Part 10

‘He or she is a long way advanced towards freedom or wisdom,’ quoth Flaxius, ‘who has found out that he--or she--is a fool. Well, lady, thus it was that centuries ago there lived on earth a beautiful princess of the Lombard line, who had a sorceress mother, and a fairy Amal-Alruna ancestress, and who, having been trained to all the mysteries and magic of the North, as well as of Rome, and of many races, attained to such power as had rarely been given to woman. Yet through it all she retained beauty and the love of power and pleasure, of magnificence, and the keen, fierce delight of preying on the hearts and lives of men, and of living, even as thou livest here now, Adelindè!

‘And having gained great power, and on one occasion by mighty worship and great services to _Tinia_--the great ruling spirit of the Tuscan land--obtained full and free choice as to her future life for ever, she said: “What that life for saints may be I know not, but this I know, that the life which I now lead is all that heart can desire, and I would fain live it so long as a single fibre of my soul remains as it is.”

‘Near and dear to her in those days was one who had lived in the ages, and been her teacher, and more, and had tried to win her from her worldly wont, and all in vain. So they went their ways, she to splendour and pageantry in life and after life, and he to study and observe in existences beyond her ken. And in her gaiety and luxury the ages rolled on, and as they rolled, there wore away the happiness of her elfin life, and torment set in, the torment ordained to every one on earth who succeeds in having to satiety and excess his own will.’

‘Man, thou speakest true,’ wailed the princess, as the voices of revelry sank lower, and the figures fading began to pass away, and the lights grew dim. The music became softer in its modulations, and the mind of Flaxius ran insensibly into unspoken song, in accompaniment with the line:

‘Five hundred years have passed by as before.’

‘One by one,’ he resumed, ‘the enchanted princess lost her passions and longings. She had delirious desires, keen appetites, an immortal and beautiful thirst, an exquisite appreciation of all that is beautiful, dainty caprices, delicate and true. Wit, humour, whim, wild-will, and Attic salt were as life to her; she revelled in music and song and letters--as thou dost in this life, or as thou didst when in the body.’

The poor princess grew tearful; the marble pallor of her fading cheek might have made sorrow in the hardest heart.

‘Yes, it all wore into triteness and commonplace, even the being hungry and eating, desiring and realising the same things over and over again, for _she_ had a soul, and every soul is damned, as soon as it is clogged and stops working, like a bee that has wished itself into eternal honey.’

Adelindè cried on.

‘But one thing survived--it generally _is_ about the last thing to die out of any woman’s heart--and that was the desire to fascinate men, to win them, to impose on them, and to have her own way. She felt it in her head and heart like a curse; she knew it was the poison of her soul; everything else grew stale, but that kept fresh.

‘And it had been decreed that if she could ever meet a man who could resist and conquer her, the spell would end; but, alas, she had wished for and won such a stupendous stock of enchanting charms that she was perfectly _irresistible_ and simply distracting, which is a thing that stands between many a woman and her salvation, in all ages. For it has kept more souls in the dark, and made more ugly fools, who might have become spiritually beautiful, than any cause on earth. So from such mothers many men are fools: an Agrippina has always a Nero for a son.’

Crushed to naught, fair Adelindè wept, till, lifting her eyes to those of the guest, a sudden, tremendous convulsion, one of transcendent rapture, mingled with strangest amazement, thrilled over her. She bent on him a glance which might have split a stone.

The music played on ever more softly, more sweetly to their words in perfect time.

‘Now I know thee, Flaxius,’ she cried. ‘_Vicisti_, thou hast conquered! The last link of the chain which bound me for centuries to earth is broken. And even in the hour in which we meet, beloved master, and in the instant of our love, because it is our love, and I am conquered, I leave thee for the better life beyond! But, ah! to have remained with thee, I would have gladly endured this ghostly existence, which had become a torment. All this is ended. Now these walls will know me no more; the peasant benighted will no longer see strange lights flickering over the ancient ruin; the enchantment has departed, and the spell of golden glory and glamour will no longer shine at midnight in these halls. The wanderer may now safely sleep here; he will behold no longer the elfin array, or my Lombard lords and ladies of the olden times, nor be enchanted by their queen. Sound for the last time my fairy music--your sweet strains will never more be heard in the court of Adelindè! Farewell, O master, we shall meet again soon, and full often in a better life--such as thou hast chosen--a life not clogged by earthly desires or petty worldly aims.’

