BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg M. Sage x89X ..A....Az.&M...;^. 1^^/2a Cornell University Library arV18186 Phidian horse; 3 1924 031 255 437 olin.anx The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031255437 /^ PHIDIAN HORSE ART AND ARCHEOLOGY ON THE ACROPOLIS WITH SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE FRENCH OF VICTOR CHERBULIEZ TRANSLATED BY ELIZABETH HILL BISSELL ROBERTS 1893 A. J. MILLIETTE PRINTING & PUBLISHING CO. CAMDEN. N. J. ERRATA. Page 21, for I'aime read J'aime. " " for quil read qu' il, " " for compasse read compass^. Page 24, Insert freely at beginning of bottom line. Page 80, for marchal read marshal. Page 283, for cafedje read cafedji To Count Gibellini Tobnielli ; You allow me, my friend, to inscribe your name on the first page of my book — Would that my new- born effort were more Avorthy of its sponsor — What reply wiU you make when asked why you allowed this privilege. I foresee that you can find none better than the claim given by the close friendship between us — that reason is good and sufficient, and for my part I am content. I can truly say that however often you give it — I shall never deny it. ViCTOB Cheebuliez. Pakis, January 13, 1892. To M. Lafokgue : Dear Sir : — Will you kindly put the conscience of Mrs. Roberts quite at ease — I shall be very glad to have her do whatever is agreeable to her with my Cheval de Phidias — and I believe myself able also to assure her of the consent of the editor — this book having appeared more than thirty years ago. It has been translated into German, and a professor of the University of Stettin has published a French edition, with notes and comments in German, for the use of students. Receive, Sir, I beg of you, the assurance of my distinguished respect and consideration. v. Cheebuliez. PREFACE. In publishing this English edition of Tin OJieval de Phidias I must record my gratitude to my Mend — Miss Emily Sartain — who in urging me to utilize my hours of leisure in making this translation inspired me to a work which has proved in no sense a task — but rather a continued pleasure. To M. Laforgue and his gifted mother I am also greatly indebted for obtaining the consent of M. Cherbuliez to an English rendition of one of his earliest works. Brightfield, Eiverton, N. J. October 5, 1893. ■•^m^ y em^r" A PHIDIAN HORSE. CHAPTEE I. He had but lately returned from Athens, and it was a great pleasure to hear him talk about his journey. One evening which I recall especially, we were taking tea with him, when the conversation turned upon the Modern Greeks. He entertained us at length with their qualities, their virtues, their defects, and their obstinate dream of a new Byzantine Empire, of which neither diplomatic notes nor the teachings of history can cure them. "Observe," said he, "that by a strange contradiction the love of these Greeks for By- zantium did not wean them from the fetes of MUtiades and Thrasybulus. Do not question for a moment that they are descended in a direct line from the heroes of Marathon, or you will find yourself in a bad scrape, for I can assure you they do not understand raillery on tliis point. I venture to say that some even believe that they themselves fought at Salamis in their own persons ; others again flatter themselves that they shared the fortunes of the day at Platea ; and proba- bly, with a little trouble, the glorious unknown who with his own hand slew Mardonius might be discov- ered somewhere in the Peloponnesus." "I know," one of us said to him, "a country, not Greece, in which, every year at the national festivals a half dozen provincial orators strive for the glory of slaying a certain Gessler of whom perhaps you have heard, by the revengeful shafts of their eloquence." "Quite right," he replied, "but the Athenians are inconsistent in assuming the responsibility of the ex- ploits of republican Greece, and undertaking at the same time to celebrate the merits of those Byzantine Emperors under whose tutelary sceptre, as you know, religion, arts, civilization and liberty flourished ; for to-day they are rehabilitating the Lower Empire, while awaiting the opportunity to build it up anew. England chafes at these Grecian day-dreams ; Eussia 9 laughs at them, assured that she has nothing to lose ; as for us othef philhellenics, we too have an occasional scruple because of the odd fancy of modem Greeks in thus associating in the same cult, Miltiades and Con- stantine Porphyrogenitus,* Epaminondas and Michael the Drunkard, the green tcoachmen and the Conquer- ors of Olympia, the Oracle of Delphi and the Con- vents of Mt. Athos,:|: or — in a word — Plato and the Panagia.§ "But," he added, "after all, the greatest originals that I saw at Athens were not Athenians. Perhaps you yourself recall that Spanish Abbot who passed through Geneva some ten years ago, on his way from *Constantine 7th, Porphyrogenitus, author and patron of literature, "born in the purple," in the porphyry chamber, caused a whole series of books to be written, treating of the administration of the Empire, the ceremonies of the Court, War and Jurisprudence ; a Cyclopedia of history and politics, of ag- ricultural science, of the veterinary art, and of medicine ; an epitome of Aristotle's Work on Animals, and a collection of Greek epigrams, and the histories of the Saints. fin the sports of the Ancient Hippodrome, chariots whose coachmen were dressed in green contested for prizes with those whose livery was blue. Montesquieu, Rom. 20. JThe sanctuary of the Greek race, which is in a great degree the sanctuary and refuge of the whole Eastern Church, is Athos, "the Holy Mountain." — Stanley's Eastern Church. §The Holy Virgin of the Greek Church. 10 Italy to France. He was a grave and taciturn person- age, from wliom we could get nothing beyond a few short sentences briefly and sententiously uttered. I see him now with his half wild and half timid air, his sti£f bearing, awkward manners, a curious mixture of humility and pride, his large flashing eyes shooting forth such terrible glances, that with one voice we declared his countenance at once that of a bigot and a Grand Inquisitor. "I have been led lately to modify those opinions," said he, "but — be that as it may — impelled by his restless humor this morose and eccentric Abbot wan- dered long through various countries, rummaging in museums and hbraries, refusing to associate with a hving soul, until he arrived at Paris where his good star led him into the presence of the Marchioness of F , who succeeded in capturing and holding him bound as her private almoner. "I was scarcely three days in Athens when, to my great surprise, I found myself face to face with the Abbot at a crossing in the street of Hermes. He 11 recognized me — then for a moment tried to avoid me but reconsidering — came forward, and saluted me with studied politeness and ceremony, and after having told me in two words about the change which had been made in his life, and about his recent voyage to the South in the retinue of the Marchioness, he offered to present me to her. Coming from him, this aston- ished me, and made me think that his manners were being humanized by his new associations." "I believe it from my heart," I said, "but what have we to do with the Marchioness and her Abbot ? The Acropolis, the Parthenon, Phidias, are the ordi- nary conversation of travelers returning from Athens, and when I came here it was about marbles and columns that I expected to hear." "Never mind," said he, "I take you at your word. Truly my gener- osity prompted me to spare you, but in your present mood it would be folly to do so. Since hearing about the marbles pleases you how would you like me to repeat — one after the other — four grand discourses that I myself heard in honor of one of the innumerable 12 horses with which Phidias decorated the frieze of the Parthenon ? Four discourses ! think well. I myself was able to endure the ordeal; I am robust ; but you, sickly and dehcate, it would be too much for you ; I will excuse you ; besides, it is a long time since I heard them ; in fact, I have almost forgotten them." Borrowing the words of Phoedrus, I replied (if I do not know Socrates, I do not knowmyself): "Socrates might be dying to speak, but he loved to be coaxed." He began to laugh. "At your risk and peril,' ' said he. "But in the words of the poet— ab Jove prin- c/'pium, — and to go back to the first cause of that adven- ture, you must return with me to the Marchioness, that beautiful widow whose merit and wisdom the Abbot had vaunted. Having presented myself at her house the morning following my encounter with the Abbot, I was introduced into a grand salon — which presented a strange appearance. Tables, etageres, arm- chairs, all were over laden with books of all sizes, piles of old papers, cards, engravings, and portfolios filled with drawings after the antique, in outline, in pen and 13 ink, in India ink wash, and cartoons in red chalk. In the middle of this disordered room, before a little table sat the Marchioness, drawing some Ionic capitals from memory ; by her side was a youth of twenty, working at a picture on an easel. In a comer, perched on a velvet stool, a little man, his head buried in his shoulders, "with a crooked nose and knowing air, was reading aloud from a large German book, in which the quintessence of art, the absolute, and a thousand other subjects — not understood by honest people — were treat- ed. Behind him the Abbot -was seated on the edge of a chair, his body stiff, his hands spread out on his knees after the fashion of an Egyptian divinity. On the other side of the room — in the recess of a window, and half hid by a curtain, a short fat man, whose jovial humor appeared in his face, balanced himself carelessly in a rocking chair — holding in his hand a little volume, which he read apparently in secret ; for, on seeing me enter, he hastened to hide it under one of the lapels of his coat. Lastly, at the end of this vast room, a per- sonage of tall stature, with hair growing gray, deep in an 14 easy chair, was sleeping peacefully — whilst at his feet a pretty lap-dog chewed with his sharp teeth an en- graving which had fallen upon the floor. "As soon as I appeared, the Abbot rose and pre- sented me to the Marchioness with formal gravity, in- troducing me as an accomplished archaeologist, a dis- tinguished connoisseur in the fine arts. What do I know ? It was a worthy sight to behold this crafty Abbot bestowing fulsome eulogies on me — which suited me about as well as a crown of roses would the head of an ass." "An ass !" interrupted I; "your humihty is exces- sive ; every one knows that you are a learned man." He repUed : "I suppose it is hardly worth while to contradict you. I am a Bachelor of Arts I admit: I possess my Lhomond, and the Garden of Greek Roots ; I am somewhat of a reader ; I indulge my taste for the poets when I am at leisure ; I love the fine arts ; in truth I enjoy everything as it comes. The first time I mounted to the Acropolis, I stood dazed, confounded, recogniz- ing — ^in what met my gaze a perfection that had never 15 been equalled — and that the boldest imagination could not picture. But to analyze my pleasure, to reason out cause and effect was beyond me ; and yet your experts in archaeology, your masters, do this every day of their Mves, or say they do ! " Then, what do you suppose happened ? When the Abbot had finished complimenting me, the Mar- chioness (no fear that I shall ever forget it), after a slight recognition said to me abruptly— and without preface : " ' At what period do you think, sir, that entrelacs and twisted work at the base of the Ionic column, and the termination of the shaft by a collar were first intro- duced ? ' " 1. sat gaping ; my face must have been very amusing, for when the Marchioness saw my expression she shouted with laughter like a young girl. Then turning toward the sleeper : ' My lord, my dear uncle, wake up,' she said, ' here is a visitor who will do you good.' Then she began again to sketch her scrolls, and ram's horns, her ovals, her palm-leaves, her friezes, her 16 intertwiruiigs, and lier collars, without taking any f uiiher notice of me. The httle man with the knowing counte- nance resumed his reading again where he had left off, whilst your servant, utterly confounded, not knowing what to think of this singular reception, grumbled inwardly at the Abbot, who had returned peacefully to his place and to his posture, a la Goddess Patcht.* " Happily, Lord A. — on my entrance, had trem- bled with joy, as a spider who feels a fly entangle itself in the web, and he bounced on the prey which Provi- dence had sent to him. He seated me near himself, and began to entertain me in a low voice. When it happens that the English are genial and affable, they are not so by halves — so that at the end of a quarter of an hour we were good friends, my lord and I. If I am not up in entrelacs, I have — byway of compensation — as I am often told, a face which begets confidence, and my lord, happy to find some one to whom he could reveal his httle troubles, explained to me, with a radi- ant air, that he was the most unhappy man in the * The goddess of the Egyptian household. 17 world. ' In the midst of tliese live persons whom you see here.' said he, ' I am more isolated than Eobinson Crusoe on his island. For what business, what ex- change of words can a reasonable man have with these hare-brains, whose chimeras have not even the merit of being amusing. Including that lap-dog, there is no one here whose head is not a little turned. My beautiful niece always had a marked leaning to enthu- siasm ; it was only too evident during our sojourn in Italy, where Raphael and Titian made terrible ravages on her heart. But once arrived in Athens — it is quite another thing. The attraction here is Phidias, and that other (Ictinus), who built the Parthenon. The antique ! the antique ! is the theme of all conversa- tion ; out of the antique — no salvation ! Everyone discusses the antique until out of breath ; they reason falsely, they enthuse to such an extent, that I have seen the Marchioness kiss on the two eyes a great ugly marble owl, which is on the Acropolis, as she would kiss an agnus or scapulary at her devotions; and in chance moments, when bas-reliefs, friezes and 18 columns are forgotten for a brief moment, they study Greek Grammar, they read Plato at the Academy, Demosthenes at the Pnyx, and — in a word — here am I threatened with being confined forever in this wicked httle city, where I am drying up with ennui. My dear sir, rest assured that it is the greatest misfortune in the world to be the chaperon of a charming woman whose head is cracked. Perhaps you wiU say —what keeps you from leaving her here with her owls and her capitals ? What hiaders you from going back to eat plum puddiag in London ? " ' AVell, my friend, that is what I say twenty times a day, and twenty times a day I reply to myself — " My lord, you are weak enough to love your niece so dearly that you could not endure to be absent one day from her." ' " At this moment the reader made a pause — and, as my lord had insensibly raised his voice the Mar- chioness heard these last words, and cried, turning her head again : " ' My dear uncle— it is not enough to say that you adore me ; you should add that I am a habit of thirty 19 y«ars to you — and I defy you to renounce me in less time.' " Then, motioning to the little man : " ' M. Chevalier, go on with your reading ; my lord has taken it upon himseK to celebrate my merits and I wish to give him time to finish my panegyric' " ' See what the passion for the antique can do, said Lord A, drawing near to me. ' The Marchioness has added two years to her life since she has been here. You will certainly say now that the study of Plato profits a woman very little! But with all her cleverness this Plato would have disappointed her for her trouble if she had not found here two kinds of hierophant especially fitted to entertain her in her folly. The Chevalier is a rustic Polish nobleman, at- tached to the Russian legation at Athens : — his prin- cipal merit is riding — a la Grecque — an unshod horse bareback and without stirrups, and it is to this noble enterprise that he consecrates his genius and his leis- ure: he is also a fine talker, a great lecturer, full of affectation and conceits — yet I would pardon him all 20 his oddities if he were not indined to toady. As to the little Venetian,' added he —pointing to the young painter — whose position — with his back turned to us and his head bent over his easel allowed us only to see a neck white as snow shaded with magnificent golden hair, ' as for this boy,' said my lord, ' he is positively a lunatic — I saw him absolutely fall ia a faint before a fragment of bas relief six inches long that was dis- interred the other day at the AcropoHs. " 'But I have too much sense to be angry with him, and his fainting spells do not worry me at all ; it is his right — it is his business — being an artist by profession, and, they say a highly gifted one. After all a clever companion, naive and amiable, of exaggerated honesty, I suspect that, after the Parthenon what delights him most in the world is what he sees in the beautiful eyes of the Marchioness. " ' Truly, this little gentleman would amuse me, were it not for the deplorable influence that his in- genious enthusiasm — supported by the conceit of the Chevalier — exercises over our pretty, thoughtless flirt. o e. o o < M W 21 Three hotheads trying to take the castle by storm! The case is grave, and if you know a remedy you will do me the favor of letting me have it. " ' I had hoped to find some assistance from the Abbot. Assistance ! The Abbot is a wicked egoist — and worse — a Jesuit — whose thoughts are difficult to unravel. The Marchioness holds him in such high regard that his lightest decisions pass here for oracles, and consequently I made an effort to enlist his influ- ence in the effort of trying to convince our idiots that their grand passion for the antique was not a very Chiistian one. " ' Honoring me with one of his gracious, tame- bearish smiles, he replied that he would think over it, and would choose his opportunity for speaking. Up to to-day he has not said one word — and I begin now to suspect connivance, underhand agreement, a secret understanding with the enemy — and frankly I'aime encor mieux un fou qui dit tout ce quil pense Que ces gens rembrunis, obstines au silence, Ou qui ne disent rien qui ne soit compasse * * I love yet better a fool who says all that he thinks, Than those dark people in silence obstinate, Or who say nothing which may be compassed. 22 " ' In my distress I betook myself also to the pri- vate physician of the Marchioness, that fat man who is doing no one knows what — yonder near the wiadow. He repKed by an excuse. Another egoist, that ! who finds fault with everything that interferes with his own ease. If the truth were known — I believe that the antique wearies him as much as me, but he keeps it to himself, enters eagerly into all the sentiments of the Marchioness and opposes her in nothing. He believes himself a great philosopher — because he has adopted the system of self-gratification. A good feather bed, and sleep for ten hours are the essentials — and the rest goes for nought. Besides, where there is hfe there is hope — perhaps he also will take the fatal mania of columns and the malady of bas-reUefs. Thej are catch- ing, sir ; see this stupid lap-dog crouching before an engraving — with what a devout air he contemplates it ! " ' To revenge myself,' added he, ' and to reheve my ill-humor, I am going to produce what my niece calls a dissonance in life' — and extending his arm toward the lap-dog, he gave a vigorous snap at his 23 right ear. The poor animal uttered a piercing cry, the Marchioness made a gesture of terror — the little Venetian trembled and let his brush drop from ner- vousness, — the Chevalier almost fell from his roost, the Abbot jumped in his chair, and there was no one even to the Doctor behind his curtain, who was not startled. " ' Graceless brute ! ' cried my lord, bravely, ' do you dare to trouble the divine concerts of paradise by your bowlings ? But, Marquise, you must pardon him ; you may be sure that it was a cry of admiration. Truly that animal does you great honor ; in one or two lessons more he will be swooning like the Chevalier.' " At this moment the door of the salon opened, and a man, still young, of rather interesting appear- ance, approached the Marchioness, bent over and spoke to her in a low voice. The Marchioness plunged back into her scrolls, answering the new-comer only in monosyllables. This seemed to make him angry — and after having waited in vain to see if she would deign to pay him further attention — he darted a look 24 at the little Venetian and the Chevalier, and left the room abruptly — slamming the door. " ' There is a poor fellow,' said my lord, sadly, ' who is even more unhappy than I am.' "And sinking into a revery, he remained quiet and silent until a servant reopened the door to an- nounce to madame the Marchioness that the horses were ready. And in a twinkling everybody was up and stirring. " Leaving the room for a few moments, the Mar- chioness returned in her riding habit, with a hat and feathers on her head which became her wonderfully. Advancing toward me with a gracious air, she proposed that I should join the party for a ride on horseback. It was high noon, in the month of August, under the burning sun of Attica ; therefore I begged her to ex- cuse me — and plead as my reason an engagement which called me home. " ' One has no engagements at Athens,' said she, imperiously. ' But if you are not a rider — say so, eely. You are on free ground here — we all do as 25 wo pleaso — including myself. Nevertheless, I require you to stay and dine with us, and my lord will keep you company whilst we are absent. It is an honor that he will not yield willingly to any one.' " ' Assuredly, madame,' said Lord A, 'for as times go and living on this free earth — the meeting of a man of good sense is a rare event. Bat I have sworn never to let you ride without me— for that would be your opportunity to break your neck.' " ' In that case,' said she, ' the Abbot will relieve you as sentinel, Monsieur Abbot — you are to answer for your prisoner ; under no pretext let him escape you — for I have been disagreeable this morning — and I keep him to prove to him on my return that in spite of ray owls I am as endurable as other women who do not read Plato.' "Thereupon she left the room and ran rapidly down the stair case — followed by her numerous escort. I went to the window to see them start. My lord had told me the truth ; they brought to the Chevalier a horse without saddle or stirrups, bitted according to 26 ancient usage — with a bit which had no shanks, the reins being covered by bossets leading directly from the corners of the mouth. The little man raised him- self skilfully with his left hand — and bounded into the saddle with a spring — whilst only with great effort did two servants succeed in hoisting the doctor on his horse. "When everyone was mounted the Marchioness set off at a gallop and my lord sprang forward to her side — followed immediately by the Chevalier, the Venetian and a little farther back, the fat doctor, who, in danger of being distanced, thrust his spurs into his horse — and at every leap bounced heavily in the saddle. "When the cavalcade had disappeared in a whirl- wind of dust on the Cephissian road, I left the window and went back to the Abbot, to whom had been com- mitted the care of entertaiaing me. To tell the truth, he did not seem to rehsh his task. Seated opposite each other — for some time neither of us uttered a word until, with an effort — at last he said, 27 " 'You ought to be satisfied with the reception that the Marchioness has given yon.' '"I am obliged to you for telling me so ; frankly, I have no doubt I should feel flattered.' " ' Yes, truly,' he replied, ' it is quite unusual to find the Marchioness so approachable. But it is wise to accept her unevenness gracefully, for she is a very good person to know. She has superior intelligence, many gifts— she sketches well— is a good musician — has a mind well cultivated — much knowledge and good taste — and best of all— she is obliging, ready to serve others and is a safe, devoted and wise friend.' "He drew this portrait of his patroness in the tone of a showman showing for the thousandth time his royal tiger. " 'Has the Marchioness traveled much?' I asked. " 'She was never far from Paris until our depar- ture for Italy. Although her mother was Enghsh, she has never been to England ; if she ever goes —it will be to see the Greek Marbles at the British Museum ; but I doubt her doing it. She dislikes the 28 idea of seeing those poor antiques shivering in the fogs of London.' " 'Has she been a widow a long time ?' " 'About four years.' " 'And she never thinks of marrying again ?' " 'That depends on circumstances' he replied. And drawing from his pocket a little note book — which he showed me from a distance — without letting me touch it — he said gravely : 'This is a little register in two parts, which I hold by her command ; in the left column I inscribe in red ink the reasons that she has for not marrying again ; and in black ink in the right column the motives she has for ?;o< remaining a widow. For six months we were thirty against thirty ; later our red column was enriched with two red reasons ; the day that the majority change places — we will make preparations to marry again.' " 'And the choice of the possible husband is al- ready made ?' " 'Wait,' said he, drawing from his pocket a second note book ; 'here is another containing what 29 might be called our conditions ; it is the list of condi- tions to be filled in order to merit our hand. There are fifteen just at present, and I know a person who fills thirteen. The fifteenth requirement filled — it is necessary to promise to live at Florence one year. Three months later we find Florence replaced by Venice — and later yet — by Athens.' Then putting back the two note books in his pocket he repeated the eulogy of the Marchioness in the perfunctory manner which he had used the first time : 'she is a very good person to know ; a superior intelligence, many gifts,' &c.,&c. "You know the rest, but you could scarcely imagine the serious tone of the Abbot in thus reciting his lesson. ".'M. Abbot' said I, 'what is the name of that fine looking man of about forty — who appeared so sud- (Jenly — and in a few moments left looking so crestfallen?' " 'That is a French gentleman — the Coimt of B,' he said. " 'The Count of B,' I replied ; 'perhaps he is the claimant who filled thirteen of the conditions ?' 30 " 'Now — you are becoming indiscreet,' he said, smiling slightly. " Then he added, " ' If my conversation wearies you, do not force yourself to speak. As the Marchioness has told you, we are here in the Abbey of Theleme.* Tou read on our door, "Do ivJiat you will." If you like reading — take a book — and I will turn to a chapter of my bre- viary. ' " 'You are right,' said I to him, 'one finds here as in Theleme a lady of high lineage, a flower of beauty, with a celestial face, and also these amiable lords, so nobly tatight that there is not one among them who does not linoio how to read, lorite, and speak five or six lan- guages, and to compose a prayer as well as a Carmelite. Nevertheless, if I recollect aright, at Theleme frivoli- ties were excluded, whilst here folly seems to me to have an honorable place.' "But deep in his breviary, he heard me no longer, and I was forced to take his advice, and search for a *A community of perfect Epicureans, pictured by Rabelais in his celebrated work — Gargantua et de Pantagruel, La vie de. 31 book. I concerned myself at this moment neither with the Greek Grammar nor Kriiger nor yet with Plato — nor Thucydides, Happily on a table in a cor- ner I found the little volume that the doctor had held in his hand on my arrival, and which he had left be- hind when he went out to ride. I seized it ; it was the Stories of Hamilton — more to the taste of this honest epicurean — it would seem, than the big German books on the quintessence of art. I began to read Les Quatre Facardins, and I was at the part where the beautiful pilgrim — beginning to speak— Bajs : 'Lovely stranger — if you understand the language that I speak — I beg of you to instruct me as to luliere I maybe able to find a ivife' — when the Marchioness re- appeared—accompanied by her retinae. In spite of sun and dust — she was sparkling and fresh a^ a rose. Having saluted me graciously — she withdrew to make her toilet. At the end of a half hour we had all gathered at the dinner table. The meal passed off well ; the Marchioness chatted quite sensibly about affairs in general ; my lord ate much more than he 32 talked ; the doctor cheered us by his jokes — seasoned with salt, which, however, was not Attic ; the Chevalier argued excitedly. Nanni, the young Venetian talked well and wisely — he had a silvery voice which appealed to the heart, and his slightest utterances breathed of the gentle can- dor of his soul. As to the man with the breviary, he was taciturn according to his wont — and the little he said breathed not of candor, but of the studied gravity of the most mysterious of all Abbots. After dinner we walked in the queen's garden, and on returning we found the Count of B awaiting us. The Mar- chioness gave him a cold reception, which he appeared to treat with indifference. The conversation turned on polychromic sculpture, and the Count maintained that the combination of gold and ivory in the colossal statues of the ancients was a feature of barbarism, and that the chryselephantine Minerva of the Parthenon could be only a monster. I do not know whether he was in earnest, but he quizzed the enthusiasm of the Marchioness and her friends good naturedly. The 33 Chevalier grew excited ; his trausports served only to stimulate the jesting humor of the Count. The Mar- chioness — impatient of his profane taunts, rose also in anger and begged Nanni to sit down at the piano with her ; this appeared to displease the amiable joker so much that he took up his hat and left. The two per- formers played ^vith admirable expression Beethoven's Second Symphony ; the Abbot remained perfectly immovable, and I believe at one time he slept, for his eyes were closed. But after the last chords of the finale, he opened them, and I perceived that they were full of tears. Had he weak eyes, or did the music make him weep ? A delicate question, which I do not feel myself able to solve. "Dating from this day I divided my time in such a manner as to give much to the Marchioness. The mild nonsense which reigned in this Abbey of Theleme did not displease me, and I listened not without pleasure to the ramblings of the Thelemites in art and philosophy. Even the Chevalier found grace in my eyes. "What he said was in the main sensible ; there 34 was only exaggeration in his gestures. When he read Plato he was subject to mysterious wailings, his voice trembled, he carried his head like an amorous dove, poured forth plaintive notes, rolled his eyes about, was lackadaisical, and made wry faces. His comments were those of a man well informed, but they were de- livered in an emphatic voice, with awkward gestures, and ia a style full of affectation. "As for Nanni, he had no affectations — he had a serious and ingenuous nature in which the love of art became a religion — his soul was liihpid and transparent as a diamond of the purest water. Although endowed with an exquisite sense of the beautifid, a sensitive delicacy, and a mind loving and impassioned, yet a Jiind of irresistible innate modesty hindered his spirit irom diffusing itself, and thus the young enthusiast was continually under constraint. He always ex- pressed much less than he felt, quite the opposite of the Chevalier, who treated him as a child. It has always been said that colored glass beads — well set- have despised uncut precious stones. 35 "I have already told you that I flatter myself that I fully appreciate the supreme delight to be found in the fine arts, but I am not equally carried away at all hours of the day, and my admiration is subservient to the law of intermission. After a sight of the beau- tiful has lifted me out of myself, my soul feels the need of returning home again : of making the tour of its own small domain ; of attending to its own little aiTairs, of demanding a momentary forgetfulness of heavenly things in honest dissipation, or in innocent questions about the pot ati-fei/. Therefore, I envied our Thelemites their gift for experiencing and enjoying this dieam-life, a gift which never seemed to take any respite, nor to feel the need of resting. But, not to deceive you, while enjoying them, I apprehended for them some grievous metamorphosis, recalling what Socrates reported of those men who from the birth of the Muses, transported with pleasure, and thinking only of singing, forgot to eat and drink. These fanat- ics, if we are to believe the son of Phcenarete,* did not *rhe mother of Socrates. 