Chapter VIII
ARBACES COGS HIS DICE WITH PLEASURE AND WINS THE GAME.
THE evening darkened over the restless city as Apaecides took his way to the
house of the Egyptian. He avoided the more lighted and populous streets;
and as he strode onward with his head buried in his bosom, and his arms
folded within his robe, there was something startling in the contrast, which
his solemn mien and wasted form presented to the thoughtless brows and
animated air of those who occasionally crossed his path.
At length, however, a man of a more sober and staid demeanor, and who had
twice passed him with a curious but doubting look, touched him on the
shoulder.
'Apaecides!' said he, and he made a rapid sign with his hands: it was the
sign of the cross.
'Well, Nazarene,' replied the priest, and his face grew paler; 'what wouldst
thou?'
'Nay,' returned the stranger, 'I would not interrupt thy meditations; but
the last time we met, I seemed not to be so unwelcome.'
'You are not unwelcome, Olinthus; but I am sad and weary: nor am I able this
evening to discuss with you those themes which are most acceptable to you.'
'O backward of heart!' said Olinthus, with bitter fervor; and art thou sad
and weary, and wilt thou turn from the very springs that refresh and heal?'
'O earth!' cried the young priest, striking his breast passionately, 'from
what regions shall my eyes open to the true Olympus, where thy gods really
dwell? Am I to believe with this man, that none whom for so many centuries
my fathers worshipped have a being or a name? Am I to break down, as
something blasphemous and profane, the very altars which I have deemed most
sacred? or am I to think with Arbaces--what?' He paused, and strode rapidly
away in the impatience of a man who strives to get rid of himself. But the
Nazarene was one of those hardy, vigorous, and enthusiastic men, by whom God
in all times has worked the revolutions of earth, and those, above all, in
the establishment and in the reformation of His own religion--men who were
formed to convert, because formed to endure. It is men of this mould whom
nothing discourages, nothing dismays; in the fervor of belief they are
inspired and they inspire. Their reason first kindles their passion, but
the passion is the instrument they use; they force themselves into men's
hearts, while they appear only to appeal to their judgment. Nothing is so
contagious as enthusiasm; it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus--it
moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and
truth accomplishes no victories without it.
Olinthus did not then suffer Apaecides thus easily to escape him. He
overtook and addressed him thus:
'I do not wonder, Apaecides, that I distress you; that I shake all the
elements of your mind: that you are lost in doubt; that you drift here and
there in the vast ocean of uncertain and benighted thought. I wonder not at
this, but bear with me a little; watch and pray--the darkness shall vanish,
the storm sleep, and God Himself, as He came of yore on the seas of Samaria,
shall walk over the lulled billows, to the delivery of your soul. Ours is a
religion jealous in its demands, but how infinitely prodigal in its gifts!
It troubles you for an hour, it repays you by immortality.'
'Such promises,' said Apaecides, sullenly, 'are the tricks by which man is
ever gulled. Oh, glorious were the promises which led me to the shrine of
Isis!'
'But,' answered the Nazarene, 'ask thy reason, can that religion be sound
which outrages all morality? You are told to worship your gods. What are
those gods, even according to yourselves? What their actions, what their
attributes? Are they not all represented to you as the blackest of
criminals? yet you are asked to serve them as the holiest of divinities.
Jupiter himself is a parricide and an adulterer. What are the meaner
deities but imitators of his vices? You are told not to murder, but you
worship murderers; you are told not to commit adultery, and you make your
prayers to an adulterer! Oh! what is this but a mockery of the holiest
part of man's nature, which is faith? Turn now to the God, the one, the
true God, to whose shrine I would lead you. If He seem to you too sublime,
two shadowy, for those human associations, those touching connections
between Creator and creature, to which the weak heart clings--contemplate
Him in His Son, who put on mortality like ourselves. His mortality is not
indeed declared, like that of your fabled gods, by the vices of our nature,
but by the practice of all its virtues. In Him are united the austerest
morals with the tenderest affections. If He were but a mere man, He had
been worthy to become a god. You honour Socrates--he has his sect, his
disciples, his schools. But what are the doubtful virtues of the Athenian,
to the bright, the undisputed, the active, the unceasing, the devoted
holiness of Christ? I speak to you now only of His human character. He
came in that as the pattern of future ages, to show us the form of virtue
which Plato thirsted to see embodied. This was the true sacrifice that He
made for man; but the halo that encircled His dying hour not only brightened
earth, but opened to us the sight of heaven! You are touched--you are
moved. God works in your heart. His Spirit is with you. Come, resist not
the holy impulse; come at once--unhesitatingly. A few of us are now
assembled to expound the word of God. Come, let me guide you to them. You
are sad, you are weary. Listen, then, to the words of God: "Come to me",
saith He, "all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!"'