As she said this, the princess cast herself in a last passionate embrace on the breast of Flaxius, and as she did so, he felt that her life and form were passing away to a purer, more idealised existence. The figure faded, the features, the face, last of all the ineffable splendour of the Sorceress’s eyes, in which there was the radiance of a divine, parting smile: she spoke no more, the music died away.

‘O love, in thy glory go!’ said Flaxius. ‘Never yet passed into life eternal a sweeter soul, never yet was a fairer goblet of the ancient time remelted into a nobler form. O love, in thy glory go! Lovelier form did never fade, brighter rose was never broken. ’Tis but a brief minute since thou wert in thy inferno of despair, and now by one instant’s flash of love and humility, thy beautiful soul is passing through the golden-pearled portals, and through the halls of the heavenly unknown. Even I cannot tell, not in this short space, what sphere contains the fairy soul that hath forsook her mansion in this earthly nook. O love, in thy glory go!’

Silent and alone sat Flaxius as the shades vanished one by one. Last of all there stood before him the giant forms of Hildebrand and his son Hahdubrand. The warrior pressed his hand and spoke no word, but Flaxius read in his eyes deep and full feeling--the knowledge of all that had passed, and a farewell.

‘Yes, farewell, my brave old companion of ancient days,’ said Flaxius. ‘Thou, too, mayst pass away to lands beyond. Thou didst battle for glory and fame, and hast learned from me that it has been truly won. _Du kannst zu Land ausreiten_--so, warrior, fare thee well!’

So he sat there till all had passed away, the glitter and glamour of chivalry and a fairy court; till the high towers had become a low, grey ruin, and the spiders’ webs hung again in the palace halls, and there were vines on crumbling walls, and the stones, themselves to ruin grown like him, seemed death-like old. Then, as in waves, the weeds grew again up to where he sat; and as the rising sun cast its first ray on him, he started as if from a dream.

‘_Comedia luget, scena est deserta_,’ he murmured. ‘Now if I wished to preach a new faith to mankind, Adelindè has given me the text. For I now see that hell _is_ the place where every mortal can have to his heart’s content his own desire, as Pluto declared. And this hell may be on earth, in life, and all may know it in their very hearts.

* * * * *

‘_Hæc fabula docet_,’ wrote Flaxius on the revise, ‘two or three morals not mentioned in the conclusion. _Item_, the Spirit that is in the trees, the Being in green leaves among the groves, the rocks and waters, or the wanton weeds, reveals unto the poet wondrous things which, being written, are as real in truth, in beauty, and in goodness for the world, as aught that ever happened in the past. He who has mastered this in every sense lives in a fairyland while here on earth, yet they are few who ever master it.

‘And yet again that great prosperity gives birth to a vanity which is often an intermittent weakness in men, and a steady madness in women, as may be clearly discerned in the memoirs or lives of all who have flourished in the atmosphere of courts, wherein, as in a hot-house, things worth no more than weeds in nature or in their proper state, are as exotics, nursed up into such condition by prosperity, that they despise every flower or plant which grows in the open air. For who, indeed, has not known some feeble-minded man or woman whose head has been so turned by having everything he or she wanted, that either is fain to scream as at some great inhuman injustice when a miracle is not wrought in some dire need--as in the want of “diamonds like the duke’s”!’

‘Now it was in the instant when her vanity was humiliated for ever, and she realised that there was, indeed, a man who was too much for her, that Adelindè first saw herself in very truth as she was, like Hawthorne’s Man of Straw, and grasped the tremendous truth of Christian humility. Which is enough time for a great mind to be saved, just as one handful of powder will in an instant overthrow a lordly tower, while it may require a ton thereof, and a long time, to destroy a mud-bank.

‘But every mortal, be he who he may, has learned a great lesson, and taken his first step to divinity, when he has learned in very truth that he is not a god.

‘Finally, there are many who imagine that old age cannot attack a man while he has health, strength, and physical or worldly appetite. And so long as he is a brute or a fool, were it for a thousand years, he could indeed go on eating, drinking, and frolicking with his kind. But with experience there comes a soul, and to that soul in time a weariness of all that earth contains, be it what it may. Now it is a curious thing to observe that as the average growth of intellect in England has increased--I pray ye here put on your studying-caps--the average of life and the duration of vitality and intelligence has increased with it. When the great Duke of Marlborough pleaded extreme old age in asking for merciful indulgence--he was then sixty-three--no one thought it strange. ’Tis hardly worth the while to say, that now, few people would lend grace to such a plea, for life is lengthening, and ‘twill lengthen on slowly--it may be--surely, into wondrous Time.

