CHAPTER VI.

MODERN PAGANISM

The Duke of Durimond and his fair bride prolonged their tour among the lakes and mountains of the "land o' cakes" until autumn begun to show the fallen leaf. Hester was not a little disappointed at this--she was impatiently expecting a summons to {181} meet her sister at the dacal mansion, and she thought the period unnecessarily delayed.

At length the wished-for invitation came, and father, mother, sisters, brother, aunt, and Euphrasie were called upon to welcome the young duchess to one of the costliest and most elaborately finished palaces in England. Hester shouted in glee as the carriage entered the mile-long avenue of stately trees that formed the approach to the ducal dwelling. The bevy of liveried servants that awaited their approach at the hall-door, the quiet, respectful bearing of the gentlemen servants out of livery who waited within to escort them to the suite of rooms prepared for their reception--all this was charming! delightful! only a look from her parents presented the merry girl from dancing round the house in ecstasy. The entrance-hall itself was sufficient to send her into raptures. The beautiful marble of the floor, the large fires burning on each side, the triple row of balconies, raised one above another, on the three sides within the hall, betokening the communication of the upper stories with the rest of the house by some unseen means, and displaying the full height of the edifice, crowned as it was by a beautifully carved cupola, into which sufficient skylight was artificially admitted to display to advantage the figures of the rosy Aurora accompanied by her nymphs, scattering flowers on her way as she opened the gates of morning, which subject was skilfully portrayed on the ceiling. They passed through this, the outer hall, to another, which contained the magnificent staircase leading to the apartments opening on the balconies described. To Hester's joy the entrance to their suite of rooms opened on the first of these, and she could look up to the painted ceiling and down to the marble floor, and gaze, unrebuked, on the colossal figures of bronze which appeared to uphold the balconies.

How happy Adelaide must be, mistress of so gorgeous a palace! And Adelaide was there at the door of the apartments to greet her mother and her mother's friends. What was there in her manner to damp at once the ardor of Hester's enthusiasm? Grace, kindness, and dignity were there! and yet Hester was not satisfied; a chill came o'er her unawares as she returned her sister's kiss. She mastered herself, however, sufficiently to express her admiration of the splendid hall.

"Oh, that is nothing," said the young duchess, with a faint smile. "His grace will introduce you to his hall of sculpture and to the picture gallery by and by, and then you will be really pleased. I believe royalty itself cannot boost such master-pieces as Durimond Castle."

"So I have heard," said Mrs. Godfrey; "but where is the duke, my dear?"

"He was unexpectedly occupied when you arrived, mamma, but doubtless he will be here to welcome you immediately."

There was a constraint and melancholy about Adelaide's manner that struck the whole party, and their pleasure was more than a little damped as they entered the magnificent apartments prepared for them.

"Here," said the hostess, "you can be as private as in your own house when you wish it; and when you desire society you will generally find some one either in the library, or in the conservatory or drawing-room."

"Have you many guests?" asked the Countess de Meglior.

"Your friend, the Comte de Villeneuve, came with us from town; he is not here to-day, though I think the duke expects him to-morrow. He is absent on some business; there is a strange gentleman closeted with the duke just now, for whom apartments are ordered; he is a foreigner, I think; the duke seems to have business with him. He will be our only visitor today."

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Just then the bell rang to warn the guests it was the dressing hour. Valets and ladies' maids were in attendance, and though only to join a family party, state-dresses were in requisition.

Adelaide retired to make her preparations, and the visitors, amid the luxurious surroundings, felt oppressed with a sadness for which they could scarcely account, and which they cared not to express, even to one another.

The duke met them in the drawing-room before dinner, and his gay manner in some degree dispelled the gloom that had crept over the party. He inquired kindly after Eugene.

"Eugene, from some cause or other," said Mrs. Godfrey, "keeps away from home altogether. He spent his long vacation at the lakes, and has again returned to Cambridge. He has taken a studious fit, I suppose, and must be allowed to gratify if ."

"And does he not, then, intend to honor us with his company?" inquired the duke.

"Oh, he will run down for a day or two ere long, I dare say. He must see Adelaide, of course; but when, he does not exactly say."

Adelaide did not appear displeased to hear this. She turned to her husband and asked what he had done with his visitor.

"He would not stay, he had an appointment to keep, so we must make up for all deficiencies ourselves."

