Frederic Mistral Part 11

Veran owns a hundred white mares, whose manes, thick and flowing like the gra.s.s of the marshes, are untouched by the shears, and float above their necks, as they bound fiercely along, like a fairy's scarf. They are never subdued, and often, after years of exile from the salt meadows of the Camargue, they throw off their rider, and gallop over twenty leagues of marshes to the land of their birth, to breathe the free salt air of the sea. Their element is the sea; they have surely broken loose from the chariot of Neptune; they are still white with foam; and when the sea roars and darkens, when the s.h.i.+ps break their cables, the stallions of the Camargue neigh with joy.

And Ramoun welcomes Veran, and hopes that Mireio will wed him, and calls his daughter, who gently refuses. The third suitor, Ourrias, has no better fortune. The account of this man's giant strength, the narrative of his exploits in subduing the wild bulls, are quite Homeric. The story is told of the scar he bears, how one of the fiercest bulls that he had branded carried him along, threw him ahead on the ground, and then hurled him high into the air. The strong, fierce man presents his suit, describing the life the women lead in the Camargue; but before he has her love, "his trident will bear flowers, the hills will melt away like wax, and the journey to Les Baux will be by sea." This canto and the next, recounting the fierce combat between Ourrias and Vincen, are really splendid narrative poetry. The style is marvellously compressed, and the story thrilling. The sullen anger of Ourrias, his insult that does not spare Mireio, the indignation of Vincen, that fires him with unwonted strength, the battle of the two men out alone in the fields near the mighty Pont du Gard, Vincen's victory in the trial of strength, the treachery of Ourrias, who sneaks back and strikes his enemy down with the trident. "With a mighty groan the hapless boy rolls at full length upon the gra.s.s, and the gra.s.s yields, b.l.o.o.d.y, and over his earthy limbs the ants of the fields already make their way." The rapidity, the compactness of the sentences, impressed Gaston Paris as very remarkable.

The a.s.sa.s.sin gallops away upon his mare, and seeks by night to cross the Rhone. A singularly felicitous use of the supernatural is made here.

Ourrias is carried to the bottom of the river by the goblins and spirits that come out and hover over it at night. There is a certain terror in this termination, something that recalls parts of the Inferno. Ourrias's superst.i.tious fears are the effect of his guilty conscience. The souls of the d.a.m.ned, their weird ceremonial, are but the outward rendering of the inward terror he feels.

A less legitimate use of the supernatural is made in the succeeding canto, called _La Masco_ (The Witch). In fact, the canto is really a blemish in the beautiful poem. Vincen is found unconscious and carried to the Mas des Micocoules, and various remedies tried. He comes to himself, but the wound is deemed too serious to be healed by natural means, and Mireio, at the suggestion of one of her maiden friends, takes Vincen to the abode of the witch who lives in the Fairies' Hole under the rocks of Les Baux. Besides the obvious objection that the magic cure could not have been made, there is the physical impossibility of Vincen's having walked, in his dying condition, through the labyrinth of subterranean pa.s.sages, amid the wild scenes of a sort of Walpurgis night. The poet was doubtless led into this error by his desire to preserve all the legends and superst.i.tious lore of Provence. Possibly he was led astray also by his desire to create an epic poem, in which a visit to the lower regions is a necessity. The entire episode is impossible and uninteresting, and is a blot in the beautiful idyll.

Later on, this desire to insert the supernatural leads the poet to interrupt the action of his poem, while the three Maries relate to the unconscious Mireio at great length the story of their coming from Jerusalem to Provence. Interesting as folklore, or as an evidence of the credulity of the Provencals, this narrative of the three Maries is out of place in the poem. It does not help us out to suppose that Mireio dreams the narrative, for it is full of theology, history, and traditions she could not possibly have conceived. The poem of _Mireio_ and all Mistral's work suffer from this desire to work into his poetry all the history, real and legendary, of his region.

The three Maries are Mary Magdalen, Mary, the mother of James and John, and Mary, the mother of James the Less. After the Crucifixion they embark with Saint Trophime, and successfully battling with the storms of the sea, they land finally in Provence, and by a series of miracles convert the people of Arles. This canto never would have converted Boileau from his disapproval of the "merveilleux chretien."