[5] The frolicsomeness of a panther suggests intoxication. In this it surpasses all other animals. Therefore the car of Bacchus is drawn by panthers.

FLAXIUS AND THE WERE-WOLF

THE WONDERFUL STORY TELLING HOW RANDOLPH OF UPSALA ATE THE SHEEP, AND HOW MR. RANDOLPH OF WALL STREET DEVOURED THE LAMBS.

‘Now there are some people who think that those who believe they are Were-wolves only suffer from what is called by doctors _Lycanthropia_. But others hold that they are indeed changed to brutes, and this cannot be denied, and those who deny it are all infamous liars.’--_Peter Goldschmied_, _Hexen Advocat._ 1705.

IT happened once in the days of sword-songs and sagas, runic sorcery and sea-dragons, that Flaxius found himself in Sweden on a summer eve, gazing at the town of Upsala. He sat upon the little hill before it, where, as tradition tells, Odin was buried. Ye may see his bones, to-day, in a paste-board box in a case in the Stockholm Museum, where I who write these lines was allowed to reverently touch them, which is indeed a favour only accorded to a pious few who still worship the gods, disguised as folk-lorists and archæologists--_quorum pars sum_.

Now as Flaxius looked upon the strange city, and the old tower, with its eight arches typifying the eight rings or armlets of the All-Father, he observed here and there on the walls, swinging in the wind, the corpses of the strangers who were caught straying about the country, and were then sentenced to _sus per coll_, or be hanged, slung up, or hitched to swing, dangle, swaggle, and go bibbety-bob in the breezes, as a sacrifice to Odin.

‘A somewhat severe custom,’ mused Flaxius gently, ‘yet doubtless not without its peculiar advantages. The stranger within our gates often seems to us well worthy of being gated, when he gets the entire government of cities into his hands, and runs the taxes--into his own pocket; as I with eye prophetic do foresee will be the case one day in Western lands, but late discovered by these valiant Norse.

‘But for the Sacrificed on yonder walls. I remember how upon a time in Rome when Nero made full oft grim martyrdoms, that a disciple of Paulus asked--hearing me declare that there was humour in all things--if it could be found in the awful conception of a God dying as a criminal to show his humility and love for the world? And I can recall how Odin once coming as stranger, or in some disguise, into this very town, he being their god, was seized at once and hung on yonder wall, as a due sacrifice unto himself. Over which thing he merrily exults as if it were a wondrous racy joke, as we may read in the Edda:

‘“For nine nights, I hung on the wind-rocked tree A sacrifice unto myself.”

‘Truly the idea was too much for me, but not for the All-Father of the Northern gods, who found a grotesque humour in the conception of a Creator baffled by his own work. So he carried out the jest by being hung. Ah well! he lost the game after all, which shows that the Scandinavians were not good myth-makers. We managed these things much better in Etruria, Greece, and Rome. “There’s nothing sacred to a pioneer,” says a French proverb, and Odin was the _Sapeur_ and leader, and discoverer for all the North. The Norseman and Norman were his children. Od or Hud was his name as “the traveller,” and Henry Hudson was of the blood. Like an old traveller, Odin would have his joke.

‘But as to this custom of stringing up, or scragging strangers, and making them dance upon nothing in honour of the Lord Odin, it behoves me to look to myself with care unless I too would wear a tight cravat, and I care not for such worldly vanities.’

Saying this he wandered on and away, till he came to a lonely place amid rocks and trees by a headlong stream, where he paused. Suddenly his attention was caught by a cry, which he found came from a pit hard by. It was a deep and powerful voice. And to it Flaxius replied:

‘Who calls?’

