The Crown of Wild Olive Part 38

FLORRIE. Oh, dear, but that's worse.

L. You wouldn't think so if you really were turned into one, Florrie; you would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself (not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a little through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time, and sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, with throats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can sing chords--it is very fine indeed. And the fire-flies fly round the edge of the forests all the night long; you wade in fire-flies, they make the fields look like a lake trembling with reflection of stars; but you must take care not to touch them, for they are not like Italian fireflies, but burn, like real sparks.

FLORRIE. I don't like it at all; I'll never go there.

L. I hope not, Florrie; or at least that you will get out again if you do. And it is very difficult to get out, for beyond these serpent forests there are great cliffs of dead gold, which form a labyrinth, winding always higher and higher, till the gold is all split asunder by wedges of ice; and glaciers, welded, half of ice seven times frozen, and half of gold seven times frozen, hang down from them, and fall in thunder, cleaving into deadly splinters, like the Cretan arrowheads; and into a mixed dust of snow and gold, ponderous, yet which the mountain whirlwinds are able to lift and drive in wreaths and pillars, hiding the paths with a burial cloud, fatal at once with wintry chill, and weight of golden ashes. So the wanderers in the labyrinth fall, one by one, and are buried there:--yet, over the drifted graves, those who are spared climb to the last, through coil on coil of the path;--for at the end of it they see the king of the valley, sitting on his throne: and beside him (but it is only a false vision), spectra of creatures like themselves, set on thrones, from which they seem to look down on all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. And on the canopy of his throne there is an inscription in fiery letters, which they strive to read, but cannot; for it is written in words which are like the words of all languages, and yet are of none. Men say it is more like their own tongue to the English than it is to any other nation; but the only record of it is by an Italian, who heard the King himself cry it as a war cry, 'Pape Satan, Pape Satan Aleppe.'[145]

SIBYL. But do they all perish there? You said there was a way through the valley, and out of it.

L. Yes; but few find it. If any of them keep to the gra.s.s paths, where the diamonds are swept aside; and hold their hands over their eyes so as not to be dazzled, the gra.s.s paths lead forward gradually to a place where one sees a little opening in the golden rocks. You were at Chamouni last year, Sibyl; did your guide chance to show you the pierced rock of the Aiguille du Midi?

SIBYL. No, indeed, we only got up from Geneva on Monday night; and it rained all Tuesday; and we had to be back at Geneva again, early on Wednesday morning.

L. Of course. That is the way to see a country in a Sibylline manner, by inner consciousness: but you might have seen the pierced rock in your drive up, or down, if the clouds broke: not that there is much to see in it; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it, is struck sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole; which you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the clouds flit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue.

Well, there's just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of the Diamond Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no bigger than the eye of a needle. But if you get up to it, they say you may drive a loaded camel through it, and that there are fine things on the other side, but I have never spoken with anybody who had been through.

SIBYL. I think we understand it now. We will try to write it down, and think of it.

L. Meantime, Florrie, though all that I have been telling you is very true, yet you must not think the sort of diamonds that people wear in rings and necklaces are found lying about on the gra.s.s. Would you like to see how they really are found?

FLORRIE. Oh, yes--yes.

L. Isabel--or Lily--run up to my room and fetch me the little box with a gla.s.s lid, out of the top drawer of the chest of drawers. (_Race between_ LILY _and_ ISABEL.)

(_Re-enter_ ISABEL _with the box, very much out of breath._ LILY _behind._)

L. Why, you never can beat Lily in a race on the stairs, can you, Isabel?

ISABEL (_panting_). Lily--beat me--ever so far--but she gave me--the box--to carry in.

L. Take off the lid, then; gently.

FLORRIE (_after peeping in, disappointed_). There's only a great ugly brown stone!

L. Not much more than that, certainly, Florrie, if people were wise. But look, it is not a single stone; but a knot of pebbles fastened together by gravel; and in the gravel, or compressed sand, if you look close, you will see grains of gold glittering everywhere, all through; and then, do you see these two white beads, which s.h.i.+ne, as if they had been covered with grease?

FLORRIE. May I touch them?

L. Yes; you will find they are not greasy, only very smooth. Well, those are the fatal jewels; native here in their dust with gold, so that you may see, cradled here together, the two great enemies of mankind,--the strongest of all malignant physical powers that have tormented our race.

SIBYL. Is that really so? I know they do great harm; but do they not also do great good?

