 21. On Milton The letters of a people reflect its noblest as architecture reflects its most intimate mind, and as its religion, if it has a separate or tribal religion, reflects its military capacity or incapacity. The word noblest is vague, and nobility must here be defined to mean that steadiness in the soul, by which it is able to express a fixed character and individuality of its own. Thus a man contradicts himself from passion or from a variety of experience, or from the very ambiguity and limitation of words, but he himself resides in all he says, and when this self is clearly and poisedly expressed, it is then that we find him noble. The poet Milton, according to this conception, has best expressed the nobility of the English mind, and in doing a work quite different from any of his peers, has marked a sort of standard from which the ideal of English letters does not depart. Two things are remarkable with regard to English literature. First that it came late into the field of European culture, and second that it has proved extraordinarily diversified. The first point is immaterial to my subject. The second is material to it. Or it might be superficially imagined that such bewildering complexity, and as it were lawless exuberance of method and of matter, would never find a pole nor even be symbolized by but one aspect of it. Yet Milton has found that pole, and Milton's work has afforded that symbol. In any one moment of English literary history, you may contrast two wholly different masterpieces from the end of the fourteenth to the end of the eighteenth centuries. After the first third of the nineteenth century, indeed, first-rate work falls into much more commonplace groove. And it is perceptible that the best verse and the best prose written in English are narrowing in their vocabulary, and in what is far more important, the way of looking at life. The newspapers have leveled the writers down as with a trowel. You have not side by side the coarse and the refined, the amazing and the steadfast, the grotesque and the terrible. But in all those earlier centuries you had side by side, manner and thought so varied, that a remote posterity will wonder how such a wealth could have arisen upon so small an area of national soil. Piers, Plowman, and the Canterbury Tales are two worlds, and a third world separate from each is the world of those lovely lyrics which are now so nearly forgotten, but which the populace spontaneously engendered in saying throughout the clothes of the Middle Ages. The sixteenth century was perhaps less modulated, and flowed especially toward its end in one simpler stream. But in the seventeenth what a growth of variety from the Jacobian translation of the Bible to Swift, the very decayed in which Paradise Lost was published corresponded with the first riot of the Restoration. If we look closely into all this diversity, we can find two common qualities which mark out all English work in a particular manner, from the work of other nations. To qualities of this kind which are like colors rather than like measurable things, it is difficult to give a title. I will hazard, however, these two words, adventure and mystery. There is no English work of any period, especially, there is no English work of any period later than the middle of the sixteenth century, which has not got at all in those emotions which proceed from the love of adventure. How notable it is, for instance, that landscape appears and reappears in every diverse form of English verse. Even in Shakespeare you have it now and then as vivid as a little snapshot, and it runs unceasingly through every current of the stream. It glows in Grey's elegy, and it is the binding element of, in memoriam. It saves the earlier work of Wordsworth. It permeates the large effect of Byron and those two poems which, today, no one reads. Thalabu and the Curse of Kihama are alive with it. It is the very inspiration of Keats and of Cooleridge. Now this hunger for landscape and his vivid sense of it are but aspects of adventure. For the men who thus feel and speak are the men who, desiring to travel to unknown places, are in a mood for sudden revelations of sea and land. So a living poet has written, When all the holy primal part of me arises up within me to salute, the glorious vision of the earth and sea that are the kindred of the destitute. The note of those four lines is the note of the landscape in English letters, and that note is the best proof and effect of adventure. If any man is too poor to travel, though I cannot imagine any man so poor, or if he is constrained from travel by the unhappy necessities of a slavish life, he can always escape through the door of English letters. Let such a one read the third and fourth books of Paradise Lost before he falls asleep, and he will find next morning that he has gone on a great journey. Milton, by his perpetual and aesthetic delight in these visions of the world, was the normal and the central example of an English poet. As when far off at sea a fleet described hangs in the clouds, or again, Hesperus that led the starry host road-brightest till the moon, rising in cloudy majesty at length, apparent queen unveiled. He everywhere and in a profusion, that is, as it were, rebellious against his strict discipline of words, sees and expresses the picture of this world. If landscape be the best test of the quality of this adventure in English poets, and the Milton as their standard, so the mystic character of English verse appears in them and in him, no period could be so formal as to stifle or even to hide this demand of English writers for mystery and for emotions communicable only by an art-allied music. The passion is so strong that many ill acquainted with foreign literature will deny such literature any poetic quality because they do not find in it the unmistakable thrill which the English reader demands of a poet as he demands it of a musician. As landscape might be taken for the best test of adventure, so of this appetite for the mysterious, the best measurable test is rhythm. Highly accentuated rhythm and emphasis are the marks and the con commitments of that spirit. As powerful a line as any in the language for suddenly evoking intense feeling, by no perceptible artifice, is that line in Lysidus, smooth sliding municious, crowned with focal reeds. I confess I can never read that line, but I remember a certain river of twenty years ago, nor does revisiting that stream and seeing it again with my eyes so powerfully recall what once it was to those who loved it as does this desolate line. It seems as though the magical power of the poet escaped the effect of time in a way that the senses cannot, and a man curious in such matters might find the existence of such gifts to be a proof of human immortality. The pace at which Milton rides his verse, the strong constraint within which he binds it, deeply accentuate this power of rhythm and the mystical effect it bears. You would say a trumpet now, a chorus of human voices, now a flute, now a single distant song. From the fortieth to the fiftieth line of the third book, Paradise Lost, has all the power and nature of a solemn chant. The large complaint in it is the complaint of an organ, and one may say indeed in this connection that only one thing is lacking in all the tones Milton commanded. He disdained intensity of grief, as most artists will disdain intensity of terror. But whereas intensity of terror is no fit subject for man's pen, and has appealed only to the dirtier of our little modern fellows, intense grief has been from the very beginning thought a just subject for verse. Five lines of Greek poetry. Milton will have none of it. It is the absence of that note which has made so many hesitate before the glorious achievement of Lycidus. And in this page which I quote, where Milton comes nearest to the cry of sorrow, it is still no more than what I have called it, a solemn chant. Thus with the year, seasons return, but not to me returns, day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, or sign of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, or flocks of herds, or human-faced divine. But cloud instead, and ever during dark, surrounds me from the cheerful wails of men. Cut off for the Book of Knowledge Fair presented with a universal blame of nature's works, to me expunged and raised, and wisdom at one entrance quite shut out, so much the rather thou celestial light shine inward, and the mind through all her powers irradiate. Their plant eyes all mist from thence, purge and disperse, that I may see and tell, of things invisible to mortal sight. There is one other character in Milton, where he stands not so much for English letters as for a feature in English nature as a whole, which is the sort of standing apart of the individual, where this may be good, and where evil it is not for a short appreciation to discuss. It is profoundly national, and nowhere will you see it more powerfully than in the verse of this man. Of his life we all know to be true, but I say it appears even in his verse. There is a sort of no-lay-may-tangier in it all, as though he desires but little friendship, and was not broken by one broken love, and contemplated God, and the fate of his own soul in a lonely manner. Of all the things he drew, the thing he could never draw was a collectivity. The end of section XXI on Hans Christian Andersen What a great thing it is, in this perplexed, confused, and if not unhappy, at least unrestful time, to come across a thing which is cleanly itself. What a pleasure it is, amid our entwining controversies, to find straightness, and among our confused noise, a chord. Hans Christian Andersen is a good type of that simplicity, and his own generation recognized him at once. When those contemporaries who knew him best are, for the most part, dead, their recognition is justified. A man for whom so much and more is said by their contemporaries, how many can stand the test which his good work now stands, and stands with a sort of sober triumph. Contemporary praise has a way of gathering dross. We all know why. There is the fear of this, the respect for that. There is the genuine unconscious attachment to a hundred unworthy and ephemeral things. There is the chance philosophy of the moment overweighing the praise-giver. In a word, perhaps not half a dozen of the great men who wrote in the generation before our own would properly