36 die, but were merely metamorphosed, and from them grasshoppers were developed, for the grasshoppers, who live on dew, having received the gift of singing eter- nally from the Muses, vie with each other in conversing on the divine, in the depths of the forest, and laugh without mercy at the 'slaves and sheep sleeping around the fountain at noon.' ^'Nevertheless, the Marchioness did not laugh at me at all ; she was even grateful for the pleasure that my lord found in my society. I listened patiently to the sad complaints of this excellent man, and tried to console him. To tell the truth, he was a little an- noyed because I was not tired of Theleme : — it aston- ished him that my sojourn in Greece was not utterly insupportable to me. I was not at all of his mind on this point ; on the contrary Athens was attractive to me and I knew a goodly number of charming and cultivated Athenians ; their conversation interested me, their character inspired me with the liveliest interest. I admired their patriotism — often more ardent than sensible — but always ready to prove its sincerity by 37 heroic effort and noble sacrifice. I loved to di'eam with them of a glorious future for their country, although — from my own point of view, the prospect of it seemed very uncertain. "After listening to all his complaints, I forced my lord to admit that ennui was an organic malady, to which he had been subject from his birth. " 'Alas, yes,' he said, sighing ; 'it has complete pos- session of me ; I am bored everywhere. But nature has endowed me with a marvellous sense of propriety, which until now has kept me from disgust of life. Do you know that, as a rule, I am always bored ? Whilst I was iu Paris, I thought, as a matter of course, that, I was leading a very happy and enjoyable life. Scarcely had I left, when this illusion vanished, and I am now forced to confess that — speaking in all seriousness — my pretended happiness was a lie, a lie to my own better self — I deceived myself into imaginary enjoyment. I had not had three quarters of an hour of veritable pleasure during my whole stay there, and I shudder at the thought of beginning over again the life whose 38 charm was only a pretence. But at Athens I am not even as well off as at Paris : — immediately on my arrival here, the fact forced itself upon me that I was not entertained in the least, and I long to leave this wretched city and to return to a country where I can be bored without knowing it ' " 'There is one resource left yet,' I said to him, 'since you only need to deceive yourself, why not awaken your inward comforter the sophist — who has abused you so faithfully in the past ? Let him per- suade you every day that Athens is the most delight- ful region of the earth, that her beef-steaks are deli- cious, her assemblies charming, her comic-opera admir- able and ia return for his efforts to make you happy you need only repay him with impudence.' " 'Ah !' he said, 'it would be of no use. Under this blue sky which desolates me, he has grown less persuasive — or I have become less persuadable.' "I saw the Count of B often. Besides pleas- ing me by his frankness and culture his chagrin inter- ested me : — it was useless for him to try to dissimu- 39 late, for in spite of his efforts, his face and manners betrayed suffering — the cause of which — was easy to unravel. I was very soon convinced that he was really that claimant, once high in favor and in a fair way of being accepted, to whom the Abbot had alluded, but in whom, although she received him with favor at first, the Marchioness was less and less interested at every interview. But trulj-, I could not help believing tbat by a little complacence he could easily have disarmed her severity : — unhappily, at that juncture he lacked tact — and after having jested quite mildly on the unnatural fancies of the beautiful widow, becoming excited — as is apt to be the case — and roused by the quickness of her repartees, he attacked to her face, her enthusiasms, her archaeology, her Greek Grammar, her pediments, and — above all — her little Venetian, whom he could not endure. He rallied her on the supreme contempt that she had suddenly affected for the world, for the salon, for noisy pleasures, for what she called the yoke of social con- ventionality ; he declared bitter war on her 40 dreams of solitude, of retreat, of a life consecrated to the worship of the Muses. Had he thought more carefully about it, he would have waited until time should have wearied her of her dreams, and her idle fancies. The caprices of a pretty young woman do not last long, at least when they are not opposed, and when offended self-love is not permitted to add interest to the game. Assuredly, there was little likelihood that a sojourn in the Thebaic region would be agree- able for any length of time to a lovely Marquise, accustomed to display her charms in the most brilliant salo7i of Paris, and it is easy to believe that after hav- ing enjoyed for several months these innocent eccen- tricities which she called the worship of the Muses, enthusiasm, and Platonic friendship, she would be ready to return to her natural self, and to renounce her proud disdain for the world, worldlings and world- liness. But the Count lacked tact and patience ; his sallies of wit often bitter, stung the Marquise to the quick. She showed her resentment and although he affected not to care, the poor man suffered cruelly from 41 a condition of things which he aggravated obstinately every day and he was often found wandering at random in the streets of Athens— his head bent — his eyes fixed on the ground, with an anxious countenance and a depressed air. ' 'One morning my lord entered my room abruptly, without being announced, and throwing himself into an arm-chair, cried out in a despairing tone : '"All is lost! the Count of B will not marry my niece. He has quarrelled with her finally. Last evening, in my presence, he precipitated a scene with her which he at last terminated by imperiously forbidding the little Venetian to enter the Marquise's door. She did nothing but laugh. He went away furious, and this morning at the Piraeus he took pass- age on the Greek Steamer starting for Kalamaki. I carried the news of his departure to the Marquise, and she laughed heartily. Plague take the fools who have disturbed her mind !' "My lord was really desperate. 42 " 'Think,' said he, 'from the day that the late Mar- quis died I resolved firmly that the Marquise should marry again. I will not tire you by going over my reasons. The best is that I have the greatest desu'e for it : this little project was formed in my own brain; aud not being very fertile in ideas, it is natural that I should cling with tenacity to the few I have. The first marriage of the Marquise was not entirely happy, and it is difficult to persuade her to resign her liberty a second time Among the suitors who entered the field, I soon remarked the Count of B — . You know him ; no one possesses more worth, more sense, more heart, and of all the men that I have had leisure to study, he is the wisest, the gentlest, the most even-tempered, the most constant in his attachments, ihe best cultured in the art of living — in a word — the most capable in every particular of making the happiness of a woman com- plete. I detailed all his perfections to the Marquise, who finally became interested in him. When the Count asked her hand, she said to him "Let me enjoy my liberty for awhile ; I am going to travel for eigh- 43 teen months, to satisfy all kinds of little curiosities which have come to me of late, and which begin to clamor to be gratified. Married to a worn out man as soon as I left the Convent, what have I seen of the world ? Almost nothing, and you know wlioever sees nothing naturally has nothing to say. A restless mood has seized me. Do not cry over it; two years at the most will satisfy me, and I will then give you an answer." Note that in speaking thus her smile prom- ised much, for perhaps you do not know that my niece has two countenances; the one which her brow indicates, signifyingnothing, and the one which her smile portrays, a charming expression of countenance, the irresistible attractions of which have won her many followers. This day her eyebrows said not a word, for they were not noticeable, so gracious, lovely, engaging and per- suasive were the corners of her mouth. But I have spoiled all by my imprudence. When I saw the devas- tations that the bas-reliefs had made in her heart, alarmed by her absurd project of meditating forever on the Greek classics by the bare banks of the Ilissus, 44 I said to myself, " We must leave no stone unturned," and foolishly, I wrote to our friend the Count, " Come quick, some one is ill ; bring your case and jour lancet." Alas ! the awkward fellow went to work the wrong way, and only irritated and increased the trouble. To-day all is lost, Monsieur, and I could -weep with rage.' And thereupon, he began his litany, again crying out like Gorgias, ' You, who are the ■cause of her folly, foolish trash, pernicious amusements ■of idle minds, romances, verses, songs, sonnets and ballads— Oh ! that you might all go to the devil ! ' " I told him to be calm and take fresh courage, -assuring him that I had seen affairs set straight that were in a much worse state ; but he shook his head with an air of utter hopelessness. Certainly, that day and the following, the Marquise had an aspect of serenity and enjoyment not calculated to reassure him. I observed, likewise, that the Chevalier had an air of satisfaction which he did not seek to hide. Nanni, also, the humble Nauni, breathed more freely : liis step was more light ; a secret joy seemed to diffuse 45 his whole being. What had he to hope for? Nothing, assuredly. There are imaginations which, to be happy, have no need of hope. To dream is sufficient for them. " As he left me, my lord said : " ' The day that my niece marries the Chevalier, I will hiuig myself to one of the olive trees of the Academy.' And I replied : " ' Do not choose your tree yet, the danger is not pressing; only, if you would be influenced by me, never reproach the Marquise ; let the Chevalier talk about Phidias until she is satisfied, and do you be care- ful not to speak to her of the Count. I guarantee that you will reap benefit from this course.' But my lord would not listen to my suggestions,* and resorting again to the Doctor and the Abbot, he entreated them to espouse the interests of the Count, and to intercede in his behalf. The Doctor replied, laughing : ' The quarrels of lovers are stings and nourishment to true love.' " The Abbot assured him, as he had at first, that he would give the matter his serious attention, and that he would be careful to watch his opportunity. 46 His coldness exasperated my lord so much that he had great difficulty in restraining himself from striking the Abbot. " Some weeks later he said to me : ' Assuredly my niece shows no indications of being cured. I begin almost to fear that she will become altogether mad.' " ' Is she going to marry the Chevalier ? ' I said. " ' It will come — in time, I have not a doubt,' he replied. ' But in dancing attendance on her I bave to rise every morning at four o'clock, in order to go with her to your cursed Acropolis — where she is copying some equestrian groups of the frieze of the Parthenon. When the sun is too hot I open a large parasol, and hold it over her head until she has finished her sketch. Judge of the pleasure that I take in this exercise. As my luck will have it, she is never content with her work : every evening she tears in pieces what she has done in the morning, and the next day it has to be begun again. Yesterday — in the midst of her work, she plunged into such a revery that I could not resist saying to her : " Indeed, my dear Lucile, you make 47 me uneasy. Have you fallen in love with tliis bas- relief ? " She began to laugh, but not without blash- ing a little, and replied ; " Yes — my lord — this horse seems to be marvellously beautiful, and I am going to carry you off one of these days, to travel the world over with me until we can find one of the descendants of the animal which served as model to Phidias." And now — whatdo you think? Does it not make youshudder? You know her ; she is capable of doing what she says. You will probably say that I might as well leave Athens for this as for any other cause. But who would wish to leave purgatory through the gate of hell ? And I must say that it would not be my choice to travel to the West Indies in search of a horse which is not to be found ; for — although the first English horse that was ever seen far surpassed him in elegance and beauty, the horse of Phidias has no countei-part in nature.' " ' I do not altogether agree with you,' I said. ' To my mind the horses of the Parthenon are the most beautiful in the world. But I am astonished to 48 see you so upset over a pleasantry of tli6 Marquise ; she is only amusing herself at your expense when she tries to frighten you with this crazy project. ' " ' A pleasantry ! ' said he ; ' but did you not hear her declare the other day, that there is nothing more serious in the world than that which is the amusementof the commonherd : justifying her position, by the authority of a certain German who has said : " Man is only truly serious when he plays ? " " ' Believe me— her head is completely turned and the most unworthy follies are attracting her with strange power : she has become the prey of charla- tans, quack doctors, alchemists : there is no mounte- bank who cannot make her accept his drugs — nor monkey's money* that she would not take for currency.' " Thereupon I replied : ' A good deal might be said about that ; but tell me, of all the horses of the frieze, which one had the honor of being distinguished by the Marquise ? ' " ' Do you recall,' he said, ' the one who arches his neck ? He is ridden by a cavalier who has — * Payer en monnaie de singe. To laugh at one instead of paying him. 49 what my niece calls an — Arcadian hat — on his head ; that is to say — a hat with a broad brim, very like the one that the Count of B. wore.' " ' Well, really,' I replied, ' the Marquise has not bad taste. Nevertheless, I suspect that the cavalier pleases her better than the horse ' " ' What ! that cavalier who has lost his nose in the struggle of the ages ? " " ' Nonsense,' I replied, ' in spite of his disfigure- ment there remains a certain pose of the head, a style in that curve of the neck that I cannot explain ; but I would wager . . . But reassure yourself, perhaps this new stubbornness is a crisis indicating a turn for the better in the Marquise.' " Milord would not believe this, but held that the Count's position grew worse every day. Shortly after this he confessed to me that he had received a letter from the poor repulsed lover, full of the most bitter com- plaints, and that, when he offered to show it to the Mar- quise, she had forbidden him sharply ever again to speak of a man who had failed to treat her with respect. 50 " I scolded him well for his want of skill — and begged him never again to mention the Count in her presence. The prompt cure of the Marquise is only to be gotten at this price. "Her fat doctor was not far wrong the other day, said I, when he affirmed that the whole secret of medi- cine is to let nature work ; and I, who have some faith in homoeopathy, I add : Similia Similihus — that is the whole story. " And really — I began to think that I could see indications that nature was beginning to act — for al- though she concealed it with care, the Marquise at moments had a pensive and pre-occupied air ; she had become more impatient and more irritable. The least contre-temps — the slightest disappointment, upset her. To quote my lord, she employed her eyebrows oftener in the expression of her face. The uneasiness of her thoughts expressed itself also by a certain movement of the right foot, the meaning of which I understood well. One day while the Chevalier was reading, I saw this little foot, shod in a gold-embroidered slip- 1^^/ - J^ H {1 51 per, move itself over a great white rose in the carpet, with an air of increasing agitation that was truly elo- quent. And speaking to her in an undertone, I said : ' Thou art not content ; the big German book, and the Uttle gentleman who reads, are not sufficient for thy happiness. I understand — thou art notable to content thyself within the house ; thou wouldst travel Heaven only knows where, and forced to remain here, thou weariest by thy stampings the great white rose — which can do nothing but' . . . Meanwhile, to tell the truth, these were — as far as I was concerned^supposi- tions rather hazardous and scarcely justifiable even to myself. The face of the Marquise at times breathed a perfect contentment and when the little foot pressed the pedals of the piano with incomparable vigor, or stepped in triumph on the beautiful marble staircase of the Propylffia— that face was assuredly a thousand leagues from all melancholy. "It was about two months since the Count had departed. One beautiful morning at the beginning of autumn, all of us having ascended to the Acropolis, 52 we lingered a few moments to see some excavations which were being made east of the Parthenon. Ordi- narily, the Marquise had a lively interest in this kind of spectacle ; at every blow of the spade she watched to see the arm or leg of some statue brought out of the earth: and the pleasures of expectation consoled her for the rarity of the findings. But that day she was distracted, and giving as the pretext that the sun in- convenienced her, she quitted us abruptly, to go and sit under the west peristyle of the temple. We were not slow in joining her there. Having gotten cushions and folding chairs from the guards of the sacred en- closure, we grouped ourselves near her, and began to talk. Meanwhile — I can scarcely say why — contrary to custom, no one was in the spirit of the occasion —the conversation drooped every moment and watching the pretty foot, the language of which I loved to study, I saw it first pose delicately on the heel, balancing from right to left, and from left to right; then the point of the toe designed little arabesques, oddly intertwisted ; after which it began to glide rapidly 53 along the joint of two marble flags, until at last, in a fit of spite, it struck three very sharp blows on the stone. Decidedly the Marquise was weary — and I saw a threatening wrinkle forming on her uneasy brow, that announced a storm ready to burst. " ' In truth, gentlemen,' said she, playing with her fan, ' you are not more happy in your gettings than the laborers who work among these ruins; it is useless for you to dig into your wits, there is nothing worth the finding. If you allow en7iui to attack us here, at the feet of these columns, in the shade of this holy place, it will be simply disgraceful.' " At these words, the doctor, seated on a cushion, made a gesture of dismay. " ' Yoia, my lady,' said he, ' it is you who tire in our society. Ah! to prevent such a catastrophe, there is nothing that I would not do. You have only to command. Do you desire me to play Punch and Judy, to sing bravura, to improvise a sonnet, to dance like a zephyr? I am at your disposal, ready for anything.' 54 " And speaking thus, he began to rise, but the Marquise made a sign to him to remain seated. " ' I excuse you from your athletics and buffoon- ery, and dancing; a little good conversation would be more to my taste.' " ' As you please— my lady ; you shall be served immediately. The desire to gratify you will have the effect of making me eloquent. And do you know why ? The French Academy on one occasion questioned the assembly as to which of the virtues of the great King was the most worthy of eulogy. If agreeable to you, we will discuss which of your merits — ' " ' Now, if you please,' interrupted she ; ' no in- sipidities, no madrigals, nothing which savors of the Muse, Patchouli, the pastilles of the seraglio. And above all, be careful how you speak of me. For there are days, my good doctor, when I cannot endure my- self, when the sight of my own shadow disturbs me, when I seek to fly from myself, to forget myself. So, for the love of Heaven, not one word of my merits, and 55 count on my gratitude if you succeed in taking me so far out of myself that I cannot find myself.' " ' Do not attempt that, doctor,' said the Cheva- lier, smiling ; ' Madame the Marquise would not take three steps before she would regret it.' " ' What,' said she, ' cannot a poor woman con- fess that self- adoration is not always agreeable to her, without being suspected of hypocrisy ? But, how about yourself, I beg — you who are so ready to speak — have you never happened to be weary of yourself ? ' " The Chevalier signified by a gesture that he thought the question impertinent. " ' It would be better to say, perhaps, that in our day it is utterly useless to try to banish self. Educa- tion and universal example oppose it. There are — strictly speaking — some people who believe in self- sacrifice, but absolute self-forgetfulness is rarely be- stowed. To-day, there is nothing done, nothing said, nothing written — in which the display of self does not break through. In this generation where, shall we find a man who does not hang a sign at his door, or else, in 56 launching his ideas into the world, does not clothe them in such a livery that they are recognizable at sight ; in fact, " They belong to such an one ; look first at the shields," is a frequent remark. Most of our moderns cry themselves hoarse, saying, " See what I am," and oftener than otherwise they are nobodies. We must look to the ancients if we wish to find vir- tues not on dress parade, and works of art other than advertisements.' " She continued in this strain some time longer ; then looking again at the Doctor : " ' Since you feel yourself inspired,' she said, 'give us a discourse, on condition always that there shall be no more reference to yourself than to me ; for, interesting though you may be, my dear Doctor, I have the misfortune to know you through and through. Yes, you are a book that I have read more than once from beginning to end — and the few good pages that I have found I know by heart. So, in. speaking of yourself to me, I defy you to teach me anything.' 57 '"I do uot propose to speak to you of myself,' he replied. ' But for my own part I attach two con- ditions to the eloquent effort that I am to have the honor of giving you. The first is — that after me — each of the others shall pay his quota — for is it right that I alone should make this expenditure ? The second is — that after we have all spoken — this evening, by moonlight, you shall bestow an olive wreath, woven by your own hands, on the one among us whose style you approve most of.' " ' The conditions accepted,' he added ; ' it only remains to find a subject.' " ' Oh, that is a small matter, and you know nothing of what is going on in the world if you trouble yourself about it,' said she. ' Do you not hear people talking every day, who, at the end of a long harangue, forget what they were talking about when they began ?' " Then turning to me : " ' Since the doctor is yet in the childhood of art, and — if he speaks at all — holds it absolutely necessary 58 to speak of something, give him a subject which will be to my taste.' " Without thinking much about it, I proposed to them to celebrate one of the metopes of the Parthenon frieze, and I chose precisely the horse which had pleased the Marquise so much. She ratified my choice by saying, with a sigh : " ' Very skilful he who can praise this horse to my liking.' " The Doctor reflected a moment, and while he collected his ideas — seated at the south end of the por- tico and leaning against one of the columns of the Parthenon, which, under the ardent rays of the sun, had taken the golden color of ripe grain, I began once more to contemplate the incomparable perspective which was spread before our eyes. From my po- sition, by turning round, I could see Phalerus, and the peninsula of the Piraeus, with its promontories and creeks, and the softly inflected contours of the bank, caressed by the lazy waves. On the right lay Sa- lamis, with its deep indentations and its proud bluffs. 59 On the left, still farther out at sea, appeared Egina, and her terraced heights, sloping gently in the back- ground, like the walls of a Greek temple. In the dis- tance were the coasts of Argolis, with their indentations, islets, and mountains, the bold chain uniting itself at the west to the summits of Corinth, and Megara, and to the sharp precipices of the Sci- ronian rocks, which form so marvellous a girdle around the Gulf. I admired this immense tableau. One could see with a single glance one of those vast suc- cessions of perspectives, unknown in our northern landscapes, all detaching themselves one from the other with such clearness that the air and light seemed to play between them. Bathed with ethereal clearness, all these diverse lines united and mingled without confusion. Now the eye seized the harmony and unity of the whole, and again wandered at random over the innumerable details which pre- sented themselves on all sides, and which the gaze could not exhaust, passing from one to the other, seizing successively all parts of the whole view, and 60 horizon fading into more distant horizoD. I ad- mired the way in which the Grecian sun, with artistic fancy, colored each of these divisions of the landscape with a particular tint. A white light was diffused on the hills which surrounded the Acropolis, and all the neighboring banks ; the sea was of the purest, deepest blue, almost pure indigo ; Salamis was rose-color ; Egina, covered with violet ; the coast and the moan- tains of the Peloponnesus beyond showed a waste of shadows which melted softly into the lightest, finest and most delicate of tones. Whilst in our own coun- tries the framing of landscape profiles itself in dark coloring on a whitish landscape, here the distances of an ashy grey design themselves in light effects on a sky of deep blue, dark and velvety and rich and refresh- ing to the one that gazes. "Dazzled and charmed, my eyes lingered on the uncertain swelling of the waves, the undulating move- ment of the lines beyond — the transparent vapors which softened the contours without veiling them ; and the insensible fading into distance of the land- 61 scape, losing itself in an abyss of azure. The thought came to me that nature in her tenderness for the de- scendants of Theseus, had kept for the use of their artists a great school of sculpture and painting — when the doctor, after having coughed three times to clear his voice, began as follows : CHAPTEE II. " 'How difficult the task, my lady, that you impose upon me ! Surely, it is not easy to extol the beautiful suitably, and to pay the quota that is due to the object of one's admiration. How can we express in words that which is inexpressible ? Granting it to be true that the inspirations of great artists are the confidence of a Muse to the privileged souls favored with her revelations, what guarantee is there that the genius of your first speaker will be inspired in this silent inter- view with his divinity, and that in his way of telling, he will not profane the mystery which he dares to unfold ? " 'The Athenians show their wisdom in the sever- ity with which they punish men indiscreet enough to 62 iiave divulged the sacred rites and ceremonies of Meusis — thus giving to human speech limitations it is bound to respect, and forbidding to the vulgar herd certain subjects which they could not handle without profanation. " 'But still, my lady, if I undertook to describe to you a masterpiece which you had never seen, and to detail beauties which you knew nothing about, it might be that my desire to please and entertain you would lead me into doing what I was not fitted to do. Thus curiosity making you indulgent, I might succeed in surrounding an object with attractiveness, which not being under your gaze, could not witness by its presence to the absurdity of my eulogy. But, my lady, this horse that you call on me to celebrate, is right before you, only a few feet above your head. By taking three steps you can see him. He himself will hear my discourse, a redoubtable witness ready to rise up against me. And note again, this horse is well known to you. From the first time you came here, he has been your especial study. You scarcely 63 had looked at him before he had your devotion and since then your admiration has grown day by day. He has no secret beauties that your gaze has not dis- covered. It is hopeless to search for any hidden grace vs^hich might have escaped those beautiful eyes of yours, whose lustre does not surpass their penetra- tion.' '"Holy Virgin!' interrupted the Marquise ab- ruptly, letting her hands fall. 'My beautiful eyes ; the beautiful eyes of the Marquise ! Will you not, doctor, cease, once for all, these insipid foolishnesses, unknown to the ancients, who, believe me (I take it from the original), knew much better how to praise women than your modern gallants. Indeed you began to interest me. Your exordium, after the manner of Socrates, won my attention, and there were certain rounded phrases which gratified my ear. And sud- denly, either from habit, or perhaps because some fly stung you, suddenly you foolishly come back to insip- idities, and to language a la mode. From these Pin- daric heights to fall with so sudden a crash to the 64 miseries of hollow flattery, it is unendurable ! Doc- tor, my friend, give me bombast once more, and I shall be forced, whatever I may think of your merit, to exclude you from this competition.' The Doctor had listened to the Marquise with a contrite air, his eyes modestly lowered like those of a school-boy caught in a scrape. Without replying, he continued in these words : " 'So, my lady, for the reason that I have just given, I could not hope to teach you anything. Al- though I might have been able to do it, under other circumstances, I can now only reproduce imperfectly what you have already felt. Nevertheless, I shall do my utmost in obedience to you ; you are a woman who will never suffer any refusal. It is not a question of choice between success and failure, but of rushing headlong into an adventure from which by foregone conclusion I shall not be able to withdraw with honor. " 'Here, . properly, my exordium ends. I do not know whether it has pleased you — ; I only know what its good intention has lost me, and that 65 more than once I have thought that I must stop short. I have also experienced the need of invoking the Muse of eloquence, knowing that she is accustomed to haunt these places, in the neighborhood of the Pnyx.* O ! that she, with the goddess Persuasion, might come to my aid, and that both would drop on my tongue a little of that honey with which they were wont to purify and refresh lips conseciated to their service.' " 'Amen ! said the Marquise. 'Eloquence and Persuasion come to him !' "And we all repeated 'Amen !' " 'In the first place,' continued he, 'a question presents itself. There is no one who, studying this horse carefully, might not forget that he is marble, and imagine him of flesh and blood. One might readily admire him, not as a work of art, but as a work of nature. The artist has rivalled nature, has drawn her secrets from her, has succeeded in animating the stone to the point of producing an illusion which imposes on the coldest and calmest judge.' *The Pnyx included an area of more than twelve thousand square yards, and could with ease contain the entire civic popu- lation of Athens "This," says Mr. Wordsworth, "was the place provided for the public assemblies of Athens in its most glorious times. The Athenian orator spoke from a block of bare stone : his audience sat before him on a blank and open field. ' ' Stuart's Antiquities of Athens. 