baggage to her own place. On the
29th, she returns for some things and her mother begs her to stay but
she refuses. Boulgakov recounts how kind Tolstoi is to his half-insane
wife: at dinner he presses her to take a liqueur and in the evening
persuades her to go to bed early saying: "Rest is the best cure for us
all."

Next day Madame Tolstoi talks kindly to Boulgakov; says that she has
noticed his delicacy and understands his reticence though she has
called him "the living post" whereupon Boulgakov replies that his
chief duty is to Tolstoi and that he will do his bidding at all costs,
even as a post-boy.

On the 3rd of October, Tolstoi has an attack of unconsciousness in
which he mutters incoherently. Then he passes into convulsions and
it takes five friends to hold him. All this time Madame Tolstoi held
her face against his feet sobbing and when Alexandra hurried to the
bedside, she said to her: "I suffer more than you: you only lose a
father; but I lose a husband and I am responsible for his death."

Yet as soon as Tolstoi has recovered, the scenes recommence, worse
even than before: "Has Tolstoi made a will?" If so, she wants
control of all his artistic work--everything.

At last Tolstoi writes to a peasant friend to ask him can he find him
one quiet room. No matter how small so that it is silent and warm; he
won't disturb him, he justs wants to rest; he will wire to him in an
assumed name.

At midnight on the 27th of October, Tolstoi, who was in bed, saw light
in his workroom and heard the rustling of papers. It was his wife who
had come to hunt for the supposed will. This was the last drop that
made the cup overflow; he went straight to his daughter and said: "I
am going away for good," and he said it with extraordinary fire and
resolution.

The daughter began to pack his clothes while Tolstoi wrote a last
letter to his wife: "My going will annoy you; I am sorry for that; but
I can't help it, my position here has become intolerable. I don't want
luxuries about me now I have come to the end, but solitude and peace.
I beg you to believe me and don't follow me even if you learn where I
am. Your coming would only worsen the situation without changing my
decision.

"I thank you for the forty-eight years of loyal and sweet
companionship that you have given me and I beg you to pardon me all my
faults as I now pardon yours. Take up your own life and don't be angry
with me.   LEO TOLSTOI."

This letter reminds me of Blake's fine verse:--

  "And throughout all Eternity
  I forgive you, you forgive me;
  As our dear Redeemer said:
  This the wine and this the bread."

To Alexandra, Tolstoi said he was going to his sister, Maria, in the
convent of Charmardino; he had always a great affection for this
sister though they disagreed in matters of religion. At half past five
in the morning, he left his home quietly and drove to the station.

The end came quickly. Tolstoi left his home on the 28th of October.
Next morning Boulgakov tells how he went to Yasnaia at 11 in the
morning and met on the stairs Alexandra, the daughter, and Madame
Tolstoi who had just come down.

"Where is Papa?" cried Madame Tolstoi.

"Gone away!" replied Alexandra.

"What? When? Where?" exclaimed Madame Tolstoi.

"Last night!"

"Impossible, dear Sacha--where?"

"I don't know where," replied Alexandra; "he gave me this letter for
you--"

Madame Tolstoi tore open the letter but could not read more than the
first line; she threw the letter on the table and ran away to her
room.

A few moments later one of the servants came running in to say Madame
Tolstoi had hurried into the park towards the lake. They all ran out
and found that Madame Tolstoi had flung herself into the water; they
saw her head go under but at once Boulgakov and Alexandra waded in and
with some difficulty drew her out and carried her into the house while
she complained that they should have left her to drown. As soon as she
had her clothes changed she sent off a telegram to the station: "Come
back at once, Sacha."

For hours afterwards she went on asserting that she would find
another, surer way to kill herself; but no one paid much attention
to her. Boulgakov adds that the servants as a rule did not like Madame
Tolstoi. Evidently Boulgakov doesn't like her; a day or two afterwards
Madame Tolstoi went about with the pillow of Tolstoi's bed in her
arms, nursing and talking to it: "Dear Leo, where is thy poor little
head now?" The next moment she burst out in imprecations of hate: "A
savage beast he is; no one could be so cruel: he went away on purpose
to kill me."

Boulgakov no doubt reads her rightly; he says she was inordinately
vain and proud of her position as Tolstoi's wife. Besides her
vanity, motives of self-interest and cupidity were also quite
manifest: she wanted the "Memoirs" not only for the honor, but also
for their money-value. She always wished to play the part of the good
genius of Tolstoi, his helpmate in every sense, and now with his
flight, her whole pose had come to grief. People would say: "You drove
him out of his home; he could not even live with you." Shame fell upon
her and this sense of disgrace was the cause of her tears, and her
anger and her passionate desire to get Tolstoi to return.

But of that there was no likelihood: hearing of his wife's futile
attempt to drown herself, he wrote to Alexandra: "If anyone has reason
to commit suicide, it is I, and not my wife."

