Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

to be immortal. His name, which would have outshone mine. Yes, mine, padre," added the artist, with noble pride, "for you must know that I am Peter Paul Rubens."

At the sound of that name, whose renown, associated as it was with a hundred sacred paintings, had penetrated even to the monastery, the pallid cheek of the prior flushed lightly and his dim eyes were fixed on the stranger's face with as much veneration as surprise.

"Ah! you know me," exclaimed Rubens, with boyish satisfaction. "That delights my soul. So you will be less of a priest with me! Now then, will you sell me the painting?"

"You ask for the impossible," sponded the prior.

re

"Well then, do you know of any other works of this unfortunate genius? Can you not recall his name? Will you tell me when he died?

"You have not understood aright," replied the priest, "I told you that the author of this painting did not belong to the world, but that does not signify, precisely, that he is dead."

"Yes, padre, the pope," repeated Rubens.

"Be assured, I would not tell you the name of this painter, even if I remembered it. I shall not tell you in what convent he has sought refuge!"

"Well, then, padre, the king and the pope will compel you to tell it," responded Rubens, in a tone of exasperation. "I will see that they do."

"Oh! pray do not," exclaimed the priest, "You will do wrong, Senor Rubens. Take the picture, if you wish, but leave its author in peace. I speak to you in the name of God! Yes, I have known, I have loved, I have consoled, I have redeemed, I have saved from the sea of passion and misfortune, shipwrecked and suffering, this master as you call him, this blind and miserable mortal, as I call him-yesterday forgotten by God and by himself, to-day near supreme felicity.

"Glory! Do you know of anything greater than that to which he aspires?

"By what right do you wish to revive in that soul the flame of earthly vanity, when there burns in his heart the

"Oh! he lives, he lives!" exclaimed all inextinguishable fire of devotion? the artists, "Give us his name."

"For what? The unhappy man has renounced the world. He has nothing in common with men-nothing. Therefore, I implore you, let him die in peace."

"Oh!" said Rubens, with enthusiasm, "that cannot be, padre. When God lights in a soul the sacred fire of genius, he does not intend that the soul shall be consumed in solitude, but that it shall fulfil its sublime mission by illuminating the minds of other men! Give me the name of the monastery where this master is hidden, and I will go to look for him, and restore him to his sphere. What glory awaits him!"

"Do you think that this man, before leaving the world, before renouncing riches, fame, power, youth, love and everything that fills mankind with pride, had not undergone a sharp conflict with his own heart? Can you not divine the disenchantment, the bitterness which he must have borne, before he understood the falseness of human affairs? And you would bring him back to the fight when he has triumphed?"

"But he is renouncing immortality!" cried Rubens.

"No," he aspires to immortality," returned the priest.

"What right have you to interpose between this man and the world? Let

"But if he should refuse?" asked the me talk with him and he shall decide," prior timidly. said Rubens hotly.

"If he refuses, I will have recourse to the pope, whose friendship honors me, and the pope will convince him better than I."

"The pope!" exclaimed the prior.

"I have the right of an elder brother, of a teacher, of a father, all of which I am to him. I again say, I do it in the name of God. Respect that holy name, for the love of your own soul."

Thus speaking, the monk covered his "Now it is that he most resembles his head and walked away.

"Let us go," said Rubens. "I know what I must do."

"Maestro!" exclaimed one of his pupils, who during the preceding conversation had been intently looking, now at the canvas, then at the priest. "Do you not think that this old monk is very like the dying man in the picture?"

work."

From the Spanish of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, by Jean Raymond Bidwell.

From The Economist.

THE FUTILITY OF FORECASTS. It does not at first sight appear un

"Jove! You're right," exclaimed the reasonable for any one at the beginning pupils.

"Take away the wrinkles and beard, and make allowances for the thirty years which the painting shows, and you will see that the maestro was right when he said that this dead monk was, at the same time, the portrait and work of a living priest. Confound me, if the living monk is not the padre prior," said the youth who had spoken first.