'I cannot now,' said Apaecides; 'another time.'
'Now--now!' exclaimed Olinthus, earnestly, and clasping him by the arm.
But Apaecides, yet unprepared for the renunciation of that faith--that life,
for which he had sacrificed so much, and still haunted by the promises of
the Egyptian, extricated himself forcibly from the grasp; and feeling an
effort necessary to conquer the irresolution which the eloquence of the
Christian had begun to effect in his heated and feverish mind, he gathered
up his robes and fled away with a speed that defied pursuit.
Breathless and exhausted, he arrived at last in a remote and sequestered
part of the city, and the lone house of the Egyptian stood before him. As
he paused to recover himself, the moon emerged from a silver cloud, and
shone full upon the walls of that mysterious habitation.
No other house was near--the darksome vines clustered far and wide in front
of the building and behind it rose a copse of lofty forest trees, sleeping
in the melancholy moonlight; beyond stretched the dim outline of the distant
hills, and amongst them the quiet crest of Vesuvius, not then so lofty as
the traveler beholds it now.
Apaecides passed through the arching vines, and arrived at the broad and
spacious portico. Before it, on either side of the steps, reposed the image
of the Egyptian sphinx, and the moonlight gave an additional and yet more
solemn calm to those large, and harmonious, and passionless features, in
which the sculptors of that type of wisdom united so much of loveliness with
awe; half way up the extremities of the steps darkened the green and massive
foliage of the aloe, and the shadow of the eastern palm cast its long and
unwaving boughs partially over the marble surface of the stairs.
Something there was in the stillness of the place, and the strange aspect of
the sculptured sphinxes, which thrilled the blood of the priest with a
nameless and ghostly fear, and he longed even for an echo to his noiseless
steps as he ascended to the threshold.
He knocked at the door, over which was wrought an inscription in characters
unfamiliar to his eyes; it opened without a sound, and a tall Ethiopian
slave, without question or salutation, motioned to him to proceed.
The wide hall was lighted by lofty candelabra of elaborate bronze, and round
the walls were wrought vast hieroglyphics, in dark and solemn colors, which
contrasted strangely with the bright hues and graceful shapes with which the
inhabitants of Italy decorated their abodes. At the extremity of the hall,
a slave, whose countenance, though not African, was darker by many shades
than the usual color of the south, advanced to meet him.
'I seek Arbaces,' said the priest; but his voice trembled even in his own
ear. The slave bowed his head in silence, and leading Apaecides to a wing
without the hall, conducted him up a narrow staircase, and then traversing
several rooms, in which the stern and thoughtful beauty of the sphinx still
made the chief and most impressive object of the priest's notice, Apaecides
found himself in a dim and half-lighted chamber, in the presence of the
Egyptian.
Arbaces was seated before a small table, on which lay unfolded several
scrolls of papyrus, impressed with the same character as that on the
threshold of the mansion. A small tripod stood at a little distance, from
the incense in which the smoke slowly rose. Near this was a vast globe,
depicting the signs of heaven; and upon another table lay several
instruments, of curious and quaint shape, whose uses were unknown to
Apaecides. The farther extremity of the room was concealed by a curtain,
and the oblong window in the roof admitted the rays of the moon, mingling
sadly with the single lamp which burned in the apartment.
'Seat yourself, Apaecides,' said the Egyptian, without rising.
The young man obeyed.