stand this test of a neat and unfringed tradition. It is not to be pretended that, according to that test, so must men be judged. Many of the very greatest, Hugo, for instance, and in his line Huxley, a master of English, or again to go further back, the great Byron would not pass the test. Things have been said about most men, great or little in our fevered time, so exaggerated, so local, and so lacking balance, whether of experience or of the fear of posterity, that contemporary opinion should not be allowed by its misfortunes to weigh them down. The man has a quality of his own when he is so made that even his contemporaries do him justice, and that was the case with Hans Christian Andersen. I will bargain that if our letters survive five hundred years, this excellent writer will quietly survive. Even the French may incorporate him, and next it is the business of one who praises so much to ask in what the excellence of this writer consists. It is threefold. In the first place he always said what he thought. In the second place he was full of all sorts of ways of saying it, and in the third place he said only what he had to say. To say what one thinks, that is to tell the truth, is so exceedingly rare that one may almost call it a grace in a man. Just those same manifold strings which pull contemporary criticism hither and thither, and which have made me suggest above that contemporary criticism commonly belittles a man in the long run. Just those same strings pull at every writer to make him conform to what he knows to be false in his time. But some men, with limitations it is true and only by choosing a particular framework, manage to tell the truth all their lives. Those men, if they have other literary qualities, are secure of the future. And this leads me to the second point, which is that Anderson could not only tell the truth, but tell it in twenty different ways, and of a hundred different things. Now this character has been much exaggerated among literary men in importance, because literary men perceiving it to be the differentiation which marks out the great writer from the little, think it to be the main criterion of letters. It is not the main criterion, but it is a permanent necessity in writing. There is no great writing without this multiplicity, which is sometimes called imagination, sometimes experience, and sometimes judgment, but which is in its essence a proper survey of the innumerable world. This quality it is which makes the great writers create what are called characters, and whether we recognize those characters as portraits drawn from the real world. They are such in Balzac. Or as figments, they are such in Dickens. Or as heroines and heroes, they are such in Shakespeare and in Homer, if you will excuse me. Yet that they exist and live in the pages of the writer means that he had in him that quality of contemplation, which corresponds in our limited human nature, to the creative power. Lastly I say that Anderson said what he had to say and no more. This quality in writers is not restraint, a futile word dear to those who cannot write. It is rather a sort of chastity in the pen. The writer of this kind is one who unconsciously does not add. If any one were to ask him why he should not add an ornament or anything suppositious, he would be bewildered, and perhaps my answer, why should I? The instinct behind it is that which produces all terceness, all exactitude, and all economy and style. Anderson then had all those three things which make a great writer and a very great writer he is. Note that he chose his framework or at any rate that he was persuaded to it. He could not have been so complete had he not addressed himself to the children, and it is his glory that he is read in childhood. There is no child but can read hence Christian Anderson, and I at least have come across no man who having read him in childhood does not continue to read him through life. He wrote nothing that was not for the enlivening or the sustenance or the guiding of the human soul. He wrote nothing that suggested questions only. If one may speak of him in terms of trifle antiquated, or rather the moment old fashion, he was instinct with charity, and therefore he is still full of life. Having said so much of Anderson in general, something should be said of him in particular. He was northern. You always feel as you read him that if his scene is laid in the open air, the air is fresh and often frosty. That if he is talking indoors, the room is cozy and often old. Certain passions which the North Lack are lacking in him, both upon their good and upon their evil side. He is never soldierly, and he is never revengeful. He is never acute with desire for life, but again he is never envious. Those who read him, who are also northern, may well be in love with Denmark. It is a triumph of our civilization that this little land, quite outside the limits of the Roman Empire, not riven by any of the empires, great vital resurrections, undisturbed by the vision of the twelfth and of the thirteenth centuries, spared from the march of Napoleon's armies, should be so completely European. What could be more European today than that well-organized, contented peasant state? It is a good irony to put against the blundering prophecies of barbaric people that beyond the Germanes the secure and heavy state exists. One might put it in a phrase a little too epigrammatic, and say that as one reads Hans Christian Andersen, one remembers Elsinor, and one recalls the good architect of Copenhagen. If ever any misfortune again shall threaten that state, and if barbarism attempt to play the fool with it, something that really is the conscience of Europe, and not the empty and sham organization to which that phrase is too often prostituted, will arise and protect the Danes, the end of Session 22. Session 23 On Anything This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. On Anything by Hiller Bellach Session 23 On the Christmas of 1808 No British army in force has capitulated in Europe for many generations. It is the peculiar historical position of this country. That historical fact lends to the common history of the schools and universities, an attitude towards military history in general, which is commonly distorted. But it lends to the policy of the country as a whole, a confident tradition. The strength and value of which it is impossible to exaggerate. The nearest touch to such a disaster, if we accept the sieges, was passed during the days in which these words are written and read. The close thing came out in the days just before and just after Christmas 102 years ago. I will attempt to describe as simply as I can the nature of that adventure. It must first of all be premised that, in the words of Napier, position determines the fate of armies. No truth is more apparent to the soldier, none more forgotten by the civilian, and more especially by the civilian touched with the unmilitary vice of Jingoism. Position determines the fate of armies, and armaments being supposedly equal, he is a great or a fortunate general who in the critical moment has so arranged matters that disposition is upon his side, or who by some stroke of luck is in that advantage. There are exceptions to this truth. Certain decisive battles, though very few, have utterly determined campaigns, and among these battles some again have been won at a drive, and by a sort of impetus, the factor of position being so simple as to be negligible or so equally balanced as to advantage neither side and be eliminated. But as a rule it is true, even of decisive actions, that position is the determining factor. It is necessarily true of the strategy of a campaign, and it is with this consideration that I return to the particular crisis of the British Army at the close of December, 1808. Sir John Moore, as everyone knows, had rated right into the north of Spain with the object of withdrawing the pressure of the French upon the south of that country. It was in the south that French ambition had found its first check, and that Napoleon's plan had been warped by the unexpected and, as it were, impossible capitulation of Valaisne. Close upon twenty thousand of the French forces had there laid down their arms. The emperor came in person to restore the fortune of his house. It was in the south that resistance could best be expected, by the occupation of the south that he might put himself at ease over the whole territory, and from the south that the English operations were destined to draw him. On the 21st of December, a Wednesday, Lord Paget, with the 10th and 15th Hussars, surprised an advanced body of French cavalry at Sehegan. It was the extreme limit of Moore's great raid. The town was occupied at all Thursday and all the Friday, Moore halted there with his force of some twenty three thousand and sixty thousand guns. He was nearly two hundred miles from the port on the sea coast, where to he must retire if he would escape. In front of him was Soult, against whom it was his business, if he were undisturbed, to march from Sehegan immediately. But upon his right, nearly as far off as the sea, though not quite so far, a matter of one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy miles, Napoleon at Madrid commanded the best and the largest of the armies of Spain. Sixty thousand men, with one hundred and fifty guns, lay at the gates of Madrid, and during those same hours in which the British army had marched into Sehegan, Napoleon's great force began to move northward over the Guadarrama. I will not here describe that famous march. I have done so elsewhere at greater length, but the reader to appreciate the conditions of this great duel must imagine a country denuded and largely mountainous, deep in snow and subject throughout those days to intolerable weather, and the race upon the issue of which depended so many and such final things, was run at a time and in a place when one would have thought that no man could be abroad, but the protagonists of the Revolutionary Wars were not men like ourselves. Christmas Day fell upon the Sunday. Moore had got ahead of his supplies. They had reached him on the Friday and on the Saturday Christmas Eve. He had intended to go forward and attack the opponent before him. But on that same Friday when in the night his infantry were already beginning to march eastward, he heard of Napoleon's amazing feat. He knew that he had succeeded