Madame Tolstoi at length begs Boulgakov to go with her in pursuit of
Tolstoi and when he refuses she tries to get Tchertkov to come back
to her and forgive her and help her. But he refuses.

Telegrams begin to pour in; the Russian papers have got wind of
Tolstoi's flight; even the Paris and London press are inquisitive.
Fortunately, Dr. Berkenheim and a nurse arrive to take care of Madame
Tolstoi who has eaten nothing in the three days since Tolstoi left the
house and is now visibly weak and ill. When the doctor suggests
feeding her she threatens to throw herself on a knife or kill herself
in some other way, resolved to keep up the tragicomedy to the end.

When Brio, a correspondent of the Rousskoie-Slovo, called upon Madame
Tolstoi, she had already read articles condemning her in several
journals and had completely lost her head; before Brio there was a
terrible scene in which she poured out a flood of reproaches not only
against Tchertkov but also against her husband.

That same evening on the 1st of November came a telegram from
Tchertkov saying that Tolstoi had pneumonia; the next day a wire from
the Rousskoie-Slovo gave Yasnaia Tolstoi's address and at once Madame
Tolstoi, nurse, doctor and the children all went off to him at the
little roadside station at Astapova. But help came too late; on the
7th of November, Boulgakov heard from Tchertkov's wife that Tolstoi
was dead. . . .

The whole story, it seems to me, gives birth to two thoughts: first of
all, here perhaps is the first and best account of feminine jealousy
ever put in print. Shakespeare painting from his own experience
describes Othello's jealousy, but says little or nothing of
Cleopatra's when Antony marries, and very little of the mad jealousy
felt by Antony's wife when she learns that he has left her and gone
back to "that serpent of old Nile." But jealousy is the vice of the
woman and not of the man; long ago it should have been studied and
described by all the great poets; but they have all ignored it, meshed
in their own personalities. It now remains for some woman to depict
woman's chief passion; the best attempt so far is this description of
Sofia Tolstoi.

The second thought that occurs to me has been suggested by Tolstoi
himself when he comes all too late to realise that he should not have
given in to his wife's senseless unreason and bad temper. Good men are
punished for their goodness by ordinary mortals, punished incredibly
and beyond all endurance. If Tolstoi had spoken firmly to his wife in
June when her jealousy first showed itself, he might have lived a year
or two longer and given us some more great work. He should have
thought of his duty to the world at large and recalled Tennyson's
lines:

  "Death closes all, yet something ere the end,
  Some work of noble note may yet be done."

Fancy allowing such a vain, selfish, stupid, perverse creature as
Sofia Andreievna proved herself, to destroy Tolstoi and limit his gift
to humanity.




PART TWO

PLACES

GREAT CITIES OF THE WORLD


In the world's history there are scarcely more than half-a-dosen
cities whose fame and fate are known to everyone, whose mere names
convey to the unlearned an inspiration of that nobility which lingers
wherever great lives have been lived. Think of it! In ten thousand
years the myriad races of men have not been able to build more than
half-a-dozen habitations sanctified by self 'sacrifice, or glorified
by greatness, or made sweet by visions of loveliness to such a degree
that we must perforce cherish their names in our memory. Thousands of
thousands of cities have been built, however, with toil of hand and
strain of breath only to disappear and be forgotten, as transitory as
are the shadows which in summer flit across a breezy upland. "Many are
called but few chosen."

Yet Jerusalem is remembered. Even now, we can, in imagination,
reconstruct its Temple, and with speechless awe enter its Holy of
Holies, and silently gaze upon the Ark of the Covenant, to be prompted
by the thought that Gethsemane yonder is of more deathless memory
still, and the gray hill of Calvary of even deeper significance. Here
our race learned all that it knows of the conduct of life, and of the
solemnity of death; here we are, so to speak, at our mother's knees
once more, with childish voice repeating words of prayer.

Athens, too, we can never forget. In it we live again in the
youth-tide of humanity. Here we become warriors and artists, poets
and philosophers, without straining effort; here our dreams are
fulfilled, all our powers realised. On its Acropolis we still see
stately temples, and all around them fair statues, incorporating in
human form those ideals of love and wisdom and majesty which still
guide our aspirations. Here the old religion of law loses its
terror; the fallen veil reveals a fair humanity, and we give up our
tongue-tied adoration for words and looks of love. In Athens, life
opens before us, life and the joy of living. We have not yet forgotten
the boy's delight in rivalry and conquest, the keen pleasure of strife
for strife's sake, but we have come to recognize that life itself is a
perpetual struggle, whether it be the artist's struggle with his
material, or the statesman's strife with his surroundings, or the
saint's conflict with his own unworthiness. At length we realize that
living implies continual overcoming. And so we throw ourselves into
the world, and are orators, artists, poets, as the desire moves us,
attempting all things, and succeeding in all our endeavors. Behind us,
as we pass, we leave eloquent words of wisdom, statues of
astonishing perfection, poems of deathless beauty, deeds that can
never be forgotten; but, at last, we are brought face to face with the
hard lesson that of himself the individual, however gifted and how
ever powerful, is not omnipotent, and it is Rome that teaches us.