The dinner passed away stiffly enough, and as the season was too late for a walk afterward, the gentlemen, following the then national custom, passed a considerable time over the bottle, discussing the politics of the day. It was late in the evening ere they joined the ladies. They found them in a large conservatory, which was illuminated in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey's arrival; and in this flowery retreat sundry self-acting musical instruments were hidden, which, from time to time, sent forth, as it were unbidden, melodious sounds and tuneful harmonies, which, vibrating amid the flowering shrubs that formed an artificial spring within the glass enclosure, contrasted pleasingly with the "fall of the leaf" that made all nature desolate without.

"Art conquers nature here," said Mr. Godfrey, as he entered the enchanted scene. "We might fancy ourselves in a fairy palace now. What says my Hester to this?"

"Oh! this is beautiful, indeed! Music, moonlight, love, and flowers are it 'A glorious combination,'" said Hester, pointing to the moon, which shone brightly through the windows; but her voice had lost its usual animation as she made the quotation, for a feeling passed over her heart, as if one ingredient, and that precisely the most important one, was wanting; she could not be satisfied that "love" presided in this abode of beauty and of grace.

The next morning the state rooms of the house were inspected. The duke was the great patron of the fine arts, and taste shone forth in every part of the stately edifice that was exposed to view.

The picture gallery and the hall of sculpture were celebrated far and wide, particularly the latter. Nor were the figures promiscuously arranged that decorated this scene of art; on the contrary, much care had been expended to form one harmonious whole. On the dome which formed the ceiling was painted ancient Saturn devouring his offspring as they rose into being, and beneath this centre-piece were painted the war of the Titans against Satan on the one side, and the war of the giants against Jupiter on the other. Thus far the ceiling. In the midst of the marble floor stood the mighty Jupiter, armed with his thunderbolts, majestic in strength and grand in intellectual sensualism. Beside him, grouped symmetrically and appropriately, were the legion of subordinate divinities--Venus, attended by the graces; Apollo, radiant in beauty; Hercules strangling the serpents while he was yet in the cradle; the Muses in various attitudes, with appropriate symbols of office. Scarcely a god, goddess, or demigod {183} could be named who was not here represented. Types of beauty--sensual, intellectual, and physical; types of grandeur and of tenor; types of mystery, beneath the veiled figure of the Egyptian deity, Isis; types of knowledge and of artistic skill were there. All that man bows before and worships when the sense of the supernatural is shut, and he learns of _self_ to deify his own passions, was here, other delineated on the walls or chiselled out in the sculptural forms. It was ft Pantheon dedicated to all the gods of human sense, refined by beauty and grace, and polished by artistic merit of the highest order. Unbounded and unfeigned was the applause elicited from the party: hardly could they satisfied themselves with gazing on these perfect forms: even the lack of drapery seemed scarcely a drawback. Euphrasie, indeed, retired, but she was so strange habitually that her absence was hardly commented upon; and but for the smile that went round the circle as she left the hall, might have been deemed unobserved.

"The true gods of the earth are these yet." said Mr. Godfrey, when the door had closed behind the young French girl, "and the race has sadly degenerated since their worship was abandoned."

The young duchess and her sisters looked up in mute wonder at the speaker, but the duke cried, "Hear, hear!" and the elder ladies tried to look wise and responsive.

Mr. Godfrey continued: "That is god to a man which his mind worships and reveres, and which to the extent of his power he strives to imitate. Julian, the Roman emperor, understood this well. He felt (what time has proved true) that the human frame must degenerate when its proportionate and due development ceases to be the primary object of the legislator. He saw that when, instead of these glorious physical powers, there is substituted a pale, emaciated figure nailed to a cross for the glorification of an ideal good, that all nature's teachings must become confused, and a fake romance lead to decay the powers that heretofore were so beautiful in their proportions."

"Surely, papa, you do not believe in paganism," said Hester, wonderingly.

"Yes and no, Hester. In the fables of the personal divinity of Jupiter, Venus, and Minerva--No! In paganism as the expression of a grand idea, well suited to man's capabilities, and to his nature--Yes! You must not confound the hidden meaning of the myth with the outward expression. The uninstructed multitude will always look to the outward, and believe the fables as facts, whatever religion they profess, and often times they penetrate no further; but the learned look through the myth to the meaning, and the meaning of the pagan myth is,--Cultivate physical strength, in union with intellectual power, worship beauty, study and contrast nature. Destroy infirmity: it is the most humane way, and the most just way. Do not perpetuate disease. Let all ill-constituted children die. Let the conquered--_i.e._, the weaker--serve; it belongs to the strong to rule. To develop the physical frame duly, Lycurgus caused even the young women to wrestle publicly, without drapery of any kind. Our more fastidious tastes cramp the form of our women, and distort the figure; and, worse than this, our perverted theology distorts their intellect, and makes it afraid even to look at the human form. Again, I say, Julian was right. The Christianity he forsook has caused not only the degeneration of human power, but has substituted false ideas of good. The real has given place to the ideal, and a sickly, romantic, sentimentalized race has taken the place of the hardy heroes of antiquity."