'You ask me,' resumed Arbaces, after a short pause, in which he seemed
absorbed in thought--'You ask me, or would do so, the mightiest secrets
which the soul of man is fitted to receive; it is the enigma of life itself
that you desire me to solve. Placed like children in the dark, and but for
a little while, in this dim and confined existence, we shape our spectres in
the obscurity; our thoughts now sink back into ourselves in terror, now
wildly plunge themselves into the guideless gloom, guessing what it may
contain; stretching our helpless hands here and there, lest, blindly, we
stumble upon some hidden danger; not knowing the limits of our boundary, now
feeling them suffocate us with compression, now seeing them extend far away
till they vanish into eternity. In this state all wisdom consists
necessarily in the solution of two questions: "What are we to believe? and
What are we to reject?" These questions you desire me to decide.'
Apaecides bowed his head in assent.
'Man must have some belief,' continued the Egyptian, in a tone of sadness.
'He must fasten his hope to something: is our common nature that you inherit
when, aghast and terrified to see that in which you have been taught to
place your faith swept away, you float over a dreary and shoreless sea of
incertitude, you cry for help, you ask for some plank to cling to, some
land, however dim and distant, to attain. Well, then, have not forgotten
our conversation of to-day?'
'Forgotten!'
'I confessed to you that those deities for whom smoke so many altars were
but inventions. I confessed to you that our rites and ceremonies were but
mummeries, to delude and lure the herd to their proper good. I explained to
you that from those delusions came the bonds of society, the harmony of the
world, the power of the wise; that power is in the obedience of the vulgar.
Continue we then these salutary delusions--if man must have some belief,
continue to him that which his fathers have made dear to him, and which
custom sanctifies and strengthens. In seeking a subtler faith for us, whose
senses are too spiritual for the gross one, let us leave others that support
which crumbles from ourselves. This is wise--it is benevolent.'
'Proceed.'
'This being settled,' resumed the Egyptian, 'the old landmarks being left
uninjured for those whom we are about to desert, we gird up our loins and
depart to new climes of faith. Dismiss at once from your recollection, from
your thought, all that you have believed before. Suppose the mind a blank,
an unwritten scroll, fit to receive impressions for the first time. Look
round the world--observe its order--its regularity--its design. Something
must have created it--the design speaks a designer: in that certainty we
first touch land. But what is that something?--A god, you cry. Stay--no
confused and confusing names. Of that which created the world, we know, we
can know, nothing, save these attributes--power and unvarying
regularity--stern, crushing, relentless regularity--heeding no individual
cases--rolling--sweeping--burning on; no matter what scattered hearts,
severed from the general mass, fall ground and scorched beneath its wheels.
The mixture of evil with good--the existence of suffering and of crime--in
all times have perplexed the wise. They created a god--they supposed him
benevolent. How then came this evil? why did he permit it--nay, why invent,
why perpetuate it? To account for this, the Persian creates a second
spirit, whose nature is evil, and supposes a continual war between that and
the god of good. In our own shadowy and tremendous Typhon, the Egyptians
image a similar demon. Perplexing blunder that yet more bewilders
us!--folly that arose from the vain delusion that makes a palpable, a
corporeal, a human being, of this unknown power--that clothes the Invisible
with attributes and a nature similar to the Seen. No: to this designer let
us give a name that does not command our bewildering associations, and the
mystery becomes more clear--that name is NECESSITY. Necessity, say the
Greeks, compels the gods. Then why the gods?--their agency becomes
unnecessary--dismiss them at once. Necessity is the ruler of all we
see--power, regularity--these two qualities make its nature. Would you ask
more?--you can learn nothing: whether it be eternal--whether it compel us,
its creatures, to new careers after that darkness which we call death--we
cannot tell. There leave we this ancient, unseen, unfathomable power, and
come to that which, to our eyes, is the great minister of its functions.
This we can task more, from this we can learn more: its evidence is around
us--its name is NATURE. The error of the sages has been to direct their
researches to the attributes of necessity, where all is gloom and blindness.