in drawing the great commander northward, but he knew also, since that commander could work miracles, that the distance separating them would last with the swiftness not to be measured by the old rules of war, and that the vast force three times his own would, if he hesitated, be found holding the snow-blocked roads between his position and the sea. The order to advance was cancelled. The order to retreat was given. By Christmas Eve, Baird and Hope were on the line of the Esla River. On Christmas Day, Sunday, the troops were passing that obstacle. On Monday, the 26th, the baggage and the last of the army under Moore's own eye were crossing by the bridge of Castro-Gonzalo before Beneventi. And the trick was done. There was a thick fog. The passage was far slower than the strained intelligence of the imperiled commander had designed. On that same day, the 26th, Napoleon was at Tordesillas. One long day's march away from the Esla River. He had covered in that dash of three days, and a half-hundred and twenty miles, but he was too late. He was too late by half a day. In the dark and storm-driven night of that Monday, the extreme van of Napoleon's horse rode up to the bridge of Castro-Gonzalo. They were unsupported, of course, and rode far before the army to discover. But though it was not contact in any serious sense, there was something very worthily dramatic in the appearance of those tall horsemen suddenly in the night through the blinding snow. Come up just too late to do more than watch the escape of Moore's column. By the next day the purpose of the British commander was achieved. Napoleon knew he could no longer intercept. The bridge was destroyed. The opportunity of recording the envelopment and destruction of a British force was lost to Napoleon. He abandoned to Sult the further long pursuit, which is called in history, the retreat upon Caruna. The end of Section 23. Section 24. On Anything. This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. On Anything by Hitler Bellach. Section 24. On Communications. There is nothing more curious in the material change which is passing so rapidly over the modern world than what I may call the romance of communication. With the romance of discovery everyone is thoroughly acquainted. The modern world is saturated with that form of romance. It has permeated all our literature and is still the theme of most of our books of travel. But like all things which have attained a literary position, the romance of discovery already belongs to the past. Not that nothing remains to be discovered, on the contrary. The modern world has hardly yet begun to appreciate how it may penetrate from detail to detail and find perpetually something new in that which it thinks it knows. But the great broad unknown spaces, the horizons quite new to Europeans which break upon them for the first time, are now no longer left to the explorer. With the romance of communication, luckily for us, there is another, a newer, and in a certain sense a much wider field. Many who have traveled largely have felt this. But it has not yet, I think, been expressed. What I mean by the romance of communication is this. That the establishment of regular lies for ocean traffic, the building of railways and above all of good roads, have made it possible for a multitude of men to see those contrasts which travel can afford, and this development of modern travel has just begun to afford our generation, and will afford, with much greater generosity, the generation to come, an opportunity for feeling physically the complexity and variety and wonder of the world. This is a good thing. Not so long ago it was a difficult matter for a man to go from some northern part of Europe, such as England, to so isolated a community as that which inhabits the island of Majorca. Now it is easy for a man, and it cost him but a few pounds to go from England to Barcelona, and from Barcelona he can sail with a rapid and regular service to the port of Palma. When he reaches that port he cannot but feel the romance, finding this little isolated state, wealthy and contented, in the mist of the sea. Corsica, of which men know so little, is similarly at hand today, and so are the valleys of the Pyrenees, especially of the Spanish valleys, upon which as yet there is hardly any northern literature or experience. In a year or two we shall have the railway through the Sardin, and another line will take one up the valley of the ridge into the middle part of northern Spain. But of all these benefits to the mind, which the modern charge is procuring, I know of none more remarkable than the entry into the desert. That portion of northern Africa, which the French have reclaimed for Europe, and which was throughout the existence of the Roman Empire, an integral part of European civilization, consists of the great table land buttressed to the north and to the south by mountain ranges, and crossed in its middle part by parallel outcrops of high rock. This plateau stretches for somewhat more than a thousand miles, all along the southern shore of the western Mediterranean. If the reader will take a map he will see jutting out from the general contour of Africa, and oblong as it were, the eastern end of which is Tunis, the western end, Morocco. All that oblong is the table land of which I speak. The coast is warm, fertile, densely cultivated, and populous, full of ports and cities, and the coming and going of ships. The highlands behind into the south of the coastline are more arid, very cold in winter, baking in summer, and always dry and rugged to our northern eyes. But they are habitable. The population is spreading upon them, and they contain the past relics of the old Roman civilization, which prove what man can do with them when their water supply is stored and their soil is cultivated. Now this habitable land suddenly ceases and falls into the desert of Sahara. The demarcation is abrupt and is everywhere noticeable to the eye. It is indeed more noticeable in the eastern than in the western part. The limit between what Miss Bell has called in a fine book of hers, the Desert End, the Zone, is more than a days march in width upon the Moroccan frontier. Indeed it is several days march, and one is not over sure when one has left the habitable soil and when one has reached the inhospitable sand at the eastern end. The limits are not only marked sharply by a differentiation in the climate and the vegetation, but also by an abrupt escarpment. The atlas, as the plateau of northern Africa is generally called, falls in huge precipitous red cliffs right down upon the Sahara. It so happens that these cliffs, just at the point where they are most abrupt and most rugged and most romantic, are cleft by a profound gorge through which the wadi Biskara runs very clear and cold, filled with the melting of the snow upon the high mountains of Ayurs to the north of it. This gap in the cliffs the Romans knew well. They had a military station here to guard them against the ravages of the nomad tribes, who afterwards, in the form of the Arabian invasion, overran their African province and turned it from a European and a Christian to an Asiatic and a Mojavean thing. The Romans called that gorge the kick of Hercules, as though the god had here by a stroke of his foot, broken away from the cultivated north toward the desert. Through this gap ran their military road, and here, as the formation of the gorge demanded, they carried that road over the river, the wadi Biskara. Upon the bridge, the stones of which still remain, though renovated and supported by modern work, to recall the greatness of the empire. The Arabs in their turn have called this astonishing breach, foam as Sahara, the mouth of the Sahara, and as is always the case where they found a Roman bridge, they have added the name El Cantera, the bridge. For it is remarkable that the Arabs were unable to continue Roman work, especially in masonry, save where they had a large Roman population to help them after their conquest, and the bridges which the Romans had built were regarded by them with a sort of superstitious reverence. Now, this mouth of the Sahara, this gap in the glaring wall of the desert has, by a coincidence, which has its obvious geographical cause, and which is to be discovered in many another past throughout Europe and northern Africa, served for modern methods of communication, the purpose which it served for the ancients. It is the nearest approach which the desert makes to the sea coast. It is the approach involving the least engineering effort, the most obvious and the most natural entry from the northern cultivated land onto the waterless sandy waste. Therefore modern civilization has used it, and you get here more than anywhere else that romance of sudden contrast with which, as I have said, modern methods of travel have gifted this modern world. The French first built down this military track, a military road as hard, excellent, and well-graded as any that you will find in Europe. It not only goes through the gorge, but right on into the sand of the desert, bounded upon either side by masonry, and it has reached or very soon will reach Biscara without a break. Some time after this road had been planned, a railway was constructed along the same track with certain divergences where the gradient of the highway was too steep for the rails, and where therefore long curves were necessary. Whether a man goes by the road or the rail, this is what he sees, and he had best see it in early spring or what is with us in England late winter. As the road and the rail wind downwards from the little plateau by great steps as it were from one level to another, the traveller has about him such scenery as has accompanied him for the last hundred miles. Fields of cotton, the trees proper to a temperate climate, and rugged rocky bridges cropping up from the cultivated soil. There is nothing around him to remind him of what is called the East, except the camel preceding its master up or down the great highway, and the distinctive dress of the natives. For the climate, the crops and the temperature, the quality of the sunlight. He might be on one of the plains of western America, which indeed this part of Africa most nearly resembles. He comes to a clean little inn entirely French in architecture, surrounded by a cool and quiet garden and with the river running behind it. He walks on a few hundred yards through