5 66 " 'That is so true,' said the Murquise, 'that more than once I have seen this horse distinctly turn his head toward me, and not only he, but also that other one who is excited, and the one rubbing his nose against his leg, have done the same. Truly, the illu- sion was so strong, that it charmed, and at the same time frightened me.' " 'Phidias is Phidias,' cried the Chevalier ; 'he alone has made marble to live. To be convinced, it is only necessary on leaving Athens to study the Log- gietta of Sansovino at "Venice. Marvelous as these bas-reliefs are — comparing them with the frieze of the Parthenon, all the figures of one of the greatest sculp- tors of the Renaissance will appear to you cold, inert and inanimate.' " 'That point is well made,' replied the Marquise, 'but we must not interrupt the orator.' " 'And yet, my lady,' continued the doctor, 'it is only necessary to consider this horse attentively to be convinced that he is none other than a copy after nature : as for myself I have endeavored in vain, to 67 recall one like him in life ; I am persuaded that he is not to be found. Such perfection cannot be equalled.' " 'Ah ! Doctor, my good Doctor,' cried milord, 'you are truly a brave man. I do not trouble myself to know whether what you say is correct, but I agree with you that it is admirable. I beg of you to write it everywhere in letters of gold — it might cure the Marquise of a certain whim.' " 'Another interruption,' said slie, frowning ; 'do not interrupt the orator. ' " 'This marvellous horse,' continued the Doctor, 'how has Phidias conceived his image ? In the struggle with nature — who furnished the weapons to surpass and to excel her ? " 'An ingenious writer of antiquity, Lucian, desir- ing to pay court to a Roman Empress, counsels the sculptor, who would wish to carve her statue, to bor- row the brow, the hair, the happy curve of the eye- brows, the moistened lustre of the eye (for, "the beau- tiful eyes of the Marquise," that is found in the Greek of Lucian, I am sorry for you, my lady) from the 68 Venus of Gnide ; from the Ve?ius des Jardins to ap- propriate the hands and the attachment of the arms ; from the Lemnian Minerva, the contour of the face, the softness and delicacy of the cheeks, and the deli- cate proportions of the nose ; from the Amazon, the compression of the lips and the pose of the head ; from the Sosandra by *Calamis, which is seen at the Acropolis, in the midst of the masterpieces of Phidias, the expression of modesty, and the nobility of the smile. To compose a whole from all these scattered features, was, according to Lucian, the method for one to follow who wished to create a figure which would honor the august sovereign ; evident proof, my lady, that there were madrigal makers then as well as to-day. '"And likewise do they not tell of a celebrated painter of antiquity who, when he wished to paint an ideal woman who should represent perfect beauty, borrowed from every model which posed for him, or which he chanced to see ; from one the hair, from another the mouth, from another the feet, from an- *This sculptor is spoken of by Lucian in the highest terms, as ou the same path with Phidias. 69 other the stature and the hands, combining the varied points of feminine beauty of the time ? Thus of all these parts brought together he hoped to form that ideal study which was in bis mind. And lest you might think that this method was peculiar to antiquity, do we not see, in our own day, some landscape paint- ers who select and group together fragments from their most successful studies, forming thus a picture perfect to their eye, since a thousand perfections of detail find themselves harmoniousl}- combined, and as it were wedded the one to the other ? " 'Those are what they call Eclectics,' said the Marquise ; 'and you know how much I like them, for it is clear.' " 'No, my lady,' he replied, 'nothing is clear yet. Do not judge hastily. Let us proceed systematically. I have not yet found the secret, I who have not the ad- vantage of being a Marquise, of saying things other- wise than one after the other ; so, may I ask whether or not Phidias, when he carved this horse which we are considering, availed himself of the manner of the 70 artists of whom we have just spoken, and which Lucian seems to approve ? Think of it, my lady — at the Olympian Games, or even, without leaving Athens, in the races which were not the least attraction of the festivals of Minerva, Phidias had the opportunity to study at his leisure, specimens of all the races of horses that antiqviiiy has boasted ; for they came from far off countries, and there were few princes who did not hold it an honor to run at the Panathensean Races, and especially to struggle for the olive wreath, a more glorious adornment for the brow than the royal diadem itself. Thus Phidias probably was familiar with many different and celebrated races of horses. Shall I cite here those Cappadocian horses, of which the King of Persia received fifteen hundred in tribute, which sometime later the Theodosian law appro- priated to the special use of the Emperors of Byzan- tium, and forbade the blue and green chariots to use in the races of the Hippodrome — horses of scriptural renown, and whose elevated neck, and long flank, Ne- mesian also has described ? 71 " 'Shall I speak of that Armenian race, of those fafiious bay and chestnut coursers of the Nysseaik plain, wiose gait and mien Strabo has extolled, whose swiftness Aristotle has alluded to — whose dehcate head and fleshy croup Synesius has sung — and again Oppian, the fair mane falling in tresses on both sides of the harness ? Or of those two Parthian horses, that Posidonius compared to the jennets of Spain, or of those horses so well limbed according to Absyrtus, who celebrated their courage and fire, and whose joints the Parthians, according to Vegece, suppled in a re- markable way ? Or of those Tyrrhenians which, like the Cretans, were distinguished by the length of the back bone ? Or of the brilliant stallions of Sicily, which secured to Hiero more than one triumph in the Olympian Games ? Or again, of that generous race brought into Thrace by the Cimmerians, among whom Rhesus found those noble coursers, which Homer teUs us in the Iliad, were the greatest in the world ?' " 'Doctor, my dear Doctor, could you not drop your lengthy and wearisome figures of rhetoric, of 72 which one would think you yourself would tire ?' " 'Ah ! my good lady,' he said, 'you are really terrible ! Why do you arraign me thus for my in- nocent self-indulgence in displaying a little erudition ?' " 'Erudition is cheap,' I interrupted, turning my eyes from the violet mountains of Egina upon him ; 'it has cost you no more than to run through the Hierozoicon of Bochart with a careless eye.' " 'You find fault with me about Bochart !' cried he, quite angry, 'and really his learning is very neces- sary to me. Bring him here, and you will find me ready to try my strength with him on any question of hippie science that it may please him to propose to me, and to prove to him on foot and on horseback that I am more than his peer. Why, I pray, am I not as qualified as he to read Oppian, Nemesian, Absyrtus, Hierocles and aU the veterinary treatises of the Lower Empire ? Has he, this Bochart — it is I who ask you — has he thought to investigate who first taught the Greeks the equestrian art ? Like me has he passed whole nights in trying to find out whether 73 Bellerophon was a great horseman or a navigator in a long course ; whether Pegasus was really a winged horse, or as Freret claims, an armed war-vessel ? Whether Perseus was a gi-eat lord who rode a stallion, or a corsair furnished with letters of marque, sailing away to kidnap young girls on the coasts of Phenicia ? Your Bochart, I beg, does he only trouble himself as to whether the Centaurs were the first who applied themselves to the study of the horse, or whether we must attribute the honor to the Dioscures, as their equestrian statues would seem to prove ? This Bochart finally ' " 'Divine goodness' — interrupted the Marquise again, striking a sharp blow on the neighboring column — with her fan — 'will you soon have finished with your Bochart, Doctor ? It is an impertinence to speak to me of this ugly pedant ! The man, Doctor, is insup- portable to me. I cannot endure him any longer. This Bochart, whom I do not know, wearies me to death. And you,' said she, addressing herself to me, I beg of you to grant that he has ga^'ned his cause. 74 and put an end to the discussion. A little more, and I shall choke to death with ennui. Once more, Doc- tor, not one word of this Bochart, nor of his Cappado- cian horses, nor of his Nysseans, nor of his Cimmerians, nor of his white mane, nor of his long back-bone, nor of all this salmagundi which may well give me the nightmare to-night. Doctor, my friend, if Bochart comes on the carpet again, I tell you, cost me what it may, I will not speak to you for eight days, and sorry enough you will be.' "Then beginning to laugh ; 'but just see what he has done with his Bochart, ' and she pointed to milord in a sound sleep. The Doctor, indignant, wished to awaken him ; but the Marquise would not consent. 'That is an affront' — she said — which you can digest at your leisure. Begin your discourse again, and re- member what I have told you.' " 'Since it is more agreeable to you,' he replied, 'we will leave Bochart ; although I swear that I was a thousand leagues from thinking of him, when you re- proached me unfairly just now with pillaging from 75 him. And if I should borrow from him, would he have the right to complain ? He is one of those authors of whom we can say, as Voltaire did of Saint Augustine : "I have read him, the traitor, but he shall pay for it." ' " 'That difficulty settled, let us return to oar mut- tons, or rather, to Phidias. I was wondering whether in carving his horse, he followed the plan of Lucian, and borrowed from one race the chest, from another the legs, from another the head, from another the postern and the shoe, trying, by a mingling of hetero- geneous points of beauty, to form a whole superior to that which nature had been able to do.' " 'A question solved beforehand,' interrupted the Marquise again, 'in effect — ' " 'Oh ! for once,' cried the Doctor, 'I rebel. No, the question is not in the least solved. You must let me speak in my own way. It is a right which I claim. I intend to force you to follow my arguments, how- ever diffuse they may appear, for I have thought them out thoroughly, and besides I am one of those people 76 who enjoy the argumeat as much as the conclusion. However,' he added, 'in deference to your impatience, I shall not pour forth the learned dissertation with which I was prepared to regale jon. And remember what you are losing. I should have shown you clearly that Phidias was able to choose his model from a par- ticular race of horses ; what that race was, would have been made clear by my demonstration. Going back to the origin of horsemanship in Greece, I should have proved to you that the Greeks, having used the horse primarily for the trace, had, in the beginning, em- ployed the heavy race of horses, which passed from Thrace into Macedonia, and from Macedonia into Thessaly : I should have shown you the first use of the saddle horse, dating from the days of Homer, who still made his heroes fight from their chariots, but who, in two similes — in which he depicted his own time, showed a rider mounting alternately three horses galloping abreast, and in the Odyssey compared the ship-wrecked Ulysses, seated astride of a beam, to a horseman straddling his steed. Then sketching in a 77 brilliant picture the progress of equestrianism, I would have shown that as the usage spread, the Greeks felt the need of renewing their race of horses, and to this end brought from the Orient light and rapid coursers, whose origin they attributed to Neptune, indicating by an allegory that the saddle horse had come to them from beyond the sea. That you may not doubt it, my lady, it is only necessary to remember that two steps from here is the rock which the god split with a blow of his trident to allow the noble animal to come forth. Finally, by virtue of a profound and in- genious analysis, I would have But, of all that, you shall know nothing, and it is your impatience, your tyranny, your rudeness that we must blame.' " 'Who knows,' said she, laughing, 'it is perhaps Bochart who has the misfortune not to be allowed to speak.' " Joke as much as you please,' said he, 'but 1 am not at all at a loss for resources, and since you do not wish my erudition, you will have to content yourself with the simplicity of my own reasonings. 78 " 'Meanwhile, as we must not give way even when pushed desperately, I shall try to withdraw with honor from the difficult situation in which you place me. And so I proceed. In equestrian, as in various other matters, for some years past, taste has improved, and as I will show, in becoming more reasonable it has become more Grecian, as if Greece and reason were two names for one and the same thing ; and the moderns could make no progress without going back to those Athenians who argued so well about every- thing but their own little affairs. I do not wish to enter into detail here about all the variations in taste that the ideal of beauty for the horse family has un- dergone. They are of little consequence, and good sense caring nothing about them, grants to everyone the right to follow his private judgment on these secondary points. So, of all which concerns the color of the coat ; each nation, each age, and each individual is free to prefer one shade to another. Who will censure the French of the eighteenth century, for condemning the horse that has no 79 mark on the head, or the Spaniards, who, faithful to their sombre gravity of mood, valued highly horses without any white spots at all, whence their proverb : Morcillo sin serial, muclios lo quieren, y pocos lo Han? " 'The ancients prized white horses highly, pro- vided that the white was glossy, and not that pale white that Virgil disapproves of. This was the coat of the coursers of Castor and Pollux, of Proserpine, of the Sun, of the Camilla of Virgil ; not to speak of the general of the same name, who, celebrating his first triumph with a team of white horses, was suspected by the Romans of arrogating to himself a privilege which belonged only to the gods. The father of poetry, although he extolled the horses of Rhesus, whose brightness eclipsed the dazzling whiteness of the snow, appeared to admire still more those famous horses of ^aeas, issae of heavenly blood, one of which won the chariot race for Diomedes, who had seized them from their master. 80 " ' "He was a blood colored bay," said the poet, "with a white mark oa the forehead like a silver crescent !" " 'If we pass on to more modem times, the steed of Archbishop Tiirpin, vaunted in the song of Roland, had a white tail and a fawn head. In the last century, Solleysel, the author of the Perfect Marclial, prized beyond all, the chestnut bay coat, with black extremi- ties. The Arabs, who despised the bald, the dun with white tail, and the roan, agreeing on one point with Homer, and on another with the Spaniards, pre- ferred to the chestnut, the black with a round mark on the forehead, and white feet : white feet were ne- cessary at any price, but there must be but three, the prophet having declared his aversion to the horse who had four white feet. On all these points, and on others also, as, the color of the eyes, which Columelle decrees to be black, Virgil bluish, Solleysel slate color, a diversity of sentiment is allowed. The coat should tell something of the temperament of the horse, and of his native qualities. The Arabs may be right, who, in their 81 preference for the whole coat of one color, regard as indi- cations of weakness, Hght whitish stains scattered over the body. I agree with the Perfect Marshal in taking the white horse to be phlegmatic, the bay sanguine, the black melancholy, the chestnut bilious, and of a fiery temperament. I am peaceful, and do not make the assertion for argument's sake, but neverthe- less I believe it to be true, that, as we have learned from the Arabs and Solleysel, the color may in- dicate the disposition and the swiftness of a horse. It is noteworthy — for example — that a gray horse has never shone in the hippodrome nor carried away a prize in the races All this, meanwhile, does not affect the beauty of the animal. Except where there is a certain mixture of shades, the effect of which is not pleasing to the eye, it is right to say that what- ever the coat, the horse may be beautiful : among the gods, Hercules was sanguine, Apollo melancholy, Jupiter bilious, and under the chisel of the sculptor, each took the form which suited his mood, and — how- 6 82 ever different in character and expression — each shared a common beauty. " 'To proceed farther, if in the valuation of a horse, there are some indifferent points that each can determine at his own pleasure, there are others about which the judgment of every period and country has always agreed, and the good disposition of a horse, and the grace of his bearing, depend on these points so evidently that only a blind man or an idiot would disregard them. For example, the horse has always been required to have elevated and sharp withers, at the cost of whatever might be needed for the solidity of the saddle, and the comfort of the seat : also, medium-sized posterns — inclined forwards. Long jointed horses are criticized sharply because they do not stand up well to work — and short jointed horses because they are liable to balk ; long stiff forelegs are under the ban because the effect on the rider is very wearying. " 'There are certain peculiarities that horse- men always avoid — for instance the head burdened 83 with a heavy lower jaw ; large and pinned down shoulders ; a falling or divided croup, sunken eyes, which indicate a dull, sluggish and easily wearied animal ; narrow nostrils — which make the horse snort — a neck too tapering, and turned or inflected too much, which renders the mouth less secure, the gait more unequal and causes the horse to resist the hand. At all times connoisseurs and horse dealers demand breadth of chest, lean, Yigorous and very thin hams — the fetlock joint slender, the back even, the hoof high, the horn polished and shining, the breast- bone lean, the sole thick and concave : all these are qualities which contribute without question, to the strength and solidity of the horse.' " 'Do you know, my lady, what he is driving at ? and what is the end of all this ?' said the Chevalier. " 'No,' said she, 'but it is enough that for the moment he speaks like a Christian, and looks as if he had forgotten biit don't name it ! do not repeat that horrid name ! After all, it seems to me that we 84 are drifting in a definite direction ; when we shall arrive I do not know.' " 'Reassure j'ourself, lady,' replied the Doctor, 'I am not one of those dogs of the chase, minus scent and nose, that keep up a tremendous barking when they lose the trail, to make it appear that they are still on the right track — my method is much more skilful. I proceed like Plato — by elimination. Having separated from the subject the questions about which there is no dispute, and those about which it is wrong to dispute, it only remains to examine the differences of opinion upon which the judgment has to decide. Just here you will see Phidias triumph. So, do not make yourself uneasy if I appear to ramble, and be certain that my cross roads will meet at the end.' " ' I ask the privilege now of a little digression ; you will acknowledge later that it has been of decided advantage. Picture, then, a circle of duchesses of the time of the great king :— dress them a la mode of their period, about like that Nymph of 85 the Seine that we find in *Zeneyde, that Nymph who figured in the prologue of an opera of the time. Her coiffure was six feet high, made of feathers and precious stones. Her ribbons fell from her neck to her knees. The end of her grand train did not enter the theatre until a quarter of an hour after her body. Suppose that you could see these grand ladies in their elaborated gear of stufiEs — laces — flowers —balanc- ing their heads with superb indolence — harnessed with gew-gaws — from head to foot decked in muslins, ribbons, hoops and trimmings : — fancy these ma- jestic creatures in farthingales — which had the effect of making the best dressed woman to be the one that occupied the most space. Then picture to yourself a Grecian woman clothed in her tunic and peplum appearing before these elaborately dressed princesses of such respectable volume. Let it be that wingless Victory that you admire every day on your way here, that only yesterday you contemplated for at least two hours. You know the one I mean, a *Z^n^yde, by Antoine Hamilton. 86 shoulder bare, and the rest of the body veiled with a fine drapery which sets off and outlines the exquisite form, the waving and flowing folds of the drapery bearing the same relation to the grace of the body that a text of Scripture does to the commentary which clears and illustrates it — that Victory then — in her antique and beautiful costume — suppose her appearing to our duchesses, the peplum face to face with the farthingales, the drapery by the side of the dress trimmings : what merriment those ladies would have, and what numberless jokes ! Well, my lady, pardon the brusqueness of the transition. This is just what happened to the Ligurians. Titus Livius has related the circumstance in his history. " ' It was in a war with the Eomans, who, taught by the experience of the Punic Wars, had enrolled under their banners a detachment of Numidian cav- alry. Only accustomed to big fat shining chariot horses, when our Ligurians saw these Numidians ap- pear, mounted on their small Barb horses of slender form and with lean, hard bony head, the neck and 87 shoulders high and lank, and sides projecting, they were overcome with laughter. A little later their Hnes were broken, and a passage was forced — smoke rising in the air around told them of the burning of their villages. The Httle Barb horses had made an opening like a cannon-ball through the ranks of these heavy Ligurians who had been overcome with laughter, but whose mirth, to tell the truth, did not last long. " ' History does not say whether, profiting by this lesson, their admiration for their big chariot horses was modified. It is not probable that there was much change. " ' There are, my lady, in this world both roses and tulips, and people who love tulips are not apt to do justice to roses ; there are Madonnas after Rubens and Madonnas after Titian, and they who admire the former, are disposed to depreciate the latter, and vice versa : finally, there are farthingales which conceal the shape of the lady, and draperies which outline her form, and from the beginning of time, the farthingale has always scoffed at and despised the drapery.' " ' May God have mercy on your metaphors. But now I can see what you are driving at — I shall wait patiently until you are through. What have you to say, M. Abbot ? ' " The Abbot, stroking his chin lightly with his right hand, replied, with an ironic smile : " ' Since he quotes Homer, you will be able to say to him as Diomedes said to Nestor, " Thy coursers are heavy ; mount in my chariot and know something of the coursers of Troy." ' " ' You will not have to wait long, my lady,' said the Doctor, ' my Pegasus is in breath, and in two min- utes I shall be with you.' "'Providing,' said she, 'that you do not linger too long in Liguria, and among the duchesses in far- thingales.' " ' Let the farthingales go,' he replied, 'I have done with them ; but as for the Ligurians, remember, that they were not alone in their prejudices. The Romans, themselves, when they saw Hannibal's horses for the first time cared but little for them ; it was only by ex- 89 perience that they learned to do them justice. Truly, my lady, if you were more enduring, right here would be the place to point out — by the aid of Polybius — the role that the Barbs played in the Punic Wars. Scipio could not have conquered at Zama, if his friend Mass- inissa had not have come to his succor with a detach- ment of them. The famed Fabius, the temporizer, who always perched on the uplands never committed himself to meeting Hannibal on the plain. Do not imagine, with Rollin, that phlegmatic in temperament, he enjoyed his vacillating tactics. His predilection for the highlands came simply from the holy terror that the Numidian cavalry caused him. If the Ro- mans afterwards learned to employ Barbs as war horses, they had no desire to adopt them for the parade. Except in the case of the Scipios, C«sar, and some others, their schooling under the Greeks never robbed the Romans of a certain sense of rudeness — a certain native coarseness, — their best age was a short interval between two barbarisms. Under the Empire the co lossal was a la mode; the master of the world could 90 only mount a very large and massive liorse — this ap- pears clearly in the equestrian statue of Marcus Aure- lius. This abominable taste lingered until the Middle Ages. Therefore it is not astonishing to find that some horsemen considered that the most desirable sad- dles were those barbed with iron, whose solidity was their first and only merit. In tournaments and tilts it was by weight that horses were judged. In war only heavy cavalry were known, such as Polybius ridiculed, picturing the manifest contradiction that there was between the two words. Have you heard, my lady, of a certain Jean Taquet who has written of horses ? This Taquet wanted the neck round, fleshy from the lower jaw to the shoulders, that the animal might not have the fault of the horses of the Orient, whose necks bend too easily; for with the neck stiff and not at all flexi- ble, the animal could turn it easily and all at once. A mechanical horse, and one that could be turned by a secret crank, would have been the delight of Taquet. The Duke of New Castle, one of the great masters in the art of horsemanship, scoffed at this fancy. The au- 91 thor of the Perfect Marshal would not have done less, and he would hardly have approved of those elephants on which Frederick William I. made his six-footed cavalry mount to the great displeasure of Frederick the Great, who, scarcely on the throne, hastened to reform these monstrous squadrons. But New Castle himself, and Solleysel as well, while they both refuted Jean Taquet on one point, were unwilhngto abjure all the prejudices of that time. The great Buffon in his turn had nothing to do but translate in his magnificent style the rather tame prose of the Perject Marshal, and in his portrait of the model horse, while attempting to esti- mate the Arabian horse at his proper value, gave the palm after all, to the European race. The full flanks, the round croup, the well filled haunch, these are the points, according to Buffon and Solleysel which make up the beauty of the animal. They argue with Colum- elle, that as far as possible, at a distance a horse ought to appear round. But the important point is the dis- like that both — whether from their love of symmetiy or their fear of what they call hardness of form — pro- 92 fess to have for the reversed or stag's neck. Each ex- plains himself at length ; from the lower jaw to the chest the neck ought to descend in a slope, so that the upper part may be more advanced than the lower part, and that the superior and inferior lines of the neck may be two right lines forming the long sides of a truncated triangle. At the top of this inclined neck, they agree to place a small head with a narrow fore- head, ears very near together, and thick at the point where they join. They have laid down the law for all future usage ; the smallness of the head, the slope of the neck, and the large croup, these are the three articles of their catechism ; in truth, this slope is very near to their heart. " ' " The inferior part of the neck " said Buffon, "ought not to form any curve, but rather to incline for- ward ; if it were perpendicular it would be false." And Solleysel, in his chapter on sculptured horses, scoffs at certain sculptors : you will see presently to whom he refers. These sculptors, according to him, not taking into account the fact that they leave too 93 much space between the ears of the horse, place the head absurdly high, not making it fall perpeodicularly toward the front, and forgetting that the throat should be at least four fingers nearer to the lower jaw than to the side of the chest. "These poor wretches," said he, " give their horses stag's necks," for he returns always to that. He censures the painters of his time who imi- tate them. He says, "The only perfect horse ever produced from the hand of an artist is that of the great king in his portrait painted by Mignard.'' Go to see it at Versailles, and you will be overwhelmed when you look at it. There it is all, my lady ; the slope, the straight lines drawn as by a chalk line, the great king, Mignard, Versailles, each detail holds and enchains you. Imagine, I beg of you, the great king on a Barb horse ! He would be no better seated than the apes of Teniers would have been. If you wish the description of a horse which Buffon and the Perfect BLarshal would criticize as defective, you will find it among Arabian writers ; or better still, if you fear their metaphors, in a small treatise on horsemanship written at Athens, 94 probably between 399-395 B. C. The author, a cap- tain, is a man of good sense, genial, ready, and skilled equally with the sword and pen, writing as they wrote in those times, that is to say, in a style which made imitators despair. He was in no wise a jockey, but a philosopher, and even introduced his philosophy into his treatise on horsemanship. This Xenophon, since we must call him by name, describing what he thinks the most beautiful type of horse, and the one which he advises his friends to possess, expresses himself curiously enough, just as the Arabs do, without their metaphors. The beauty that he seeks in a horse is that which accompanies and bespeaks agility and sup- pleness. That the horse may rise easily on the fore- quarters, he must be not only agile in the bending of the leg, but must have supple and short loins — thus the belly, a parb which if too large makes the horse at once heavy and deformed, will appear small. Add to this, high withers, a full flank — a head hard and bony — ears small and far apart at the base, giving always a distinguished air, and you have the head of Buceph- 95 alus, a horse always highly prized by the Greeks ; for the name did not belong especially to Alex- ander's horse, but was common to an entire race. There should be no convexity in the forehead, no testa di carnero as Buffon would prefer, the fault I suppose of his having reflected too much on the subject, for let me ask you, my lady, how would this illustrious author himself have enjoyed the gift of this sheep's forehead, narrow and bulging, never considered the index of superior intelligence ? Add to this the large chest — prominent and muscular, and above all, note that, starting from the chest, the neck must not fall forward as in the boar, but it must rise toward the fore- lock. The neck of the horse must be hollowed out deeply underneath in the direction of the curve. Carrying the head thus, the horse will be less likely to pull hard, and will place the rider much more at his ease, whilst his spirited bearing will draw forth the admira- tion of all good judges. Thus speaks Xenophon : and Abd-el-Kader, describing the Barb horse, has said the same in more florid style. Well, madam, this horse 96 described by the Arabs, with the lean and at the same time undulating outlines — and with the reversed or ostrich neck, is precisely the horse which Buffon con- demns. If you would allow me here to reUeve my eloquence by the happy employment of a short apos- trophe, I would cry, ' ' Oh ! Buffon, great genius, in- spired painter of nature, you who rebel at the stag's neck and strong lines of Xenophon's horse, confess that the style of this captain seems hard, and that the meagre Attic graces displease you, on account of a certain irregularity which your frills and ruffles could never accept." ' " " 'Doctor,' said the Marquise, 'enjoy your apos- trophes as much as you please, but do not forget that I arrived sometime since, and am waiting for you.' 