The poet finds his true inspiration again in the life of the Mas, in the home-bringing of the crops, in the gathering of the workers about the table of Meste Ramoun. This picture of patriarchal life is like a bit out of an ancient literature; we have a feeling of the archaic, of the primitive, we are amid the first elements of human life, where none of the complications of the modern man find a place. Meste Ambroi, whom Vincen has finally persuaded with pa.s.sionate entreaties to seek the hand of Mireio for him, comes upon this evening scene. The interview of the two old men is like a Greek play; their wisdom and experience are uttered in stately, sententious language, and many a proverb falls from their lips. Ramoun has inflexible ideas as to parental authority: "A father is a father, his will must be done. The herd that leads the herdsman, sooner or later, is crunched in the jaws of the wolf. If a son resisted his father in our day, the father would have slain him perhaps!

Therefore the families were strong, united, sound, resisting the storm like a line of plane trees! Doubtless they had their quarrels, as we know, but when Christmas night, beneath its starry tent, brought together the head of the house and his descendants, before the blessed table, before the table where he presided, the old man, with his wrinkled hand, washed it all away with his benediction!"

But Mireio and not Meste Ambroi makes known to her father that it is her hand Vincen seeks, and the mother and father break out in anger against the maid. Ramoun's anger leads him to speak offensively to Meste Ambroi, who n.o.bly maintains his dignity amid his poverty, and recounts his services to his country that have been so ill repaid. Ramoun is equally proud of his wealth, earned by the sweat of his brow, and sternly refuses. The other leaves, and then the harvesters continue their merry-making, with singing and farandoles, about a great bonfire in honor of Saint John. "All the hills were aglow as if stars had rained in the darkness, and the mad wind carried up the incense of the hills and the red gleam of the fires toward the saint, hovering in the blue twilight."

That night Mireio grieved and wept for Vincen, and, remembering what he had told her of the three Saint Maries, rises before the dawn and flees away. Her journey across the Crau and the island of Camargue is narrated with numerous details and descriptions; they are never extraneous to the action, and are a constant source of beauty and interest. The strange, barren plain of the Crau, covered with the stones that once destroyed a race of Giants, as the legend has it, is vividly described, as the maiden flies across it in the ardent rays of the June sun. She stops to pray to a saint that he send her a draught of water, and immediately she comes upon a well. Here she meets a little Arlesian boy who tells her "in his golden speech" of the glories of Arles. "But," says the poet, "O soft, dark city, the child forgot to tell thy supreme wonder; O fertile land of Arles, Heaven gives pure beauty to thy daughters, as it gives grapes to the autumn, and perfumes to the mountains and wings to the bird." The little fellow talks of many things and leads her to his home. From here the fisherman ferries her over the broad Rhone, and we accompany her over the Camargue, down to the sea. A mirage deceives her for a time, she sees the town and church, but it soon vanishes in air, and the maiden hurries on in the fierce heat.

Her prayer in the chapel is written in another verse form:--

"O Santi Mario Que poudes en flour Chanja nsti plour Clinas leu l'auriho De-vers ma doulour!"

O Holy Maries, who can change our tears to blossoms, incline quickly an ear unto my grief!

Before the prayer is ended, there begins the vision of the three Maries, descending to her from Heaven.

Meste Ramoun discovers the flight of the unhappy maiden, and with all his family starts in pursuit. After the first outburst of grief, he sends out a messenger.

"Let the mowers and the ploughmen leave the scythes and the ploughs! Say to the harvesters to throw down their sickles, bid the shepherds leave their flocks, bid them come to me!"

The boy goes out into the fields, among the mowers and gleaners, and everywhere solemnly delivers his message in the selfsame words. He goes down to the Crau, among the dwarf oaks, and summons the shepherds. All these toilers gather about the head of the farm and his wife, who await them in gloomy silence. Meste Ramoun, without making clear what misfortune has overtaken him, entreats the men to tell him what they have seen. And the chief of the haymakers, father of seven sons, tells of an evil omen, how, for the first time in thirty years, at the beginning of his day's work, he had cut himself. The parents moan the more. Then a mower from Tarascon tells how as he began his work he had discovered a nest wherein the young birds had been done to death by a myriad of invading ants. Again "the tale of woe was a lance-thrust for the father and mother." A third had been taken as with epilepsy, a shudder had pa.s.sed over him, and through his dishevelled hair as through the heads of thistles he had felt Death pa.s.s like a wind. A fourth had seen Mireio just before the dawn, and had heard her say, "Will none among the shepherds come with me to the Holy Maries?" And then while the mother laments, preparations are made to follow the maiden to the shrines out yonder by the sea.