In the mean while, Rubens, gloomy, ashamed, and profoundly moved, saw the old man move away. The prior, crossing his arms on his breast, saluted him, just before he disappeared.

"It was he! yes!" cried the artist. "Oh! let us go," he added, turning to his pupils. "This man is right! his glory is worth more than mine! Let him die in peace!"

Throwing a last glance at the canvas which had so moved him, he left the church and went to the palace, where their Majesties honored him by an invitation to dinner.

Three days later, Rubens returned, entirely alone, to that humble chapel, desirous of contemplating once more the marvellous painting, and even of speaking to its presumed author; but the picture was not in its place. Instead, he found that there was a coffin on the floor of the principal nave of the church. It was surrounded by all the brotherhood of monks, chanting the requiem for the dead. The artist drew near to look at the face of the dead man, and saw that it was the padre prior.

"He was a great painter," said Rubens, as soon as his surprise and pain had given place to other sentiments.

of a new year to forecast the course of European politics for the coming twelve months. The data are very well known, the personages who influence events are fairly understood, and affairs usually flow on in certain well-worn grooves, which are channelled all the deeper because certain incidents of importance-like the meet ing of Parliament in Great Britain, France, and Germany, and the new President's first Message in America -occur at anticipated and fixed dates. It seems not impossible for any experienced politician, or diplomatist, or even journalist, to sketch out with some decision a course of events which will bear a close resemblance to reaiity, or, at worst, serve as a sort of search-light for observers anxiously peering out in the endeavor to discern any obstacles along the road. Surely we shall come to that hedge, and have to pass that bad bit where the road is broken, and may meet that artillery tumbril, and shall be a little hustled in that advancing crowd. The whole should, if experience is a solid guide, be a matter of calculation, like rail. way traffics, or the average sales of a business, or the fluctuations in the movement of a population, all of which require allowances for accident, but all admit of forecasts accurate enough for action to be reasonably founded on them. As a matter of fact, however, nothing can be more futile than such forecasts in regard to the politics of Europe, more especially at the present time. The action of the nations depends upon at least three sets of wholly incalculable quantities, viz., incidents, the determinations of individ

uals, and the outbreaks among the populations. It is simply impossible to predict what may happen in any week in Paris to alter the attitude of the republic, or what may occur in Constantinople rendering intervention in Turkey unavoidable, or what may break out in the Far East with an immediate reflex action upon the politics of Europe. It is equally conceivable that all may remain as it is, and that a sort of volcano may burst out in Macedonia, that the European alliances may remain politically distributed as at present, or may suddenly be redistributed by an outbreak of anarchy in Morocco, or a furious threat directed from Washington against Madrid. The force of Great Britain might be paralyzed by a military insurrection in India, or all the armies of the Continent be reduced to inaction by an invention so strikingly available for the destruction of life that all alike must pause until, at vast expense, the governments have inIcluded it in their organization for war. A discovery which would almost terminate the fighting power of navies has long been believed to be possible, and so is a discharge of explosives having all the effect of artillery from the air. Then, as to the influence of individuals, the world is still governed by persons; and the decisions of persons, swayed as they are by hopes, fears, intellectual wishes, and excesses of folly, are absolutely incalculable. The most experienced diplomatist will not venture to predict what the present sultan of Turkey will do on any given day, or the German emperor, or the American president, or the nearly unknown emperor of Japan; and any one of these could, by an act, a speech, or a threat, turn the whole current of the world's affairs, introducing not only new tasks, but wholly unexpected combinations among the nations with fleets and armies at their disposal. Nor has the reasonable Zadkiel to reckon only with individual decisions, unexpected as they always may be. He may be baffled by the forces of nature, which act on im