'Ah ! my lady,' said the Chevalier, 'do not disturb his pleasure ; since he himself has compared himself to a dog of the chase — see how he resembles at this very moment those whom his hero Xenophon has described. What has he said ? "Slwwing joy as soon as they have caught the trail, casting their eyes all about, betraying 97 iJieif ardor by the movement of tJie head and the chang- ing positions of the body." Again, "they shoot forward, backward, their high spirits, their transports of joy, all betoken that they are on the eve of touching victory." ' " 'I do more than touch it, I have forced the hare in his lair ; henceforth, he cannot escape me. To see the Barb horse, my lady, the horse of Xenophon, you have only to raise your eyes. He is precisely the horse of Phidias, the horse of the Parthenon, the horse that we celebrate.' " ' At last,' said she, sighing. " ' Yes, my lady, this horse with the thick body and strongly marked contour, whose whole frame stands out in such surprising relief, I can only describe in borrowing the words, of the Emir Abd-el-Kader — describing the Barb horse — " Horses," said he, " although of one family, are of two different kinds — the first is the Arab race, to which belongs the Barb ; the second, is that of the Ber-adi/is.'' You understand me, it is on the horse with the curve, the round horse, on the Beradin that Mignard has seated the great 7 98 king ; this is the horse who so enchanted the Perfect Marshal. " Note further," said the Emir, that " the greatest enemy of the horse is fat ! Let your horse have hollowed out flanks, free of flesh ; let him have three large points, the forehead, the chest and the croup ; let his back be short, his anterior limbs long ; let his ears resemble the frightened antelope in the midst of the herd ; let each of his nostrils resemble the den of the lion, the wind going out as he breathes ; let him have the neck and swiftness of the ostrich, the sharpness, the grace, the eye and the mouth of the gazelle." You see, my lady, that the Emir has himself described our horse exactly. Let me recall to you what he wrote to Gen. Daumas : " If in extend- ing his neck, to drink in a low brook, a horse rests upright on his forelegs, without bending on one of his forefeet then he is perfectly in keeping ; he is a true born horse." And notice this brother of our horse a Httle further on to the right, just above your head, who, while waiting to be mounted, bends his long neck to the ground to chase away with his muzzle 99 an insect which stings his feet ; without appearing to, he answers to the description of the Emir. So the horse of Phidias is not a Beradin, it is a Hoor, a drinker of the air, a gazelle horse, and now you under- stand who are the sculptors, criticized so severely by Solleysel.' " 'It seems to me that the doctor is right,' said the Marchioness. " 'The result of my demonstration,' continued the Doctor, in a triumphant tone, 'is that Phidias did not employ any process of eclecticism, and that he did not idealize the beauty of the horse by creating an ideal horse, or by conferriug on him liberally the combined merits of numerous races.' Here the Marchioness interrupted him again, saying : •' 'Tell us, Doctor, to arrive at your conclusion, was there any necessity to make use of all these detours and farthingales and tulips and apostrophes ? Assuredly you have made a rare discovery, and you are very generous to allow us to share it with you. 100 How, I ask, could this glorious friend of Pericles liave been an eclectic ? "We allow that privilege to a Lysip- pus and a Mengs ; but such fancies scarcely belong to Phidias or to Leonardo da Vinci. Ask our friend the Abbot, who rather appeared to scoff at you.' " The Abbot had resumed his pose of the lion- headed goddess, quite in keeping with his face and physiognomy. If you wish to see the Abbot as I saw him at Athens, fancy a captive lion gradually grown accustomed to his cage. Crouching before the grating of his prison, the tawny animal sleeps with his eye half closed, but at intervals, haunted by some sudden vision of the desert — his mane rises erect — his heavy eyelid slowly opens— and his fiery eyeball shoots out a sudden flame. "It was one of these glances that the Abbot darted forth, when he replied in a sombre voice to the Marquise : " 'Assuredly the divine sculptor knew from birth that in art as in life — all which lives — all which is worthy of living, is composed not of separate parts 101 — but of parts cemented, united, touching each other — combined and joined into one and the same thing. He knew that hybridation — a process of the flower garden, has nothing to do with poetry and sculpture. He knew with scientific certainty that God is the Supreme Logician, and the principal effort of the wise should be to appropriate that logic — as Prometheus stole fire from Heaven. He knew above all, that a thing is only beautiful in its individual condition — that the form of a thing is its limitation — that if you suppress the limitations of being — you suppress its outHnes. A certain Jew of my acquaintance has said "All determination is a negation.' ' Yes, the limits of being are sacred ; it is by that means that they manifest themselves ; free them from all which restrains, and you will find it is from existence itself that you have delivered them. Do not confound the indeterminate with the infinite. God himself would be but a vain phantom, if he did not possess the power to limit himself incessantly. It is the character of spirit. . . .' 102 "In uttering these words, the Abbot, who had unconsciously become animated — realized that we were gazing at him with open mouths Suddenly his two great eyes half closing — he darted one of his lion glances at us. 'Oh ! poor worms of the earth,' he cried apparently from his heart, like the lion of Marot. "Then the Doctor took up the thread of his discourse again and finished it in the most studied manner. " 'And now behold why the horses of Phidias are Barb horses ! Acknowledge, my lady, that my eloquence has accomplished miracles A moment ago it brought sleep to my lord — who complains constantly of insomnia, caused, he declares, by the climate of Athens — again, untying the tongue of the Abbot — it forces him to say more in one breath than he says ordinarily in one day.' "Afterwards he added: 'you speak admirably. Monsieur Abbot. True speculator that you are, you fly like the birds : as for me, I am content to walk, not being able to do anything better : in truth, I prefer 103 my own way, for although I have the highest regard for your speculations, I am enchanted to have verified with my eyes, aided by the slight analysis which you have beard, that our subject under discussion is a Barb horse — it is good in this world to be very sure. Only, what the Abbot could explain better than myself, my friends, is at what point Phidias, so far from seeking to modify the type that he represented — by adding foreign elements to his creation actually undertook to portray him more strictly than nature even could do, and consequently was, if I dare to say so, more natural than nature herself ! A.s for borrowed majesty, and the magnificence of attitudes — do not attempt to seek them here, but at Versailles, on the canvas of Mignard. In the Barb horse, in the horse of Phidias, what strikes and arrests the attention and astonishment is the concentrated strength, "which the more it is restrained the more it overpowers.' " At this point of his discourse, leaviag his place to lean against one of the columns of the portico, and pointing with his finger to the metope, ' Raise your 104 eyes,' he said, ' and gaze on him, if you can stand the dazzling effect of the snnHght on the marble ! He is all muscle and nerve ; we forget that his is not living flesh. Look at the trembling folds of the neck, as they stand out at the line of the curve. Look at those distended veins which mark the birth of the belly, the limbs pawing the air, the lean head and arched neck. Throughout — strength, power and ar- dor are exhibited. He trembles, he rises erect, his nostrils are smoking, his eye is on fire. If he began to neigh, the temple would shake on its foundations, and if he ran away But fear not, the sculptor holds the rein, is master of himself. The procession in which he is about to join will not be troubled, for faithful to the genius of his race, this horse is the most intelligent, the most cautious, the most spiritual of all horses. Oh! my well beloved Barb, who could adequately sound your praises. "When Hannibal, according to Polybius, had arrived at the summit of the Alps, he decided to make a halt of two days to wait for the laggards who wandered here 105 and there among the ravines and passes of the moun- tains, but the Numidian horses, with their penetrating eyes discovering the path of the army, won their way back and enabled all to rejoin Hannibal before the set time for resuming the march had come. And thou wast a Barb ! I would stake my life on it thou glori- ous Aura of the Corinthian Pheidolas, who losing thy rider at the very beginning of the race, didst not stop to wait for liim, but jealous for his honor, continued the course, turned at the goal, came back with bridle hanging, to tlie starting post, and triumphantly pre- sented thyself with bowed head before the presiding officials, to receive from their hands the sacred crown. What nonsense to bring Mignard's palfrey into compe- tition with ours ! Our horse is wonderfully conscious of where he is, and what he does ; he has divined long since that he is about to take part in Ihe festival of Minerva. If he rises under the hand, it is to display his graces. A little child can walk boldly in front of him and have nothing more to fear than the breath of his lion-like nostrils. Do you know what that horse 106 is ? He is a soul ; yes, truly, only so can he be de- scribed. Why arp. you astonished ? Xenophon recog- nized that there is a soul in the horse, and was rather set at nought by those English veterinary surgeons of a past age, who refused the noble animal even a brain. The soul of the horse ! that word occurs contiaually in Xenophon's Treatise. " The most important part of a horse to know is his soul." He requires it to be proud but generous, ardent but controlling its fire ; he says to the rider who wishes to excel '' Be careful, thou wilt only succeed if thy horse has some soul." ' " ' The soul is certainly not wanting in this horse of Phidias. This horse is not, as we are (if we must believe the catechism), composed of a body and soul. His body is indeed his soul. Soul appears throughout, from the raised ear to the lifted tail. Would you contrast him with some of the finest horses in the world ? There are none equal to him. Do you recall those horses outlined in red chalk by Leonardo da Vinci ? You saw them prancing, trotting, gallop- ing, on the Ambrosian road, sketched from the front, 107 and in profile. Do you recollect among others a cer- tain apocalyptic horse mounted by a devil armed with a whip ? Do you remember those bony limbs, that back and infinite belly, the scattered and flowing mane, the heavy jaw, the formidable grin of the mouth which breathes fire, all harmonizing so wonderfully with the diabolical horn on the forehead? Every- thing about him combines to give the animal an ex- pression of frightful beastliness. And behold how genius imprints the seal of unity and harmony on her works, and how the Leonardos, and the Phidian School derived from God that logic of which the Abbot boasts. " 'And moreover,' continued he, lowering his voice, 'at moments that horse up there, that gracious, noble, generous courser, dare I say it ? inspires me almost with a secret fear, a fear very different from any that one could feel for the horse of Leonardo. He is so true, no natural, that as I said before, one forgets that he is made of stone. At times the illusion is complete. As was the case with you, my lady, one sees his head move, his limbs tremble, his 108 muscles swell, his eyes flash — you find yourself imag- ining that you have seen him before — not on the frieze of a temple, but sporting on the plain, with that proud and spirited air that Xenophon describes, or as the Arabs would say, with the indolent and superb gait of a sultan — you have seen him galloping on the edge of a precipice — or breathing the air of the moun- tains with dilated nostrils. Yet the longer you gaze on him, the more the certainty forces itself upon j'ou that this horse, so natural, and so lifelike, has never come under the touch of the hand of nature, that he can never meet his equal in the pastures of Thessaly, or in the solitudes of the desert. What shall I say ? There is something in him which makes you shudder. This horse, after all, is he really a horse? He has some- thing of the human in his expression. Yes, there is something of a man, or something grander than man. As we speak of him, he looks at us, he judges us, he compares proudly in the depths of his soul, . his immortal vigor and our weakness, his divine joys and our miseries. What if this horse were a god, 109 and not a horse ? But why should we fear ? As we gaze, we ourselves shorten the distance which separates us from him— our thoughts rise, his strength and beauty penetrate the inmost recesses of our soul. Small though we are, we fear him no more, but filled with admiration, can only exclaim, "Thou art the force which knows and possesses itself. Thou art the beauty which enjoys itself. Thou art that which is best and most precious in humanity !" ' " When the Doctor had thus terminated his peroration, the Marquise complimented him on his discourse, the end of which had surpassed her expec- tations. She assured him that although she had ques- tioned until then his faculty for admiring the Barb, she was now forced to retract. 'Meanwhile, I suspect,' she added, 'that your enthusiasm was less for the horse than for your own demonstration, which seems to be entirely satisfactory to you. Ah ! La Fontaine has well said : "Son fait consistait en adresse ; Quelques termes de I'art, beaucoup de hardiesse, 110 Du hasard quelque fois, tout cela concourait, Tout cela bien souvent faisait crier miracle." * " 'But surely, Doctor, it cannot be denied but that you have a great fund of generosity ; truly, you are not bitter. You have glorified Barb horses. Yet meanwhile, if my memory serves me, a certain mis- chance happened to you with one of them.' " 'Oh ! my lady, I beg of you, forget that,' inter- rupted he. 'I have pardoned him. Although Geronte excused Scapin he did not like to recall the blows which .... But believe me, madam, I have now finished. Let us awaken my lord, for the sun has found us here, and we had better move to the other side of the colonnade.' " Saying this, he drew my lord gently by the arm, who trembling rubbed his eyes, opened them, and looking at us, said : " 'My friends, I am very glad that yon have awaliened me, for I was having bad dreams, while I *His deed consisted in address Some terms of art — and much boldness^ In chance sometimes — and all combined — To make one often say — a miracle. Ill slept. As the Doctor was talking of Nystean horses, I dreamed that the Marquise sent me to Persia with a commission to buy one. After superhuman efforts I had the satisfaction of putting my hand on some superb hackneys, that I determined it would be my pleasure to present to her. On the way home the unfortunate beasts faded away before my eyes, and when I arrived I could only offer to my niece worn out and miserable nags, wind broken and foundered. Judge of the reception that she gave me.' " CHAPTER III. "When we were installed at the north extremity of the portico, the Marquise said to the Chevalier, 'I see. Monsieur, that you are very anxious to speak. Begin then, I invite you ; only I entreat you to avoid sallies of wit, emphasis, declaration, ambitious flights of fancy, ambiguities, a florid and picturesque style, cloudiness, vagueness, bombast and all sorts of rigma- roles. Be clear, concise, say what you want to say without dwelling upon it from noon to midnight — after 112 the manner of our dear Doctor. These are the recommendations which my grandmother gave me when I was making ready to recite to her. I see her now with her large lace head dress, and her yellow ribbons. She adored yellow, and pretended that all good language had the color of the jonquil. She also wrote on the title page of every book that pleased her this sentence from her favorite poet "Et lajonquille eucor Off re a mon ceil ravi la paleur de son or." " 'On the other hand, red and sky blue rasped her nerves. My grandmother was charming. She had a romantic turn which enchanted me. In my childhood I went to see her every day in the dusk of the evening. Her great delight was to tell me short stories whilst she plaited my hair iu Chinese fashion. She would place a screen before the lamp and sing : * "Iva pres de douce berg^re Beau pastoureaii parle d'amour, Derobe un instant ta lumiere ! II leur suflStd'uu demi — jour." *Thus near the gentle shepherdess The beautiful young shepherd speaks of love, Take away an instant the light It sufl5ces them to have twilight. 113 Then tieing up my hair, she would say "Go on, little one ; it is your turn now ; tell me a Story and put jonquUs in it."' " 'That grandmother,' said my lord aside to me, 'was an insupportable fool, and she it was with her jonquils and her pastorals who first began to derange the mind of the Marquise. It is impossible to tell you how she bored me. ' " 'And you were aware of it ?' " 'Scarcely out of my room it would attack me like a stroke of apoplexy.' " ' So M. Chevalier,' the Marquise continued : ' if you care to do so, try the yellow style. In any event avoid figures of speech and apostrophes. If you repeat the exploits of Aura, tell them simply, as Xenophon would have done, "Aura lost her rider in the beginning of the race," and do not cry out like a ranter, "Oh ! incomparable Aura, thou who having lost thy rider didst conquer, etc." This style of speaking is marvellous in the mouth of a gendarme arresting a criminal in the street. "Oh wretch, thou hast made me run ; behold 114 thy self caught at last . " But the gendarmes — though very useful people in their way — when it comes to a matter of eloquence —are not masters of the art. Above all, be as brief as possible. And you gentlemen, for your part, do not interrupt him — for if you do, we shall be here until almost nightfall — which would upset Ugly entirely, for I have promised him to be back before he has finished his siesta.' The Chevalier preparing to speak, stroked his chin, ran his fingers through his hair, looked at a cameo ring on the index finger of his left hand, and then began as follows ; " 'My lady, I am unfortunate enough not to know the theory of the yellow style of writing, but since you like precision and clearness, to please you, I will try to be clear and precise. To this end I will not wrap the plan of my discourse in mysterious obscurity, nor will I give you one of those visions of eloquence in which logic, Enlac6e et roul^e en feston, Tourne comme un r^bus autour d'un mirliton.* *Entwined and enrolled in a garland Revolves like a rebus around a reed-pipe. 115 I do not possess the art of serving to order a denouement well cooked. I shall explain to you as clearly as possible, what I propose to demonstrate. I agree with what has been said. Our horse was a Barb, but that is not enough to have determined to what race he belongs. Phidias has not represented on the frieze of the Parthenon the wild Hoor — the drinker of air on the Desert of Sahara, but the Barb adopted by Greece — living in Greece — and trained to the "principles of Grecian horsemanship. '"Grecian art was art in its second power. Thanks to an education founded on gymnastics and music — the national life — that the poets and sculptors reproduce in their works, was itself orginally derived from poetry and sculpture. The genius, thecustoms, and the culture of the people, have the same relation to the artist who is inspired by them, that a practical work- man outlining a statue bears to the sculptor who is to finish it. In Greece the practical workman who dug out the material that the professional artist used in his work, had himself the soul of an artist. It is this 116 that makes me say that Greek art was art in its second power. And now let us return to the horse — the Barb courser trained according to the method of Simon and of Xenophon was a veritable work of art, and Phidias in his equestrian sculpture in glorifying the aesthetic character of Greek horsemanship has only reproduced it. Starting with this principle I wiU be able to correct two propositions advanced by the Doctor. In defining our horse he has said that he has a soul ; he has added also that this soul has some- thing human in it, which surprises and confounds. I shall demonstrate that our noble Barb, my lady, owns only half of a soul, and that that humanity, which appears in him, is not a miracle, but a natural phe- nomenon — of which the artist himself furnishes the explanation. Having proved this much, I shall feel that I have added something to the eulogies that have been bestowed upon the chef-d'oeuvre.' " 'Well,' said the Marquise, 'truly I do not see any jonquils yet ; I must confess your style seems even a little obscure. I beg of you — let there be no mathe- 117 matical formulas, for I have never in my life been able to say my tables correctly, and algebra is a closed book to me.' " 'It is very difficult to satisfy you,' said the Chevalier, evidently somewhat annoyed, 'but if you will have the patience to listen, I flatter myself you will not have difficulty in understanding me. ' The Marquise inclined her head profoundly, and the Chev- alier continued as follows : " 'On the west front of the Parthenon, so cruelly stripped by Lord Elgin, and where the only figures which are left at the present day are those of Cecrops and his daughter — the sculptor, whether Alcamenes or Phidias, I know not which, has sketched, as Pausanias tells us, the quarrel between Neptune and Minerva — when they were disputing the possession of Attica — and the right to name the new born city. Choosing among several traditions that one which seemed to furnish the happiest motive to his ai-t — the sculptor represented the horse springing from the earth at the word of Neptune, but on the instant 118 subdued by the powerful hand of Minerva. Under the eyes of her irritated rival — Minerva harnessed him without effort to a chariot mounted by Erechtheus and Victory. This legend explains to us why it is that the horse is consecrated to two divinities, one of whom gave him to man, while the other taught man the art of training and making him useful. Why the birth of the horse was referred to Neptune is very simple : the worship of this god according to Herodo- tus passed from Africa into Greece — it was from Attica that, by the enterprise of the Phoenicians, the horse was brought to the Hellenic peninsula. I could bring forward more than one proof of this : — we know, for a certainty, that the Phoenicians who established trading posts along the shores of Greece, carried oa a great business in African horses — but, my lady appearing to dishke quotations, I will not abuse my privilege, and will spare her the fatigue of following me through the details of a demonstration, which after all might seem idle to her. It suffices that Neptune and the horse having come io Greece from the same 119 region and by the same route, it was natural that the legend should represent the god as giving birth to the horse by striking with his trident on the rock of the Acropolis, or according to the version of Lucan, on a mountain in Thessaly. This much is certain, however, that by general consent of the Greeks, the horse was always held to be a foreign importation. In the divin- ing art of the Telmissians the horse was employed as a symbol to designate foreign nations. Tradition varied considerably as to the part which should be attributed to Neptune in the training of the horse. Some insisted that the donor of the most precious of quadrupeds must have been the first instructor — others on the contrary believed that the god of the waves had given the horse to man still wild — trembling and furious as the winds and waves. They added further, that, angry at the bold hands which had dared to touch his work, and to force to obedience this indomitable soul — : into which he had breathed something of the genius of the tempests, the god was pleased to disconcert the calculations of this criminal art in spreading among 120 herds of horses that icUd and tcandering spirit, which is the despair of horsemen. In several places altars were raised to Neptune, the frightener of horses, PoseirJxm Taroxippus,^ and efforts were made bj sacrifices to dissipate this fatal influence, of which Hippolytus was the most famous and the most de- plorable victim. La frayeur les emporte ; et, sonrds a cette fois, lis ne connaissent pins ni le frein, ni la voix ; En efforts impnissants lenr maitre se consume, lis rongissent le mors d'une sauglante ecume ; On dit qu'on a vu meme, en ce desordre affreus, Un dieu qui d'aigaillous pressait leur flinc poudreux.t *Poseidon, the name of Neptune among the Greeks. He was a brother of Zeus, Hades, Hera, Hestia and Demeter, and it was determined by law that he should rule over the sea. The palace of Poseidon was in the depth of the sea, where he kept his horses with brazen hoofs and golden manes. With these horses he rode in a chariot over the waves of the sea, which became smooth as he approached, and the monsters of the deep recognized him and played aroand his chariot. A statue of this deity was placed near the Race Ground at Elis, and his protection was implored that no harm might hap- pen to the horses during the games. t" Fear lends them wings ; deaf to his voice for once And heedless of the curb, they onward fly ; Their master wastes his strength in efforts vain With foam and blood each courser's bit is red ; Some say a god amid the wild disorder. Is seen with goads pricking their dusty flanks." Jiacine—Ph€AxaL, Act V; Scene 3. 121 " 'Oh ! Heavenly Wisdom, Pallas Athena, in whom force is united with prudence, was it not natural to attribute to you the honor of having checked the fire and chained the will of the most ardent and the most willing of animals ?' " This apostrophe escaped so involuntarily from the enthusiastic Chevalier, that the Marquise was not scandalized. She had grown attentive, and her tranquillity communicated itself to all except my lord, who made vain efforts to choke his convulsive yawns. '"Let us recall,' continaed the Chevalier, 'the surprise mingled with terror that the Mexicans and the Peruvians felt at the sight of the first horses brought into the New World by the conquering Spaniards. We shall not then be astonished that the Greeks honored the divinity who subjugated the horse even more than the one who created him — nor that the Athenians were glad to refer the glory of having successfully bridled and saddled the horse to that divine virgin — who represented so peculiarly their character and national civilization. This is not to 122 infer that the equestrian art as practiced by the Greeks was created at once complete in all its parts. The Greeks were not originators, their institutions — in germ and outHne — came from other countries. Their customs, usages, laws, arts, sciences, their indus- tries, even their gods — all were derived primarily from the Orient — but at the hands of these skilful people however, everything was transformed, im- proved, made more beautiful ; they stamped what they borrowed with the seal of their remarkable genius : they were more original if possible in their imitations than the originators whose lines they fol- lowed — the East had outlined, the Greeks brought all to perfection. Witness what their sculptors made of the shapeless divinities that Africa, Phoenicia and Egypt had bequeathed to them, sublime metamor- phosis, which makes it well nigh impossible to recog- nize in the virgin of the Parthenon and her glorious shield, the Libyan Neith* and her goatskin. And, I *Among the attributes of Minerva, some of those apper- taining to the Egyptian Neith have been intermingled. The 123 ask, which of the races of Greece, can dispute ■with the Athenians this art of appropriating and perfecting everything ? Xenophon says of them, that thanks to their sway of the sea, which enabled them to speak the languages of all peoples, and to study at their leisure all manners and customs, they were able to attain for themselves a happy mingling of all that could be known among Greeks and Barbarians !' " In spite of my wrapt attention I had a distrac- tion at this stage of the lecture, which hindered me from following it. From my position I perceived one of the caryatides of the small tribune of the Erech- theum. The incomparable grace of that antique virgin absorbed me for a few moments. When I came out worship of Neith was brought by a colony from Sais to Athens, and Neith received from Phtha the web of nature, and labored upon its mysterious tissue. How comes it that Minerva, who disdains not employments of so peaceful a nature, can be also the goddess of war and of combat? It is because the casts of warriors in Egypt were consecrated to Neith, as soon as they carried on their rings the scara- bseus, her symbol. Why does Minerva arrayed in other re- spects with all the attributes of ideal beauty, bear on her segis the frightful visage of Medusa ? The Gorgons head is here nothing more than that urn of the Nile, surmounted with a 124 of my re very the Chevalier was discussing the equip- ment of the horse. The Greeks rode without stirrups, bare back, or oq a saddle consisting of a single panel of sheep-skin, or often of a piece of cloth folded several times, and so forming a pillion. This accord- ing to the Chevalier came from the Phoenicians, and was formerly in usage on the Asiatic and African coasts of the Mediterranean. Here he endeavored to show the very recent origin of the present harnessing of a horse among the Arabs. The very large stir- rups into which they thrust the whole foot, and on which the whole weight of the body is carried, their saddle a Teerbmiss and with a cantle, all of this they borrowed from the false civilization of the Lower Empire. hnman head, and svirronnded with serpents, which in Egypt continued a mute and impressive symbol, while in Greece it became the subject of a poetical and lengthy narrative. Thus the Greek irinerva is originally a compound of incoherent ideas drawn from difiFerent mythologies and collected together from distant lands. And yet from this same combination of attributes there re- sults a divinity perfectly conformed to the spirit of the Greek 125 "The saddle bow, pommel and cantle were in- vented in Constantinople, apparently toward the middle of the fourth century. Even later than this the stirrup came into use, appearing for the first time in the Treatise on the Art of War, written by the Emperor Maurice, at the end of the sixth century. These Byzan- tine innovations spread everywhere. It is beyond question, that the Turks, for example — adopted with the saddles and spurs, all the administrative forms of the Lower Empire— and many a usage which seems little in accord with their primitive genius. So power- ful is the influence of Byzantium, so great is her prestige and sway over man ! Under the same influence spreading by degrees, the Barbarians of the "West, among whom formerly, according to Tacitus, it was held in dishonor, adopted the saddle with spurs. This polytheism, a. diviuity elegant of mien, passionate, majestic, who descends occasionally to earth, mingles in the affairs of men, and persecutes or protects heroes. In order to render her more completely indigenous, Arcadia is assigned as her native land, and she is fabled to have seen the light in the City of Aliphera. Finally the olive is given her as her favorite tree, and from henceforth she is completely Grecian. In this way every trace of her foreign origin is made to disappear. Nothing can be 126 saddle with its trappings formed a sort of packing case, into which the rider fitted up to his loins. The ancient Greeks took no interest in snch innovations ; they belieTed that the rider, deprived of ease by an ar- tificial positioH, wonld seek the solidity of his seat in his own erect position, and in his own balance. In the eighteenth centnry when La Gueriniere reformed horsemanship, he retomed to the antiqae in doing away with the trappings of the saddle with stirrups. On the same principle, the Greeks could not persuade themselves to use stirrnps- As ion the cavaher of the Middle Ages, very ridicolons were his stiff legs, kept at a distance from the hoise, and only by jerks com- ing closer. With the Greeks the great point was the adherence and fixedness of the knee ; the principal more different than the Neith of Egypt and the Minerva of the Iliad, and no one would ever recognize the goddess who pro- tects Diomedes and Ulysses in one of those secret a&irs of na- ture, personified by the priests of Egypt and Phoenicia. As regards the Greek name of Minerva, it may be remarked that it would seem to be of Egyptian origin, and formed from the name of Neith, by inverting the order of the letters. The Latin appellation Minerva is derived from the Etrurian Menfra. — Redford's Ancimt Sculpture. 