Rome--the very word brings with it a larger air as of corporate life,
and a sterner stress as of death faced for the fatherland. Here we
learn that living is not all enjoyment and achievement; here we find
again that "we win most in that we seem to fail." And so we spend our
lives, soaking the Nubian sands with our blood, or in dim German
forests battling with hordes of savages, or in wild British strands
seeking a landing, and lo! in death itself our life wins purpose and
significance. And so Rome is the city of our manhood; its passion is
ambition; its art the writing of history; its highest achievement the
federation of men in one citizenship of world-wide empire. Jerusalem
is, as it were, the mother of our childhood, and Athens the mistress
of our youth; but Rome is the wife of our maturer years, teaching us,
as she does, to sacrifice ourselves for our posterity, and to find
pleasure in the fulfillment of duty.

There are no cities quite like these three; none so assured as are
these of immortal renown. But after these three, and in a second rank,
there are a few others which humanity cannot forget, even if it would.
There is Constantinople, the city of lawless lust and savage cruelty;
the stones of it are blood-stained with purposeless murder; the waters
flowing by it are scared to haste by the deeds they witness there.
Constantinople will be remembered, as men remember, in their own
despite, the grimmest tale of giant and ogre over which they shuddered
in childhood. Besides, Constantinople is the grave of Athens; in St.
Sophia there still dwells the memory of her loveliness, and the
wavelets of the Sweet Waters whisper to each other her _requiem_.

Paris, too, is not likely to die, nor can it ever be forgotten. Here
we grew skeptical of duty and laughed, and the light laughter--echoing
hollow in the eternal silence--is called Voltaire. There is something
of Rousseau and Voltaire, of Panurge and Figaro, in every man, and
here is the city in which they lived their lives--and faced their
deaths.  And what deaths they all met! A sort of convulsion of
universal Nature, during which the foundations of the earth were
shaken, and the waters under the earth rose up to fill the vaults of
heaven. And all the while, the blood-rain fell in sheets, till the
earth shivered under its clammy mantle. But since the Revolution,
Paris has become the ideal city. Profiting by its revolutionary
experiences, France leads the world in social justice. It has no
unemployed, few multi-millionaires, and a love of the best in art,
literature and thought, such as no other country can claim. No! Paris
is not likely to be forgotten while men live upon this earth!

  And Vienna cannot be forgotten,
  The rose-red city half as old as time.

Paris draws strangers from London and New York and Kioto, but Vienna
draws Hungarians, Greeks, Rumanians, Russians, and Poles, and all the
Balkan peoples with an imperious attraction. Its Opera shows finer
music than Paris; the Burg Theater is at least as good as the _Comedie
Francaise_ for its repertoire includes Shakespeare and Goethe, and its
public library and museum are at least as interesting as anything to
be found in Paris. The _Literaten Cafe_ was a better meeting-place
than Poussets on the Grand Boulevard, for there one met the best
writers and thinkers, artists and musicians of a dozen different
nationalities.

The books and humorous papers, too, are just as good as the French,
and speech everywhere as free as in Paris and as witty. Oh! the golden
days of youth in gay Vienna!

It takes a thousand years and a hundred generations of men to build
such a great city and it is not to be destroyed by three ignorant
bald-pates in an hour! Sooner or later the "repairer of the ways"
shall come, as Isaiah called the Savior, and dear Vienna will again
know the old pulsing, passionate, colored life!

What shall be said of London and New York? I have written at great
length of London elsewhere, of its beauty, and fog and grime; but New
York, despite its tremendous natural advantages, is devoid of any
historical associations and noble memories; this omission makes life
hardly worth living there for the highly educated.

The man who reads and thinks lives at least as much in the past and in
the future as in the present. Life to him is not bounded by the walls
within which he dwells, nor confined to the affections and sorrows,
the cares and customs, of his individual life. "The heir of all the
ages" that have passed, he finds in history counsel, consolation, and
encouragement, such as the present does not yield; in the cellars of
the Time-home there lies waiting for his use goodly store of "the wine
that's meant for souls," and this wine has had time to clear itself of
the fiery spirit which, when it was new, concealed its finest flavor.
The educated man will not even attempt to slake his thirst with the
vintage of the day. The men who meet and jostle him in the street, the
men whose orders he obeys or to whom he gives commands, are usually
nothing more than acquaintances to him; "the persons of importance" in
the day are generally unimportant in his judgment. Why should he make
these his friends when he can choose the society of any of those who
in the past have lived noble and heroic lives? For he can make those
"shining ones" as present to him, can know them as intimately and love
them as dearly as if they now walked the streets beside him.