of emotion pulses entirely beyond our ken. There are at least five individuals in Europe the three emperors, the sultan, and M. Faure the death of any one of whom would upset all calculations, and give all action pause; and perhaps six other persons, the principal being Lord Salisbury, M. Hanotaux, Count Goluchowski, and Prince Bismarck, whose disappearance would strongly deflect the current of events. We all expect them to live, but there is no solid reason for any expectation as likely to be falsified in their cases as in those of any other men, or more likely, for very few live like some of them under permanent danger of assassination. Then there are the emotions of the nations now so easily stirred, and so powerful a factor in national action, who would have dreamed of all England waking up one morning to find itself confronted with news which made the whole nation, without distinction of parties, feel it self ready for battle, and that with another nation with which we had never crossed swords or dreamed of a serious conflict. It would take very few words to induce Spain to risk everything in a war with America, and probably as few to compel the German emperor, even against his will, to put the Triple Alliance at last in motion, risking all the tremendous conse. quences which must follow that explosion. A surge of feeling in Paris might in a day undo all that diplomatists have done to preserve peace, and so might a similar surge among the Mussulman multitude of Constantinople, of whose governing thoughts and influences no diplomatist or statesman really understands anything whatever. Eastern crowds are more passive, and, as a rule, more orderly, than Western crowds; but they are strangely subject to fits, both of panic and of excitement, verging upon madness, of which their own leaders or rulers never pretend to give an intelligible explanation. They only say, "The folk are frightened" or "the folk are crazed." In the presence of forces so incalculable as those we have de

scribed any forecast must be absolutely nugatory, or worse, being, so far as it is credited, deceptive. We remember a great one in our own columns by Mr. Rathbone Greg, which deeply impressed statesmen, and which even now reads as if it ought to have been correct, yet which was entirely falsified by the facts. We thought Napoleon III. must wage a war with Great Britain, and the emperor sought an alliance instead.

We have made these remarks be cause we believe a little reflection upon the subject will be useful at this season to men of business as well as politicians. They are both obliged to act more or less as if the usual must always happen, and they are right in doing so, but they. should never forget that the usual is not the inevitable, and is less so just now than heretofore. The forces in existence are fearfully great, and seem stable, but the grand danger of a first-class ironclad is that it may capsize, that its very weight and speed make a slight obstacle as dangerous as a lifted rail to an express

train. Events have seldom been

SO

and

large, the "personal equation" has
never been more incalculable,
men's minds have never been more
overtaxed. We all exult in the extent
of everything British, dominion, busi-
ness, influence, but every increase in
that extent increases the difficulty of
foresight and the laboriousness of cal-
culation. Up to a point it is as easy to
conduct a big business as a small one,
easier perhaps, because the averages
are less mutable, but there is a point at
which the grasp of the directing minds
begins to fail, and though they may go
right they do it almost accidentally.
We hope it is not reached yet, but of
this we are quite sure that a double
conviction of the necessity for fore.
cast and of its futility begins to daunt
the very strongest among English

statesmen, and to incline them to think
that safety lies in exceedingly slow
speed. That is not always the opin-
ion of experienced captains when the
storm is rising, and the harbor too full
of vessels of the first class.

From The Spectator.

ANIMALS IN NOVELS.

The recent adventure of a "mad bull" in Langham Place shows that such animals still exist in fact. In fiction, where the mad bull once played an important part, giving endless opportunities to the hero to distinguish himself by rescuing young ladies, he has almost disappeared. Other animals still survive in novels, some, like the bull, as part of the machinery of the piece, others as important characters, and others again because the writer seems so fond of animals that he must introduce them, whether needed or not. Among the great novelists, Sir Walter Scott used them more comprehensively than any one else. It was part of his happy art to use animal characters as the unconscious means of firing the train of human emotion in certain situations in his novels. The recognition of a longabsent master by a dog-the common device of story since the days of the Odyssey-has never been set out more directly or with greater reserve of

force than in the scene in "Old Mortality," when Henry Morton returns from exile to the house of Milnwood, and listens to the old housekeeper's story of his miserly uncle's death and his last words, that a "dipped candle was good enough to die with:"

While Mrs. Wilson was thus detailing the last moments of the old miser, Morton was pressingly engaged in diverting the assiduous curiosity of the dog, which, recovered from his first surprise, and combining former recollections, had, after much snuffing and examination, begun a course of capering and jumping upon the stranger which threatened every instant to betray him. At length in the urgency of his impatience, Morton could not forbear exclaiming, in a hasty tone, "Down, Elphin! down, sir!" "Ye ken our dog's name," said the old lady, struck with great and sudden surprise, "and it's no a common one. And the creature kens you too," she continued, in a more agitated and shriller tone. "God guide us! it's my ain bairn!"