Had they confined their researches to Nature--what of knowledge might we not
already have achieved? Here patience, examination, are never directed in
vain. We see what we explore; our minds ascend a palpable ladder of causes
and effects. Nature is the great agent of the external universe, and
Necessity imposes upon it the laws by which it acts, and imparts to us the
powers by which we examine; those powers are curiosity and memory--their
union is reason, their perfection is wisdom. Well, then, I examine by the
help of these powers this inexhaustible Nature. I examine the earth, the
air, the ocean, the heaven: I find that all have a mystic sympathy with each
other--that the moon sways the tides--that the air maintains the earth, and
is the medium of the life and sense of things--that by the knowledge of the
stars we measure the limits of the earth--that we portion out the epochs of
time--that by their pale light we are guided into the abyss of the
past--that in their solemn lore we discern the destinies of the future. And
thus, while we know not that which Necessity is, we learn, at least, her
decrees. And now, what morality do we glean from this religion?--for
religion it is. I believe in two deities--Nature and Necessity; I worship
the last by reverence, the first by investigation. What is the morality my
religion teaches? This--all things are subject but to general rules; the
sun shines for the joy of the many--it may bring sorrow to the few; the
night sheds sleep on the multitude--but it harbors murder as well as rest;
the forests adorn the earth--but shelter the serpent and the lion; the ocean
supports a thousand barks--but it engulfs the one. It is only thus for the
general, and not for the universal benefit, that Nature acts, and Necessity
speeds on her awful course. This is the morality of the dread agents of the
world--it is mine, who am their creature. I would preserve the delusions of
priestcraft, for they are serviceable to the multitude; I would impart to
man the arts I discover, the sciences I perfect; I would speed the vast
career of civilizing lore: in this I serve the mass, I fulfill the general
law, I execute the great moral that Nature preaches. For myself I claim the
individual exception; I claim it for the wise--satisfied that my individual
actions are nothing in the great balance of good and evil; satisfied that
the product of my knowledge can give greater blessings to the mass than my
desires can operate evil on the few (for the first can extend to remotest
regions and humanize nations yet unborn), I give to the world wisdom, to
myself freedom. I enlighten the lives of others, and I enjoy my own. Yes;
our wisdom is eternal, but our life is short: make the most of it while it
lasts. Surrender thy youth to pleasure, and thy senses to delight. Soon
comes the hour when the wine-cup is shattered, and the garlands shall cease
to bloom. Enjoy while you may. Be still, O Apaecides, my pupil and my
follower! I will teach thee the mechanism of Nature, her darkest and her
wildest secrets--the lore which fools call magic--and the mighty mysteries
of the stars. By this shalt thou discharge thy duty to the mass; by this
shalt thou enlighten thy race. But I will lead thee also to pleasures of
which the vulgar do not dream; and the day which thou givest to men shall be
followed by the sweet night which thou surrenderest to thyself.'
As the Egyptian ceased there rose about, around, beneath, the softest music
that Lydia ever taught, or Iona ever perfected. It came like a stream of
sound, bathing the senses unawares; enervating, subduing with delight. It
seemed the melodies of invisible spirits, such as the shepherd might have
heard in the golden age, floating through the vales of Thessaly, or in the
noontide glades of Paphos. The words which had rushed to the lip of
Apaecides, in answer to the sophistries of the Egyptian, died tremblingly
away. He felt it as a profanation to break upon that enchanted strain--the
susceptibility of his excited nature, the Greek softness and ardour of his
secret soul, were swayed and captured by surprise. He sank on the seat with
parted lips and thirsting ear; while in a chorus of voices, bland and
melting as those which waked Psyche in the halls of love, rose the following
song:
THE HYMN OF EROS
By the cool banks where soft Cephisus flows,
A voice sail'd trembling down the waves of air;
The leaves blushed brighter in the Teian's rose,
The doves couch'd breathless in their summer lair;
While from their hands the purple flowerets fell,
The laughing Hours stood listening in the sky;--
From Pan's green cave to AEgle's haunted cell,
Heaved the charm'd earth in one delicious sigh.
Love, sons of earth! I am the Power of Love!
Eldest of all the gods, with Chaos born;
My smile sheds light along the courts above,
My kisses wake the eyelids of the Morn.
Mine are the stars--there, ever as ye gaze,
Ye meet the deep spell of my haunting eyes;
Mine is the moon--and, mournful if her rays,
'Tis that she lingers where her Carian lies.
The flowers are mine--the blushes of the rose,
The violet--charming Zephyr to the shade;
Mine the quick light that in the Maybeam glows,
And mine the day-dream in the lonely glade.