127 part of the body being erect, or leaning slightly for- ward, below the knee the limb must hang loose and free, so that if being lax, it were to be knocked, it would yield, and the thigh would not be hurt. Need I add that nobility of position and grace of posture were as much required of the horseman as of the gymnast. It belonged to the Greeks, a people most sensible to natural beauties, to discover the theory and perfect the practice of the art of horsemanship. The Athenians who neither at Marathon nor at Platcea had any cavalry, very soon developed it when they felt the need, just as they had with their marine service. It was but a short time until their exhibitions of horse- manship proved the most beautiful ornaments of their fetes. Everyone knows the role that their cavalcades played in the Panathenaic procession. In a short time the breeding and education of horses became the study and intense admiration of the jeunesse doree. To be admitted into a fashionable club, to frequent the school of Gorgias, and to run, such were the marks by which the ^lite of Athens were recognized, the horse 128 being as important an accessory to polite life as the political club, and the skilled rider not less aristocratic than the sophist. So thought the briUant youth of that day, and this inordinate taste for the turf drew deep sighs from the poor Strepsiade, for it engrossed his son Phidippides*, to such a degree that even in his sleep he dreamed of stables, steeple chases and koppatias. Just here my eyes fell on the cary- atides ; again, I indulged in a second revery longer than the first. When I broke away from the distraction, the Chevalier was saying : " 'Horsemanship is linked closely with education ; in fact, it is only a chapter of education ; as the child is trained, so in the same way is the horse. Read at the same time Plato on the formation of man's character, and Xenophon quoting Simon's practical theories for training a horse. You will find in each the same principles and methods. Athenian education *A celebrated courier, who ran from Athens.to Lacedaemon, a distance of about 152 English miles, in two days, to ask of the Lacedsemous assistance agaiiist the Persians. The Athenians raised a temple to his memory. 129 was as different as possible from that of the Middle Ages, and from that asceticism, which, putting nature under the ban, blasted happiness with anathemas, and extolled sadness, harshness and hair-cloth, enjoin- ing man to smother his passions under the ashes of penitence, and to present to God as an acceptable offering the researches of a heart cruelly bent on self- torment and self-destruction. From a wiser stand- point and respecting the laws and necessities of human nature, Athenian education disciplined with- out restraining ; it did not favor that intense virtue which courts the self-abnegations of a life deprived of enjoyment. Athenian education leaned rather to- ward that voluntary and easy submission to law and order, that is the portion of hearts, which by a careful training of the reasoning faculty, have learned to take pleasure in obedience, and to conform inclination to duty. Nourished with the milk of that ancient prudence, souls grew freely : there was no effort to restrain, or repress, nor in fact to control them in any way : there was no attempt to slacken their 130 fire, nor weaken the source ; there was no fear that their strength would wax into violence, nor their trans- ports into fury. An intuitive gentleness, combined with a natural enthusiasm, and a measure of passion, modified their desires so that they were never unreas- onable ; masters in self-control, they resisted the allurements of fancy without effort. They sighed for goodness, as corrupt souls covet evil pleasures. Nothing was studied with them, there was no afifecta- tion, no constraint, and no stiffness. To the calm and strong resolution of mature age, they joined a charm- ing simplicity and a kindly frankness, which perpetu ated in them the graces of childhood, and gave to their virtues an air of eternal youth. Capable of every- thing, they prided themselves on nothing: their wisdom was their happiness and their health : they fled from disorder as they would from suffering ; they avoided carefully all that would injure their beauty. A secret rhythm controlled their subtlest movements, vibrating in the depth of these well governed souls, like the gentle sound of a fete, in which a divinity 131 crowned with flowers was the supreme influence. Listen to Plato addressing his fellow-citizens, whom he seldom or never flattered : " When these Athen- ians are good" — he says — " they are good to the highest degree ; in truth they are the only people who do not owe their virtue to an enforced training : their goodness — in a way — is innate : perhaps it would be better to say it is a gift from the gods, free and un- varnished !" This same Plato reveals to us the secret of that national education which produces such beauti- ful results. " There is bo animal," said he, "whose tongue or body when young is in repose ; all young animals make an incessant effort to move and cry : some jump and leap about, dancing or frolicking as if from unbounded pleasure : others fill the air with a thousand different cries ; but no animal carries loithia itself & sense of order, the effect of which is percepti- ble. They are ignorant by nature of what we call measure and harmony. These qualities belong to the divinities who preside at our fetes : we owe to the Muses, and Apollo and Bacchus, our consciousness of 132 sentiment and harmony, together with that of pleasure. Pleasure under the direction of the gods — rules our movements — and teaches us to form between one another a kind of link by the union of our songs and dances." You see the Athenian education sent souls to study virtue at the school of beauty. Observing carefully their natural movements, it submitted them to the gentle rule of harmony, and thus enlisted music in the training of the passions. " ' Exactly what Plato prescribes for the child, Xenophon recommends for the training of the horse ; not to force, not to bring him into subjection by brutal methods, but to break him in gradually, to supple him and to develop by degrees his natural qualities, above all to make him take pleasure in marks of submission, -in feats of strength and gentleness, that are required of him, to render obedience more agreeable to him than resistance : in a word to inspire him with the consciousness of measure and harmony, as weU as with that of pleasure, and in his own way, to teach him music. This is, according to Xenophon, the way in 133 which a horse can be best trained. This system would have seemed odd indeed to the horsemen of the Middle Ages : they were not concerned about giving joy to the horse. They forgot that intelligence and a desire for happiness could enter into his composition. The care and attention that they did not trouble themselves to bestow on children, they could hardly be expected to show for colts. Moreover, horsemanship, as an art, was unknown in the Middle Ages : like most other arts it did not reappear in the West until the epoch of the Renaissance, and was first cultivated in the country which rescued it from antiquity. The author of that revival was a Neapolitan gentleman, Federigo Grison. At Naples and at Eome the first eques- trian academies were founded : after Grison appeared Pignatelli, whose teachings were propagated in France by his disciples la Broue and Pluvinel. But it is note- worthy that moderns were very slow in accepting ancient methods. What Montaigne wrote on this point in the sixteenth century was practically lost in the void. In order that the genius of the Renaissance should do 134 justice to the methods, follies and prejudices which had so long dishonored pedagogy, it was necessary for Jean Jacques to appear in open attack on the close re- lationship between the instruction of men and horses. It was a contemporary of Jean Jacques, La Gueriniere, who succeeded in making the rules of nature, and of the Greeks available for horsemanship. The famous Orison, a great man in his generation, and who seems to have followed Xenophon on more than one point iiad not succeeded in abolishing that brutality which was still the custom of his time, wedded, I can hardly say how, to the study of a refined politeness. He knew no better than to recommend violent and frequent use of the spur to arouse the action, and supple the liind-quarters : to deaden the fire of the horse, he Teoommended running long distances at a furious pace ; he treated the horse not as a friend but as a slave, whose caprices and resistance it was necessary to reduce without pity. "I advise you" he writes, "when the horse is stubborn, when he tosses his head, rises on his hind legs, or pulls on the bridle, or in 135 case of other notable faults, to chastise him with a loud and terrible voice, and say angrily, in a loud threatening voice — whoa there ! whoa there — call him a wretch, a brute, whatever comes to your mind, but speak harshly !" " ' Is not this the very picture of those school- masters, crazy with anger, whom Montaigne repri- manded, and who compelled him to say " What a curious way of arousing an appetite for their lessons in these tender and timid souls — this of guiding them with a frightful tongue, and armed with a whip ! " Far otherwise spoke the wise student of Socrates on the banks of the beautiful Cephissus, to his horse. It is safe to say that in that school, as Montaigne would have had it, Joy, Mirth, Flora and the Graces ruled the movements : like Montaigne, he inculcated in the- ory and practice, that the principal recreations of the scholar should in kind be in harmony with his instruc- tions. Hear him recommend that the training of the colt should be such as to make him a friend of man ; a lover of man; a, philanthropist; and to this end he 136 advises that he shall never be allowed to suffer save when alone, all cause of uneasiness being removed by the presence and thoughtful care of his master. ' ' Thus ' ' said he, " he will learn to enjoy and even to desire the presence of man. Let great care also be taken to change the place, and limit the duration of his work. The result will be that the horse will learn not to worry, and will do what is demanded of him with greater pleasure. As soon as you have won from him a token of obedience, be careful to show your gratification, by according him some relaxation, or making him do something that he likes to do. And besides : " Bad treatment only produces awk- ward and defective positions ; with horses, nothing is gained by anger ; for anger foresees nothing, and what it does by force is always followed by repent- ance: The first point is to avoid everything which frets the animal : abruptness troubles an impatient horse, as sudden noises and surprises trouble man ; it is the horse's nature to worry at everything sudden and unexpected. If he becomes fiery, to master him 137 it is only necessary to draw the reins gently, and not suddenly ; to bring him in gradually, and without vio- lence. When you see that he carries his head high, and enjoys the light hand, it is well not tb fret him by making him work harder, but on the contrary to caress him, as though he were about to stop work."* Does he not echo ^ean Jacques censuring the brutality of the pm-te ferule race ? And what would Xenophon have thought of those great bleeding cuts, made by the frightful spur of the Arabs on the flanks of their unyielding or restive horses, or of those furious cries of Grison— " Wretch ! Brute ! Turn .'"—And withal, this Grison was a man of sense on more than one point ; in certain ways wiser even than his successors and disciples. He did not limit instruction in horse- manship to the four walls of a stable or school. To lighten the forequarters, and to force the horse to lift his feet, he advised exercising him in freshly ploughed fields, on stony roads, or in the running streams of * The Chevalier here quotes from memory and most faith- fully this inimitable translation from Paul Louis Courier. 138 ■water. After him horsemanship lost ground ; columns and walls became the great engines of equestrian education : Pluvinel, and later, the Duke of New Castle, put all their energies into the stiidy of those famous supplings, the excess of which are so inimical to the grace of the horse, as everything must be which forces nature. It was not until the eighteenth century that prescriptions dictated by common sense regained their sway. "I have seeii," wrote Gaspard Saulnier, trainer of the University of Leyden, in 1756, " I have seen horse-trainers who pushed their exaggerations so far as to bend the neck of the horse until his head touched the foot of the rider ; they thought themselves won- der workers and exceedingly skilful, and they really passed for such with the public." And la Gueriniere, the Jean Jacques of the horse, complained bitterly of those " partisans of affected accuracy, who deadened the courage of the animal, and took from him all the gentleness that nature had given him." After him, the d'Abzacs, valuing but slightly the bend in half circle, or the half bend in arc, and abandoning that 139 limited work to which horsemanship was reduced, brought back freer gaits, reduced to their proper place the dancings and prancings, the low passage and the gallop on two tracks, and conformed themselves with- out doubt to the traditions of Greece — preferring the horse that shines on the tui-f, in the chase or in battle, to the one whose whole merit is in the parade. " ' In his book of Laivs Plato takes the ground that it is only necessary to turn the taste and the in- clination of the child toward tlie proper object — in order to induce him to educate himself by means of his recreations. He defines education as a well under- stood discipline which — by way of amiisement — leads the soul of the child to love that which — when he is grown — will have fitted him for the calling which he shall choose. Just so Xenophon teaching horseman- ship, never lost sight of the purpose for which the horse was inteuded to use his powers. If the horse is born to run, if it is a race horse that he proposes to make, the treatment that he recommends is the train- ing used to-day in England, and which none but those 140 who like obesity can condemn. Xenophon is not satisfied with the exercises of the riding school : he wants also the open country, away from the high roads. To dart up the hillocks, to descend from them with a bound, to run the rapid inclines, down into the valleys or uphill, or obliquely, these are, by his ruling, the exercises that the rider ought above all to practice. He approves even of the descending galop, as the Persians and the Odrysians did, and as the Georgians do to-day ; which is rendered less dangerous however, by shoes without irons. The horse that pleases him is quick, easy to mount, pos- sessing strength, good will, fine aids, a tender and loyal mouth, with an assured and well raised step, ready and elastic movements, starting out swiftly when it is necessary, making short and steady stops, lively, ardent, warming up under the hand, and capable of making long runs, but as easy to hold in as to push forward, and joining to an indefatigable vigor, free- dom and variety of gait. As for the volt, he knows scarcely anything but the half-volt by which the 141 passage terminates, and the exercise of accustoming the horse to turn in both hands. Philopoemen, who according to Poly bins, reformed the Achaian cav- alry which had fallen into decadence — added httle to these instructions. Not that Xenophon refuses to give attention to the parade, or that he condemns high movements or cadenced gaits — he does not care : any- thing, which serves to display the grace of the horse he approves — in fact, he gives necessary instructions to those who desire a horse to go through certain move- ments ; but he takes pains to say that, all horses not being susceptible of these turnings and leapiags, only those should be trained who join to a noble soul a supple and vigorous body. He would have approved of Bour- gelat, who remarks in his New Neivcastle, that there is no universal horse which handles equally well in the passage, at a short canter, pacing, dancing, or cur- vetting. Each according to his particular disposition responds to the movement which he likes best. To require leaping from the beginner, would be as 142 ridiculous as to pretend to teach all men alike the pirouette and fancy dancing — " ' Xenophon was from Athens ; Athens was the one city in the world where the greatest amount of originality in opinions and customs was encouraged — nowhere was the yoke of conventional manners and received prejudices less tyrannical ; nowhere was moral tolerance pushed so far — in Athens each man was free to fashion his character and rule his life con formably to his tastes and his humor — and this re- spect for individual character we find in what Xeno- phon says of horses, and in the attention that he gives to varying the education, according to their qualities and their innate aptitudes ; he proscribes severely all exercises contrary to what the horse is calculated to do by nature : he wishes to develop the natural graces of the horse, not to allow artificial movements and affectations that are contrary to good taste. Once||again, not to force nature, but to consult her continually, to follow and to cultivate her, that is the principle from which he never separates. 143 " ' " If a horse is to appear to advantage, be care- ful not to torment him by drawing the bridle or by pricking him with the spur or starting him with the whip. This is often done to produce a brilliant effect ; but the result is just contrary to what we expect. Thus maltreated, the horse will dislike work, and far from having grace, will show only ugliness and chagrin in what he does. Led, on the contrary, by a light hand — raising his neck — and throwing back his head with grace he will take the proud and noble gait with which he is naturally pleased, for when he comes near to other horses — above all if they are females — it is then that he raises his neck the most, throws back his head with a superb and brilliant air, lifts his hmbs gently, and carries his tail high." And after adding a few words on the method of producing the most bril- liant gaits in the horse, he adds, " If having been trained to it, at the same time that he is reined up, one of the fine aids is used, held by the bit, excited by the movements on the fore, he throws out the chest and raises his fore legs high ; but if after having inflamed 144 him, the reins are loosened, by the same ease that he experiences in finding himself free from the bit, he throws back his head proudly — moves his limbs with grace, and takes absolutely the same air as when he finds himself near other horses. The lookers-on at that moment call him generous, noble, courageous, full of fire, superb." This he never tires of reiterating. He quotes Simon on the same point " What a horse does by force he does not learn : it is as impossible to teach him in this way, as to teach a man to dance by the blows and stings of a whip : The thing, then, is to train him to do willingly what he does naturally — ■ when he wishes to appear well : by use of the right methods, he will display himself as of his own accord, to the best advantage. And if you could but realize it, the horse in his natural movements is so beautiful and gracious — -so amiable — that when he rises thus under the hand of the rider — he attracts the attention of everyone : it is almost impossible for old or young to take theu' eyes away ; indeed you will never tire of admiring him, when he has developed in his 145 movements this grace and gentleness. Such," he adds, " are the horses that are represented as carrying gods and heroes, and those who know how to handle them, cover themselves with honor. " ' As 3'ou have already been told, my lady, such is the horse of Phidias, to which we consecrate these discourses ; to describe him, it has suflSced to let Xenophon speak, and from the first words you could recognize him. Assuredly you will approve of my having chosen Xenophon, and not Abd-el-Kader to describe him : for to borrow from the emir his portrait of the Barb, and to exclaim : " Behold the horse of Phidias" — would mislead you ! In truth there is not the slightest likeness. I have already said that this Barb — sculptured by an immortal chisel, is a horse from a school, and he was trained and instructed at Athens : to teU the truth, he is the emblem of education as the Athen- ians understood it — of that education, which dis- ciplined souls, but did not take away their energy or their pride. This horse does not rear, he rises under the hand of the rider, who invites him to display his 10 146 graces : far from objecting — he knows ouly obedience — but he obeys without effort, without constraint ; he fulfills his duty from affection, not from command ; his ardent nature urges him to submit to the will of his master, or rather, together they have but one will. Who speaks of being afraid of this horse ? Study him carefully, and you will discover in the pose of his head, in his look, in his mouth, an expression which is almost miraculous. No, this horse is neither a god, nor a slave, who obeys trembling, he is a friend who gives himself freely ; in a word, he is the horse that Xenophon wished him to be, " gentle and terrible to see" and the more the sculptor has brought out his immortal vigor and indomitable pride, the more we feel the penetrating charm of so much sweetness, united with such fire and ardor Marvel- lous secret ©f Grecian art, that of combining in the same figure, in the same soul two opposite qualities, complementary the one to the other ! living contrasts very superior to the abstract simplicity of most of the creations of modem art. Eecall, for example, the 147 heroes of the most Athenian of all the poets, Sopho- cles, — summon to your memory Antigone, QEdipus, Philoctetes, Ajax, in moments when the pm-suit of destiny allows them a breathing spell ! " ' What surprises and ravishes in them is their repose, which is not the sleep of a torpid nature, but the triumph of a grand impassioned soul, which mas- ters and holds itself in check, and that divine melo- diousness of the strong and forcible, who know how to love ; and that is the spirit that breathes upon the head of this horse. Even the superb courser of Job, who hollows the earth with his movings and tossings, and whose savage neighing scatters terror everywhere : — here is a spectacle rarer and more marvellous than that, an indomitable strength which subdues itself by love. " ' After all this, shall I iudulge myself in refuting this SoUeysel, who has been quoted, and who re- proached the sculptors of antiquity with representing their horses always in postures of rage and despair, apparently because they knew nothing else, never 148 having been trained ? The mistaken writer alleges as proof that they hold their mouths open in a strange and horrible manner, ignoring that the bit of the ancients had two plates, placed on each side between the bars and the tongue, which hindered the horse from closing his jaws entirely, not to speak of those broken mouth pieces with small rings that they chewed incessantly — by which may be explained in the horses of ancient sculpture, those half-open mouths playing with the bit. But let us leave the strange assertions of Solleysel : — what concerns me most to reveal here is the contrast that this sculpture of Phidias presents to most of the equestrian groups of modern artists. Having to chisel into marble, or run into bronze the image of a captain or a king, they do not faU to mount their hero stiffly on the back of a horse, both because ordinarily we picture to ourselves kings and captains on horseback, and because it is a higher, more conspicuous position, farther from the groimd, and therefore impresses one more with respect. But besides, between the rider and his 149 animal, there is no accord, no harmony of lines, nor movements ; the horse is only a second pedestal or the second stage of a basement. I do not exaggerate, and I defy you to show me many exceptions. And to turn from generalities, consider for a moment one of the most vaunted works of modern times, one of the master-pieces of the Renaissance, that famous eques- trian statue of General Bartolomeo CoUeone de Ber- gamo, which ornaments the plaza of the Zanipolo Church in Venice. I do not know whether you have ever read in Vasari that the Senate having decided to raise this monument to a general who had rendered them remarkable services, confided the execution of it to Andrea Verocchio, the master of Perugini and Leonardo — one of the most renowned sculptors of his day. Then by a change of plan caused by some intrigue — the Senate, at the moment that the artist had just finished the model of his horse, withdrew half of the order, and Vellano de Padoue, a student of Donatello, was commissioned to execute the statue of the general. An odd fancy, was it not ? and one that 150 shows what a strange idea they had of an equestrian statue. But what is most astonishing, Verocchio himself in his disappointment did not point out to the Senate the absurdity of introducing into art the division of work manifestly corresponding in industry, and of saying to two artists — " Make your arrange- ments to have only half of an idea " — as if speaking to two workmen we would say to one " Make the main-spring of that watch," to another " Make the wheels." No, Verocchio was only angered because of the aifront — and the wrong that had been done to him : beside himself with fury, he^broke the head and limbs of his horse, and ran away. The Senate having issued an edict forbidding his return, at the penalty of losing his head, Andrea replied that he should not care, considering that their most serene lordships could not put it on again if once cut off. " ' This pleasantry disarmed the wrath of the Senate, who gave him full license to return, and re- stored the whole order to him. But to be honest, if the statue of CoUeone had been done by the rival 151 sculptors without consultation, it is a question as to whether much would have been lost, for in the one that we see on the Plaza Zanipolo — there is neither harmony nor unity of thought, and it is diflScult to believe that the Verocchio who made the horse is the same who made the rider. I never could look at this horse so over-estimated, without a feeling of dis- appointment. Do you recall that small insignificant head, adjusted to that enormous body, that massive croup, and those flanks over-burdened with flesh? Assuredly that is not the horse that Xenophon loved, of which it could be said that he had a soul. This sad steed suffers with plethora, and has a mourn- ful, lauguishiug, exhausted air indicating painful di- gestion and somnolence. There is no action, noth- ing that bespeaks life, not to speak of the mysterious pose of the limbs. The lower part of the right fore leg is so awkwardly placed that Gicognara says it makes the horse look as if he were about to step down from the pedestal ; but aU anxiety on that account is wasted, for the other three legs are pressed 152 firmly on the ground, with all their weight ; especially the left hind leg, which should accompany the for- ward movement — is the farthest back of all, and very skilful would be he who could detach it from the pedestal. Would you say that the horse wishes to scratch the earth with his hoof, then he would not raise the leg so high, and would bend it differently — or perhaps it might be suggested that after the fashion of that period, he is about to kick up his heels. You know that it was the custom, when the passage was followed by the demi-volt, to make the horse bend the leg of the hand in which he happened to be, and to hold him thus until the half turn was finished ; but nothing indicates this manoeuvre, and besides, the rider is giving no aid to his animal, and does not hold him in with his limbs, which in fact stand out from the horse, and frankly, he has the air of thinking of anything in the world but passages and heel perform- ances. There is nothing left to believe but that this right fore leg is gesticulating, and that this somnambulistic horse declaims in his sleep — or better still, I imagine 153 that dropping asleep at the very moment that he was about to walk, the artist has chosen precisely that time to run him into the bronze. What is beyond doubt is that this movement prepared and become henceforward impossible, causes an indefinable uneasi- ness that you would experience just as I did. And now what inharmony there is between this plethoric and sleepy quadruped and his ferocious rider with his stiff angular helmet on his head, his somewhat rude shape boldly seated on his saddle, the back scarcely touching the cantle, the left arm proudly thrown back, the aqui- line nose, the energetic profile which breathes the de- fiance and pride of the word of command ! One thing is certain, the horse is not at ease with his rider, nor the rider with the horse, and the impression that is received from this disagreement redoubles the feel- ing of discomfort that the suspended movement of the horse causes. " 'Shall I say it? at moments I am tempted to believe that, the Greeks alone — more highly gifted — possessed that genius for grouping — that science of 154 concord — which was the secret of the ravishing har- mony which appeared in all their works. Look at the horse that you admire, my lady, which in a way belongs to you, if at least to understand is to possess — this horse who arches his neck and curvets, endeav- oring by his parading, to do honor to his master ; and examine also the rider arrayed in his Arcadian hat, draped in his mantle with the drawn folds, whose fringe hangs the whole length of his limb ; observe how their pose and attitude harmonize ; how the head of the rider slightly bent forward, and gently inclined on his breast, responds to the wavy movement of the neck of the horse ; how all these lines form that deli- cious melody of mould, that the modern sculptor has not known how to reproduce. And remark afterwards, that that harmony of line and movement, is but the emblem of the concord of soul and thought. In both the man and the horse, the same ease, the same aban- don; there is no eifort, but an assured vigor which takes delight in displaying itself. Without question the rider commands, but it is scarcely perceptible ; he 155 controls the horse by insensible aids ; united, as in the Centaur the human bust was to the quadruped, there is but one soul revealed alike in each ; and now you know why I wish to add to the eulogies already conferred upon the horse, the assertion that he has only the half of a soul. Have I not reason on my side in saying that the head of this horse is not a miracle, but a natural effect of which the artist himself furnishes the explanation ? It is in his intimate union with his master that this horse loses what belongs to him of the animal, and that his soul elevates itself more than seems to belong to his kind. Or, in other words, the education that the rider has received, he transmits to the horse. Judge for yourselves if they do not seem to have come from the same school, then passing by, if you will, the great young man in the Ar- cadian hat — whose face unfortunately has been mutilated by time, contemplate at the extreme left of the frieze those other youths mounted on their coursers flying with the wind — their horses in full action, who are hastening to rejoin that marvellous cavalcade which 156 perfidious Albion prided herself on possessing in her palace of Art. " ' To-day's study is not our first introduction to those charming youths : Plato, Xenophon, Aristo- phanes have familiarized us with them, and later a French writer has celebrated their glory in such fitting and exalted language*, that it would be difficult to add anything. " ' Many, many times, my lady, have you admired those pure and delicate profiles, those exquisitely pro- portioned bodies — in which grace and ease dispute with strength, those open foreheads which are puri- fied as it were by the kiss of a Muse, those finely chiselled mouths, those serious and serene faces, in which the play of a generous soul animates and charms. . . . . Those are the youths who went to the gymnasium, as said the poet " With a wise friend, crowned with wreaths of white flowers, breathing in the odor of the smilax, and the white poplar, and *We think that the Chevalier speaks here of an admirable study of M. Taine, Des jeunes gens de Platon. 