What society can be found today comparable to that which throngs the
streets of Old London--the London of Shakespeare and Elizabeth, of
Cromwell and Milton, of Chatham and Nelson, of Wordsworth and
Coleridge, of Carlyle and of Browning? Even now, after living but a
short time in London, we become aware that the spirits of these men
encompass us about; this is the very air they breathed, these skies
they gazed upon, these ways they trod; and the deeds they did, and the
words they spoke, live still and reveal their souls to us with such
reality of representment that we can easily conjure up their bodily
presence.

And so the historical cities of the world, the places where great men
have lived and labored, nay, even the roads along which they passed,
are invested with a secret and singular charm. But in a young city
like New York, a city devoid of lofty traditions, fancy has nothing to
feed on. The future even is intangible, a crowded buzzing hive in
which the shaping spirit of imagination cannot build for want of
material. This material exists only in the past, and so we understand
how all arts partake of the nature of a record, and are prophetic only
as the flower forecasts the fruit.

Thus it comes about that the educated man finds it almost impossible
to live in a new city. The better part of life is lacking there, and
no material wealth or comfort, no prospect of personal gain or
advantage, can ever make up for this hidden want. "Men shall not live
by bread alone"; the saying is as true today as it was when first
uttered nineteen centuries ago.




SEVILLE


Some travelers wander over the earth's surface for no other apparent
reason than to tell us afterwards of their discomforts and
disappointments.  They catch colds in St. Peter's and fleas in St.
Sophia, are ague-stricken at Thermopylae, and sea-sick off Trafalgar.
They have eyes only for shortcomings, and can never look at the sun
without cursing its spots. Was it not Cobden who said that when at
Athens he could not find the Ilyssus, as "a couple of washerwomen had
dammed up that classic stream?" A sneer is the one weapon with which
mediocrity can avenge itself upon everything beyond its ken. But,
after all, things ignoble and envious, and of evil nature, may safely
be left to their own Nemesis. Those who travel in order to find fault
are not rewarded as are those who go in quest of the beautiful. "Seek
and ye shall find;" and if sought in the right spirit, with reverence
and appreciation, loveliness is as easily found in this world of ours
as ugliness; kindness is as common as malevolence, wisdom as prevalent
as folly. It is Thackeray who compares the world to a mirror; if you
grin at it, it grins at you in turn; if you threaten it, it shakes a
menacing fist in your face by way of answer; and if you bend to kiss
it, its lips try to return your greeting.

Let us then be determined to see everything at its best, and we shall
not be disappointed in Seville. The very name has an inexplicable
charm for us. We do not know when or where we first heard it, or why
the mention of it should exercise a fascination for our fancy. But so
it is. In some strange way Seville reminds us of the first love-tale
we read and cried over without knowing why the tears came. It is so
beautiful that we love it, and its beauty is so fleeting that it moves
us to heavy sorrow. Is not the kiss of youth rounded by the sign of
age? "Seville" we murmur to ourselves, and forthwith the
myrtle-blossom is before us, and the scent of the almond in our
nostrils. The fields around it are blue with hyacinth and golden with
crocus. There it lies in its white loveliness, girdled with orange
groves, and seems, mider the moonlight, to sway to some mystic
measure of passionate desire; but it is lonely in its isolation, and
the hills about it are sad with the gray quivering olive-leaves. The
beauty of life and the desolation of death meet in this one word
"Seville."

For it is very beautiful, although its beauty is not easy to describe.
Regularity of feature it does not possess, nor majestic grandeur, nor
classic severity of grace. But the splendor of its coloring atones for
a thousand faults of form, and it continually startles our
indifference into delight by unexpected beauties where shyness and
passion seem to mingle. It is "a romance in stone"; its narrow streets
are more than modest, and the high houses with their barred windows
almost unapproachable; but suddenly through a doorway we catch a
glimpse of some patio, bathed in golden sunlight, with birds singing
on broad palm-leaves, as if in emulation of the melody made by the
falling spray of the center fountain. And the glimpse of light and
warmth and music charms us the more by reason of this contrast. We
pass on down the street and halt involuntarily before a shop without
doors or windows, a fruit-shop to its inmost recesses open to the
gaze, wherein a young mother is quietly nursing her baby, in utter
unconsciousness of the fact that in our days the hereditary fig-leaf
is usually of portentous size. The great dark eyes regard us without
curiosity, meditatively, and the picture is complete. The piles of
fruit around, the young mother, the simple duty and delight, something
of the old-world innocence in all this charms us, and we move on
wondering whether the love-poetry of Seville is more beautiful than
the household prose of its later life.

