Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida Part 38

It rests with you to live your life n.o.bly or vilely. We have not our choice to be rich or poor, to be happy or unhappy, to be in health or in sickness; but we have our choice to be worthy or worthless. No antagonist can kill our soul in us; that can perish only from its own suicide. Ever remember that.

But they are hollow inside, you still urge? fie, for shame! What a plea that is! Have you the face to make it? If you have, let me bargain with you.

When all the love that is fair and false goes begging for believers, and all the pa.s.sion that is a sham fails to find one fool to buy it; when all the priests and politicians clap in vain together the brazen cymbals of their tongues, because their listeners will not hearken to bra.s.s clangour, nor accept it for the music of the spheres; when all the creeds, that feast and fatten upon the cowardice and selfishness of men, are driven out of hearth and home, and mart and temple, as impostors that put on the white beard of reverence and righteousness to pa.s.s current a cheater's coin; when all the kings that promise peace while they swell their armouries and armies; when all the statesmen that chatter of the people's weal as they steal up to the locked casket where coronets are kept; when all the men who talk of "glory," and prate of an "idea" that they may stretch their nation's boundary, and filch their neighbour's province--when all these are no longer in the land, and no more looked on with favour, then I will believe your cry that you hate the toys which are hollow.

Can an ignorant or an untrained brain follow the theory of light, or the metamorphosis of plants? Yet it may rejoice in the rays of a summer sun, in the scent of a nest of wild-flowers. So may it do in my music. Shall I ask higher payment than the G.o.d of the sun and the violets asks for Himself?

Once there were three handmaidens of Krishna's; invisible, of course, to the world of men. They begged of Krishna, one day, to test their wisdom, and Krishna gave them three drops of dew. It was in the season of drought,--and he bade them go and bestow them where each deemed best in the world.

Now one flew earthward, and saw a king's fountain leaping and s.h.i.+ning in the sun; the people died of thirst, and the fields and the plains were cracked with heat, but the king's fountain was still fed and played on.

So she thought, "Surely, my dew will best fall where such glorious water dances?" and she shook the drop into the torrent.

The second hovered over the sea, and saw the Indian oysters lying under the waves, among the sea-weed and the coral. Then she thought, "A rain-drop that falls in an oyster's sh.e.l.l becomes a pearl; it may bring riches untold to man, and s.h.i.+ne in the diadem of a monarch. Surely it is best bestowed where it will change to a jewel?"--and she shook the dew into the open mouth of a sh.e.l.l.

The third had scarcely hovered a moment over the parched white lands, ere she beheld a little, helpless brown bird dying of thirst upon the sand, its bright eyes glazed, its life going out in torture. Then she thought, "Surely my gift will be best given in succour to the first and lowliest thing I see in pain?"--and she shook the dew-drop down into the silent throat of the bird, that fluttered, and arose, and was strengthened.

Then Krishna said that she alone had bestowed her power wisely; and he bade her take the tidings of rain to the aching earth, and the earth rejoiced exceedingly. Genius is the morning dew that keeps the world from peris.h.i.+ng in drought. Can you read my parable?

To die when life can be lived no longer with honour is greatness indeed; but to die because life galls and wearies and is hard to pursue--there is no greatness in that? It is the suicide's plea for his own self-pity.

You live under tyranny, corruption, dynastic lies hard to bear, despotic enemies hard to bear, I know. But you forget--what all followers of your creed ever forget--that without corruption, untruth, weakness, ignorance in a nation itself, such things could not be in its rulers. Men can bridle the a.s.s and can drive the sheep; but who can drive the eagle or bridle the lion? A people that was strong and pure no despot could yoke to his vices.

No matter! He must have _race_ in him. Heraldry may lie; but voices do not. Low people make money, drive in state, throng to palaces, receive kings at their tables by the force of gold; but their antecedents always croak out in their voices. They either screech or purr; they have no clear modulations; besides, their women always stumble over their train, and their men bow worse than their servants.

Ere long he drew near a street which in the late night was still partially filled with vehicles and with foot-pa.s.sengers, hurrying through the now fast-falling snow, and over the slippery icy pavements.

In one spot a crowd had gathered--of artisans, women, soldiers, and idlers, under the light of a gas-lamp. In the midst of the throng some gendarmes had seized a young girl, accused by one of the bystanders of having stolen a broad silver piece from his pocket.

She offered no resistance; she stood like a stricken thing, speechless and motionless, as the men roughly laid hands on her.

Tricotrin crossed over the road, and with difficulty made his way into the throng of blouses and looked at her. Degraded she was, but scarcely above a child's years; and her features had a look as if innocence were in some sort still there, and sin still loathed in her soul. As he drew near he heard her mutter,

"Mother, mother! She will die of hunger!--it was for her, only for her!"