157 enjoying the leisure of the beautiful spring time, when the elm murmured near the plane tree." Well, my lady, riders and horses ha-ve a certain indescribable air of kinship ; they possess the same grace and vigor — the same meekness and pride, breathing the dignity of an untrammelled soul — which knows no other master but reason ; riders and horses all have been students together under the gentle skies of Attica — among the olive groves of the Academy, and the oleanders of the Cephissus — within sight of the sacred Hymettus, where Pericles, Aspasia and Socrates lived — horses and riders shared equally a beauty of soul which was the direct result of Athenian cultivation — horses and riders, all learned that music which creates, according to Plato, the harmony of souls, and the immutable order of the universe.' " During the latter part of this discourse the Marchioness had been in a re very. Whilst he dis- cussed stirrups and saddles and spurs, she had lis- tened attentively to the Chevalier, regarding him with that intelligent and sympathetic air, which makes 158 her so attractive in her moments of good humor. But when he began to speak of harmony and music, she lowered her eyes, bent her head, and began non- chalantly to fold and unfold her fan, with a preoc- cupied and dreamy air. " I had already often noticed that certain words uttered peculiarly had the effect of making her melan- choly and pensive — and in truth— the Chevalier, although she did not dream of addressing the slightest compliment to him — appeared enchanted with the effect he had produced. Another thing that I had also remarked was that Nanni — ordinarily occupied in sketching arabesques in a small port-foUo which was his inseparable companion, frequently suspended his work to gaze on the Marchioness with a singular expression, until — perceiving that I noticed him, he turned away hastily blushing. As to my lord, he appeared very proud that he had not slept, and seemed to expect that the Chevalier would thank him. Seeing that the latter did not intend to do this — " ' All this is very good,' he said, rising, ' but it is 159 none tlie less true that an Englisli saddle is a beauti- ful thing : — and to jump a ditch I would prefer every time an English horse, trained a V anglaise, to a little bony Barb, who has been taught music by Xenophon, and I add that at this moment I would breakfast more willingly on an English beefsteak, broiled by the cook of the Hotel d' Angleterre, than on a third giand dis- course about a lame horse, who lacks two hind legs, and is mounted by a rider to whom is left but half of his face.' " This sally drew the Marchioness from her revery : she raised her head, and looking at her uncle smiled. The Chevalier could not repress an angry movement on seeing the charm that he had thrown around the beautiful widow broken by this imperti- nent interruption — and she seeing his chilled air — re- covered all her gaiety — and bit her beautiful lips to stifle a shout of laughter. Then rising, she took the Doctor's arm, and moving away toward the Propyloea — said : " ' Well, my poor, good Doctor, you have just 160 been taught a lesson. Ah ! coldest and most egotis- tical of men, who thinks that what is most to be val- ued here below is the strength which adores — and the beauty which contemplates itself ! Must you be taught from the mouth of a diplomat the happiness of possessing only half a soul, and of placing the other half with your neighbors? These things are not studied in Bochart. Be grateful to him who teaches you. Reform, my respectable friend; in future do not be sufficient to yourself — aspire to com- plete yourself — and, above all, study music ! ' " Then turning again to us : " ' Gentlemen,' she said, ' let us go to breakfast, and this evening at four o'clock we will go to the banks of the Cephissus and look for a propitious place for continuing this oratorical tournament.' We descended last, the Abbot and I. Noticing that Nanni did not follow us, I drew the Abbot's attention to it, and we turned back. "We found him in the Parthe- non, pencil in hand, opposite one of the metopes ranged against the wall. The Abbot called him. 161 " ' What are you doing here, Nanni? ' he said. ' Come to breakfast.' " ' I have not time,' he replied. ' I must make a drawing of this bull and these two men ; you know that the Marchioness has begged me to do it.' " ' You have made ten copies of this group already,' replied the abbot. " ' No — only two,' he said ; ' but the first was lost — the second was destroyed by the lap-dog, whom the Marchioness did not wish to vex by taking it away from him. Yesterday she asked me to make another.' " The Abbot advanced toward him. " ' Nanni, my child,' he said, ' never obey the caprices of any one.' " The child blushed, and to conceal his embarrass- ment he attempted to reply in an indifferent tone, and smiling : " ' The caprices of a pretty woman are sacred. But the Abbot regarding him with a severe air : " ' Never repeat such nonsense,' he said, in a stern voice, ' and come to breakfast.' 11 162 CHAPTEK rV. " At four o'clock we were reassembled at the gate of the Hotel d' Angleterre, awaiting the Marchioness. She was not long in appearing. As in spite of the heat she was in the humor for walking, she dismissed the carriages, and we went on foot toward the banks of the Cephissus. There are few cities, to my mind, whose environs can equal the beauty of those around Athens. Assuredly, an abundance of water and a rich vegetation are not indifferent features in a landscape — and such a beautifully situated city is Brousse for example, the Granada of the Levant, with her tapering mosques, her minarets, and her houses of every color on the first foothill of Mt. Olympus, with a back- ground of dark forests of chestnut trees, and a view commanding a valley which extends at her feet like a vast sea of verdure, and displays to the gaze its im- mense orchards, its thick groves, its mountain roads, inclosed in living hedges fifteen feet high, and its foot hills with their gentle inclines covered with a luxurious vegetation that retains an eternal freshness from gush- > n » o > H (a M > > w g ■t) t-i M O 1) M (0 O a c! 163 ing springs and murmuring brooks. Meanwhile what I value more than the brilliancy and richness of the shade, is the grace of the lines, the variety of the tints, and the harmonious diversity of forms, and no surroundings to my mind combine these three orders of beauty more happily than those of Athens. " Represent to yonrself a long plain rising insen- sibly on the sides to rejoin the mountains which serve as a border — Hymettus in the East — Hymettus loved of the bees, with its undulating croup and flanks cut by narrow gorges ; on the north, the dentellated pyra- mid of Pentelicus and Parnes, with its fir trees, and the wildness of its proud contours and deep crevasses : at the west the long Achaian chain running in a straight line toward the sea, and divided opposite Athens by the defile of Daphne, through which the procession of Eleusis passed : to the South, the sea, her isles and her frame of steep precipices. At the foot of the mountains rise a great number of small hills, of very differing aspect, some isolated, others con- nected with each other by necks more or less hollowed 164 out; in the direction of Pentelicus, Anchesmus, with its turfy slopes rising in terraces : nearer Athens, to the north of the modern city, that strange hillock of the Lycabettas, an enormous pointed rock with two summits, escaped, as you know, from the hands of Mi- nerva, in the surprise caused by the crow telling her of the indiscretion of Aglaurus. " Between Athens and the sea is the Acropolis, with its superb rocks, bare and reddish, cut as with a chisel, and its temples and colonnades designing them- selves on the sky above the walls of Themistocles and of Oimon — whilst around that sublime fortress, open out in a half circle a succession of lower hills, turning towards her to adore her, like nymphs bending before the goddess, of whom they are made the followers : here is the rounded knoll of the museum adjoining the Pnyx — farther to the right the hillock of the Nymphs ; on the front the Areopagus, with its rugged rocks, its perpendicular walls, its dislocated flanks, and its black precipices — gulfs consecrated to the Eumenides. 165 " In the interval between these heights, there is no unbroken tableland —everywhere rolling ground, round heights, hillocks and valleys, defiles, ledges and plateaux, beautifully graduated — all these diverse movements harmonizing with each other — nothing rough, nothing clashing, no discordance. It has the appearance of a soil once torn up by a volcanic convulsion, heaved up on every side, but the disor- der of which has been converted into beauty by the cares of a divine protectress, who has inflected and reunited all the lines, softened the contours, restored the surfaces, made the under parts to disappear, con- cealed the seams, and diffused a marvellous harmony, of which one can hardly unravel the secret, over that infinite variety of accidents which seem to defy all rule and symmetry. Yes, a Divine hand has hollowed out, excavated, formed, modelled, fashioned that sacred earth — as the thumb of a sculptor would make a rough wax model. And the mountains and foothills, which intersect and surround that vast plain, contribute to the harmony of the whole. In this great landscape nothing 166 seems to have been left to chance — everything has motive-and end Uke a work of art ; the contours and lines appeal to, seek, pursue, rejoin each other, tracing in their caprices, mazes and intertwinings — like magic circles, that the feet of the Graces, in their frolicsome sports, design on the moss of the forest. Picture further — on two sides of this plain, great spaces — bare of all vegetation, as if repelling anything that would veil the beauty of their form, and in the midst of these spaces — on the two banks of the Cephissus — place the immense olive grove, several leagues long, bor- dered with rich gardens and beautiful free vines from the South, that a more clement destiny has not sub- jected to the need of the support of a prop. Imagine that forest, following the course of the river, winding on out of sight, like a long serpent, and charming the gaze by its thick shade of dark and fresh verdure. And then diffuse a heavenly light over this sculptural landscape, which heightens all the details, designs the relief, touches tenderly the outlines, and, adapting the variety of tints to the multiplicity of views, floods the 167 nearest sites with a dazzling splendor, and extends over tbe more distant points as a light gauze, bluish, rosy and violet mists. And now, climbing a height, embrace with a glance of the eye this vast plateau — admire, contemplate. I scarcely know how you will tear yourself away from this panorama, the beauty of which is renewed and diversified without ceasing: moment by moment the tints change, displace each other, deepen, lighten, a new landscape is created as by magic under your eyes, and you remain lost — your breath suspended — without tiring of this grand and beautiful sight — that you will do well to forget on leaving Greece, under pain of thinking everywhere else, that nature is vulgar, hard, monotonous, discordant, or artificial. " The Marchioness occupied herself in an anima- ted discussion on the polychromic landscapes which are peculiar to southern countries. The Doctor amused himself by raising objections, and the Abbot, consulted every moment or two — simply acquiesced without a word. My lord and I formed the rear-guard : 168 he entertained me about the Count of B from whom he had just received a letter which he gave me to read. " ' The poor man is dying with chagrin !' he said, ' and if he could see the happy air of the Marchioness at this moment — ' " ' Meanwhile,' I replied, ' the Marchioness was very thoughtful this morning during the discourse of the Chevalier.' " ' These reveries do not portend anything good,' he answered, ' it is ennui that I would wish to see, but she is far away from that — see now with what anima- tion she talks with the little man whom I cannot endure !' " ' Believe me or not,' I said, ' before many days the Count will be recalled from exile, and you will do well to reserve all your sympathy for that gentle boy who is walking up and down over there — with his golden hair, and his little black velvet turban. " ' You would lure me with vain hopes' — he re- plied — ' it is much more probable that before eight 169 days have gone by I will have a terrible scene with the Marquise, for by nature I am the gentlest; most amiable and enduring man in the world, but ennui pushed to paroxysm may develop into a passion as violent as anything else, and to this I am responsible for all the great heroic acts that I have done during my life.' " Whilst my lord recounted all the heroisms of which his ennui had been the cause, we had crossed the plain that I have tried to describe, and leaving on the left Colonus, her hillock surmounted with the funeral column of Ottfried Mtiller, and the groves of the Academy, we had entered the wood. We pene- trated into one of those pretty cross-roads along which run irrigating canals, tilled with limpid water from the Cephissus, which spreads everywhere abundance and fertility. On both sides of these pretty roads are green and flourishing gardens, in which the olive with its pale branches, the fig-tree with its thick shade, twisting in every direction large lustrous branches, the pomegranate, whose delicate foliage scarcely hides its 170 swollen and ripening fruit, the mulberry tree with its shining green, the turpentine with its bunches of red berries dear to the smaU bird, and the orange with its shining and yellowish leaves — all blend together. Here and there are bowers of flowers, roses, cacti, jasmines, framed in a border of lavender —and graceful garlands of vines are entwined in the trees — whose red branches fall in festoons all through the autumn — and bend uuder the weight of their golden bunches. Nothing could be richer, gayer, more fertile than these orchards. Following turn after turn, we arrived at the edge of the Cephissus, whose course, exhausted by so many trenches, left three-quarters of its bed dry. We crossed the river and settled ourselves at the entrance of the arbor of a cafe. In front extended the bed of the river, bordered with shnbbery, and great bunches of oleander. Farther on there was a grove of magnificent olive trees, over which the setting sun threw its golden rays obliquelj" ; on our right, a Greek chapel, surrounded with poplar, aspen and oak trees; still farther to the right, a bridle-path 171 and a bridge — and beyond the bridge another wood of ohve-trees, profiling their hollowed tops on a sapphire sky. " "We were served with coffee and raJci *, and the Doctor, whose happiness depended upon it, asked the Marchioness to allow him to smoke a narghile t- Nanni, seated near on a low chair, took the lap-dog _ on his knee — who is not always easy to manage — and began to caress his long, silky hair, considering the while, one by one, the Cephissus, the olives and the sky. At the end of some moments : " ' What a cool, wild and charming place ! ' said he, with a soft and silvery voice. " ' Is this an exordium ? ' said the Marchioness, ' for if I am not mistaken — ^your turn has come to pay your quota.' " ' Oh, dispense me ! ' said he, smiling. ' I never did such a thing in my life, and I should make an * Brandy prepared from grain spirit in Greece. t An Eastern tobacco-pipe, in which the smoke passes through water before reaching the lips. The stem is a long tube. 172 utter failure. All that I could say would be, that long before visiting Greece, I often saw her in my dreams, or beheved that I did, for I lent to her beauty a certain severe regularity, which existed only in my own brain. Later, some months before start- ing for Athens, I saw at Munich those famous views of Greece that you know, and I imagined, on the faith of the painter, I hardly know what of arid, melan- choly, desolate sites — ' " ' And you have finished by recognizing that Greece is neither a French tragedy nor a melodrama of the boulevard- Certainlj', you have made a dis- covery worth the finding.' " ' For myself,' said the Doctor, ' I imagined Greece a country of cut-throats and brigands, and I have made the whole tour of the Peloponnesus, without firing off one barrel of my revolver.' " 'Nor have you found any use for the four gen- darmes who served as your escort. Doctor, you are one of those voyagers who start out with the idea that they are in search of an adventure, and who use every 173 precaution to keep everything of the kind at a dis- tance. Be easy; no remarkable occurrence will ever come to you — you are one of the people to whom nothing ever happens.' " The Doctor sighed, and chasing a thick cloud of smoke through the air, said : " ' You are right, my lady. Hammering at me continually, it is not surprising that one time out of a hundred you hit the nail on the head. No, nothing has ever happened to me. I cannot find in my whole life a single occasion which would approach the dra- matic — nothing which would furnish material for a "Tale of a Tub;" and, frankly — it desolates me to think that, although it has been my life's dream, I shall never attain to being an interesting man.' " ' Meanwhile,' said she, ' I am curious to know how you would take any small mishap — such as if Ugly, for example, should happen to disturb your idleness, whilst you were deep in the enjoyment of the smoke of j'our narghile.' " ' What consoles me,' said the Doctor, ' is that 174 I have a lively imagination. Laugh as much as you please, I know what I am talking about, and if you press me, I will prove it to you. Yes indeed, I am a man of great imagination, and there are moments at times when I feel that I have the stu£f for a hero within me, and then I fancy to myself the brilliant career that I could have developed, if Destiny — ' " ' Enough said, Doctor, I surrender ; the mo- ment that you recognize in yourself the stuff of which wandering knights are made, we must gi'ant you without doubt the most prodigious imagination in the world ; any other proof would be superfluous : behold me persuaded : I declare you more of a poet than our friend Nanni. " And saying that, she threw on the child a ca- ressing look which completely confused him. " ' Ah, my lady,' he said, lowering his eyes, ' if I have a small amount of imagination, that is not enough to make me a poet ; something more than that is required.' ' ' ' What 1 ' said she ; ' is not imagination the cre- ative, the inventive faculty ? ' 175 " ' But, my lady, from my teDclerest infancy I have tried to picture Greece to myself, and when at last I beheld it, it was a surprise to me.' " ' I can well believe that,' she replied — ' Greece has never been pictured save by the good God who made it.' " ' And so of everything,' said he, ' God alone creates ; the rest of us only combine, and our combina- tions are often abortive ' "'Marvel of marvels; said the Doctor: 'He came first — He, and he has treated every subject — ' " The lady began to laugh and pointing at the Doctor with her fan, who lounged peacefully on his chair playing with the amber of his pipe,' " ' Look at another thing, gentlemen ; ' said she — ' Just now our dear epicurean is not contented with be- lieving that he holds the key to the problems of earthly existence — he is a little disappointed be- cause he did not make the world, and to put his self-esteem at ease, he consoles himself that he came too late. The thing was already done. A 176 simple question of time The battle was to the swift. What astonishes me, Doctor, is that they were able to get along without you : your collabo- ration, your counsels would have been so precious.' " Then turning to Nanni, she said, " ' I do not wish to hide it from you, my child,' — for she spoke to him ordinarily in a motherly manner — 'you are modest and have few companions who would appreciate your style of thought, for it is quite the fashion among artists, and philosophers too, to exalt art at the expense of nature. Most of them speak of our poor world as a shapeless waste, that they are charged with clearing up and correcting. Why, only this morning, these gentlemen have proved positively that nature cannot dispute with Phidias the art of making a horse, and I was almost tempted to believe them.' " ' I do not gainsay it,' said Nanni, quietly. ' I only said that we must not flatter ourselves that imagination can surpass nature. We strive and strive — and after all, the best that we can do in our inventions 177 is to fall in with her, for to attempt to beautify in regulating her is a pure illusion, a vain chimera ! Left to herself, and deprived of the assistance of recol- lection, imagination simplifies everything, and her richest productions astonish us by their indigence, their sterility ; they are only fleeting silhouettes, or vague and cold abstractions ; they are wanting in that infinite detail which surprises and charms us in the study of the most inferior of nature's creations ; and which the more we examine, the less we can exhaust.' " ' Well said, Nanni,' cried my lord, looking at him tenderly. ' Bravo, my child ! and this is the first word of common sense that I have heard. Courage, go on, my beautiful niece will forgive you if you prove that there is no statuary to be compared to her.' " Nanni blushed and smiled. " ' You would throw me into an undertaking indeed. You know how my lady dislikes madrigals, and as for me — I have no gift for that kind of thing, and could never tell her what her mirror Let me rather relate, since we have agreed to-day only to 12 178 talk about horses, what happened to me the very first time I ever undertook to handle the pencil. I vpas always a little of a dreamer ; my father, a practical man, reproached me with it, but I inherited it from my poor mother, who was a great dreamer. . Among other Utopias, I imagined one day, that as there was no horse in which I could not discover some imperfection, the only thing to do was to invent one which would be simply perfect, without a defect, and to do that it was necessary to study the ideal horse, and then to sketch that ideal. Fancy me then, pur- suing without cessation — the absolute horse. I grew thin ; even in the night time I dreamed of him ; but my work made slow progress. In the pursuit of a phantom, the object was in danger of being lost in the void ! One day to draw me out of this dilemma my good genius dropped into my hand Bourgelat's work — the Elements of Horsemanship, and in the first volume I found a chapter entitled The Theory of the Geometrical Proportions of the Horse, in which Bourgelat deter- mined a priori the geometrical beauty of the horse.' 179 " ' A charming book,' interrupted the Chevalier, 'with a pretty vignette as frontispiece, representing a skeleton of a horse, and on one side winged Loves in the style of Boucher, which formed a circle, pressing shins and thighs against their heart. Some pages far- ther on there is this poetic definition of beauty. What do you understand by the term beauty ? For Bourgelat wrote in dialogues as Plato did — to which the reply is I understand the word beauty to express the exact, agreeable and symmetrical proportion of parts, ivhich form in 4he animal the exterior total which seduces and flatters ics.' " ' In spite of the vignette and of this " total which flatters us," ' replied Nanni, 'I blessed the good fortune which had placed Bourgelat in my way. That book will be close to my heart always as a talisman of inestimable value, and I began to study it with an ardor beyond words. I thought only of Bourgelat, I talked only of him, and I pitied — from the bottom of my heart— those who were not fortunate enough to know about Bourgelat. Bourgelat had become for 180 me — the chief among men: his book never left my side, I gazed lovingly on it, as Aladdin looked on his enchanted lamp, by the aid of which he sum- moned the spirits at his will. So that, by means of my magic book, I flattered myseH to be able to evoke from the shades the sublime ideal of the horse. I learned by heart the geometrical theory. In the even- ings in the public gardens near the Grand Canal, I would find myself, under my breath, murmuring some sentence from the great man ; this, for example, that I have never forgotten : " The horizontal traversing in the second second of the secojid prime will have two seconds two points in length, a?id will arrive at the two extremities of the tuberosity of the maxillaries." And while saying these words, I pitied the horses and their riders, who pawed and galloped round me in the broad paths of the garden. " What are you ? " I would say, " in comparison with the Bourgelat horse — in comparison with the divine ideal of the horse ? " At last I sank so deep into my folly, that I neither ate nor slept. My parents noticed this and questioned 181 me. I disclosed my secret to them. My mother smiled. My father did not smile; he shrugged his shoulders, and, pointing to his forehead with his fore- finger, uttered but one word: "Matto!"* But nothing was capable of repressing me, and when I thought I had really absorbed the quintessence of the sublime doctrine, with trembling hand I took my pencil and began to work. No alchemist searching for the philosopher's stone ever felt — ^before his still and retorts — ^sueh heartbeatings as mine, when seated before my cartoon, all my measures taken, I drew the first outlines of the holy image — the picture of the absolute horse. But alas ! misery ! O cruel deception! the horse that appeared on my paper had the defect of Koland's horse; it was dead. Whether he responded at all to the ideal of a horse, I do not know ; but of one thing only I am certain, he was only a phantom, a shadow. But if it had only been the shadow of a living horse ! Unfortunately, on looking at him there was the fatal impression that he * Mad. 182 had never lived. " Thou wilt not do at all," I said, " I will make a living horse of thee." And I began to remodel my sketch, but I soon perceived that in order to correct it, I must call to my aid the recollection of a living horse — some horse that I had seen in my walks — and what became just then of Bourgelat, and his geometrical theory and absolute idea ? I tore up my first sketch and began again ; I did this twice, a third time, with the same result. I was almost crazy. Happily, one day, when I was studying my cartoon — elbows on the table — my head in my hands, confess- ing in the secrecy of my soul that the most wicked hack that had ever drawn a dray in the streets of a great city, was a hundred times more interesting than my absolute horse — suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder — -it was the Vicar of the Parish of Saint Zacharie, a great friend of the family — who entering on tip-toe — after having without my knowledge ex- amined my primes and seconds, bent over and said to me, as he dried his glasses, "Nanni, learn this from thy Vicar ; a picture is not a problem of descriptive 183 geometry." The evening of that very day^my car- toons and Bourgelat had perished together in the flames. And the next morning as I was] going with my mother to make a visit at Zuecca we saw on the way — running loose on the bank, a white ass just arrived from Alexandria, which, on seeing us, began to bray. I got my mother's consent to land the gondola, and getting out approached the ass, which was gentle, and began to caress it. " Nanni," called out my mother, laughing, "thou stoopest, my child. Holy St. Mark! to fondle an ass with the same hand which would draw the absolute horse." I kissed the donkey tenderly between the ears, and laying my head against hers, " Mother," I said, " nature alone is divine, and Bour- gelat is not her prophet." ' "'Well,' said the Doctor, 'the Curate of St. Zacharie was a man of very good sense — contrary to the advice that Juliet gave to Jean Jacques, he said to you Lascia la matematica, Nanni, e studia la donne." * *I ►J K « Z o 263 effect as our Gothics with their triple stories of mount- ing columns one above the other. Great principle of Greek art ! To cover carefully her intentions, and to produce the greatest effects by the least apparent means. Scarcely have we entered the nave, than the Gothic Church cries out " I propose to bear thee to the heavens." The Greek temple aims to say : " I rest with thee here below." By a divine ruse it lifts our thoughts from earth higher than any cathedral arch, for we see the terminating effort of the bold arch — whilst the Doric columns gravitate toward a point in space beyond our gaze. And when I speak of effort, that is the point. Everywhere in the Gothic church it is felt, and it is a labored effort, like a prayer which despairs of reaching God — because he is so high— and the great travail of the sorrowful aspiration gives that impression of being overwhelmed, which is so overpowering at Fribourg, Cologne or Strasbourg. But in the Parthenon there is no effort, no fatigue ; you mount, mount with those aerial columns. " How easy it is to go to God " is the thought— the heart 264 expands, and a heavenly joy possesses the whole being. Thus it was in the architecture of her horse that the goddess protectress of Athens revealed her soul, for that divine Wisdom whose immortal traits Phidias fixed in ivory is the principle and inexhaustible source of that intellectual joy which exalts all the powers of the soul. And as that august sovereign manifested herself in the structure and order of her temple, so in the decoration of this magnificent edifice everything announced her reign, and proclaimed her power. On the frontals, Phidias had made his students carve (for there is no possibility of his having executed the whole of this gigantic work himself) the birth of the Goddess and her triumph over the god of the sea. In their turn the metopes of the exterior frieze told every beholder of the exploits of heroes, nurslings, and confidants of the Muses, of monsters conquered and destroyed, of skilled bravery over- ruling brute force, of the new-born civilization, the beginnings of agriculture and all the arts of peace. Represented in person in the sculptures in the rounds 265 of the pediments, she appeared again although invisi- ble, on the frieze in half relief, manifesting herself in the prowess of her favorites, in sowing fields by their hands, suppressing barbarism, promulgating laws, and bringing from the earth at once harvests and cities. But the goddess, after establishing her empire in the world, did not withdraw from her people, nor break her compact with them. She continued to guide her children, to load them with her benefits, and to favor them with her inspirations : by the holy magic of prayers and sacrifices, invisible, she descended from heaven, assisted in their celebrations, and inspired and consecrated their worship by her pres- ence. The decoration of her sanctuary likewise would have been incomplete had not Phidias represented her fete on the frieze of the cella. The story of this frieze was not that of heroes working solely to extend her kingdom, but of an entire people, who in a religious communion of thought and act celebrated her glory, and offered their homage to her — likewise the second frieze in bas-relief, instead of being separated into 266 metopes representing detaclied subjects, was composed of parts closely in touch, the union of which formed — so to speak — one unbroken pi^ce of sculpture. That grand scene was not going on in heaven, nor in the illu- sive world of heroic legend, but on earth, in the streets of Athens, in the very epoch when the great sculptor lived — and when he portrayed on that slab of marble the most ordinary and familiar episodes of everyday life, he meant toteachus that while the goddess vouchsafed her aid to Theseus in slaying the Centaurs, she regarded as equally worthy of notice two innocent, modest chil- dren, leading a victim to her altar. But note -well, every masterpiece of classic or romantic art, whatever pedants may say to the contrary, is a world which has its horizon and its distances. But in Greek art, as in the landscape