The voice answered:

‘I am one who has fallen into this pit, and have not the power to come forth.’ Then he sang in staff-rhyme:

‘“To catch the Band-olf, To take the Adelolf, Bertolf, Eginolf, Frekulf, Aistolf, Hedenolf, Ingolf, Kelolf and Kunolf, Orkulf, Ordulf, Ludolf and Rachulf, Ralf and Ranulf, Wolfram and Tackolf, Theodolf, Unolf, Wolfart and many a wolf, Men with the sword, Bearers of Lances, Go forth to battle. To catch the Were-wolf, They dig the pit-fall, With runes and sorcery, Witch-rhyme and magic, So well they guard it That the wild wolf-man Falling into it, There must remain, Starving, a prisoner, Until a sorcerer, Pitying, comes to him, Breaking the witch-spell.”’

‘Which means in prose,’ said Flaxius, ‘that a poor devil of a sheep-stealer, _alias_ a were-wolf, is here in the pit--more’s the pity! There is to my mind indeed--I know not why--something less of crime in stealing mutton and venison than some other things; in fact I remember that a great Etruscan dramatist, now forgotten, once made deer-poaching almost sacred. And I recall how a bold, brave man said to a judge in my hearing: “Jedge, I’m glad you punished that mizzable creeter so severely for stealing hens. Being naterally strong in the back, it _hes_ befel at times when the country was thinly settled, that I myself have now and then inadvertently stolen a sheep, but I allays had the moral grandeur to refrain from Hens. _Hens!_ O the low, poor, ornery, medium-minded cuss!--he orter to be _ashamed_ of himself!”’

The man in the pit uttered an exclamation not over-pious.

‘It would serve these Swedes right, for their hanging strangers at Upsala,’ pursued Flaxius, ‘if I were to pull this poor devil up into the light of day. Let us see how they have laid their hocus-pocus of runes and witch-knots! Why rubbish and trash!’ he exclaimed with a scornful laugh, ‘an old Roman witch who tells fortunes for a penny would undo this sorcery with a pin! Ahem, let me try:

‘Aldebarantiphoscophornio! Bombochidescluninstaridé sarchides! Tarchun, Hinthial, Tara!

There--the charm is broken! Were-wolf, my son, come forth!’

And sure enough the pittite came forth. His appearance was _not_, to draw it mildly, as Flaxius observed unto himself, ‘absolutely prepossessing.’ _Punchius_, a celebrated Roman jester of the Lower Empire, once remarked of such an appearance, ‘that he would not be a nice customer to meet of a dark night in a lonely lane, on the loose.’ For he was red all over, as if with excessive health, and awful in muscle, an over-done Hercules, like to the Cacus of Baccio or Bandinell in the Signoria of Florence. His arms hung out from his sides like a turtle’s fins, because the bulging biceps were so great. His hair was red and dishevelled, and his eyes glared from under it with unmitigated ferocity, like those of a wild cat staring from a pig-pen. He bore on his left arm a wolf’s skin.

But suddenly, ere Flaxius could speak a word, the two found themselves surrounded by a crowd of furious rustics, who had evidently been ambushed on the watch, in the forest, about the pit. They rushed upon the pair with angry cries, accusing Flaxius of having delivered the Were-wolf, also of being a stranger, and ere they were aware, cast over them a net in which they were helpless.

‘_Flagrante delicto_,’ thought Flaxius. ‘Misplaced humanity oft leads to woe. He who lets a rat out of a trap loses his cheese. What next?’

The next was that the culprits found themselves imprisoned in the witch-tower. Its walls were about twenty-five feet in thickness; there was just room in it for two to sit on a bench, and there was one grated window to admit air.

They looked at one another. Flaxius began to sing a song written some time after by the Trouvère, Marie de France:

‘“When lays abound, ’twould ill beseem Bisclaveret were not a theme; Such is the name by Bretons sung, And Gar-wal in the Norman tongue.”’

‘_Gar-wal!_’ exclaimed the other prisoner. ‘That means me--a were-wolf. ’Tis not our tongue, and yet I know the word.’

‘So I suppose, my son, therefore I sang,’ rejoined Flaxius. ‘So now while we are resting a space, from our romantic adventure, ere we get out of this somewhat limited apartment, I pray you tell me all your story clearly ... in simple words, and few.’

‘By Fenris!’ exclaimed the Were-wolf, ‘I will tell you the truth. Loki and Hela take me if I lie! I was a free, simple _bonde_, a plain small farmer, and I lived from a flock of sheep. It was my all, and hard was my life withal. Now I had a rich neighbour, and one year my pasture was ruined by flood and storm, and this man being crafty, and I as simple as a child, he persuaded me to pasture my sheep on his farm for half the lambs to come. But he so managed by head-craft and law-craft, as to take from me all I had; and when I followed my claim at the Thing or court, it went even worse with me, and I was cast into debt, and made a thrall or slave.