the gorge and quite suddenly at the turning of a corner the desert and all its horizon breaks upon his eyes. He sees a waste of hot red unusable sand, a brilliant oasis of palm trees, and even the sun small and glaring above that plain seems something different from the familiar light which he had received by an hour before. It is the most complete contrast, the most sudden and memorable revelation which modern travel affords. And if I had to advise anyone who with short leisure desired some experience of modern travel, at least in the way of landscape, I would advise him to visit this astounding place. It has already found its way into many English books, but the great mass of people who could enjoy it do not yet know how exceedingly easy it is to access. For travelers even to so near a place like to put on an air of mystery, there is no one with a fortnight to spare and twenty pounds to spend who cannot walk or bicycle or motor to this place at the right time of the year. For in summer the heat is insupportable and in winter the snow on the high northern plains makes travel difficult. Anyone who will take that journey would have a memory to last him all his life. There are those who say that the popularization of wonderful things is the spoiling of them. I have never been able to agree. Places are not spoiled by the multitude of those who reach them, but by the character of those who reach them. And no one will journey to this meeting-place of the east and the west, I think, save with a desire to wonder and to observe, which of itself breeds reverence. Such man may come in any numbers, and the place will be the better for them. At any rate, I repeat, it ought to be known to anyone who has the sum or the time to spare that a revelation of such a kind is quite close at hand for as yet hundreds of Englishmen with far more than that leisure and infinitely more than that wealth are ignorant of the place and its opportunities. And your quickest way is by Marseille and Bona. And on your way I beseech you to stop and see Tim Gayet, which is a dead Roman city, lying silent and empty under the sun upon the edge of the desert. The end of section 24 Section 25 On Anything This is a Libravox recording. All Libravox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Libravox.org On Anything by Hilaer Bellach Section 25 On Estarte If you stand outside the old fortifications of the town of Tule and look eastward toward the German peoples, you see a long, even line of hills, very high but not quite mountainous. They end in a sharp dip and rise again and terminate in an isolated summit which, like so many of the striking conical peaks of Europe, is dedicated to St. Michael. These heights, like all the crests which surround the basin of that entrenched camp, are fortified both with complete works and with connecting trenches and batteries, save in the gap between the isolated hill and the ridge. I have mentioned the guns are everywhere. In this gap, in the hollow of it and upon the hillside, is a little village which, like all the villages on the actual line of the encircling forts, is wholly dominated by the soldiery. These furnish it with all its trade and give it its few adventures and its manner of life. The peasants are woken summer and winter by the sound of buckles, the heavy firing of practice is a usual thing to them. A profitable commerce with a person twice as numerous as the civil population enriches those who work upon their land. In this village there live one of those families which are poor in a country of free men through their own fault. They had land, of course. No rent was asked of them. They were in a community which had now, for many ages, administered itself and had, for more than a hundred years, forgotten the oppression of a territorial class. In some vice of temperament they lived like slatterns, and if they cultivated at all some tiny patch of their ruined and weedy holding it was but just so much as would keep their souls within their bodies and they preferred chance-begging and barefoot jobs at the railway station or in the streets of the town. Their house was more a cave than a hut. It was dug out of the hillside with beaten earth walls save where the front portion of it jetted out and was roofed with old bits of corrugated iron, borrowed or stolen from the sappers. These were supported by a jumble of ramshackle wood old railway sleepers and here and there were gaps stopped roughly with canvas. In such a place surrounded by brothers and sisters of all ages and the only house worker to a drunken and worthless mother lived by accident one of those women who have such great power in this world. Her ugliness was singular it had nothing to do with that power save perhaps to enhance it. Her hair which was sparse and crisp was of a bright unbleasing red harsh and offensive. Her eyes were green and stood very far apart in her head. Her mouth was large and very decided and firm. It is not by any capitulation of her features though anyone who had once seen them would always remember them that one can give the impression of her power. This rather proceeded from a gesture a manner and a whole being which was the continual outer manifestation of a certain kind of soul. There was strength in all her gestures an upstanding challenge in the poise of her body whether she worked or walked and a sort of creative handling of things whenever she grasped them which at once arrested the attention of a man. Her excessive poverty and the gross carelessness of her surroundings by contrast greatly enhanced these things. The young soldiers cared very little for mysteries. Their religion was indifferent to them. Their knowledge of the perils and of the adventures of the soul was less than that of children. For those who might have guessed at the mysterious things which everywhere surround our existence even at twenty one had such imaginings drowned and perched out of them by continual labor in the open air, by hours of grooming and of writing, by the deep and glorious fatigue of such a life, by sleep in the night, by hunger and fellowship. Nevertheless, among commissioned officers there was one man who fell under the spell. He was handsome, unintelligent, lacking in judgment and perhaps twenty-five years of age. His father was a large farmer to the north of Reims. He had a very fair allowance from home. He was regular and did his service well. He was so far as the non-commissioned ranks can be in any army, popular with the men. This fellow felt the spell. He felt it neither deeply nor violently, for his nature was one on which the great emotions could have no play. But he would seek such duties as brought him to the village. He would intrigue to be sent upon any inspection of the reserve forces, or with provisions up into the forts, or upon any other business which would give him for a few moments a chance of seeing her at the door of the admissible hovel and of exchanging a half-dozen words from the saddle. His leave he would often spend in the inn of that village. Some said in her company, but I doubt if this were true. He would have taken her once into Nancy to see some public show or other, but she would not go. Between the end of winter and the start for camp, the thing had become as much a habit to him as his own name, and by a sort of code which the regiment observed his habit was respected and passed by. Indeed, to have become so enmeshed regarded no one but himself and the singular net that had been thrown over him was not one which others envied. But there was one who envied him. When he had been at vague amestra, that is the sergeant deputed to fetch the letters of the regiment, and often also when he had gone out to note the condition of the reserve horses, or upon any other message, he had taken with him one of the two-year men, a Belgian who had crossed the frontier to find work in his teens, and was not ill-content to have been caught by the conscription, for he was utterly destitute and knew neither father nor mother. This man was dark, short, and broad. He was kindly and temper, and one would have said an animal for stupidity. He was possessed of great physical power, and his sergeant, who thus favored him, would often see to it that his service should be lightened in one way or another, and made his life more easy to him than it was to the other drivers of the bannery. He was popular. Everyone helped him. He had done harm to no one. He was always willing. He very rarely spoke amid all that valuable clatter of young men, and when he did a pleasant joke, or to repeat some old tag of a proverb. But one day the head of the room, who happened to have no stripes and was no more than an older soldier, or as it was called in that service, an ancient, found him sitting on his bed and crying. The lot was crying in a gentle but despairing sort of way. The ancient was a rough man, a minor, and rather brutal. He would have none of it, and just as he was making things rough for the Belgian, the sergeant's voice came down the wooden corridors calling him to saddle the two beasts. And all the Belgian did was to refuse. It was a quite unheard of thing. There was no elasticity in the service, and if anyone in authority said do this, to say I will not, or even to be slow in obedience was as grave, or rather as unknown, as is a violence among wealthy men. And now the sergeant, with more womanliness and discernment than one would have thought, any one could have shown in such a place, made no noise about it. But he came in to see what miracle had happened. He saw the lad sitting there upon his bed with his coarse face full of despair, and he did not in the least understand what could have happened. The eyes of the lad were full of wonder and of terror of hopelessness, as though he had seen some full tragedy of human life. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and let him be. And to save his being worried sent him off upon an easy job until he should come round. Then taking another man to saddle the two horses and to accompany him, he went off upon his usual rounds toward the hills upon some official errand or other which he had managed to secure. But when he got there he found in the village without leave, and having run and panted through the newly plowed fields the Belgian fellow looking like an angry dog, sullen and with new tears in his eyes standing outside the door of the Huffle. He ordered him back. He wrote a source after him as the Belgian obeyed and began trudging suddenly away and said that he would not report it, but that it was a piece of madness, and that if this sort of thing went on it ended in Africa. The Belgian said nothing, but plotted off his enormous strength, apparent in every step and apparent also in the set of his neck and shoulders and the bending of his head, something of doom. When he got back to quarters he got a ball cartridge from the workroom, no one knows how. He put it in one of the gunner's carbines which he took from the rack. He had never handled such a weapon before. Pulled off the boot from his sockless right foot put the barrel of the thing in his mouth and with his toe pressed down the trigger. In this way he killed himself. I have told the thing exactly as it happened. Then many of the young men first knew that our lives are not wholly of our own ordering, or to put it better learned that to ride one's destiny needs in the soul of a man's training and a quickness and a constancy like that which in the body helps a man to ride a strong horse and to control him. The end of section 25 Section 26 On Anything This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org On Anything by Hilaer Bellach Section 26 On the Hungry Student It was with great astonishment combined with a sense of misfortune that I discovered the other day in a garret off King's Road in Chelsea, a poor hack formerly of my acquaintance who in his endeavor to keep body and soul together had formerly been distinguished or rather ridiculous among journalists by his excursions into every conceivable subject and his preparedness to write any sort of books that a publisher might order of him. What I found him after these many years he was lying in the last stages of some disease, the name of which I forget, but which anyhow was mortal and it was the character in the disease which most affected him to its scientific appellation he was indifferent. He confessed to me that he had long had it on his conscience that a work that was now long forgotten he had promised the reader to tell a certain story and that this promise had never been fulfilled. It is in the beginning of the book he whispered, feebly, as his dying eyes were turned towards the four chimneys of the electrical works that I promised to tell the story in any two stories I promised to tell the story of the Hungry Student and also the story of the Brigade of Radhika Fani whose stories weigh heavily upon my conscience. I have promised he continued in a nervous manner which was tragically affecting and I have not redeemed my promise. Readers of mine may have died still wondering what the truth may be. I beg you therefore to take this manuscript and he motioned with his wasted hand to some sheets of paper by the side of his bed and to give it to the world. At once he said with a hasten fever of a dying man, tomorrow you shall come and I will give you the second manuscript concerning the Brigade of Radhika Fani. Both he moaned, I took from the writings of others and then I can die in peace. I took the manuscript and left him and to fulfill his last wishes I publish it here. A student in the University of Paris had the misfortune to be wholly deprived of money in any form and such credit as he had once enjoyed the meal entirely exhausted. It was now thirty-six hours since he had eaten any memorable meal and during that long period of time he had tasted no more than one roasted potato, a penny worth of chestnuts, a cup of coffee and a little bread which he had kept in his pocket from the day before yesterday and which was therefore of a hard and ungracious sort. Even that had been consumed in the small hours of the morning and he sat upon a stone bench in the evening of the day about fifty yards from the Odeon Theatre carefully considering what course he should pursue and determining if it were necessary to thief. For hunger had got him where hunger gets us all which is not as too many assert in the stomach but in the throat and palate and brain. As he there sat he thought of delicious things not of a mere filling but of rare matters. He had longings. He remembered that beans, green beans are better crisp than soft and he thought of irrecoverable arborgenies and what an onion was when it was well fried and of larded chickens and of great Turanian pears and the kind of wine called Chinon. He thought of all these things but there is this quality about hunger that the imagination does not satisfy it in any degree at all but stimulates it only and he was tortured as he sat upon that bench. Remember that he had not any money at all. He even recalled as he sat there the excellent taste of fresh bread and chocolate and he was about to get up and walk off the memory of such things when a confused and growing rumor coming up the step street around the corner broke upon him. It was the noise of many young men. It was almost military in its character though it had no precision for one felt in it the advance of numbers. It swelled with every moment and at last there swung around the corner and up towards his bench a considerable body of students who were walking rapidly, excitedly and happily just stipulating freely and telling each other good news while a very powerful and loud voice young man led them on. He could hear snatches of what was said by this company. One was crying, it is surely the best cooking in the world. Another, I care nothing for the cooking but what wine. Two others were eagerly disputing whether the lark or the thrush were the better bird and one was hoping there would be a show-de-froid of nightingales. Some few sang songs others in a sort of contented sense went forward eagerly. All evidently had before them some great goal. As the herd swept by him a lean young man with black hair just stooped and passing the hungry student and whispered, would you like to eat tonight? He whispered back, yes. Then said the first, whose eyes burned like holes, up you get and follow and hold your tongue till you learn the tricks of the rest. So the hungry student rose up once and went forward mingling with the rest and still before their robust leader plunged through the streets before them like a captain bringing on a young army of saviors into an oppressed land. Now and then this captain would turn round and walk backward like a bandmaster or a drum major shouting out good news of food to come and of the wine that has been pressed in paradise. So they went till they came to the end of the boulevard, which they crossed one of them fighting with a policeman on the way. The band plunged into the narrower streets and came at last to a little open square where was a restaurant with a balcony upon the first floor and upon that balcony and awning the name written above the restaurant was this. The widow Bertrand, a house founder in 1837 they all trooped in. Upon the balcony the table was spread. There were other tables in the room with which the balcony communicated. At these some few and rather diffident guests had sat down but the large table was reserved for the herd. They took their places noisily and following upon a few little sardines and one or two stale strips of sausage they began loudly exclaiming upon every side at the excellence of the fair. The hungry student said nothing so he wondered much. But ceasing an enormous piece of bread he aided all up with the rapidity of a storm and heard round him as he did so ceaseless exclamations of enthusiastic surprise. The wine was very thin and sour but the wine of students is always so. What astonished him was to see a curly headed fellow very northern in type suddenly jump up and shout so that all the street below could hear. Upon my word this is amazing. Send for Gaston. Gaston a very weary waiter came. Gaston said to the northerner I really must know where the widow gets this wine. The whole chorus of them shouted together. Yes Gaston you must tell us where she gets this wine. Gaston murmured something which the hungry student did not hear. Oh do not be afraid shouted the northerner. Give the secret away. But what wine he added turning round to his companions who applauded with their hands. We will get it through the widow. She shall provide it to us. A wine like this is not to be missed. And he took the miserable stuff and sited slowly from his glass cocking up one eye wisely toward the ceiling like a knowing fellow. There followed bad soup, bad fish, bad meat, bad vegetables, and bad roast. But the hungry student was not particular and he fed. Lord how heartily he fed. He fed so heartily that he got into that mood when a man thinks he will never be hungry again. He ate great quantities of cheese which alone of all the courses was served them with some liberality. He drank their coffee and the whole host rose to go. He was still in a profound mystery. An elderly woman whose face betrayed King Aphrodis overspread with conventional courtesy bed them goodnight as they left her establishment. They cheered her and the leader of the band kissed her warmly upon both cheeks. Then they went out, turned into the roux-cousins, and quite suddenly their enthusiasm wholly disappeared. And a council of war was summoned. The powerful man, the leader, stood in their midst, gave the mission and took council with his peers. It is the last time, he said grimly. Do you mean said the dark-haired student who had first whispered to the hungry student as he passed before the meal? Do you mean the widow will not receive us again? You are right, said the leader, in a solemn tone. The bargain was for five nights. She has extended it to six. But it seems bitterly that we have done our work too well. It is the last day of a seventh. Only yesterday the business was bought by a very foolish fellow from Ozare. That, said a short-fat young man who had not yet spoken, accounts for the intolerable wine. The leader shrugged his shoulders and said gloomily, friend, it was the same old wine but from the bottom of the barrel. Then there is no meal for tomorrow, said a fourth man anxiously, a red-headed, vague-eyed man who had gone in for anarchism or, but was, at that particular moment, a symbolist. Well, said the leader, there is a meal for tomorrow, but the conditions are a little hard. Where is it to be? What is the rendezvous? What are those conditions? cried several voices. The strong leader obtained silence and said, I can tell you at