of Greece, distances are not envel- oped in a grayish mist, which confuses their contours ; they are bathed in a transparent vapor which at once makes them look far away, and yet brings out their forms with a celestial clearness. . . . And our frieze also has its luminous distances, whose wonders 267 reveal themselves to the attentive gaze. A religious fete — pay particular attention, Nanni — is more than a national rejoicing in honor of a god. When the cer- emonies of her worship are celebrated, the divinity goes out from her sanctuary, to diffuse herself among her people ; she breathes into them her own spirit, she gives herself to them as nourishment, for some hours at a time they live from her own life, and are nurtured from her own soul I do not know who it was, but one of you drew our attention to the happy way in which Phidias brought out the marvellous lightness of his Barb horses by contrasting them with rams' heads, and the heavy movements of his oxen. But those horses themselves serve to display to advan- tage their riders — I myself believe that I recognize a certain harmony which testifies that they were raised in the same school. But the harmony does not exclude contrast. A happy union of force and beauty, a fiery but disciplined soul taking pleasure in obedience, joined to a delicious expression of gentleness and ten- derness — these are the points which are brought out 268 in the heads of these horses But the brows of their riders indicate still more — a mysteri- ous breath has passed over thorn, and what the glorious impress left there means, we must find out from religion and the divinity herself. Some of those actors are entirely perfect, and even death itself can give them no more. Look at that man with the naked bust, who walks at the right of one of the bulls His nudity is a symbol ; he has cast off the dnst and darkness of earthly life with his clothing, and although his body remains among men, his soul has already rejoined the choirs of the blessed. In divers degrees, all these who are ready to serve at her altar, have felt the influence of divinity in their heart, and inmost being. Ah ! there is something grander here than the ease and joy which a passing forgetfulness of the troubles of Hfe gives ; something grander also than the tumultuous and disorderly transports of the Bachanals, and the prophetic furies of their orgies. These well-beloveds of the goddess Wisdom do not laugh, they do not even smile; their perfect feUcity is 269 serious ; there is no fever, no delirium about them ; they are grave, thoughtful ; the joy that wisdom gives ravishes the soul without troubling it. To portray them, I will borrow the words of Fenelon, describing the inhabitants of the Elysian fields. " A pure and sweet light diifuses itself about the life of those just men, and covers them with its rays like a garment. It is more a celestial glory than a light ; it penetrates the" life more subtly than the rays of the sun enter into the purest crystal ; it never dazzles — on the contrary, it strengthens the eyes, and carries into the soul's depths a peculiar serenity ; from that alone are these blessed ones nourished; it flows from them and into them again ; it enters into and is incorporated in them as our alimentary food into our own bodies. They see, they feel, they breathe it ... . An indescriba- ble divine influence runs unceasingly through their hearts like a torrent from the divinity herself, which unites them to each other ; together they sing the praises of the gods — and together they have but one 270 single voice, one single thought, one single heart; one happiness controls these united souls." " ' Ah ! my friends, believe me, no one has more admiration for Fra Angelico da Fiesole, and all the mystic paintings of the first renascence, than myself, and I often stand in contemplation before those saints crowned with a nimbus of gold, who, with joined hands, and souls uplifted to the third heaven, taste the delights of an ineffable and sublime enchantment. But these mystic saints are in ecstasy, and the light which bathes their brow is an aureole. They are privileged beings, whom God favors with a beatific vision, and whose felicity — passing my understanding — makes me feel that I am a coarse, carnal man, in- capable of taking part in such miraculous graces. On the contrary, when I study some fragment of the frieze of the Parthenon, or I succeed, as now, in bringing before my mind's eye this immense work as a whole — whatever the sublimity may be — I am not over- whelmed ; deceived by one of those delicate subtleties familiar to the great Greek artists — in those magis- 271 trates, musicians, virgins, and youths, I do not see anything which confounds or humiliates me ; they are human beings like myself, living on the earth — every- thing about them is natural ; not hesitating to mingle among them, I take my place in the procession ; lost in the crowd, I also mount to the Acropolis : — but suddenly while considering more closely the footmen and riders who surround me, I find something strange in them and I soon recognize that while all seem to be occupied in preserving their rank in the procession, either tending the oxen destined for the sacrifice, or playing on lyres, or making their coursers prance, all possess in the depth of their soul that felicity which Fenelon has just described ; as different from ecstacy as from delirium — that celestial joy neither allows their thoughts to vacillate, nor plunges them into the inaction of idle reverie ; but exalting their soul with- out disturbing their minds, and running in waves into their veins, mingles with their blood, which it quickens, and rekindles with its ardor ; radiates on their brow, reveals itself in their slightest actions. 272 betrays itself in their movements, attitudes, gestures, in the mute language of their countenance, and exhal- ing from their whole body in subtle effluvia, which in- sinuates and penetrates everywhere, it diffuses, so to «peak, into all hearts, the influence of the divinity irom whom it emanates Then surprised, be- side myself, trembling with emotion, I adore that marvel- lous art of Greece which leads me to God without scatter- ing my senses, or doing violence to my reason. I bless him that he has descended, even to me, and has adapted himself to my weakness that I might be trans- ported by his magical enchantments to the abode of the blessed, and I bow with sacred veneration before the great sculptor who, in representing on the frieze of a temple the PanatheuEean fete as it appeared to his inspired gaze, has graven in the marble the eternal poem of the divine life.' " Night approached. From our height we saw through a clearing in the forest, Hymettus clad in glowing violet, on a background almost black. Toward the setting sun, above the gilded tops of the olive- 273 trees the sky was a beautiful emerald green, with rose- colored clouds floating through ; on a light breeze were brought to us the perfume of flowers and fruits, and we breathed in with full lungs the pure life-giving air of Attica, which expands the lungs and fortifies the heart " ' Oh sacred air ! ' said the Abbot, who, his head bowed, seemed to dream — ' air soft and light that the poets compared to the eternal dwelling-place, thou who playedst around the brow of the Graces, who made this their favorite abode, who didst pour enthu- siasm into the hearts of Socrates and Phidias — thou, who at last, in due time, wast blest with the religion of the cross, and who minglest something of the wisdom of Plato with the divine ecstasy of that religion, purify our hearts, revive our courage, teach us ' " At this moment the tremulous and nasal song of a passer-by made the Abbot tremble, and casting a startled look on us he stopped suddenly in the midbt of his apostrophe. 18 274 "I approached, and giving him the breviary said — - "'My dear Abbot, you who explain Phidias by Spinosa, and confound curiously in one and the same admiration, the mystic saints, Thalia, the youngest of the Graces, and intellectual Love, take your brevi- ary that you dropped so imprudently.' " He darted a furious look at me, for he hated to have the secrets of his soul known, and having dropped the unlucky book into one of his pockets, he put his hat on again with a disgruntled air, and drew it down over his eyes. " Then the Marchioness said to him — " ' M. Abbot, I beg of you — go on with your dis- course ! You do not know how intensely I am inter- ested in what you are saying, and I wish the foolish song which disturbed your inspiration — a thousand miles away. Yes, blessed be the air that we breathe here, equally congenial to artists, and to the bees of Mt. Hymettus ; would that it might revive the sacred fire in the soul of regenerated Greece ! Would that Phidias again ' 275 " ' My lady,' I interrupted, ' I am not an orator, and consequently I will not descant on Barb horses — nor on the ideal — nor on music — nor joy, but if you approve of my paying my quota by proxy, I will challenge some one to explain why the genius of Phidias, and the Panathensean displays should not appear again in this country, in spite of King Otho, and the beautiful turf of his royal wife, and the excellent air which we breathe here ! ' " Thereupon I offered her my arm, and we walked towards the little church, which was on the other side of the Oephissus. The rest of the party followed, except the Abbot, who divining my intention — preferred to remain alone with his own thoughts. We entered the chapel ; it was the first Greek church that the Marchioness had been willing to visit. The sun was declining, but enough remained with the light of some candles to perceive quite dis- tinctly a large picture representing the crucifixion. You know the Byzantine Christ. From the time of St. Basil, the East decreed that the Saviour of the 276 world was ugly, and any attempt to beautify his image -was at once condemned as sacrilege by the monks of Mount Athos.* Ugliness is sacred, beauty is a snare and a device of Satan. If indeed the Christ of Byzantium were only ugly and deformed! But in his emaciated, livid face, in the pale lips, in the dull eyes, in the leadish complexion there is something indescribable, which makes one shudder. This is not the tragic and sublime Christ of Catholicism, the Love crowned with thorns, who, in the agonies of death, opens his heart and arms, to the world which curses and crucifies him ! It is a slightly gnostic Christ, who has never completely lived, and who — consequently — has never completely known death. In him the divine person is always held apart from the human : the divine has looked on sadly and seen the human suffer and die. It seems as if a kind of lugubrious fancy had impelled this heavenly Master to reclothe himself in a terrestrial body, a caprice of a surfeited God, worn *For interesting accounts of this Mountain of the Monks, «ee Stanley's Eastern Church, and Mural Painting by Frederick ■Crowninshield. 277 out and disgusted with everything, renouncing every- thing that he had done — and who makes one last effort to dissipate his intense ennui, and to revive the sentiment of existence in himself. Useless and vain attempt ! After musing awhile under the palms of Judea, from the height of the cross, the nails of which — penetrating into his flesh, excited only a kind of vague, confused sensation, he has thrown on the world one last look of supreme melancholy, and closing his eyes again, has withdrawn into the weariness of his incurable sleep ! " The sight of this picture pained the Mar- chioness ; she turned away at once, and attempted to leave the church. But I detained her. " ' That mournful phantom is not the Master of the house,' I said. ' Come pay your homage to the Queen of the Orient ! ' And leading her before an image of the Virgin, I pointed with my finger to the sad, and at the same time threatening face — for which, they tell us — the Empress Helena had the honor of being the model — with those large subdued eyes, that 278 narrow, tapering nose, of immoderate length, the pinched mouth, pointed chin, the morose face breath- ing of fasting and penance, added to all an imperious, haughty air, a severe, inexorable brow, lips closely drawn together, ready to shoot forth anathema, or the arrogant word of command. " The Marchioness gazed with a sort of terror at the celestial empress of Byzantium, and I, stooping, whispered into her ear ' O, tribune of the Pnyx ! Shouts of the people at the theatre of Bacchus ! Long talks of philosophers under 'the shadows of the Lyceum, and the Academy ! Muse of Sophocles, and chisel of Phidias ! Worship of beauty and the graces ! Holy liberty of genius ! Spirit of Attica ! O, Pana- thenseans ! Virgins clad in white veils ! Conquerors crowned with ohves! Wisdom and joy! Divine youth of the world ! All is overawe will see you no more. Behold how you are replaced ! Behold the terrible nightmare which hangs over Greece and the Orient ! and skilful he who will chase from the hearts of these people that sorrowful and redoubtable sovereign !' 279 " At this moment a priest of the Greek church, of doubtful cleanness, and with his hair bristling on end, approached us. " ' Behold Plato,' I said to the Marchioness. " ' 'That is just my name,' he said to me, with a silly smile. ' What can I do for you ? ' CHAPTEK VI. " ' You do not love Greece,' said the Marchioness cui'tly to me when we had left the church. ' How can you despair of a people who, to say the least, within the last twenty years have created for themselves the most beautiful language in Europe ? You have mocked at this poor priest and while you were talking with him, I was busy comparing your short and harsh words with the delicious grace of his language.' " ' / do not love Greece ! ' I exclaimed indig- nantly. 'Ah ! my lady — you do me great wrong ! Do you know that I have always borne this unfortunate and heroic country on my heart, and that I am even 280 more interested since I have trodden her soil. I admire the domestic virtues of her people, their mar- vellous intelligence, as ready as it is pliant — their patriotism which might serve as a model for every nation ; I also admire their faith in her destinies ; but my lady, I hold that her future is at the cost of one of those great revolutions of conscience, which after all, are the only veritable events of history : and I am on the alert for the least indication of that revolution. I search the horizon for its first forerunners ; I await above all, the voice which said to Lazarus, " Arise and walk." ' " I could not carry out my thought ; Nanni had placed himself on my right, and forthwith, the Marchioness, dropping my arm, walked on before us rapidly. At the garden gate she turned and called out to the Doctor : " ' We will take supper here, Doctor ; have the table spread in the arbor.' " ' Take supper in this Greek cook-shop ! ' cried his lordship, appalled. 'Think of it, my lady! for 281 once, that is pushing the love of local trnth too far, and to speak frankly, salt fish, a few olives, and a slice of Khalva are not at all to my taste.' " ' Your lordship is always busying himself with details,' the Marchioness replied — a little annoyed. " ' Details — my lady, you speak very much at your ease. I myself discovered long ago that life is composed only of details.' But the Marchioness, not taking the trouble to reply, darted into the garden, as we thought, to join the Abbot, so no one followed her, for she was sometimes seized with a fancy for speculative tete-a-tetes with the great man. " The uncle was horrified : he could hardly think of the meagre supper he was going to make, without a shudder ; but he was soon reassured, for in a few moments one of the servants of the Marchioness appeared, and two Albanians with him carrying a large basket from which they took cold chickens, a venison pie, ham, and a basket of bottled wine. "The Doctor, without delay, superintended the table. It was a duty which he willingly assumed. 282 Whilst this was being done I took his lordship by the arm, and we walked up and down a platform which extended between the cafe and the Cephissus. I con- fided to him my project of pleading this very evening, during supper, the cause of Count , and I guar- anteed that I would succeed. He shook his head with an incredulous air, and replied that I did not know his niece, that it was not easy to reason her out of her caprices, that she seemed more than ever absorbed in Phidias, which was especially apparent in the expression of happiness that had come over her countenance during her conversation with Nanni. I replied that he didn't understand women at all, and to increase his confidence in my powers, I recounted to him the miraculous cure of the dowager and her canary. Then we returned to the arbor, where the Chevalier was skirmishing with Nanni and his golden lyres ; he had been visibly annoyed by the evident pleasure which the Marchioness had shown in the theories of the young artist, and had taken refuge as usual in raillery. But Nanni did not seem to pay any 283 attention to him ; his thoughts and soul were else- where, and there was a strange, exalted expression on his countenance. Evidently his heart had been almost intoxicated with delight by the look of the Mar- chioness. ' Terrible will be the awakening,' I said to myself, looking at him, and I pitied him from the depths of my soul ; but I did myself the justice to believe that I had done my best to disabuse him — why had he repelled me with such hauteur ? " The preparations for supper were ended. The cafedje* who, besides lights, tablecloth and napkins, furnished the bread, olives, anchovies in oil, lemons, and the fruit for dessert, brought in a large bouquet of flowers, which he placed in the centre of the table, and taking off his red fez, the blue tassel of which fell half way down his back, he said, bowing low : Ta 'panta inai epi tis trapezis which about signifies the gentlemen are served. But the two wanderers had not returned ; the Doctor and my lord, losing patience, went to look for them in the garden, but they beat *Iim-keeper. 284 about among the bushes with no success. The garden was empty. Where could the Marchioness have gone ? A whole hour slipped away ; night came on rapidly ; his lordship exhausted himseK with conjectures, and after running all around in the neighborhood of the cafe — came back, and seating himself beside me, with his eye fixed sadly on the lanterns hung on both sides of the arbor, he began to grumble at the Abbot. " ' This devil of a man,' said he, ' is capable of having carried o£f my niece to Eleusis. They had formed a plan of passing some days there, and you will see that they could not wait until to-morrow to be initiated into the mysteries. Although he may not think so, I say plague take the Abbots who care nothing for their supper, and who run the fields whilst their plates are wearied waiting for them !' "Nanni also was restless, and standing at the entrance of the arbor, his eyes wandered around anxiously, and he trembled at the slightest noise. " At last the Marchioness appeared : there was a curious air about her, and I believed that I could read 285 on her countenance the calm expression of a strong soul that has just made some grand resolve. " ' Well ! really, my lady,' cried milord, 'wiU you have the goodness to tell us where you have been ? I thought that you had departed for Eleusis.' " ' Indeed, milord, there is no need to go so far for mysteries ; all is mystery in this world, even the soul of a Marchioness.' " ' And the Abbot ?' " ' I have not seen him' — she said ; ' apparently he is pursuing on the banks of the Cephissus, the solution of some metaphysical problem. Let us be seated ; you know he only eats for politeness, and he will be delighted if we do not wait.' " We were just through with the first course when the Abbot appeared to speak for himself. " ' Bless you for coming, M. Abbot,' said the Marchioness, in making room for him to be seated by her — ' I have been waiting patiently for you to exor- cise me. A bad spirit has come into me, and be- 286 hold, I am not only deserted by divine joy, but one of the elementary graces" — gaiety — has left me. ' " ' I am not your physician, my lady,' replied the Abbot, with an ironic smile. ' Address yourself to the one among us who is responsible for your health before God and man !' " ' The Doctor,' said she, in a tone of pity. ' Just at this moment the poor man only thinks of his supper. And besides is there anything in common between him and me ? His is one of those tranquil hearts that aroused your indignation an hour ago. He was born tranquil. The air of Greece keeps him tranquil, and if he consents to neglect his plate for one instant, it will be to entertain me with his insup- portable Bochart, or his lost vocation of wandering knight, or about his Numidians and his great Cara- moussal.' " ' The Caramoussal would not be much out of place here,' the Doctor said, deferring an attack upon a slice of hare-pie which he was meditating — ' as, my lady, you seem to be entirely like that unfortunate 287 Mousseline la Serieuse;* who lost the faculty for laughing — and who — traveling in her gilded palan- quin — ' " ' That palanquin,' she interrupted, ' what do I care about it , if all its panels were mounted in gold, why should I care a straw about that ? I am ill — seriously ill — and I will be grateful to any physician who can cure me.' " ' You astonish me, lady,' said I ; ' a moment ago you were full of joy and happiness. Is this the result of two minutes' gaze at the Byzantine virgin ? ' " ' I entreat you not to think it was the first time I had seen her,' she said. ' She has often appeared to me in my dreams, and I had no trouble at all, in recognizing her at once, just as that air on the flute that milord played recalled immediately that odious and wretched melody which torments my ears, accustomed to celestial concerts.' " ' This is very serious,' said the Doctor, pouring *Stories of Hamilton. 288 out a glass of Santorin wine ; ' describe the symptoms of yom* disease, and we will consult.' " ' The symptoms of her disease, describe them who can ? ' said milord, who had by this time taken the edge from his appetite. ' But the cause — the principle of this disease — I wiU undertake to tell you about. I might as well do it, for grand discourses are the order of the day; everyone here has had a turn, and I might as well have mine. The malady of my beautiful niece ... it consists in having come to this foolish land whose air as say the poets and the abbots — so pure — so light — goes right to the brain, and disturbs the most well-balanced minds ! There are none of you whose health is not upset in this ugly, dusty plain. . . . None of you are what you were, my friends; you are all somewhat out of balance, and if you wish to preserve the grain of reason left from contagion, leave here to-morrow, and beware of turning back. But look at some of the unworthy follies into which you, sensible people as you are, have fallen ! Here is M. the Chevalier, whose gifts 289 demanded a brilliant diplomatic career, but who, refusing every opportunity for advancement, obsti- nately rests glued fast in a wicked little place like this, and consecrates his entire genius to teaching his horse Greek music ! Here is a young man (pointing to Nanni) who by nature is a good reasonable child — the proof of it is in what he has told us of the ideal — and meanwhile, here he is putting all his ambition into becoming a golden lyre, that he may have the bliss of repeating the harmonies of the universe, and all that troubles the poor boy is to know whether he shall repeat them in sol major, or si minor.' " ' There is M. the Abbot, his cassock and the natural gravity of his disposition should protect him from all kinds of extravagance — well, even this grave and reverend person has discovered the whole cate- chism in a fragment of marble, and he invokes the etJier, as otherwise he would call upon the Eternal Father! In short, even the Doctor, man of good sense as he generally is, even he begins to warm up his imagination, to declaim, to manufacture phrases, 19 290 and to bring forth conceited ecstatics pitifnl to listen to ! To conclude, here you have four estimable men of principle and honor who — in one single day — have racked their brains in making four discourses on the subject of an unfortunate horse, to whom — I repeat it — two hind legs are wanting, which to my mind is a capital defect in a horse. This horse that you are preaching about so much, I myself have taken occasion to praise : T have remarked that he was a horse of stone, who did indeed strongly resemble a living horse, and I am still the first to declare — although I complain of him as the cause of the garrulities that have been inflicted on me to-day, that this Phidias was a man of great gifts ; this certainly appears in that little decoration which he made for the amusement of the Athenians. " ' Yes, I delight in the fine arts as much as any one. There is a certain Virgin by Raphael that seems to me perfect, and a good landscape — or better still — a good portrait of a person that I love, either gives me great pleasure. In the evening a pretty sonata — 291 not too long — or what is more to my taste — a pretty polka, a good dancing tune, seems to me altogether fitting to charm away the fatigues of digestion. A diama of Shakspeare well played, or better, a pretty vaudeville with well sung couplets, seems as good a recreation as one need want, and I often find myself humming songs when I am happ}'. But good sense is more to me than all the sonatas and vaude- villes in the world ; I hate exaggeration of any kind : I detest apostrophes, swoonings, rolling of the eyes, and all the grimaces that furious dilettanti make ; I have a horror of ecstasy, chimera and bombast ; art being an amusement, I am indignant when people make it a business. I curse the followers of Ictinus and of Phidias who upset your brains, and to whom I owe it that I have already passed more than nine months in a very tiresome little city, where there is enough sunshine and dust swallowed to kill you. I curse this sacred air light as the ether, if it has scat- tered your wits, and I send to all the devils the horses who understand music, dancing girls who dance with 292 the head and feet at the same time, golden lyres, winged guitars, columns of thirty-five feet, which mount to the sky, infinite desires, the poem on the divine joy, the light which is incorporated into the blessed, and all the other rigmaroles and burlesques that have chased from my beautiful niece's brain what little good sense nature had given her, and which would, God forgive me, end by bewitching me too if I were not careful ! ' " At these' words, milord took his flute, and put- ting it to his lips, prepared to play, but the Marquise by a gesture, and such a pathetic look, implored his mercy, that he excused her from his concert. " ' Lady,' he said, ' the music would exorcise you, you and your friends: but since it disturbs your nerves, I consent to spare you. Only I forewarn you, the first time that I am inflicted with interminable discussions on the ideal and the fine arts, I will use this pretty little instrument without scruple to protect my ears and me from insult ! ' " ' Ah, milord ! ' cried the Doctor, ' you are too 293 brutal a physician, and your remedies would only serve to increase the disease of our dear Mousseline la Serieuse, whose cure seems doubtful, since your ill tempered attack has not succeeded in enlivening her.' " ' "Would to Heaven ! ' said the Marchioness, in a sorrowful tone — ' Would to Heaven that my nncle were right, and that I might have been as crazy as he believes! But do you know what has happened to me ? I believed myself endowed with a mental eleva- tion which unhappily has been refused me. I did not come into the world like a certain heroine of Shakspeare, at the moment when a star danced in the sky. The conjunction which presided at my birth condemned me to be a very ordinary, kind-hearted little woman, and devoted me by diviae decree to tittle-tattle, frivol- ities, fineries, to all the common-places of sentiment, and the bores of conventionality that are called the pleasures of high life. Unfortunately not realizing that I have been decreed to their lower vocation, I have believed myself very superior to my destiny ; I 294 have resolved, cost what it might, to indulge my noble aspirations, and have striven so hard that I have suc- ceeded in deceiving myself — strictly speaking one can do anything that one undertakes to do. At times, I inflated my little soul to the degree that it seemed to me the largest soul in the universe, just as in my garden- ing I have had exotic plants forced in hot-houses, on account of my intense love for their fragrance.' " ' Has not the Queen of Greece succeeded in liaving a lawn ?* It cost her an immense outlay, it is true, and I assure you that the cost of establishing and maintaining my small works in horticulture, has been no inconsiderable sum. The happiness that I dreamed of was an enthusiasm without intermission, a beautiful continuous fever, a life consecrated to a •cult of the grandest things, and in which the noble sentiments that they inspire would occupy my soul exclusively. Alas, there it was that my bad star *Qiieen Amelia, the wife of King Otho, worked untiringly to plant trees and produce a fine lawn in the Royal Gardens ; she was her own landscape gardener. Irrigation was the great expense. 