There is so much in it to love because there is such variety in its
expressiveness. You bend your steps to its cathedral, and look up the
Giralda tower, to where the delicate tracery seems to move in the
quivering sunlight, and, far above, is the blue dome of the sky. Out
of the warmth you pass through a doorway into the chill gloom of the
building, and at first your dazzled eyesight exaggerates the mystic
grandeur and solemnity of the lofty columns which stretch before you
towards unexplored solitudes, and unconsciously the voice is hushed,
and the footfall becomes inaudible. But scarcely have you yielded to
this influence when suddenly the organ peals forth, and you come to an
opening in the aisle, where from a side window the painted glass
throws bars of purple, and gold, and rose, athwart the green marble
floor; and the gloom of the place is lighted with the glow and glory
of passion.

Everyone remembers the story of how Mozart, when a youth, visited
Rome, and attended at St. Peter's in order to hear a celebrated
requiem which had never been published. On his return to his lodgings
the youthful genius sat down and wrote out from memory every note of
the music he had just heard. In the eighteenth century this feat was
looked upon as something almost miraculous, but today there are
hundreds of Germans, and perhaps some few Frenchmen and Englishmen,
who would not shrink from attempting a similar task. For example, at
the Cathedral of Seville a Miserere is now and then played, the score
of which is carefully guarded, and which, they say, has never yet been
duplicated, much less published, and yet one can obtain a copy of it,
transcribed by hand, without serious difficulty. Who, we wonder, was
the man who first listened to this music with such enthusiastic love
that each separate note burned itself into his memory so that he could
afterwards reproduce the score of it at will? So much is certain, that
he never won fame as Mozart did, or we should have heard of him. He
was one of that noble band whose names were writ on water, and who yet
did work which the world would not willingly lose.

What a heartless, merciless coquette Fame is! She throws herself into
one man's arms almost without being solicited, and on his forehead
presses the kiss of immortality, careless of gratitude; and yet shows
herself coy and cold to another who is eager to buy her smallest
favor at the cost of half his life. Thank goodness, the vast majority
of feminine beauties are not of so nice a fancy. At least, Spanish
beauties do not push discrimination to so ultra-fine a point. Perhaps
their instinct tells them that when they yield they are altogether
irresistible. At any rate, one glance from their eyes, a sort of
promissory note without a signature, is not easily forgotten.

Let us return to our Cathedral at Seville. We go there one spring
afternoon, in order to be present at a ceremony, the like of which
cannot be seen in any other city on earth. For on this one day in each
year it is the custom at Seville Cathedral for young boys to dance
before the altar to the music of stringed instruments, much as David,
we are told, danced before the Lord twenty-seven centuries ago. On the
occasion we speak of, the ceremony took place in a side chapel, as
part of the Cathedral was undergoing repairs; but this which we at
first looked upon as a subject for regret we afterwards regarded as a
piece of singular good fortune. For the ceremony was carried out in
all detail under the eyes of an officiating Archbishop, and yet the
stage was so small and so near us that we could follow easily every
movement of the dancers. They were eight in number, apparently choir
boys of from ten to fourteen years of age. They were all dressed in
doublets of gay colors, and their hose and shoes seemed to be of white
satin. It is said that their costumes are centuries old; but if so, we
can only say they have worn marvelously well. In two rows the boys
stood facing each other, and as the music changed from wailing sadness
to a strain of grave rejoicing, forthwith the boys began to move in
time to it, changing places and swinging round, all the while marking
its measure with the castanets in their upraised hands. The spectacle
was strangely impressive. The few tapers on the altar before us, the
half-dozen candles which served to light up the scores of the
musicians, threw scarcely any light into the dim aisles on our left;
and the gloom and grandeur of the lofty pillars, whose capitals were
lost in the night overhead, served as fitting background to the
picture whereon our eyes were fixed. Such a miniature representation
of this world of ours we have never looked upon. Here in the light we
mortals move for a brief moment to the music of life and love, but all
around us is the night, immense and unfathomable, with shadows
hastening to embrace us, and a silence which rebukes our feeble
rejoicings.

But the quickened sense of man's mortality exercises anything but a
depressing effect upon some natures. Let us eat, drink and be merry,
for tomorrow we die, is but the corollary of the monition, "Work, for
the night cometh wherein no man can work," which has ever been the
motto of the northern races. And so we leave the Cathedral on this
second day of carnival, minded to enjoy ourselves. But in spite of
brave resolutions our mirth is at first a trifle forced. Of course, we
buy packets of gilt paper cut into small squares, and deluge every
pretty girl who passes us with the golden spray that sits so well upon
the black tresses. As we pass under a balcony our gifts are repaid
with interest, and as we look up we see merry girl faces and hear
ringing laughter--better sounds and sights, we think, than those in
the Cathedral yonder. And so our hearts beat quicker, and the spirit
of enjoyment enters into us, and we laugh and dance, pelt and are
pelted through the streets, while the laughter overhead grows more and
more musical, and the fun faster and faster.