In "The Talisman" Sir Kenneth's Scotch deerhound, instead of being the

ncidental cause

of precipitating a ter short, I beseech you, good friends, to observe the state of Sir Duncan Campbell's palfrey, and I give you my honest assurance that that horse and his rider shall lack for food before either Gustavus or I." "Gustavus's" supper is what all lovers of horses would wish. "His master filled a large measure with corn, and walked up with it to his charger, who, by his low, whinnying neigh, his pricked ears, and his pawing, showed how close the alliance was between him and his rider. Nor did he taste his corn until he had returned his master's caresses by licking his hands and face . . . . who, after looking on the animal with great complacency for about five minutes, said: 'Much good may it do you, honest Gustavus. Now I must go and lay in provant for myself for the campaign.''

crisis, is one of the principal actors in the story. Sir Walter doubtless had in mind his own favorite deerhound "Maida," for he clearly writes from the life. The hound shares and comprehends in part the knight's watch by the standard of England; "when the cry of the sentinels came from the distant lines and defences of the camp, he answered with a deep and reiterated bark, as if to affirm that he was too vigilant in his duty." The defence of the standard by the dog in the absence of its master, its wound and recovery, and its attack upon Conrade of Montserrat, as, in company with the other leaders of the crusade, he passes and salutes the replaced standard of England, are the turning points of the plot in the later chapters.

In descriptive writing Sir Walter draws his animals as carefully as his men and women. They take the same place in his chapters on Scotch do mestic life as they do in Sir David Wilkie's pictures of the same subjects. Scott's fireside portrait of the Liddesdale farmer with his generations of terriers-"auld 'Pepper' and young 'Pepper,' auld 'Mustard' and young 'Mustard,' little 'Pepper' and little 'Mustard' "-was felt to be so real that his readers proceeded to make it a reality. They wrote for puppies to "Dandie Dinmont, farmer, Liddesdale," and the Dandie Dinmont terrier was produced to their order. Mr. Davidson, who was the nearest to the original among the farmers of the vale, took the honorary title, but remarked that "the sheriff had not written mair about him than about other folk; only about his dogs." No horse in fiction is better beloved by readers than Dugald Dalgetty's charger "Gustavus." "My horse hath an excellent social quality," says the soldier of fortune; "for although he cannot pledge my cup, yet we share our loaf between us"-a reminiscence of Bruce's border raid when the Scots' ponies were fed on oat cakes-"and it will be hard if he suffers famine where cakes or bannocks are to be found. But to cut this mat

No one who reads Lockhart's account of Sir Walter, his guests, and family setting out from Abbotsford for a day's coursing and fishing can fail to discover the reasons for his power of painting verbal portraits of animals in their relation to man. He was devoted to dogs-greyhounds, deerhounds, and terriers-and even his daughter's donkeys, named irreverently "Mrs. Hannah More" and "Lady Morgan," used to come to the fence to "have a pleasant crack wi' the laird." On the morning which Lockhart describes his animal companions were not limited to the inmates of the kennel and the sta ble. The cavalcade was about to set out when his daughter, Anne, "broke from the line screaming with laughter, and exclaimed, 'Papa, papa, I knew you would never think of going without your pet.' Scott looked round, and I rather think there was a blush as well as a smile on his face, when he perceived a little black pig frisking about his pony, and evidently a selfelected addition to the party of the day. He tried to look stern, and cracked his whip at the creature; but was in a moment obliged to join in the general cheers. The pig had taken, nobody could tell how, a sentimental attachment to Scott, and was constantly

« VorigeDoorgaan »