L. My dear child, what good? Was any woman, do you suppose, ever the better for possessing diamonds? but how many have been made base, frivolous, and miserable by desiring them? Was ever man the better for having coffers full of gold? But who shall measure the guilt that is incurred to fill them? Look into the history of any civilised nations; a.n.a.lyse, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, the lives and thoughts of their n.o.bles, priests, merchants, and men of luxurious life. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this; pride, and l.u.s.t, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. The sin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not disbelieve their Christ; but they sell Him.

SIBYL. But surely that is the fault of human nature? it is not caused by the accident, as it were, of there being a pretty metal, like gold, to be found by digging. If people could not find that, would they not find something else, and quarrel for it instead?

L. No. Wherever legislators have succeeded in excluding, for a time, jewels and precious metals from among national possessions, the national spirit has remained healthy. Covetousness is not natural to man--generosity is; but covetousness must be excited by a special cause, as a given disease by a given miasma; and the essential nature of a material for the excitement of covetousness is, that it shall be a beautiful thing which can be retained _without a use_. The moment we can use our possessions to any good purpose ourselves, the instinct of communicating that use to others rises side by side with our power. If you can read a book rightly, you will want others to hear it; if you can enjoy a picture rightly, you will want others to see it: learn how to manage a horse, a plough, or a s.h.i.+p, and you will desire to make your subordinates good hors.e.m.e.n, ploughmen, or sailors; you will never be able to see the fine instrument you are master of, abused; but, once fix your desire on anything useless, and all the purest pride and folly in your heart will mix with the desire, and make you at last wholly inhuman, a mere ugly lump of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish.

SIBYL. But surely, these two beautiful things, gold and diamonds, must have been appointed to some good purpose?

L. Quite conceivably so, my dear: as also earthquakes and pestilences; but of such ultimate purposes we can have no sight. The practical, immediate office of the earthquake and pestilence is to slay us, like moths; and, as moths, we shall be wise to live out of their way. So, the practical, immediate office of gold and diamonds is the multiplied destruction of souls (in whatever sense you have been taught to understand that phrase); and the paralysis of wholesome human effort and thought on the face of G.o.d's earth: and a wise nation will live out of the way of them. The money which the English habitually spend in cutting diamonds would, in ten years, if it were applied to cutting rocks instead, leave no dangerous reef nor difficult harbour round the whole island coast. Great Britain would be a diamond worth cutting, indeed, a true piece of regalia. (_Leaves this to their thoughts for a little while._) Then, also, we poor mineralogists might sometimes have the chance of seeing a fine crystal of diamond unhacked by the jeweller.

SIBYL. Would it be more beautiful uncut?

L. No; but of infinite interest. We might even come to know something about the making of diamonds.

SIBYL. I thought the chemists could make them already?

L. In very small black crystals, yes; but no one knows how they are formed where they are found; or if indeed they are formed there at all.

These, in my hand, look as if they had been swept down with the gravel and gold; only we can trace the gravel and gold to their native rocks, but not the diamonds. Read the account given of the diamond in any good work on mineralogy;--you will find nothing but lists of localities of gravel, or conglomerate rock (which is only an old indurated gravel).

Some say it was once a vegetable gum; but it may have been charred wood; but what one would like to know is, mainly, why charcoal should make itself into diamonds in India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale.

SIBYL. Are they wholly the same, then?

L. There is a little iron mixed with our black lead but nothing to hinder its crystallisation. Your pencils in fact are all pointed with formless diamond, though they would be HHH pencils to purpose, if it crystallised.

SUBYL. But what _is_ crystallisation?

L. A pleasant question, when one's half asleep, and it has been tea time these two hours. What thoughtless things girls are!

SIBYL. Yes, we are; but we want to know, for all that.

L. My dear, it would take a week to tell you.

SIBYL. Well, take it, and tell us.

L. But n.o.body knows anything about it.

SIBYL. Then tell us something that n.o.body knows.

L. Get along with you, and tell Dora to make tea.

(_The house rises; but of course the_ LECTURER _wanted to be forced to lecture again, and was._)

FOOTNOTES:

[145] Dante, Inf. 7. 1.

LECTURE II.

_THE PYRAMID BUILDERS._

_In the large Schoolroom, to which everybody has been summoned by ringing of the great bell._

L. So you have all actually come to hear about crystallisation! I cannot conceive why, unless the little ones think that the discussion may involve some reference to sugar-candy.