Suddenly we find ourselves before our hotel, and all at once remember
that we are hungry. What is that? From the dining-room of the hotel
come strains of music, dance-music, too, played by many hands, and
among the instruments riot two or three violins. In our present mood
nothing could suit us better than this. Hastily we change our dress,
and five minutes later enter the dining-room, to find there a band of
young students, all dressed in ancient costumes, who on these evenings
of carnival turn their musical talents to account. Their dress is
sober in hue, but strikingly picturesque. Black doublet and hose,
shoes with steel buckles, short black cloaks and broad-brimmed black
hats, each adorned with a single white feather; this is what we
remember of their vestments, and each one wears a plain rapier by his
side. They are some twenty in number, and they play with all their
hearts, finding each of their efforts rewarded by enthusiastic
applause. But alas! their repertoire seemingly contains nothing but
well-known French, and German, and Italian airs, and it requires some
pressing to get their leader to give the signal for a genuinely
Spanish tune. And when it does come we find it is but the
accompaniment to a dance. Two of the student band leave their
instruments, and suddenly pose opposite each other with the castanets
in their hands. Then they dance and we all watch them with interest.
The steps are similar to those of a Scotch reel, and the hoarse shouts
of the Highlanders are here represented by the Holeh! Holeh! which at
intervals break from the Spanish spectators. As the dinner draws to an
end, a pair of students go about among the company with tamborines,
which are soon filled with large silver dollars. Well pleased at the
harvest, their leader makes a bow to the world at large, and assures
"the noble gentlemen and gentlewomen" present that he and his comrades
will be glad to play for us the whole night long.

And so the _table d'hote_ breaks up tumultuously and all the younger
ones press into the reading-room to clear away the tables and chairs
and prepare to finish fittingly what has been so well begun. Then we
dance to the music of violins and guitars and tamborines, while the
castanets mark the measure, till the stars above the patio come out to
watch us, and grow larger and larger eyed in wonder at our amusement.
And then, as we pause for breath, and go out beneath the palm-leaves
of the patio for coolness, we see the queen of night, with silver
radiance clad, moving across the blue floor of heaven, and in spite of
sorrow and in scorn of death

  "We look into the future far as human eye can see,
  See the rapture of the world and all the wonders that will be."

And so, as I began to know Seville, I came to love it more and more,
and to find in its customs and courtesies things characteristic of
Spanish sentiment which were not to be found elsewhere in the
Peninsula. After all, the Spaniards themselves are the best judges;
Andalusia is the heart of Spain, the province most courted by the sun,
best loved of poets. Its wine is better than the wine of other
districts, and its women are fairer than those which are to be found
north of Cordova. And so I came to love the province and its capital.

  "Give us wine and women, mirth and laughter;
  Sermons and soda-water the day after."

Some of the customs which still obtain in Seville strike the foreign
taste as peculiar. For example, you meet a pretty girl in the street,
and, instead of passing her by with one admiring glance, you pause and
say, so as to be heard, "Que monisima es!" "How delicately beautiful
she is!" or "What perfect eyes!" or "What divine feet!" Do not be
afraid; your beauty will acknowledge the compliment either by a
graceful inclination of the head, or, better still, by the quick blush
which suffuses neck and forehead with crimson, or by one glance of the
dark eyes. Happy land! in which a compliment constitutes a claim to
kindness, and admiration is one of the means by which love is won! To
English ears the story of how Walter Raleigh gained Queen Elizabeth's
favor seems somewhat far-fetched. Who, in our days, would think of
throwing his cloak over a puddle in order that a queen might cross it
dry-foot? But in Andalusia this custom still prevails. Here it is not
even necessary to await the opportunity of a puddle. Throw your
overcoat boldly down before any pretty girl, and stand beside it with
bowed head; of a surety you will not miss your reward. Quietly she
will bow in recognition of your compliment, and her eyes in eloquent
fashion will thank you for your courtesy. And so the first step
towards acquaintanceship is taken, and the man is a fool who cannot
find a way further to improve his opportunity.

The Andalusian type of woman's beauty is all but perfect. Generally
the loveliness consists chiefly in coloring. Again and again you will
find perfect complexions and magnificent eyes. Not infrequently,
however, the features, too, are fine, and then the beauty of the face
becomes almost divine. It is scarcely necessary to say anything about
the figures of Andalusian women. In this respect they surpass all
others; such a mixture of voluptuousness and delicacy is hardly to be
found in any other part of the world. Rounded limbs and graceful
suppleness of movement; small and exquisitely formed hands and feet:
these beauties they possess in perfection. It may be doubted, however,
whether their minds are as perfect as their bodies. But they have a
good share of natural wit and mother shrewdness combined with an
absolute simplicity and directness of feeling. They like or dislike,
at first sight, so ingenuously that one is apt to underrate the
strength of their sympathies. One of their favorite _pateneras_ will
best show our meaning:

  "'Give me thy love or kill me,'
    Say the dark eyes,
  'Give me thy love or I shall die,'
    Say the eyes of blue."