‘Then I was mad with rage. Short words, master--I met a witch who gave me a spell, and I made myself a were-wolf. Then I slew all that man’s sheep ... one by one ... I set fire to his home--his family all perished in the flame--he escaped, lame and a beggar. And I was made a Wolf’s Head.’

‘Truly a pretty tale!’ remarked Flaxius. ‘Apuleius might have made something of it. _Entre chien et loup_ in this twilight, my son--or _entre nous_--hast thou more to narrate?’

‘Yes. I had taken from my foe’s house a goodly treasure of gold rings and coin, which I have concealed. Now, if any sorcerer would take the wolf-spell from me and change my face, I would buy me a ship and go a-pirating as a Viking, and so reform and lead an honest life.’

‘Truly men’s ideas as to _honesty_,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘are indeed somewhat involved--or as we may say--conventional. But what dost thou think, my son,’ he said aloud, ‘as to our present prospects?’

‘Simply, my lord, that we shall be burned alive to-morrow in honour of Odin.’

‘All lost--except honour,’ quoth Flaxius. ‘But, my son, I have no fancy to figure as a _rôti_, albeit I propose to be a _pièce de résistance_. Let us for once in our harmless and innocent lives vary the monotony of moral goodness by evading the law. All novelty is pleasing.’

‘And how shall we do it?’ asked the man amazed.

‘Thou art a strong carl,’ replied Flaxius, ‘and I warrant me that thou couldst tear yon window grating out of its place. And I--’tis a mere trick, my son--can increase thy strength ten-fold. Only drink now and then from this flask. So, so! bully boy, to work! Work while I sing to thee a magic spell taught by the great Ir-Ving.

‘“Hinculus dinculus trinculus! Holy boly bum! The Latin for chain is _Vinculus Nunc inspiratus sum_!”’

It was with intense awe that the Were-wolf listened to these words, and in full faith that he attacked the grating, which he pulled away as if it were straw.

‘Now try a stone, my son!’ exclaimed Flaxius. ‘Nay--take a pull first from the flask. There is a spirit therein, unknown to thee--_spiritus vini Gallici, duæ unciæ, fiat potatio_!’

Crash came a stone weighing a ton, then another, then a third. The Berserker rage was on the giant. Soon he had made a hole through which one could have driven a coach, but he kept on.

‘Softly, softly, my dear boy!’ interposed Flaxius. ‘Thou art too good an actor, and wilt bring down the whole house about our ears. Now, if thou art ready, I see the new moon rising o’er yon trees. Ha! Hesperus! I give thee greeting fond! Come to the green wood; let us haste away!’

It was a drop of twenty feet from the window, but the red man took it like a mountain goat, and then caught Flaxius in his arms, like a ball, albeit the latter was none of your light-weights, neither was he small. Now, as the Wolf was still _berserk-wode_, or half-mad with the tremendous magic potion, he gave a fearful yell, turning townwards,

‘And shook his gauntlet at the towers,’

when catching up Flaxius on his back, he ran with him, ‘as a fox might run with a goose,’ thought the passenger, at headlong speed, along the road and into the woods, crashing through boughs and thickets, over rocks leaping, through torrents splashing; a-down a force or waterfall here, up a hill there, while Flaxius sang:

‘“Va petit postillon! Va en avant, vite, vite! Tu vas comme l’aquilon Sur ta jument favorite?

Go on, my postillion! Before thee lies the way! And thou art like an eagle fleet Upon thy gallant grey!”’

Truly the similes were all a little mixed, but they were in a devil of a shaking, jumbling hurry, and there was no pause till they found themselves far away in a lonely land, where it seemed as if the cock never crew, the sun never shone, and the wind never blew. There the Berserker threw himself matt and flat on the ground, out of wind, and dead broke. And then Flaxius noticed that he had in his right hand a sheep, which he had caught up on the way as he ran.

‘Truly there is a good soldier lost in this man,’ said Flaxius. ‘He can forage even during a retreat.’ So there was resting, cooking, and camping _au clair de la lune_; and the next day they went on, and so to the North for many days more. The wolf-man seemed to be bound for a certain place, and Flaxius followed to see what would come thereout.