once, Frito wants to sell his place by private treaty next week and he will take us from tomorrow. Three days broken a silent man who had not yet spoken. A full week, said the leader. Well, that's good enough, said the dark man solemnly. Yes, but the point is, said the leader, there is another offer. The new railway station wants to start a meal at a fixed price. It will be better cooking, said the red-haired, symbolist, doubtfully. You are right, answered the leader a little weirdly, but it is one of their conditions that the absurd hour of half past five and hurry through the meal, exclaiming all the while, chants things about the express to Toulouse and noting the rapidity of the service. I will never do that, said the red-haired man firmly, amid murmurs of approval. If I must eat their deathly stuff, I will eat it, but I will not be hurried into the marten. And half past five is the hour for poisons, not for food. Absent is mine. No, Bertot was the man, said the leader with a sigh. He put it to the vote as the fashion with the French. There was a large majority for Bertot. Next day that same enthusiast, World of Youth, went through other streets of the learned center of Europe. Their lips vivacious, their eyes aflame to give Bertot's business a selling value and themselves to have food for nothing. In this way was the hungry student filled. Next day, having sent in this manuscript that you have read, I called upon my poor friend to receive the brigade of Reticophony. But you may imagine how shocked I was to hear that he was dead. The end of section 26 Section 27 On Anything This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. On Anything by Hilaire Belock Section 27 On the Brigade of Reticophony It is with the utmost pleasure that I am able to communicate to the English-speaking world a literary document of capital importance which my readers had only two great reasons to mourn as lost. It will be remembered that my poor friend the hack recently deceased in the neighborhood of the King's Road suffered in his last hours from the fear that the world might never receive his two masterpieces which he had so long promised them. The story of the hungry student and the brigade of Reticophony. It will also be remembered that on reaching his humble lodgings after the publication of the first I discovered him to be dead and feared therefore that the second of these classics would never be discovered. I am delighted to say that a rag and a bottle merchant and a dealer in kitchen stuff near the world's end, which is a landmark in that neighborhood, has been found in possession of the precious paper which, by a providential accident is still legible although it had been used to wrap up to boot brushes and a second-hand pot of blacking. Such coincidences are not unknown in the history of English letters. A young colonial journalist full of great determination to succeed in life but insufficiently equipped for that ambition had occasion to visit the country north of Rome in the year 1903. He had been sent by his proprietors to gather information upon the customs of the peasantry for a series of articles which they deigned to publish. He had orders to photograph these natives with or without their leave and to acquire such knowledge of the local dialects that would permit him to converse with them. With his numerous adventures in the extinct volcanoes of that district, I need not detain you nor tell you of how he was imprisoned and run sickly on find by a magistrate and Vitorbo nor how he was soundly beaten by a drunken mason in the town of Balsina whose lovely lake he still remembers with associated feelings of admiration and regret. It is more to my purpose to retell how each of these towns as he wandered northwards and at every intervening house of call he was perpetually reminded of the Brigande of Radicafani. Some, when he would ask them questions upon their local habits would reply, oh, go and discuss it with the Brigande of Radicafani. Others, when he attempted to stammer his experiences of the road would tell him that the Brigande would make a better audience than they. The magistrate who find him and Vitorbo made an illusion to the Brigande of Radicafani which he caught but ill but which provoked to his annoyance considerable laughter and court. The policeman who locked him up and run sickly only turned the key with an illusion to the same individual and even the drunken mason in the very act of beating him in Balsina made him be gone to the Brigande of Radicafani. As for Aquapendenti the town was full of rumors about this strange man the children in the streets who should have known better took the young colonial twice for the Brigande and followed him in chorus calling him by that name while a little brown man who was pushing a barrel assured him with great salinity that he was taking its contents of private refreshment for the Brigande of Radicafani. It may be imagined with what eagerness the journalist left the town next morning by the northern road and with what curiosity of attention he marked the little town of Radicafani perched upon its distant conical hill and glaring white under the hot morning. There said he to himself as he laboriously panthed up the last slope I shall find a character indeed worthy of so many pains and discover something perhaps of permanent value for the history of this ancient land. He seated himself in the principal room of the first day and he came to within the gate and boldly asked whether it were possible at that hour to interview the Brigande. The young woman was the mistress of the house looked at him for a moment in a sort of stupor then bursting into wild cries not unmixed with laughter she fled from him and left him for quite a quarter of an hour alone. She returned with a little crowd of Radicafani and Burgesses who stood round hats in hand looking at him leguriopsily at last the oldest of them a man noble head handsome and gray said to him solemnly do we understand excellence that you desire to see the well-known Brigande of Radicafani that is so replied the journalist manfully I am indeed sorry if my pursuit of such an audience seems impertinent for I recognize the high position held by this gentleman in your community and I am equally sorry if I have given you any trouble by my request but as I am deputed by a foreign newspaper of high standing to discover what I can of the customs of an ancient land I could hardly proceed onward to the notable town of Siena and leave behind me uninterviewed the principal personage of your countryside not a word said the grave leader of that band it is a pleasure to serve one who takes so flattering an interest in our poor affairs if your excellency will but wait a moment and read the local newspapers of which she will discover to be religious the other of contrary tone the Brigande shall shortly be introduced to you heartened by this promise the young journalist read with some care the leading articles of the greasy rags before him and maintained his dignity and his apparent attention to the text in spite of occasional openings of the door accompanied by the giggling and elbowing of the curious who in out of the way places infest at last the door opened wide before the sweeping gesture and the advancing stride of one accustomed to command and the Brigande of Radicafani stood before the traveler his dress was picturesque in the extreme he had on knee breeches ornamented with party colored ribbons his calves were swung round with crisscrossed bands a rustic pipe hung from his belt which also sheathed four knives of different dimensions variegated and curious carved handles a slant across the east he wore a naked dagger quite 18 inches long a gloomy cloak depended from one shoulder upon his head was a steeple crowned hat very tall and pointed and adorned like the rest of his person with ribbons of gay hue in either ear he wore an enormous ring of gold and black ringless which shone with some oily substance profusion from either side of his head this extraordinary figure was completed by a gigantic blunder bus with a board about the size of a duck gun and ending in a huge bell mouth quite 9 inches across the Brigande for it was he startled the journalist by asking him in a terrible voice what he wanted with him and bidding him be brief and to the point in his interrogation or demands as he so spoke he tapped with his left hand the curious handle of his dagger keeping his fist clenched upon his haunch and his right arm akimbo while his left leg and foot were advanced in a marshal and even a threatening manner the young colonial who was acquainted by his reading with many situations of danger summoned all his firmness beggy the Brigande to share the wine which stood before him and it only disturbed his leisure in order to hear from the lips of one so justly prominent in the ancient and noble town of Radikafani memories of his great past intermingled as he hoped with records of the Brigande's individual career mollified by such an address the great man sank into the rickety chair opposite the journalist assumed the attitude of the warrior at ease and began with plentiful and dramatic gesture of things Brigande he assured his companion was now by no means the trade it had been he had himself taken to the road at the early age of 15 having been persuaded to that industry by an uncle of his a can of Iterbo for in the old days he was careful to add this country was very easily administered and the clergy in a special defended and encouraged the picturesque customs which ease of administration bread often after a hard night upon the highway or after some successful business in the brushwood above the city I would make it my business to call upon my revered uncle to press upon him some trinket as a mark of my esteem or if the day had been exceptionally lucky some piece of foreign gold which a tourist for they were even then numerous in these parts might have left in my possession the old man died continued with a sigh in the year 68 during the reign of the late Pope Pius IX and it was perhaps as well for great changes were impending which had he lived to see them would have broken his heart for myself to begin went on thoughtfully I am too much of a patriot to complain of the unification of my country and I had some hopes on the establishment of a new government of obtaining a permanent situation under it which as I now approaching