And Mr. Godfrey bowed profoundly to the deities before him.

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The duke laughed and clapped his hands. "Well said, Mr. Godfrey, well said. I hardly knew till now, how great a benefactor I was to the human race when I collected these statues. Hitherto I have thrown open my house but once a week for the public benefit. Henceforth I will direct my steward to allow instructions oftener in this temple of the true gods of the earth. By the by, I believe there is a very good chance of restoring this gone-by worship, if, as you say, it consists in the exaltation of physical power. Science, in its diffusion, is fixing men's minds on material agencies, very much to the exclusion of superstitious ideality. We have only to throw in a vein of the love of beauty, and much will be effected toward bringing back men's minds to the natural worship, here so beautifully symbolized."

"I believe so," said Mr. Godfrey; "but, meantime, how much evil has been effected by letting in upon the race so many delicate constitutions! How shall we restore the hardy races that peopled the earth, when these mighty types of glory ruled the populations?"

"Indeed, it is difficult to say. Men have accustomed themselves to a false estimate of mere vitality, as if life without enjoyment were worth the having. We shall, I fear, find it difficult to persuade English mothers to destroy their diseased and crippled children for the good of the public, or to train their daughters in the gymnasium."

"Would you seriously wish it, my lord duke?" asked his wife.

"I hardly know. We are all trammelled more or less with the feelings our mothers instilled into us. I think Lycurgus a great man, and perfectly reasonable. Had I been born a Spartan, I think I should have thanked the gods for it, but now--"

"Now," interrupted Mrs. Godfrey, "you are more nearly a Sybarite. I know of no one whom a crumpled rose-leaf disturbs more easily than yourself."

"Nay, Mrs. Godfrey, the _argumentum ad hominem_ is hardly fair; but, after all, I suppose we must admit that character is geographical and chronological, besides being modified by individual circumstance. I think freely, but I am scarcely free to change my character; so in legislating I must legislate on public grounds for others. It does not follow that I can keep the law I deem it fitting to make.

"But if you cannot keep it, how can others?" demanded Annie.

"Well asked, my fair sister--asked not only by you, but by others also, and therefore is it that we must practically legislate not as we think best, abstractedly, but as nearly best as can be carried out. So, as the people are not yet ripe for ancient Spartan laws, we must be content yet a while to diffuse the principle that physical development, physical beauty, and physical power are the legitimate objects of human worship. When we have accustomed the people to adopt these views, the rest may chance to follow. Meantime, I see De Villeneuve coming up the avenue: excuse me for an instant;" and somewhat to the surprise of the party, the duke bolted through the open door that led on to the grounds to meet his friend, who dismounted when he saw him coming. In deep conference they slowly approached the house. There was a cloud on the duke's brow, but he shook it off as he entered and gayly introduced his friend.

"I am afraid De Villeneuve hardly admires these divinities, Mrs. Godfrey; let us adjourn to the drawing-room."

"Nay, defend yourself, M. de Villeneuve; you will not plead guilty to not loving art?" said the lady addressed.

"No, indeed, dear madam, his grace is only avenging himself for my criticisms. I suggested to him the other day that he might get up another temple of modern art as a supplement to this, and he felt piqued, I suppose; yet I have found him many times standing rapt before a Madonna."

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"The gentlemen decided this morning that these were the true gods of the earth, and that Madonnas and Crucifixions were false, unreal types, and to be discouraged."

"Not possible!"

"Nay, it is true, they were voting a return to paganism."

"But you, ladies," said M. de Villeneuve, "you, ladies, were not of that mind, surely?"

"I don't know," said Hester, mischievously, "papa was very eloquent In lauding ancient institutions."

"But," said the comte, turning very earnestly to her, "he did not tell you how woman was treated in the olden time, before Mary's _fiat_ repaired the fault of Eve. Women, intelligent, beautiful women, owe everything to that divine Mother; and if they cast off their religion it is because the misery is hid from them which the sex was subject to formerly."

"There is no necessity just now of making it more clear," said Mr. Godfrey drily.

"No," said the comte; "and yet when I see the tendency of the age, I often feel that it would be safer did our ladies know the truth. Eve's fault should at least bring knowledge when knowledge is necessary to truth. Woman could not help but be fervently religious, did she know from what an abyss of degradation Christianity has raised her."

Mr. Godfrey turned impatiently to the window. "It is splendid weather for riding," said he; "suppose we order the horses."