And if hazel eyes are commoner in Andalusia than eyes of violet, these
latter are to be found there not infrequently.

_Ay de mi_! What would this world be worth without woman's love! Here
in a room I sit, and hear, as in a dream, men and women talking. They
talk and talk and talk, and I hear every word, and yet cannot catch
the sense of what they say. But suddenly I hear a footfall on the
stairs, and then a form enters--I need not look to know who it is--all
my blood rushes to my face, and my pulses beat as if they would burst.
"Fairer than the evening air," fairer than any poet's simile; the
place whereon her feet rest is holy ground. And then she looks at me,
perhaps shyly glancing, perhaps with truthful earnestness; but however
it may be, I catch the kindness of it, and thank her from my heart's
core. And suddenly, in the sunshine of her regard, all things grow
beautiful and worthful to me; the chitchat of the company is charming,
and their mirth musical, and I sit still for fear of breaking the
spell, and pray that she may move, and so afford me a new delight, or
remain as she is, and so hold my soul in a snare. Great God! When they
talk of woman's constancy do they ever know what the faithfulness of
man sometimes means?

  "For all her passions matched with mine
  Are as moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine."

I hear the rustling of her dress, and my blood is in my face; she
stops beside me, and my heart holds its beating; I close my eyes and
see her, see how the little waves of hair kiss the white slimness of
her neck, and how the eyelids kiss her eyes; see her head bend, and
the heaving of her bosom. Each drop of my blood is a mirror of her
loveliness. Without her my life is a dream. But were I dead and
buried, I should wake to life again as soon as her footfall startled
my solitude. Ah! Seville! What strength is to a man and youth to a
woman, that thou art among the cities of this world! Of the fair
moonlight the forms of thy daughters are made, and their eyes of the
depth of thy heaven.

And so it is but fitting that before we leave Seville we should go on
to the flat roof of the hotel at night and look out over the city.
There it sleeps in the moonlight beneath us, and beside it the
Guadalquiver sweeps past to the sea. On one side is the delicate white
tracery of a Moorish tower, and on the other the green foliage of a
garden, rich in myrtle, and orange and palm trees.  And hark! from the
street beneath us the notes of a guitar rise, and the music of a man's
voice, and then suddenly we catch a glimpse of a half-opened casement
and of a hand which holds back the curtain. And so we say to
ourselves, Seville is the city of romance and of love, and the
extravagances of passion are the realities of its life.




TRAVEL IN FRANCE


Men have hardly learned the A B C of the art of living; they have only
just begun to find out that change, or contrast, is a law of it as of
all the other arts. For many years I used to spend eight or ten months
working in grimy, foggy London and then go for a few weeks to the
Swiss mountains, or the Riviera, to Khartoum or Biskra. And before
the change had begun to take effect, before the sun had had time to
dry the skin or tune up the nerves, I was back again in London,
fitting anew my neck to the yoke. When a horse is fagged and stale
with overwork we take his shoes off and turn him out to grass and
idleness for three or four months; if we prescribed with the same
large-heartedness for ourselves, we should live longer and do better
work. Rest and change are Nature's doctors; change of air, change of
scene, change of language and custom refresh the spirit and renew
one's youth.

Unlike the great majority of tourists and travelers, I have always
preferred Spain to Italy. Italy, it seems to me, has lost all her
peculiar characteristics: one has to go into the Apennines or the
wilds beyond Salerno before one can find among the peasantry primitive
beliefs or old pagan customs. The veneer of French civilisation is
smeared over Italy like the brown sauce with which a bad cook
disguises the native flavor of a dish. Cheap steamers turn the Grand
Canal into an evil-smelling ditch, and the modern quarters of Rome and
Florence are bad imitations of Hausmannized Paris.

But Spain is still Spain; in Valladolid or Burgos, Toledo or Valencia,
one can still live in the storied past: everywhere the old Spain crops
up like granite rocks showing here and there through sparse herbage.
And how quickening it is to catch even a glimpse of a national spirit
quite unlike our own--a Sancho Panza who, at any moment, may surprise
us by acting Quixote to the life! How we have degraded the noble
idealist with our contemptuous adjective "quixotic"!

The railroad and ocean liner have made change easy and travel a
delight and wonder. Turner was the first, I suppose, to depict the
poetry and mystery of the railroad; but to me, a wanderer from
boyhood, the shining straight way has always been at once a magic
symbol and an inspiration. "Aladdin's Carpet" I call it to myself,
with a shuddering sense of expectancy and delight; at any moment I can
close my eyes and hear the _chunk-chunk, chunketty-chunk_ of the blood
beating in the great heart of the monster who will carry me to the
home of Heart's Desire.