This poem, then, depicts for us the rustic life of Provence in all its outward aspects. The pretty tale and the description of the life of the Mas and of the Provencal landscapes are inseparably woven together, forming an harmonious whole. It is not a tragedy, all the characters are too utterly lacking in depth. Vincen and Mireio are but a boy and a girl, children just awakening to life. The reader may be reminded of Hermann and Dorothea, of Gabriel and Evangeline, but the creations of the German and the American poet are greatly superior in all that represents study of the human mind and heart.

Goethe's poem and Mistral's have several points of likeness. Hermann seeks to marry against his father's wish, and the objection is the poverty of Dorothea. The case is merely inverted. Both poems imitate the Homeric style, Goethe's more palpably than Mistral's, since the German poet has adopted the Homeric verse. He affects, also, certain recurring terms of expression, "Also sprach sie" and the like, and there is a rather artificial seeking after simplicity of expression. Goethe's poem is more interesting because of the greater solidity of the characters, and because of the more closely knitted plot. The curiosity of the reader is kept roused as in a well-constructed romance. Mistral's poem has, after all, scarcely any more real local color; the rustic life of the two poems is similar, allowing for geographical differences, and we carry away quite as real a picture of Hermann's home and the fields about it as of the Mas of Meste Ramoun. Mistral's idyll terminates tragically in that Mireio dies of sunstroke, leaving her lover to mourn, but the tenor of the German poem is more serious and moves us more deeply; the background of war contributes to this, but the source of our emotion is in the deep seriousness of the characters themselves.

Vincen and Mireio are charming in their navete, they are unspoiled and unreflecting. They are children, and lacking in well-defined personality. They have no knowledge of anything beyond the customs and superst.i.tions of the simple folk about them. Their religion, which is so continually before us, furnis.h.i.+ng the very mainspring of the fatal denouement, is of the most superficial sort, if it can be called religion at all. Whether you are bitten by a dog, a wolf, or a snake, or lose your eyesight, or are in danger of losing your lover, you run to the shrine of some saint for help. The religious feeling really runs no deeper. In his outburst of grief upon seeing Mireio p.r.o.ne upon the floor of the chapel, the unhappy boy asks what he has done to merit such a blow. "Has he lit his pipe in a church at the lamp? or dragged the crucifix among thistles, like the Jews?" Of the deeper, n.o.bler consolations of religion, of the problems of human destiny, of the relations of religious conviction to human conduct, there is no inkling.

All the characters are equally on the surface. They are types rather than individuals. They have in common the gift of eloquence. They have no thought-life, no meditation. They are eminently sociable, frequently loquacious. They make you think of Daudet's statement concerning the man of the south, "When he is not talking, he is not thinking." But they talk well, and have to an eminent degree the gift of narrative. Vincen's stories of what he knows and has seen are told most beautifully, and the poet never forgets himself by making the boy utter thoughts he could not have conceived. The boy is merely a child of his race. In any rustic gathering in southern France you may hear a man of the people speak dramatically and thrillingly, with resonant voice and vivid gestures, with a marvellous power of mimicry, and the faces of the listeners reflect all the emotions of the speaker. The numerous scenes, therefore, wherein a group of listeners follow with keenest interest a tale that is told, are eminently true to life. The supreme merit of Mireio lies in this power of narration that its author possesses. It is all action from beginning to end, and even the digressions and episodes, which occasionally arrest the flow of the narrative, are in themselves admirable pieces of narrative. Most critics have found fault with these episodes and the frequent insertion of legends. In defence of the author, it may be said, that he must have feared while writing _Mireio_ that it might be his last and only opportunity to address his countrymen in their own dialect, and in his desire to bring them back to a love of the traditions of Provence, he yielded to the temptation to crowd his poem rather more than he would otherwise have done.

Mireio, then, is a lovely poem, an idyll, a charming, vivid picture of life in the rural parts of the Rhone region. It is singularly original.