295 awaited me. I have never tasted a joy, since I can remember, for which I have not paid dearly — and every time that I have indulged myself in the delights of admiration, my evil genius has condemned my poor noble soul to long hours of barrenness and disgust. When I was little I never could go to a ball without bringing back with me a headache. I did not give up going on that account, but none the less I had to repent the next day. And so my dear friends — in the world of the ideal, — I have never entered into its passing joys, without expiating them by a kind of aching of the heart and such cruel torments as I trust you will never experience. I have some character, I am obstinate, and really after arriving in this country I believed for a time that I had charmed away my bad star, to such au elevation had the marvels of ancient art lifted my soul. Alas ! suffering increased in pro- portion to pleasure. You have known nothing of all this, so carefully I have concealed what was passing within me. It was a wager that my vanity was at stake in sustaining. But to-day you have given me 296 such a surfeit of enthusiasm, that my heart is on my lips — and I can no longer keep my secret from you. Know, then, my dear friends, that owing to the temperament that God has given me, after having raved so enthusiastically over this statue of Phidias, I was seized suddenly with a wretched feeling of weariness, and bitter disgust for things in general. In this condition when I attempted to recall to remem- brance the masterpiece which had charmed me, all I could see was a ridiculous caricature ; life itself appeared like the grim and frightful countenance of a fury, who threatened me with her vengeance, and quite recently I was so vexed by the annoyances that art had caused me, that I took peculiar delight in seeing Ugly tear up with his beautiful teeth the superb copy that Nanni had made of that blessed work whose marvellous beauty the Abbot so recently described. Don't believe again, my friends, that when I have been playing a symphony from Mozart or Haydn, I have felt my wings growing : oftener when I closed the piano I would hear resounding in my ears notes of 297 some wretclied little air, something like tlie miserable tune that milord regaled us with on his flute. Finally, if I must tell you all — I did indeed take infinite delight in hearing your different talks on the horse ; but at the very moment when I looked for it the least, a profound melancholy seized me, and just now in a retired corner of the garden where you could not find me, I found my soul in the most disordered, deserted condition, just as a ball-room looks the morning after a fete, with its faded decorations and withered garlands, and I compared my thoughts to the Pierrots and Columbines, who coming from a masked ball early in the morning with faded complexions, heavy eyelids, exhausted and hoarse with dust, stare stupidly at the first rays of the sun, which mocks at their foolish appearance and trappings.' " Whilst the Marchioness was speaking, several times I darted a triumphant glance at my lord, which seemed to say, ' What do you think now of my discernment ? ' I don't know that he paid much attention to me for he was busy finding out what the 298 Marchioness was driving at, and he was just coming to the point of what she meant when, fearing that he would upset everything by his awkwardness, I hastened to take up the thread, and launched forth a skilful and eloquent harangue, which could not fail to pro- duce a striking effect. I spoke as a man of experience of life, its happiness, illusions, deceptions, and of the art of consoling one's self, and I finished by saying, ' Your sufferings, my lady, do you honor ; you are one of those perfect souls who have need of contrasts in life, and who — like lovers — possess two opposite poles. You love art passionately, and you are right, but it has no right to all your thoughts and your whole existence ; you are perhaps unusually susceptible of enthusiasm, but do you not recognize that enthusiasm like all excessive sentiment, is of short duration, and that after having experienced strong emotions, the heart imperiously demands repose ? Your mistake then, is not in not being able to keep up this extraordi- nary condition of ecstasy, which, of necessity, is pass- ing and fugitive, but in wishing to force nature to 299 maiutain this condition, and in not knowing that everything has its due place in your Kfe. Lady, I love fairy tales quite as well as our friend the Doctor, and if you will allow me to quote one in which there is neither a Caramoussal nor a Facardin, let me recall the wonderful tale of the Awahened Sleeper, that I admire almost as much as the Iliad, or a bas-relief of Phidias.' " ' You remember Abou-Hassan's feelings when, after he had been transported sound asleep to the palace of Haroun al-Raschid, on being awakened at early dawn in his grand bed of red brocade, studded with pearls and diamonds, he found at his bedside a caliph's cap, and saw the emirs, the court officers, and the Grand Vizier himself, in their official coats, bend- ing the knee, their foreheads touching the carpet, doing homage to him as the Commander of the Faithful, and the vicar of the Master of two worlds, whilst the young ladies of the palace gave him their morning greeting with a concert of sweet flutes, haut-boys and lutes. At first, dear lady, Abou Hassan found it 300 difficult to receive all tliis homage ; but at length con- quered by the positive declarations of the ministers and courtiers who surrounded him, all of whom yielded him the august title of Caliph, he decided to accept his new role of Commander of the Faithful, and fol- lowed by all his court, he passed with a majestic air into a magnificent salon, lighted by seven golden candle-sticks, with seven branches, in which were grouped around a table covered with seven golden dishes, seven bands of musicians, vieing with each other in beauty. Seated on a throne there he enjoyed an exquisite repast served by Neck-of-Alabaster, Mouth-of-Coral, Brightness of the Sun, Pleasure of the eyes, Delights-of-the-Heart, and Sugar-Cane ; then when he had fully satisfied his appetite, he moved on to another room, still more magnificent, where he was entertained by Chain-of-Hearts and Torment-of-the- Soul ; he passed on still farther, until having entered an apartment whose splendor effaced all the rest, in which all the riches of the earth were displayed for the eyes' delight, intoxicated with the incense 301 which perfumed the air, drinking a delicious wine out of a golden cup, filled by the smiling Star-of-the- Morning, he was veritably lost in a trance, by the song which the adorable Bouquet-of-Pearls sang to him, with a lute accompaniment. But just at the moment, when he was satiated with dehght, a small narcotic powder that the true Haroun-al-Easchid caused to be thrown into his cup, suddenly throw him into a deep sleep, during which he was stripped of his royal garments, and this Caliph of a day, became Abou Hassan again, and was transported to his humble dwelling, which, for his own happiness, it would have been better that he never had left. You know what hap- pened when he awoke, and how in a transport of fury he shouted : " Bouquet-of-Pearls, Star-of-the-Morniag, Coral-Mouth, come to me." No one responded to his call except his poor old mother,wlio could not be of any use to him. Now, my lady, if on leaving the Caliph's palace, and his borrowed role of Commander of the Faithful, the poor Abou Hassan had wakened in a pretty home dear to his heart, decorated by the 302 hands of Love; where instead of hangings of brocade and golden candlesticks, he could have found gew-gaws and baubles to every one of which sweet and tender thoughts and recollections were attached — if, in- stead of the Grand- Vizier Giafar bowing his head to the ground, and presenting his salaams, he could have heard a caressing voice call to him, "Abou Hassan^ you have been absent a long time ; my dear soul, I have been waiting for you : I thank God who gives you back to me, my love" — ^if, finally, in the place of Torment- of-the Soul, and Bouquet-of -Pearls, a faceless beauti- ful, it may be, but more loved, could have greeted his awakening with a smile that love alone inspired — Ah ! believe me, lady, Abou Hassan, under these cir- cumstances, would have accepted his lot on waking from his dream, without difficulty^ — Abou Hassan would have consented readily to be Caliph for only a -day — willingly Abou Hassan would have returned to Abou Hassan again, and consequently would not have beaten his mother because she protested that he was neither the Commander of the Faithful nor the earthly 303 vicar of the Master of two worlds ; he would not have attempted to box his neighbors' ears who had run in to protect the poor woman from his violence ; he would not have been chained and handcuiFed by them, and taken to the insane hospital, and finally he would not have received every day for three weeks fifty -strokes with a cow-hide on his shoulders and back. This story, my lady, like all the Arabian tales, contains a profound moral, which I need not interpret. There- fore, I will content myself by saying to you that if I had the honor of being a Marchioness, endowed with a rich fancy, devoted to intellectual pleasures and the enjoyments of art, I would make sure that in return- ing from my excursions into the world of the ideal, and awakening from the divine musings of poetry, I should find myseK in an agreeable dwelling place, where my imagination, rendered more delicate and sensitive by its flight into the seventh heaven, could find nothing to vex or offend. To this end, I should have a friend — not too much like myself — but who without having my own tastes, or the sublime reach of 304 my own intelligence, was yet a man of common sense and keen-witted — knowing thoroughly — not music, but the art of liviug, quite as valuable in its place as the other arts, and possessing that poetry of the heart, whose charm touches with beauty and radiates through all the petty details of life. I should want this friend to allow me the privilege of taking my flights heavenward at pleasure, that I might enjoy myself among the clouds ; I should require him to wait patiently for my return, ready to offer me a firm and devoted arm, and to keep my small winged feet — made to fly rather than walk — from being hurt by the stones of the wayside. Then in the hours when life no longer seemed like a virgin endued with the beauty of a statue of Phidias, that same friend, as a good, kind, agreeable companion, would fill all my need — who, in the intervals when I could not hear the harmonies of the golden lyres resound, would play me an air on the flageolet to drown the discordances of this lower world ; an air on the flageo- let is comforting when the instrument is touched by skUful fingers, and by lips inspired by love. And so, 305 without renouncing the festive enjoyments of poetry and art, I would be reconciled, and become tolerant of life ; for know, my dear lady, that divine joy constitutes but half of the happiness here below ; tolerance makes up the rest. That is what I would have said if I had been the Marchioness, and I add that if I could have had my heart's desire, if I could have had the happi- ness of meeting such a friend, if I could have had the yet greater happiness of being loved to distraction — " " ' Oh 1 for once, stop,' said the Marchioness, aiTO- gantly, ' why do you take the liberty of dictating to me ? I am astonished ! ' " ' Don't scold this dear and worthy man, who is a thousand times right,' said milord. ' Yes, dear niece, that is right ; he lives — this excellent friend — ' " ' Do not speak to me of him,' she interrupted shortly ; ' an excellent friend does not fly away for a trifle, as he has done — and above all — does not spend his time in pouting. That excellent friend is to-day in Paris, where he has entirely forgotten the existence of his excellent friend.' 20 306 " ' My lady, do you not know as well as myself that the poor unfortunate man had no courage to go far- ther than Venice, that he is there now awaiting his destiny, and that he loves you more than ever. Ah ! wait until I read you a touching letter that came only to-day from him.' " ' Gently,' she replied, seizing the letter that milord was preparing to read aloud ; ' if this love letter is so touching, it is a private affair, not to be handled publicly. I only hope that the tone is humble and submissive, and, that the language is humble and penitent — for really, there is much to pardon.' " ' I do not beheve that submission can be pushed farther than it already is,' replied milord ; ' I fancy that this poor Count is ready to go anywhere you wish ; I believe him capable of resigning himself to the study of Mousa and Didomi, and at your slightest request, he too will undertake a discourse, and instead of beginning like sensible men, he will only open his mouth and cry out " My lady, at the moment of beginning to celebrate " or perhaps " It is, my lady. 307 a very heavy task that you impose on my weakness." ' " As he said tliese words, milord arose, approach- ing the Marchioness, who was at the head of the table, and bent one knee before her, saying in a pathetic tone — " ' You know, dear lady, how I have always studied your happiness, how eagerly I have conformed my whole life to your least wish, how faithfully I have clung to you in good and bad fortune. In return for this devo- tion and affection, the sincerity of which you can never doubt, grant me one favor, the first perhaps that I have ever asked ' " ' If your petition is reasonable,' said she. "'Judge of that yourself,' he replied. 'I am overwhelmed with joy to see that you have come to a better state of feeling about our poor friend ; but I know your inconstancy, and I beg of you, before the wind has changed, either to dictate or write yourself some lines intended to calm the cutting grief of the poor exile, and to give him some hope of being allowed to return to you at an early day.' The 308 Marchioness needed a great deal of coaxing, but milord untreated so urgently that she finally surrendered, and ordering the landlord to bring paper, ink and a pen, she dictated aloud the following note to milord : " ' My dear Count : my friends, to please me have given to day some great talks on an equestrian group ■which I admire extremely ; but they have not been able to discover the reason of this caprice. Know that this cavalier, with his head thrown forward, and his bent posture, recalls to me the habitual pose of the head of an ingrate who abruptly left us to go and eat sherbet under the arcades of the palace of the Procurators. That resemblance seemed so striking, that it has made me waste my time at the Acropolis. As to the face, and it is so mutilated that I can pic- ture it as I please, I have given it the features of an excellent but very sensitive man, who quarrels with his friends about trifles. Come back q uickly to us, man always ready to take offence and easily angered. The society of the amiable Eosicrucians by whom I am surrounded can no longer make me happy. But 309 beware of studying Greek ; it has been leaxnedly explained to me that contrasts are necessary to hap- piness as to art, and that it is well for loving souls to have their negative pole. Be ready to pardon my follies, and bring back with you your prejudices, your ignorances — and .above all your gaiety. In doing so you will bring back mine — which left with you.' " After having dictated this note, the Marquise, taking the pen out of milord's hands, placed her sig- nature at the foot of the important document, and added a short postscript which milord had the indis- cretion to allow me to read the next morning before mailing the letter. It ran thus : '" In truth, can one pardon you for getting excited about our idea of the memorandum books? You are like a farmer who takes fright himself at the scarecrow rigged up in his own fields for keeping sparrows away. Furthermore, do you recall the saying of a wise man, that the great passions are above jealousy ? In the future be more reasonable, or you will find yourself involved in a much more serious quarrel.' 310 "WMlst the Marchioness traced her words rapidly, the Chevalier, whose face for the last few moments had portrayed lively vexation, turned to the Doctor and said, in a low voice, 'That woman has neither beginning nor end.' But he had too much self-love to betray himself openly, and controlling his . countenance, he hastened to congratulate the Marchioness on her act of clemency, which did great honor to her generosity. And of Nanni, what ? From the instant the Mar- chioness had begun her confessions, no one saw the poor child's face, for turning his back, and looking toward the entrance of the arbor he remained silent and motionless. Finally he arose abruptly and turned around. I trembled for him. His face was pale as death, his lips moved convulsively. I do not know what folly he was about to utter, but his eyes met the stern and threatening gaze of the Abbot fixed on him. This look gave him' the courage to restrain himself, and making a supreme effort for self-control, he cried out with a bitter gaiety 311 " ' As for me, my lady, I do not believe in a com- promise. We must choose between the lyre and the flageolet; these two instruments do not harmonize any more than the poetic plane and the ordinary contentments of the vulgar. When one has had the glory of being caliph, even though for only twenty- four hours, one must live in the memory, and on the hope of regaining again so glorious a condition. They are only little souls that return so quickly to Abou Hassan. But if happiness alone is in the scale, let us chase away all ambition and seek peace and repose in the emotions of the soul — and in thought ; for as the romance that I am about to have the honor of singiog to you teaches, to know about happiness we must go to the ass and the crow.' " At these words he ran out, and reappeared directly with a guitar in his hand, which he began to tune, and on which he played the accompaniment to the song that he was about to sing. The subject was not gay. It treated of three poor fools, the first of whom was a knight, the second a poet, and the 312 third a lover, who mounted on asses, meeting in the glade of a forest, at the foot of a high momitain, dis- mounted to recount their adventures. The knight had consecrated his sword to the cause of children and the oppressed, but the world had disregarded, despised, and loaded him with outrages, and he went off and took refuge on the top of a mountain to enjoy there, he said, converse with the tempests, 'for the winds of heaven have a more tender heart than man.' The poet, on his part, boasted that he had divined the secrets of the gods, who revenged them- selves by diffusing into his spirit a pitiful madness ; he had the coldness of death in his head, and like hot burning coals in his entrails, and he went away to the mountains to lie down upon his back until a mantle of snow and ice covering his chest should extinguish the fire which was consuming him. Then the lover said — " ' Brothers, I am even more unhappy than you. I wandered in the paths of life until one day Heaven discovered to me a treasure. That treasure was the heart of a woman.' 313 " ' That heart was pure and resplendent as a dia- mond ; it was resplendent with a thousand fires which warmed my soul, and hghtened the darkness of my thoughts.' " ' I remained immovable before her, and kneeling as a devotee in prayer, only asked that I might be permitted to look at her.' " ' One day, however, I became bolder ; I wished to seize this divine diamond and hold it in my hands, but scarcely had I touched it when it broke into a thousand pieces.' " ' And now I too am going off to the top of the mountain to see if, touching the firmament with my finger, I can reduce to powder all the planets and stars.' " ' And whilst these three fools spoke thus, the two asses cropped their thistles. " ' Good Heaven ! but we have been sorrowful souls, said all three of them : this world is a failure, one cannot move without finding trouble.' 314 " ' There is perhaps somewhere near some long grass, which is not dead — , and some lady asses beau- tiful as love.' ' ' ' But wait, this thistle is exquisite, and it is wisdom to swallow the thorns without choking.' " ' An hour later the glade was empty, and the silence of the forest was only broken by two rough voices which came from a nest.' " ' It was a crow and his mate ; it was a female crow and her spouse. They ate with equal appetite two big nuts, and eating, the male said :' " ' We have always loved each other.' " ' And we always will love each other,' replied the wife. " When Nanni had stopped singing, he remained standing, running his fingers by chance over the strings of the guitar, his eye excited, all ready to let the madness which boiled over in his soul fall from his lips. But the Abbot looking at him steadily, in a dry and severe tone, said : 315 " ' Nanni, your song has no common sense, and you do not understand anything of natural history. It is not from crows but from nightingales that eternal love is vaunted.' " ' That biings us back to my theory,' said I, ' for out of every pair of nightingales, there is only one, the husband, who sings.' "Nanni sat down again. For the second time the Abbot's look had brought him back to himself and had dissipated the wicked intoxication of the fumes which troubled his brain I stepped away for a moment to settle the proprietor's bill ; on my return I found all my grasshoppers conversing peaceably on the future of Greece. The moon had risen, and the lanterns were extinguished that we might enjoy her tender beams. Favored by that heavenly lamp, whose rays, piercing the foliage, glanced like diamonds around us, the Marchioness, seated at the end of the arbor, appeared to me like a graceful and charming phantom ; the shadows of the leaves moved by the gentle sighing breeze, floated 316 over her white dress ; her magnificent hair, a Kttle out of order, hung in long curls, which strayed over her right shoulder, and her slender, delicate neck swayed like a reed rocked by the mnd. Nanni cast long stolen glances at her, in which lingered the sadness of an eternal farewell, whilst the Chevalier fastened his fawn colored eyes in anger on her pretty feet which were amusing themselves in teasing Ugly lying in front of her. Milord had a radiant and triumphant air, which it was a pleasure to see. The Doctor sneered and bantered, and smoked his inexhaustible narghile, and the Abbot as usual, watching Nanni, uttered now and then a brief word, as a doctor does to a madman whom he seeks to hold in check. They talked with animation about Greece and her future, and meanwhile each one of them was pre-occupied with other thoughts ; but their hopes, their joys, their vexa- tions, their desires, their griefs, were not revealed in tone or language. At moments the child would take up his guitar and play a few chords ; then they would begin to talk again. To the shrill voice of the Cheva- 317 lier, which never rose above the first note, and the flute like tones of the Marchioness, responded the joyous barytone of the Doctor, which rose from time to time above the coarse, smothered bass of the Abbot, and at intervals, like a rocket, a peal of sparkling laughter from poor Nanni, whose forced gaiety nearly broke my heart, rose on the air. " Meanwhile, from the effects of the fumes of the Cyprus and Marsala wine, which I can never resist, a sort of stupidity akin to sleep crept slowly over me, and closing my eyes, I fell into a vague reverie, which filled my brain with odd and incoherent visions. I saw first the procession of the Panathenaea defiling before me, until suddenly the Panagia appearing in the air, the virgius, musicians, and the ApoUos crowned with olives, paled, were effaced, and vanished into space, and a voice resounded which said : ' The god Pan is dead.' Just after, a satyr with pointed ears approached me and said, sneeringly, ' Pan is not dead, he is only sleeping, and when he is awakened, it will be done by the Panagia.' 318 "Then I saw nothing more, save Nanni prostrate at the feet of the Marchioness, who chased him from her presence by an imperious and contemptuous gesture. Suddenly the caryatides that I had contemplated in the morning at the Erechtheum came between the Marchioness and Nanni, and extending her arms to the child, said : ' I alone am worthy of thy love ; come to me, and I will console thee.' " At this moment I opened my eyes, and saw two steps from me the Marchioness and my lord looking at me curiously, whilst farther away the Doctor directed the attention of the Chevalier and the Abbot to me, and they all seemed amused at my expense. " ' Well, you are polite,' said the Marchioness, ' and it is gratifying to see how well you use your con- versational powers to entertain a poor woman who has the blues.' " ' Whilst you were asleep we finished our task,' said the Doctor. ' We have just arrived at the mathematical solution of the problem of the regen- eration of Greece. 319 " 'That is all right,' I said, casting my eyes around, ' but where is the child ? ' " ' He left, after putting you in your present plight.' Then I discovered that I had a crown of olive leaves on my head, and in each hand I held one of the pieces of milord's flute. " As I was about to award the crown to the winner, she said, ' Nanni declared his intention of withdrawing from the contest, and begged me to transfer to him instead the duty of selecting the conqueror. I con- sented, and immediately he crowned you, insisting that by doing so he was interpreting my sentiments, and that although you had said nothing about the horse, you were of all the orators of the day, the one to whom I was most indebted, for you had taught me the theory of the moderation of the soul and of hap- piness. Then seizing milord's flute, he broke it in two, and putting a piece in each of your hands, said : " Honor to him whose wisdom succeeded in triumph- ing over all the inharmouies of life, and may this flute be the sign and trophy of his victory." Then inquir- Missing Page Missing Page 322 foolish allusions of the child, anJ the anger of the Marchioness ; the part that I had taken and the insidious cleverness of my discourse How can I describe it to you ? After my stupefying sleep, the fumes of the wine excited me excessively, and my praise of myself was inexhaustible. The Abbot did did not make me any reply, only murmuring under his breath once in a while : ' That was admirable ! aston- ishing ! What a skilful man ! ' At the close, his ironical exclamations provoked me, and I said abruptly, ' What do you mean ? you mysterious man ! Is this the time for you to ridicule those who have undertaken to attend to your business ? For you are at least a little responsible for the condition of the soul and happiness of the beautiful Marchioness ; but from the height of the clouds in which you live, you do not deign to let a single glance fall on the miserable interests that struggle here below.' . " He began to smile slightly, and taking my arm, said, in an abrupt tone : 328 " ' My dear sir, if I amuse myself a little with you and your skilful powders, I take you to be an extremely sensible man, and I am not afraid to trust to your discretion the short history that I am about to confide to you. . . . You cannot possibly he> " angry with me for confirming you by this confidence in your estimate of your own sagacity. You know that on leaving the chapel the Marchioness came to look for me in the garden, where I was quite alone, astride my clouds ; when I saw her coming I went to meet her, and when she was within two steps of me, I said, looking steadily in her eyes : " ' " You love him, my lady; your own looks have just betrayed you." She turned pale, and dropping her eyes, replied, smiling sadly : " ' " Until to-day I believed that I had the heart of a grandmother And yet sometimes there was a confused sense of the danger which threat- ened me. Those irritable moods that you have reproved me for, those rudenesses that I indulged in to the poor child — . . . and will you believe it ? 324 'what I was searcbiag for this morning in the Acrop- olis, was a vague resemblance to a friend that I begged to aid me in conquering my folly. But calmness soon returned to my soul. I laughed at my imaginary terrors I tell you on my conscience, father, it is so : while looking at him I cannot tell yon what has been going on in my heart. . . . Yes, now I recognize that the danger is serious. Do not scold me father, — but help me by your advice." " ' " For a long time," I said, "I have observed carefully what has been going on within you ; if I did not warn you sooner, it was because you would have said that I was dreaming, and I am not fond of wasting words." ' ' ' ' Thereupon we began to wander through the garden paths, and you will readily know, you— so subtle ^so penetrating, which way our conversation turned, when I tell you that twenty minutes later the Mar- chioness said, sighing heavily : " ' " Yes, you are right, it is not worth while to 325 think about it any longer ; it would be a romance compK- cated with treachery." " ' Just at this moment we saw that you were searching for us, and we took refuge in a small pavilion at the end of the garden, where no one suspected that we would be. We stayed there a long time, talking in a low voice, and the Marchioness concluded by saying : " ' " So, father, you are for violent remedies : To bring back the friend as soon as possible, whilst he " "'"I know him," I replied; "'trying to pre- pare him will irritate his condition ; strong souls are better supported under heavy blows, because they judge them to be more worthy of their courage — And you also, my lady, you are a strong soul; violent treatment agrees with you." " ' " My strength," she said, taking my hands between hers, " comes from what you yourself have taught me about not believing in the fatality of the passions." 326 " ' " Passions oi the head, above all," I said, smiling. " ' We looked at each other for a few moments ; then she replied : " ' " What you have said to-day has done me good ; I feel unusual courage in my heart ; it must be put to good Qse. Perhaps to-morrow I should hot be capable of the great effort that you impose on jne. But leave me here for a few moments, to my own reflections, and walk around the pavilion — only let me hear the sound of your footsteps." " ' And now, my very dear friend, is there any need to tell you anything further, and does not this little recital prove to you sufficiently that I am a man •of the Moon, and an ugly egotist, and that you — jou are a philanthropist, as clever in your expedients, a,s you are sagacious in your conjectures ?' " Thereupon just as we entered the city, this devil of a man made me a profound reverence, and going through a little street disappeared directly from my sight. I was stunned, I confess, and somewhat 327 mortified by the little revelation that he had just made. " ' Bah ! ' I said to myself, at last ; 'I shall have none the less credit with milord for the honor of this adventure ! ' " Then tapping my brow — " ' Ah ! one thing is left, there is one thing that I can do, I will go and console the poor child ! No one can possibly think just at this moment of robbing me of the glory of that good action.' " I moved on toward the district in which Nanni lodged, and from a distance raising my eyes to the ■ window of his room, I saw a light there. I approached the entrance, but some one from the opposite direction, grazing the walls to gain time, arrived at the door before me, and then turning around, cried out to me in a rough voice, " ' What are you coming here for ? ' " It was the Abbot, as you may imagine, who, without waiting for a reply, mounted the staircase rapidly. I followed him, and entering without knockiag. 328 we found Nanni busy packing his trunks. He ap- peared not to see me, but advancing with a wavering step to meet the Abbot, be threw himself into his arms, and burst into tears. " The Abbot seated himself in an arm-chair ; the child kneeled before him, his head resting on his knees, and let his poor heart relieve itself in long sobs. I wanted to draw nearer, but the Abbot with an imperious gesture prevented me. He remained some moments in perfect silence, rolling Nanni's long golden ringlets around his finger. Then he began to speak in such a low tone that I could not understand a word. Standing before a round table to pass away the time, I began to examine a portrait in enamel that was just under my hand. This portrait, which was not unknown to me, had for a long time suggested the idea that Nanni had left a fiancee in Venice, and certain embarrassed explanations of his had gone far to confirm me in my conjecture ; there could be noth- ing more fresh, more graceful, more deliciously poetic than the beautiful child painted on that enamel. A 329 maidenly candor rested on her finely shaped brow, and her large chestnut eyes had rather a pensive look, which seemed to say : ' study me, I am worth the tfouble.' " The Abbot made a sign to me to bring the por- trait to him ; I did so and then seated myself at the end of the room. I remarked that he made several efforts to put the picture to Nanni's lips. Twice I saw the poor boy turn away his head, but the third time he did not draw back, and his lips touched the enamel. Meanwhile the Abbot continued to converse with him in a low tone. What could he be saying ? What language was there that could console such despair? One thing is certain, that at the very moment that a neighboring clock struck two, Nanni raised his head, and on this countenance flooded with tears, I believed that I could perceive — O miracle — something approaching the first aurora of a smile ! Then darting forward, I said — ' Pardon me, strange Abbot ! What in the world have you said to console that child ? Have you quoted Spinosa or the Gospel to 330 him ? Have you spoken to him of the Panathensean Yirgin, or of her whom we adore at Borne ?' " He looked at me with an ironical air : " ' What concern is that of yours,' he said, coldly, ' and why pray are you troubling yourself about it ?' "Then changing his mind, he said, fixing his ■eagle or lion like eyes on me: " ' Since we have been told that we can only speak to-day of horses, I extolled the lot of those noble coursers, consecrated to the altar — who grazed freely in the enclosure of the temple — and by the pride of their bearing seemed to say : — ' A god alone is our master ! ' (THE END) APPENDIX. The Ionic frieze is well suited to the representation of a long train of moving figures, and it was natural that the artist employed to decorate the frieze of the Parthenon should choose as his subject the most magnificent and beautiful of the many splendid groups of which Athens boasted — The Great Panathenaic Procession. ****** It seems probable that a Panathenaic festival was held every year, on the third day before the end of the month Hecatombaion (towards the middle of August); but that the great Panathenaics * * * * were celebrated in the third year of every Olympiad. It was on the 28th of Hecatombaion, the^rra^day of this more splendid cele- bration, that the new crocus-colored Peplos was solemnly carried to the temple of Athene Polias, and presented to the goddess Ath&nS. This magnificent robe, on which the Battle of the Gods and Giants was embroidered by Athenian women and maidens, ■viasjixed to the mast of a ship with wheels * * * * The only existing copy of this ship may be seen in the frieze of the small metropolitan church in Athens called the Panagia Gargopico. — Perry's Greek and Roman Sculpture.