Love, sons of earth--for love is earth's soft lore,
Look where ye will--earth overflows with ME;
Learn from the waves that ever kiss the shore,
And the winds nestling on the heaving sea.
'All teaches love!'--The sweet voice, like a dream,
Melted in light; yet still the airs above,
The waving sedges, and the whispering stream,
And the green forest rustling, murmur'd 'LOVE!'
As the voices died away, the Egyptian seized the hand of Apaecides, and led
him, wandering, intoxicated, yet half-reluctant, across the chamber towards
the curtain at the far end; and now, from behind that curtain, there seemed
to burst a thousand sparkling stars; the veil itself, hitherto dark, was now
lighted by these fires behind into the tenderest blue of heaven. It
represented heaven itself--such a heaven, as in the nights of June might
have shone down over the streams of Castaly. Here and there were painted
rosy and aerial clouds, from which smiled, by the limner's art, faces of
divinest beauty, and on which reposed the shapes of which Phidias and
Apelles dreamed. And the stars which studded the transparent azure rolled
rapidly as they shone, while the music, that again woke with a livelier and
lighter sound, seemed to imitate the melody of the joyous spheres.
'Oh! what miracle is this, Arbaces,' said Apaecides in faltering accents.
'After having denied the gods, art thou about to reveal to me...'
'Their pleasures!' interrupted Arbaces, in a tone so different from its
usual cold and tranquil harmony that Apaecides started, and thought the
Egyptian himself transformed; and now, as they neared the curtain, a wild--a
loud--an exulting melody burst from behind its concealment. With that sound
the veil was rent in twain--it parted--it seemed to vanish into air: and a
scene, which no Sybarite ever more than rivalled, broke upon the dazzled
gaze of the youthful priest. A vast banquet-room stretched beyond, blazing
with countless lights, which filled the warm air with the scents of
frankincense, of jasmine, of violets, of myrrh; all that the most odorous
flowers, all that the most costly spices could distil, seemed gathered into
one ineffable and ambrosial essence: from the light columns that sprang
upwards to the airy roof, hung draperies of white, studded with golden
stars. At the extremities of the room two fountains cast up a spray, which,
catching the rays of the roseate light, glittered like countless diamonds.
In the centre of the room as they entered there rose slowly from the floor,
to the sound of unseen minstrelsy, a table spread with all the viands which
sense ever devoted to fancy, and vases of that lost Myrrhine fabric, so
glowing in its colors, so transparent in its material, were crowned with the
exotics of the East. The couches, to which this table was the centre, were
covered with tapestries of azure and gold; and from invisible tubes the
vaulted roof descended showers of fragrant waters, that cooled the delicious
air, and contended with the lamps, as if the spirits of wave and fire
disputed which element could furnish forth the most delicious odorous. And
now, from behind the snowy draperies, trooped such forms as Adonis beheld
when he lay on the lap of Venus. They came, some with garlands, others with
lyres; they surrounded the youth, they led his steps to the banquet. They
flung the chaplets round him in rosy chains. The earth--the thought of
earth, vanished from his soul. He imagined himself in a dream, and
suppressed his breath lest he should wake too soon; the senses, to which he
had never yielded as yet, beat in his burning pulse, and confused his dizzy
and reeling sight. And while thus amazed and lost, once again, but in brisk
and Bacchic measures, rose the magic strain:
ANACREONTIC
In the veins of the calix foams and glows
The blood of the mantling vine,
But oh! in the bowl of Youth there glows
A Lesbian, more divine!
Bright, bright,
As the liquid light,
Its waves through thine eyelids shine!
Fill up, fill up, to the sparkling brim,
The juice of the young Lyaeus;
The grape is the key that we owe to him
From the gaol of the world to free us.
Drink, drink!
What need to shrink,
When the lambs alone can see us?
Drink, drink, as I quaff from thine eyes
The wine of a softer tree;
Give the smiles to the god of the grape--thy sighs,
Beloved one, give to me.
Turn, turn,
My glances burn,
And thirst for a look from thee!
As the song ended, a group of three maidens, entwined with a chain of
starred flowers, and who, while they imitated, might have shamed the Graces,
advanced towards him in the gliding measures of the Ionian dance: such as
the Nereids wreathed in moonlight on the yellow sands of the AEgean
wave--such as Cytherea taught her handmaids in the marriage-feast of Psyche
and her son.