Local color is its very essence. Its thought and action are strictly circ.u.mscribed within the boundaries of the Crau and the Camargue, and its originality consists in this limitation, in the fact that a poet of this century has written a work that comes within the definition of an epic, with all the primitive simplicity of Biblical or Cla.s.sic writers, without any agitation of the problems of modern life, without any new thought or feeling concerning love or death, or man's relation to the universe, using a dialect unknown at the time beyond the region described. Its success could scarcely have been attained without the poet's masterly prose translation, and yet it is evident that the poem could not have been conceived and carried out in French verse. The freshness, the artlessness, the lack of modernity, would have suffered if the poet had bent his inspiration to the official language. Using a new idiom, wherein he practically had no predecessor, he was free to create expression as he went along, and was not compelled to cast his thought in existing moulds.

The poem cannot place its author among the very great poets of the world, if only because of this limitation. It lacks the breadth and depth, the everlasting interest. But it is a work of great beauty, of wonderful purity, a sweet story, told in lovely, limpid language, and will cause many eyes to turn awhile from other lands to the sunny landscapes of southern France.

II. CALENDAU. (CALENDAL.)

Mistral spent seven years in elaborating his second epic, as he did in writing his first. The poem had not a popular success, and the reason is not far to seek. The most striking limitation of the poet is his failure to create beings of flesh and blood. Even in Mireio this lack of well-defined individuality in the characters begins to be apparent, but, in general, the action of the earlier poem is confined to the world of realities, whereas in _Calendau_ the poet has given free play to a brilliant and vivid imagination, launching forth into the heroic and incredible, yet without abandoning the world of real time and real places. Allegory and symbolism are the web and woof of _Calendau_. The poem, again, is overburdened with minute historic details and descriptions, which are greatly magnified in the eye of his imagination.

A poet, of course, must be pardoned for this want of a sense of proportion, but even a Provencal reader cannot be kept in constant illusion as to the greatness of little places that can scarcely be found upon the map, or dazzled by the magnificence of achievements that really have left little or no impress upon the history of the world. As we follow the poet's work in its chronological development, we find this trait growing more and more p.r.o.nounced. He sees his beloved Provence, its past and present, and its future, too, in a magnifying mirror that embellishes all it reflects with splendid, glowing colors, and exalts little figures to colossal proportions. The reader falls easily under the spell of this exuberant enthusiasm and is charmed by the poetic power evinced. The wealth of words, the beauty of the imagery with which, for example, the humble, well-nigh unknown little port of Ca.s.sis and its fis.h.i.+ng industry are described, carry us along and hold us in momentary illusion. We see them in the poet's magic mirror for the time.

To the traveller or the sober historian all these things appear very, very different.

With the Felibres the success of the poem was much greater; it is a kind of patriotic hymn, a glorification of the past of Provence, and a song of hope for its future. Its allegory, its learned literary allusions, its delving into obscure historic events, preclude any hope of popular success.

Like _Mireio_, the poem is divided into twelve cantos, and the form of stanza employed is the same. The heroic tone of the poem might be thought to have required verse of greater stateliness; the recurrence of the three feminine rhymes in the shorter verses often seems too pretty.

Like _Mireio_, the poem has the outward marks of an epic. Unlike _Mireio_, it reminds us frequently of the _Chansons de geste_, and we see that the author has been living in the world of the Old Provencal poets. This is apparent not merely in the constant allusions, in the reproductions of episodes, but in the manner in which the narrative moves along. Lamartine would not have been reminded of the ancient Greek poets had _Calendau_ preceded _Mireio_. The conception of courtly love, the guiding, elevating inspiration of Beatrice, leading Dante on to greater, higher, more spiritual things, are the sources of the chief ideas contained in _Calendau_. Vincen and Mireio remain throughout the simple youth and maiden they were, but Calendau, "the simple fisherman of Ca.s.sis," develops into a great hero, performing Herculean tasks, like a knight of the days of chivalry, and rises higher and higher until he wins "the empire of pure love"--his lady's hand.

Very beautiful is the invocation addressed to the "soul of his country that radiates, manifest in its language and in its history--that through the greatness of its memories saves hope for him." It is the spirit that inspired the sweet Troubadours, and set the voice of Mirabeau thundering like the mistral. The poet proclaims his belief in his race.

"For the waves of the ages and their storms and horrors mingle the nations and wipe out frontiers in vain. Mother Earth, Nature, ever feeds her sons with the same milk, her hard breast will ever give the fine oil to the olive; Spirit, ever springing into life, joyous, proud, and living spirit that neighest in the noise of the Rhone and in the wind thereof! spirit of the harmonious woods, and of the sunny bays, pious soul of the fatherland, I call thee! be incarnate in my Provencal verse!"