middle age would be more constant to my years than the precarious though active and healthy career I had hitherto pursued for some moments in the year 1873 I hoped I might be a pointed receiver of the taxes a post for which my intimate knowledge of the whole countryside and my many connections with the farmers of the locality seems singularly to fit me a former chief of mine for whom I had always preserved the reverence attachment was very powerful in his department and assured me I might look for regular post so soon as he was himself installed to the office of the Feasts of Orovito but there continued the began sighing loyalty and gratitude our sentiment soon dissipated in the atmosphere of politics and though I had the pleasure of seeing my old chief installed as the head of his department no such post as he had hinted at came my way meanwhile trade sank artists litter a man and poor foul of that sort still thought it an eccentric and therefore a desirable thing to approach the eternal city by road and these I would not infrequently be a pains of carrying off a ransom but it was a dwindling and the most unsatisfactory trade the wealthy took more and more to the railway the new government at the queer and all after a certain amount of hesitation definitely decided upon a policy inimicable to our profession if not actually hostile to it my advancing years and the various circumstances I have detailed made the dear old life less and less possible until one day here he sighed again profoundly in 93 just 10 years ago I was constrained to accept the situation as a model under an agency which provides such individuals for the entertainment of foreigners I was already old I am over 70 as you see me here and now but I often think with bitterness as I poise upon one leg in an attitude flight or shield my eyes with my hands with a gesture that is very much applauded by the ladies who sketch me I often think with bitterness I say as I adopt these various attitudes to order of the days when I was known as the lion of Amacia when my name was a terror far beyond the Tiber to the marshes that of the Mediterranean sea the old man was silent and the journalist who had been busy taking notes and was profoundly moved by the recital he had heard as the began most differentially and in a gentle tone whether these memories did not stir him to some particular story and whether he could not recite before the stranger left some especially telling incident of his great past why muse the vigorous old man rising slowly from the chair I think I can reconstruct for you that famous occasion which the old wife still tell as in which a story when I held up the syndic of Madafisconi and without the trouble of binding him to a tree nor of inflicting the slightest mutilation I acquired for the purposes of my expenditure all that was movable upon his person come let us reconstruct the scene he put a heavy hand upon the young journalist looking round the room as he did so for a favorable stage which to order the drama the colonial rose at the same time and the began shaking his head and growling like a monarch of the forest muttered deeply no no this place is too small with the moving of the chairs many had come into the little impaler and followed the pair out into the blazing market square and the began led the now dubious journalist into that public place their appearance in the open was a signal for the great gathering children ran from narrow alleys market women rushed up with shrill voices farmers engaged in bargaining left their sport for the superior attraction of the scene and loud cries of the brigade is going to work come and see the brigade were heard upon every side the journalist maintained his dignity and even allowing a faint smile to flicker upon his anxious lips as the brigade pacing cobblestones of the marketplace in a thoughtful manner decided the spot where his companions should stand here he said stamping with his foot this was about the distance the journalist found himself alone the crowd retired at some fifty yards before him was the street leading northward out of the town towards sienna it was empty he turned and saw facing him the large concourse of people recounting to each other the interest of the proceeding and he further perceived that the brigade who stood a little in front of them all was slowly disembarrassing his blunder bus from the innumerable details of his custom thus shouted the old giant in a terrible voice stood I there where you are stood syndic come look slightly away and upwards as though you did not perceive me for such was the syndic's attitude upon the occasion in question make as though you were walking leisurely but do not actually take a step for that would destroy the reconstruction of the scene which I am arranging for your entertainment with great deliberation the brigade of radical finding next proceeded to pour into the huge bell mouth of his blunder bus a measure of gunpowder from a horn next he rammed in a piece of the anti-clerical newspaper with the rusty ramrod which he had with difficulty drawn from its rings he replaced the ramrod and as deliberately dropped into the mouth of his deadly instrument a number of large liton slugs thus said he as he made these preparations did I carefully load while the unsuspecting syndic leisurely crossed before my line of fire and as he said these words the brigade slowly raised the blunder bus to his shoulder leaned his great potty forward and bent his head until an eye of extraordinary brilliance and power was gleaming down the top of the barrel the course was now silent and the journalist with an admirable sense of what was required of him adopted the attitude of a man walking at a leisurely pace and acted to perfection the part of syndic halt roared the brigade in a startling and quite novel tones the journalist instinctively started in the brigade bitterly added must I fire will you spare me that expense by laying carefully upon the ground at your feet your watch your rings your pocketbook and such valuables as you may have about you the journalist with no little hesitation for he found this too realistic threw down a coin by a way of semi acrolem he mocks me bella the brigade while all the crowd applauded he hesitated to obey thus did I speak to the syndic come empty all your pockets and turn them inside out that I may see them the journalist excusing his pride by the reflection that the whole thing was but a game with some reluctance did as he was bid there lay at his feet upon the market square a little heap of valuables a quantity of private correspondence a handkerchief and a notebook now shouted the brigade still carefully aiming at the foreigner's head go go warily and step backward if you choose to assure yourself that I shall not lower my gun for some few steps the journalist so walk toward the northern gate and step by step keeping his distance the immense old man pursued while the crowd with subdued applause encouraged his action and with rising menaces bade the stranger not cross the brigade's purpose since upon these occasions he was terrible if he was thwarted when he had nearly reached the limits of the town the unfortunate traveler began to protest that the joke should end to his horror the reply which reached him not from the began alone but from many of his supporters was given in tones of increasing sincerity and he shuddered to see or to think he saw the pressure of the finger upon the trigger he hesitated for a moment and then suddenly he ran the northern road out of Radikafani is steep it seems aided his flight and when he was well down toward Radikafani he heard that increased his determination a loud report and high over his head sang a cubby of slugs he neither looked back nor attempted to order his confused mind but ran without ceasing until from sheer exhaustion he dropped at the roadside to his delight he saw two mounted policemen in splendid uniforms he recounted his tale they looked at him severely and one of them beckoning with his finger to follow us he followed them for miles and miles of how he was supplicately examined and disbelieved threatened with fine and imprisonment and at last escaped only by an appeal to the consul in Siena you may read in the interesting memoirs which he is about to publish under the title of Estrusan Wine and Song meanwhile in Radikafani the began drinks and sings the end of section 27 section 28 on anything this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org on anything by Hilaer Bellach section 28 on the honest man and the devil a man who prided himself very justly upon his uncompromising temper and love of truth had the misfortune the other night to wake at about three o'clock in the morning and to see the devil standing by his bedside who begged him that he the honest man should sell him the devil his soul I will do nothing of the kind said the honest man to a mixture of sleepiness and alarm very well said the devil quite obviously put out you shall go your own way but I warn you if you will have nothing to do with me I will have nothing to do with you I ask for nothing better said the honest man turning over on his right side to get to sleep again I desire to follow truth in all her ways and to have nothing more to do with you with these words he began a sort of regular and mechanical breathing which warned the devil that the interview was now at an end the devil therefore with a grunt went out of the bedroom and shut the door smartly behind him shaking all the furniture which was a rude thing to do but he was very much annoyed next morning the honest man before going out to business dictated his letters as was walked into a phonograph this little instrument which by the way had been invented by the devil though he did not know it is commonly used in the houses of the busy for the reception of dictated correspondence comic verse love sonnets and so forth and if the busy also lived by their pen the phonograph spares them use of this instrument the honest man of whom I speak had no such profession he used the phonograph for his daily correspondence which was enormous he dictated his answers into it before leaving his private house and during the forenoon his secretary would take down those answers by reversing the machine and putting it at a slower pace so that what it said could easily go down upon the typewriter at about half past five the honest man came back