The great railways of the world are to me beneficent Titans who have
beauty and health and wonder as gifts and are always prodigal of
bounty. Think of the Canadian Pacific, whose imperious purpose
holds arrow-straight from Quebec to Vancouver, through untrodden
pine-forests, over unchristened lakes and unchartered prairies and
heaped-up mountain-ranges to the great ocean.where West and East are
one. Think of the New York Central which follows the Hudson quietly
for miles and miles and then flings itself coil on coil over the
Adirondacks to dart, straight as a serpent striking, to Chicago, a
thousand miles away. Or recall for a moment the Cape Railway, like a
homing-pigeon circling round Table Mountain before it finds its line
due north to the Victoria Falls, the first breathing-place on its
breathless flight of seven thousand miles to the Mediterranean Sea.

But my favorite among railways is the Paris-Lyons-Mediterranee, or
the P.L.M., as its admirers love to call it. It is a marvelous
journey, not through France merely, but across the pictured centuries.
The P.L.M. will whirl you through the dim backward of time to the days
before Christ: it is the first stage to Girgenti and the Greek theater
at Taormina, and to Athens itself and its Acropolis. And once there,
you can turn aside, if you will, from the "altar to the immortal gods"
to a nobler but unpretentious shrine, a rough, whale-shaped rock lying
athwart the road to the Agora, which, as Mars Hill, is consecrate to
still more sacred memories.

Or if you please, you need not plunge so deep in time, or so far to
the East; you can stop in the Rome of the Caesars if you say the word,
or at Florence of the Medici, or study the beginning of the pictorial
art and the art of mosaics in Siena or Orvieto.

You may even take another way altogether, and cleaving to the P.L.M.,
go down the long trail through Dijon and Avignon to where in Provence
the land bares its loveliness to the waters and dream yourself into
the fourteenth century with master works of classic civilisation all
about you, and on every hand, too, examples of the modern spirit and
its wonderworking magic.

Here at the Frejus you will find a Roman amphitheater and there the
remains of a Roman villa dating from the first Caesars, and while you
watch the little green lizards darting about the ruined walls, and
crush the myrtle and rosemary under your footsteps, you are disturbed
by the whirr of an airplane and are fain to follow an aviator a
thousand feet above you in his flight towards the Italian frontier.

Wonderful as it is, the journey across space has never seemed to me so
enthralling as the flight across time. Who can travel from Paris
southward without remembering that in the first couple of hours he
will pass through Chartres, with its great cathedral kneeling in its
robe of stone?

Who can help thinking of the many pious souls who took the stubborn
rock and transformed it into a prayer which moves us six hundred years
afterwards as it moved those who first fashioned it? And the artists
are just as living for us as the priestly architects; there is the
great choir they chiseled, with its world of figures--princes and
monks and saints; fair women and wondering children and monsters of
humorous deformity. A city of creatures, all born of loving hands,
modeling at leisure in sunny afternoons.

The two spires set me dreaming; they are so unlike: the one straight
and severe, the other all crocheted. What a subtle attraction there is
in the unexpected; it is one of the great secrets of all art, the
discord in music that turns melody into harmony, the irregular accent
or caesura that helps to transform verse into poetry.

I find the unexpected again and again in this high church, which lives
for me as a noble and gracious personality; some Newman, with a wider,
subtler artistry, and a far more intense and saintly devotion of
spirit than the framer of the great Apologia. To know and love the
maker of Chartres is in itself no mean religion.

The very names of the half-forgotten towns we .pass through hold a
strange fascination. "Sens," I hear the porters cry; "Sens," and I
suddenly recall the great church of St. Etienne, which was built by
that William of Sens who designed the choir of Canterbury in imitation
of the choir here. This church, in which in 1234 St. Louis married
Margaret of Provence, was built in the early part of the twelfth
century to take the place of an older church which, it is said, was
constructed in the third century by St. Savinien on the foundation of
a still older pagan temple. And so reverence "that angel of the world"
leads one back and back to where the mists of time veil the past in
oblivion. I remember Sens very well now: here are to be seen the
sacerdotal vestments of St. Thomas a Becket, who, in 1170, left his
favorite monastery of St. Colombe on the outskirts of Sens to go to
far-off Canterbury to meet his death.

Veselay and Avallon and Chinon are a little to the south (how the
names sing themselves to music!) and then one comes to Dijon, the
jewel-casket of Burgundian life, with its unforgettable Chartreuse
and the magnificent monuments to Death.

Here at Dijon one runs into French sunshine and French gayety and love
of life; here, as the vintagers say, you can taste through the wine
the perfume of the grape and the exquisite, healthful savor of that
amber French earth.

And then the marvelous land and sea views all the way from St. Raphael
through the Esterel to Cannes. I don't like Cannes; the conventional
British element dominates the whole place: golf clubs and bridge
drives are out of place in hot white sunshine; but St. Juan pleases
me, where Napoleon landed from Elba, and alone and unfriended
overthrew a monarchy and conquered twenty millions of people. Then
Antibes, with Vauban's old toy fort and the long tongue of land
immortalized by Alexandre Dumas' dream o