We are plunged in orthodox fas.h.i.+on _in medias res_. The young fisherman is seated upon the rocky heights above the sea before the beautiful woman he loves. He does not know who she is; he has performed almost superhuman exploits to win her; but there is an obstacle to their union.

She relates that she is the last of the family of the Princes des Baux, who had their castle and city hewn out of the solid rock in the strange mountains that overlook the plain of Arles. She tells the marvellous history of the family, evoking a vision of the days of courtly love when the Troubadours sang at the feet of the fair princesses. A panorama of the life of those days of poetry and song moves before us. The princess even describes and defines in poetic language the forms of verse in vogue in the ancient days, the _Tenson_, the _Pastoral_, the _Ballad_, the _Sirventes_, the _Romance_, the _Conge_, the _Aubade_, the _Solace of Love_. She relates her marriage with the Count Severan, who fascinated her by some mysterious power. At the wedding-feast she learns that he is a mere bandit, leader of a band of robbers that infests the country. She fled away through the mountains and found the grotto where she now lives. The fishermen, seeing her appear and vanish among the cliffs, take her to be the fairy Esterello, who is a sort of Loreley.

Calendau determines that either Severan or he shall die, and seeks him out. His splendid physical appearance and bold, defiant manner arouse in the bandit a desire to get Calendau to join his company, and the women of the band are charmed with him. They ask to hear the story of his life, and the great body of the poem consists of the narrative by Calendau of his exploits. After the last one Calendau has risen to the loftiest conception of pure love through the guidance of Esterello, like Dante inspired by Beatrice. Then the Count holds an orgy and tries to tempt the virtue of the hero. Calendau, after witnessing the lascivious dances, challenges the Count to mortal combat. The latter knows now who he is, and that Esterello is none other than the bride who fled after the marriage-feast. Calendau is overpowered and imprisoned, and the Count and his men set off in search of Esterello. But Calendau is freed by Fourtuneto, one of the women, and journeys by sea from Cannes to Ca.s.sis to defend the Princess. Here a great combat takes place with the Count, who fires the pine-woods and perishes miserably, uttering blasphemous imprecations. The Ca.s.sidians fight the fire, and Calendau and the blond Princess are saved.

"The applause of two thousand souls salutes them and acclaims them.

'Calendau, Calendau, let us plant the May for the conqueror of Esterello. He glorifies, he brings to the light our little harbor of fishermen, let us make him Consul, Consul for life!' So saying the mult.i.tude accompanies the generous, happy pair of lovers, and the sun that G.o.d rules, the great sun, rises, illumines, and procreates endlessly new enthusiasms, new lovers."

The poem clearly symbolizes the Provencal renascence; Calendau typifies the modern Provencal people, rising to an ideal life and great achievements through the memory of their traditions, and this ideal, this memory, are personified in the person of the beautiful Princess.

The time of the action is the eighteenth century, before the Revolution.

This is a deliberate choice of the poet who has a temporal symbolism in mind. "I shall thus combine in my picture the three aspects of Provence on the eve of the Revolution: in the background, the n.o.ble legends of the past; in the foreground the social corruption of the evil days; and before us the better future, the future and the reparation personified in the son of the working cla.s.ses, guardians of the tradition of the country."

As regards the execution, it is masterly, and cannot be ranked below _Mireio_. There is the same enthusiastic love of nature, the same astonis.h.i.+ng resources of expression, the same novelty and originality.

In place of the rustic nature of Mireio, we have the wild grandeur of mountains and sea. There is the same, nay, even greater, eloquence of the speakers, the same musical verse.

"Car, d'aquesto ouro, ounto es la raro Que di delice nous separo, Jouine, amourous que siam, libre coume d'auceu?

Regardo: la Naturo brulo A noste entour, e se barrulo Dins li bras de l'Estieu, e chulo Lou devourant alen de soun nve rousseu.

"Li serre clar e blu, li colo Palo de la calour e molo, Boulegon trefouli si mourre.... Ve la mar: Courouso e lindo coumo un veire, Du grand souleu i rai beveire Enjusqu'au founs se laisso veire, Se laisso coutiga per lou Rose e lou Var."