He stooped in the snow, and letting fall, unperceived, a five-franc piece, picked it up again.

"Here is some silver," he said, turning to the infuriated owner, a lemonade-seller, who could ill afford to lose it now that it was winter, and people were too cold for lemonade, and who seized it with rapturous delight.

"That is it, monsieur, that is it. Holy Jesus! how can I thank you? Ah, if I had convicted the poor creature--and all in error!--I should never have forgiven myself! Messieurs les gendarmes, let her go! It was my mistake. My silver piece was in the snow!"

The gendarmes reluctantly let quit their prey: they muttered, they hesitated, they gripped her arms tighter, and murmured of the prison-cell.

"Let her go," said Tricotrin quietly: and in a little while they did so,--the girl stood bareheaded and motionless in the snow like a frost-bound creature.

Soon the crowd dispersed: nothing can be still long in Paris, and since there had been no theft there was no interest! they were soon left almost alone, none were within hearing.

Then he stooped to her: she had never taken off him the wild, senseless, incredulous gaze of her great eyes.

"Were you guilty?" he asked her.

She caught his hands, she tried to bless him and to thank him, and broke down in hysterical sobs.

"I took it--yes! What would you have? I took it for my mother. She is old, and blind, and without food. It is for her that I came on the streets; but she does not know it, it would kill her to know; she thinks my money honest; and she is so proud and glad with it! That was the first thing I _stole_! O G.o.d! are you an angel? If they had put me in prison my mother would have starved!"

He looked on her gently, and with a pity that fell upon her heart like balm.

"I saw it was your first theft. Hardened robbers do not wear your stricken face," he said softly, as he slipped two coins into her hand.

"Ah, child! let your mother die rather than allow her to eat the bread of your dishonour: which choice between the twain do you not think a mother would make? And know your trade she must, soon or late. Sin no more, were it only for that love you bear her."

Their lives had drifted asunder, as two boats drift north and south on a river, the distance betwixt them growing longer and longer with each beat of the oars and each sigh of the tide. And for the lives that part thus, there is no reunion. One floats out to the open and sunlit sea; and one pa.s.ses away to the grave of the stream. Meet again on the river they cannot.

"They shudder when they read of the Huns and the Ostrogoths pouring down into Rome," he mused, as he pa.s.sed toward the pandemonium. "They keep a horde as savage, imprisoned in their midst, buried in the very core of their capitals, side by side with their churches and palaces, and never remember the earthquake that would whelm them if once the pent volcano burst, if once the black ma.s.s covered below took flame and broke to the surface! Statesmen multiply their prisons, and strengthen their laws against the crime that is done--and they never take the canker out of the bud, they never save the young child from pollution. Their political economy never studies prevention; it never cleanses the sewers, it only curses the fever-stricken!"

"What avail?" he thought. "What avail to strive to bring men nearer to the right? They love their darkness best--why not leave them to it? Age after age the few cast away their lives striving to raise and to ransom the many. What use? Juvenal scourged Rome, and the same vices that his stripes lashed then, laugh triumphant in Paris to-day! The satirist, and the poet, and the prophet strain their voices in vain as the crowds rush on; they are drowned in the chorus of mad sins and sweet falsehoods! O G.o.d! the waste of hope, the waste of travail, the waste of pure desire, the waste of high ambitions!--nothing endures but the wellspring of lies that ever rises afresh, and the bay-tree of sin that is green, and stately, and deathless!"

He himself went onward through the valley, through the deep belt of the woods, through the avenues of the park. The whole front of the antique building was lighted, and the painted oriels gleamed ruby, and amber, and soft brown, in the dusky evening, through the green screen of foliage.

The fragrance of the orange alleys, and of the acres of flowers, was heavy on the air; there was the sound of music borne down the low southerly wind; here and there through the boughs was the dainty glisten of gliding silks:--it was such a scene as once belonged to the terraces and gardens of Versailles.

From beyond the myrtle fence and gilded railings which severed the park from the pleasaunce, enough could be seen, enough heard, of the brilliant revelry within to tell of its extravagance, and its elegance, in the radiance that streamed from all the illumined avenues.

He stood and looked long; hearing the faint echo of the music, seeing the effulgence of the light through the dark myrtle barrier.

A very old crippled peasant, searching in the gra.s.s for truffles, with a little dog, stole timidly up and looked too.

"How can it feel, to live like _that?_" he asked, in a wistful, tremulous voice.

Tricotrin did not hear: his hand was grasped on one of the gilded rails with a nervous force as from bodily pain.

The old truffle-gatherer, with his little white dog panting at his feet, crossed himself as he peered through the myrtle screen.