Now approaching, they wreathed their chaplet round his head; now kneeling,
the youngest of the three proffered him the bowl, from which the wine of
Lesbos foamed and sparkled. The youth resisted no more, he grasped the
intoxicating cup, the blood mantled fiercely through his veins. He sank
upon the breast of the nymph who sat beside him, and turning with swimming
eyes to seek for Arbaces, whom he had lost in the whirl of his emotions, he
beheld him seated beneath a canopy at the upper end of the table, and gazing
upon him with a smile that encouraged him to pleasure. He beheld him, but
not as he had hitherto seen, with dark and sable garments, with a brooding
and solemn brow: a robe that dazzled the sight, so studded was its whitest
surface with gold and gems, blazed upon his majestic form; white roses,
alternated with the emerald and the ruby, and shaped tiara-like, crowned his
raven locks. He appeared, like Ulysses, to have gained the glory of a
second youth--his features seemed to have exchanged thought for beauty, and
he towered amidst the loveliness that surrounded him, in all the beaming and
relaxing benignity of the Olympian god.
'Drink, feast, love, my pupil!' said he, 'blush not that thou art passionate
and young. That which thou art, thou feelest in thy veins: that which thou
shalt be, survey!'
With this he pointed to a recess, and the eyes of Apaecides, following the
gesture, beheld on a pedestal, placed between the statues of Bacchus and
Idalia, the form of a skeleton.
'Start not,' resumed the Egyptian; 'that friendly guest admonishes us but of
the shortness of life. From its jaws I hear a voice that summons us to
ENJOY.'
As he spoke, a group of nymphs surrounded the statue; they laid chaplets on
its pedestal, and, while the cups were emptied and refilled at that glowing
board, they sang the following strain:
BACCHIC HYMNS TO THE IMAGE OF DEATH
I
Thou art in the land of the shadowy Host,
Thou that didst drink and love:
By the Solemn River, a gliding ghost,
But thy thought is ours above!
If memory yet can fly,
Back to the golden sky,
And mourn the pleasures lost!
By the ruin'd hall these flowers we lay,
Where thy soul once held its palace;
When the rose to thy scent and sight was gay,
And the smile was in the chalice,
And the cithara's voice
Could bid thy heart rejoice
When night eclipsed the day.
Here a new group advancing, turned the tide of the music into a quicker and
more joyous strain.
II
Death, death is the gloomy shore
Where we all sail--
Soft, soft, thou gliding oar;
Blow soft, sweet gale!
Chain with bright wreaths the Hours;
Victims if all
Ever, 'mid song and flowers,
Victims should fall!
Pausing for a moment, yet quicker and quicker danced the silver-footed
music:
Since Life's so short, we'll live to laugh,
Ah! wherefore waste a minute!
If youth's the cup we yet can quaff,
Be love the pearl within it!
A third band now approached with brimming cups, which they poured in
libation upon that strange altar; and once more, slow and solemn, rose the
changeful melody:
III
Thou art welcome, Guest of gloom,
From the far and fearful sea!
When the last rose sheds its bloom,
Our board shall be spread with thee!
All hail, dark Guest!
Who hath so fair a plea
Our welcome Guest to be,
As thou, whose solemn hall
At last shall feast us all
In the dim and dismal coast?
Long yet be we the Host!
And thou, Dead Shadow, thou,
All joyless though thy brow,
Thou--but our passing GUEST!
At this moment, she who sat beside Apaecides suddenly took up the song:
IV
Happy is yet our doom,
The earth and the sun are ours!
And far from the dreary tomb
Speed the wings of the rosy Hours--
Sweet is for thee the bowl,
Sweet are thy looks, my love;
I fly to thy tender soul,
As bird to its mated dove!
Take me, ah, take!
Clasp'd to thy guardian breast,
Soft let me sink to rest:
But wake me--ah, wake!
And tell me with words and sighs,
But more with thy melting eyes,
That my sun is not set--
That the Torch is not quench'd at the Urn
That we love, and we breathe, and burn,
Tell me--thou lov'st me yet!