"For now, where is the limit that separates us from joy, young, amorous as we are, free as birds! Look: Nature burns around us and rolls in the arms of Summer, and drinks in the devouring breath of her ruddy spouse.

The clear, blue peaks, the hills, pale and soft with the heat, are thrilled and stir their rounding summits. Behold the sea, glistening and limpid as gla.s.s; in the thirsty rays of the great sun, she allows herself to be seen clear to the bottom, to be caressed by the Rhone and the Var."

These are the words of Calendau when, seeking his reward after his final exploit, he learns that he has won the love of Esterello. The poet never goes further in the voluptuous strain, and the mere music of the words, especially beginning "Ve la mar" is exquisite. They are found in the first canto. This scene wherein the Princess refuses to wed Calendau is typical of the poet. The northern temperament is not impressed with these long tirades, full of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and apostrophes; they are apt to seem unnatural, insincere, and theatrical. Intense feeling is not so verbose in the north. In this particular Mistral is true to his race. We quote entire the words of Calendau after the refusal of Esterello, itself full exclamation and apostrophizing:--

"Then I have but won the thirst, the weariness of the mids.h.i.+pman, when he is about to reach the summit of the mainmast, and sees gleaming at the limit of the liquid plain naught but water, water eternally! Well, if thou wilt hear it, listen! and let the heath resound with it! It is thou, false woman that thou art, it is thou that hast deceived me, luring me on to believe that at the summit of the peaks I should find the splendor of a sublime dawn, that after winter spring would come, that there is nothing so good as the food earned by labor. Thou hast deceived me, for in the wilderness I found naught but drought; and the wind of this world and its idle noise, the embarra.s.sment of luxury, and the din of glory, and what is called the enjoyment of triumph, are not worth a little hour of love beneath a pine tree! See, from my hand the bridle escapes, my skull is bursting, and I am not sure now that the people in their fear are not right in dreading thee like a ghost, now that I feel, as my reward, thy burning poison streaming through my heart. Yes, thou art the fairy Esterello, and thou art unmasked at last, cruel creature! In the chill of thy refusal I have known the viper. Thou art Esterello, bitter foe to man, haunting the wild places, crowned with nettles, defending the desert against those who clear the land. Thou art Esterello, the fairy that sends a shudder through the foliage of the woods and the hair of the terrified hermit; that fires with the desire of her perfumed embrace her suitors and in malevolence drives them to despair with infernal longings.

"My head is bursting, and since from the heights of my supernatural love a thunderbolt thus hurls me down, since, nothing, nothing henceforth, from this moment on, can give me joy, since, cruel woman, when thou couldst throw me a rope, thou leavest me, in dismay, to drink the bitter current--let death come, black hiding-place, bottomless abyss! let me plunge down head first!"

And when Esterello, fearing he will slay himself, clasps him about the neck, they stand silently embraced, "the tears, in tender mingling, rain from their eyes; despair, agitation, a spell of happiness, keep their lips idle, and from h.e.l.l, at one bound, they rise to paradise."

Like the creations of Victor Hugo's poetry, those of Mistral speak the language of the author. They have his eloquence, his violent energy of figurative speech, his love of the wild, sunny landscapes about them; they thrill as he does, at the memories of the past; they love, as he does, enumerations of trees and plants; they have his fondness for action.

The poem is filled with interesting episodes. One that is very striking in the narrative of Esterello we shall here reproduce.

We are at the wedding feast of Count Severan and the Princess des Baux.

The merry-making begins to be riotous, and the Count has made a speech in honor of his bride, promising to take her after the melting of the snows to his Alpine palaces, where the walls are of steel, the doors of silver, the locks of gold, and when the sun s.h.i.+nes their crystal roofs glitter like flame.

"Scarcely from his lips had fallen these wild words, when the door of the banquet hall opens, and we see the head of an old man, wearing a bonnet and a garment of rough cloth; we see the dust and sweat trickling down his tanned cheeks. The bridegroom, with a terrible glance, like the lightning flash of a fearful storm, turns suddenly pale, and seeks to stop him; but he, whom the glance cannot harm, calmly, impa.s.sively, like G.o.d when he clothes himself like a poor man, to confound sometimes some rich evil-doer, slowly advances toward the bridegroom, crosses his arms, and scans his countenance. And he says not a word to any one, and all are afraid; a weight of lead lies upon every heart, and from without there seems to blow in upon the lamps an icy wind.