A Reckless Character, and Other Stories Part 32

Be not cast down by a moment of dark sadness!

The longed-for instant will come ... and light will disperse the gloom!"[70]

Junius ceased speaking ... and in reply to him, from all points of the square, clamour, whistling, and laughter arose.

All the faces turned toward him flamed with indignation, all eyes flashed with wrath, all hands were uplifted, menaced, were clenched into fists.

"A pretty thing he has thought to surprise us with!" roared angry voices. "Away from the tribune with the talentless rhymster! Away with the fool! Hurl rotten apples, bad eggs, at the empty-pated idiot! Give us stones! Fetch stones!"

Junius tumbled headlong from the tribune ... but before he had succeeded in fleeing to his own house, outbursts of rapturous applause, cries of laudation and shouts reached his ear.

Filled with amazement, but striving not to be detected (for it is dangerous to irritate an enraged wild beast), Junius returned to the square.

And what did he behold?

High above the throng, above its shoulders, on a flat gold s.h.i.+eld, stood his rival, the young poet Julius, clad in a purple mantle, with a laurel wreath on his waving curls.... And the populace round about was roaring: "Glory! Glory! Glory to the immortal Julius! He hath comforted us in our grief, in our great woe! He hath given us verses sweeter than honey, more melodious than the cymbals, more fragrant than the rose, more pure than heaven's azure! Bear him in triumph; surround his inspired head with a soft billow of incense; refresh his brow with the waving of palm branches; lavish at his feet all the spices of Arabia!

Glory!"

Junius approached one of the glorifiers.--"Inform me, O my fellow-townsman! With what verses hath Julius made you happy?--Alas, I was not on the square when he recited them! Repeat them, if thou canst recall them, I pray thee!"

"Such verses--and not recall them?" briskly replied the man interrogated.--"For whom dost thou take me? Listen--and rejoice, rejoice together with us!"

'Ye lovers of verses!'--thus began the divine Julius....

"'Ye lovers of verses! Comrades! Friends!

Admirers of all that is graceful, melodious, tender!

Be not east down by a moment of heavy grief!

The longed-for moment will come--and day will chase away the night!'

"What dost thou think of that?"

"Good gracious!" roared Junius. "Why, those are my lines!--Julius must have been in the crowd when I recited them; he heard and repeated them, barely altering--and that, of course, not for the better--a few expressions!"

"Aha! Now I recognise thee.... Thou art Junius," retorted the citizen whom he had accosted, knitting his brows.--"Thou art either envious or a fool!... Only consider just one thing, unhappy man! Julius says in such lofty style: 'And day will chase away the night!'.... But with thee it is some nonsense or other: 'And the light will disperse the gloom!?'--What light?! What darkness?!"

"But is it not all one and the same thing...." Junius was beginning....

"Add one word more," the citizen interrupted him, "and I will shout to the populace, and it will rend thee asunder."

Junius prudently held his peace, but a grey-haired old man, who had overheard his conversation with the citizen, stepped up to the poor poet, and laying his hand on his shoulder, said:

"Junius! Thou hast said thy say at the wrong time; but the other man said his at the right time.--consequently, he is in the right, while for thee there remain the consolations of thine own conscience."

But while his conscience was consoling Junius to the best of its ability,--and in a decidedly-unsatisfactory way, if the truth must be told,--far away, amid the thunder and patter of jubilation, in the golden dust of the all-conquering sun, gleaming with purple, darkling with laurel athwart the undulating streams of abundant incense, with majestic leisureliness, like an emperor marching to his empire, the proudly-erect figure of Julius moved forward with easy grace ... and long branches of the palm-tree bent in turn before him, as though expressing by their quiet rising, their submissive obeisance, that incessantly-renewed adoration which filled to overflowing the hearts of his fellow-citizens whom he had enchanted!

April, 1878.

THE SPARROW

I had returned from the chase and was walking along one of the alleys in the garden. My hound was running on in front of me.

Suddenly he r.e.t.a.r.ded his steps and began to crawl stealthily along as though he detected game ahead.

I glanced down the alley and beheld a young sparrow, with a yellow ring around its beak and down on its head. It had fallen from the nest (the wind was rocking the trees of the alley violently), and sat motionless, impotently expanding its barely-sprouted little wings.

My hound was approaching it slowly when, suddenly wrenching itself from a neighbouring birch, an old black-breasted sparrow fell like a stone in front of my dog's very muzzle--and, with plumage all ruffled, contorted, with a despairing and pitiful cry, gave a couple of hops in the direction of the yawning jaws studded with big teeth.

It had flung itself down to save, it was s.h.i.+elding, its offspring ...

but the whole of its tiny body was throbbing with fear, its voice was wild and hoa.r.s.e, it was swooning, it was sacrificing itself!

What a huge monster the dog must have appeared to it! And yet it could not have remained perched on its lofty, secure bough.... A force greater than its own will had hurled it thence.

My Tresor stopped short, retreated.... Evidently he recognised that force.

I hastened to call off the discomfited hound, and withdrew with reverence.

Yes; do not laugh. I felt reverential before that tiny, heroic bird, before its loving impulse.

Love, I thought, is stronger than death.--Only by it, only by love, does life support itself and move.

April, 1878.

THE SKULLS

A sumptuous, luxuriously illuminated ball-room; a mult.i.tude of cavaliers and ladies.

All faces are animated, all speeches are brisk.... A rattling conversation is in progress about a well-known songstress. The people are lauding her as divine, immortal.... Oh, how finely she had executed her last trill that evening!

And suddenly--as though at the wave of a magic wand--from all the heads, from all the faces, a thin sh.e.l.l of skin flew off, and instantly there was revealed the whiteness of skulls, the naked gums and cheek-bones dimpled like bluish lead.

With horror did I watch those gums and cheek-bones moving and stirring,--those k.n.o.bby, bony spheres turning this way and that, as they gleamed in the light of the lamps and candles, and smaller spheres--the spheres of the eyes bereft of sense--rolling in them.

I dared not touch my own face, I dared not look at myself in a mirror.

But the skulls continued to turn this way and that, as before.... And with the same clatter as before, the brisk tongues, flas.h.i.+ng like red rags from behind the grinning teeth, murmured on, how wonderfully, how incomparably the immortal ... yes, the immortal songstress had executed her last trill!

April, 1878.

THE TOILER AND THE LAZY MAN