from his business and was met by his secretary in a very nervous fashion I fierce sir said the secretary that there must be some mistake about your correspondence I have taken it down literally as was my duty and certainly the voice sounded like yours but the letters are hardly such as I would post without your first reading them I have therefore foreborn to sign them in your name and have kept them to show you upon your return here they are pray read them in seclusion and advise me at the earliest moment with these words the secretary handed the documents to his bewildered employer and went out of the room with his eyes the honest man put on a pair of gold spectacles exchanged these for some gold pince-nez hummed twice then began to read this is what he read one the laurels put me heathed southwest November 9th dear lady were inside yes I will come to Warnside house next Thursday I do not know you well and I shall feel out of place among your friends I think that to be seen at such a gathering even for but a few moments is of general advantage to my business otherwise I should certainly not come one thing I beg of you which is that you will not ask me a number of private questions under the illusion that you are condescending the habit is very offensive to me and it is the chief drawback I feel in visiting your house I may add that though I am in the middle classes like your late father I have a very pretty taste in furniture and the inside of your house simply makes me sick I am very faithful to yours John Rowe two the laurels put me heathed southwest November 9th dear sir no I will not entertain your proposal to use the imperial British suction apparatus upon my ships it may be a very good apparatus and it might possibly increase my profits but the fact is that I am so well to do it is hardly worth my while to bother about these little things the bother of arranging the new installation and the risk that after all my men might not know how to use it has decided me I know what you say that the French the German the Italian the Russian and the United States governments have all bought your patent for use in their navies but it does not influence me one John what are they after all but foreigners besides which it is my experience as somehow or other I muddle through and I hate having to think we are your obedient servants John Rowe and company three the laurels put me heathed southwest November 9th dear Dr. Burton I wish you would come around this afternoon or tomorrow morning and see my eldest child James there is nothing whatever the matter with him some children with whom he went out to a party the other evening had developed mumps and his voice is husky which he idiotically believes to be a symptom of that disease your visit will cost me two guineas but it is well worth my while to spend that some if only to avoid her intolerable fussing my advice to you as man to man is to look at the tile's tongue give him some plain water by way of medicine and go off again as quickly as you can your fee will be the same in any case it is ridiculous to waste time over such a business I am your sincere friend John Rowe four the laurels put me heathed southwest November 11 dear Dr. Mills I enclose five guineas and a subscription for your new church I confess that I do not clearly see what advantage this expenditure will do me and I should have some hesitancy in setting down in black and white my reasons for sending you the money at all your style of preaching is monotonous your doctrines if they are really your doctrines are particularly offensive to me and after all we could get along perfectly well with the old church at the bottom I think this kind of thing is a sort of blackmail you know I cannot afford to have my name left out of your subscription list and probably the same motive is causing many other sensible neighbors of mine to part most reluctantly with a portion of his property perhaps the best way out of it would be to form a sort of union and to strike all together against your exactions but I cannot be at the pains of wasting any more time upon this matter so here's your five guineas and be hanged to you very faithfully and respectfully yours John Rowe five the laurels put me heathed southwest November 9 dear Sir I have received your estimate for the new conservatory I have figured it out and undoubtedly will lose upon the contract I therefore accept it without reserve and beg you to begin work as soon as possible I fully appreciate your motive in making so extraordinary a bargain you know that I shall make further alterations to the house and you hope by throwing away a sprat to catch a whale do not imagine that I should be misled in this regard the next alteration I have to make I will accept a tender of some other builder as gullible as yourself and so forth to the end of the chapter and I am your obedient servant John Rowe six the laurels put me heathed southwest November 9 my dear Alice I will not send the small sum which you ask me as a brother to afford you though I am well aware that it would save you a very poignant anxiety my reason for acting thus is that a little annoyance has caused me when I have to disperse even a small sum without the chance of a possible return and especially when I have to do it to benefit someone who cannot make things uncomfortable for me if I refuse I have a sort of sentimental feeling about you because you are my sister and to that extent my refusal does give me a slight though a passing sense of erasion that will very soon disappear and when I balance it against the definite sacrifice of a sum of money however small I do not hesitate for a moment please do not write to me again your affectionate brother John Rowe seven the laurels put me heathed southwest November 9 dear sir I enclose a check for 250 pounds my annual subscription to the local war chest of the party I beg you particularly to note that this subscription makes me the creditor of the party to the extent of over 3,000 pounds counting interest at one above bank rate from the first subscription I have carefully gone into this and can be no error I would further have you note that I desire no reward or recognition for my disbursement of this sum beyond the baronetcy of which we spoke the last time I visited you in the presence of a third party and I must conclude by assuring you that any lengthy negotiation would be extremely distasteful to me you need not fear my attitude in the approaching election I am quite indifferent to parliamentary honors I will take the chair five times and no more I am good for one large garden party three dinners and a set of fireworks I will have absolutely nothing to do with the printing and I am always at your service John Rowe when the honest man had pursued these letters he decided that they should not be posted in their present form but upon attempting to amend them he found himself singularly lacking in those phrases which he could usually discover so readily for the purpose of his correspondence he sent therefore for his secretary and told him to rewrite the letters himself according to his own judgment which that gentleman did with singular skill and dispatch maintaining the checks as drafted and putting every matter in a proper light that night the honest man who was sleeping soundly was more annoyed than ever at the reappearance of the devil at his bedside in the middle of the night now the devil said the devil have I brought you to your senses no said the honest man composing himself for sleep as before you have not you should have remembered that I have a secretary oh the devil said the devil impatiently one cannot be thinking of everything and he went out even more noisily than the night before in this way the honest man saved his soul and at the same time his face which if it were the less valuable of the two organs was nonetheless of considerable moment to him in this mundane sphere the end of section 28 section 29 on anything this is a LibraVox recording all LibraVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org on anything on anything by Hilaire Belog section 29 on Compiègne the main room over the terrace of the palace in Compiègne an autumn night in 1782 the room is lit with many candles and there is dancing the Queen of France is present the court and some few of the neighboring gentry among whom a lady called Madame Les Groslées about 40 silent and rather timid a gentleman about the court, a trifle older than herself stands by and talks to her as she sits and looks at the dancing he takes his title from Notre-Bille in the forest but has never been there Madame Des Groslées I cannot see anything in the Queen of what she say Monsieur Notre-Bille she seems to be a little violent Monsignor de Notre-Bille it is precisely as you will but I confess she spoils the room for me the truth is that if she jostled an elbow she would please me better she always looks as though she would I am disappointed in my amusement Madame Des Groslées Monsieur Notre-Bille she is a good woman I can see it in her eyes Monsignor de Notre-Bille Monsignor de Notre-Bille oh yes Madame they are frank enough they are being frank just now to half the room I have seen a market woman looking so but only at the return from market he pauses have you written today Madame Des Groslées laughing gently no sir I have not written we do not write at my age but tell me do you not think there is something majestic about the queen you must remember I have not seen her for three years and it may be you are just used to her carriage but do you not admire the poise of the head and that high manner or perhaps I should say have you not admired them Monsignor de Notre-Bille oh yes Madame I have admired it and I do as also her hairdresser and her shoemaker am I not at court Madame Des Groslées but they say it is at court that she is least admired Monsignor de Notre-Bille shocked I would not presume to say that God forbid from what I have heard in the street I would say she was least admired in Paris or perhaps amusing perhaps in the village of Levenciennes nay I have forgotten Saint-Cloud Saint-Cloud was in Levenciennes hard Madame Des Groslées I have to doubt these names are well known in Versailles Monsignor de Notre-Bille Madame Versailles knows everything and everybody because Versailles is the queen for myself after many years in the full view of Versailles I am begging my money from Versailles yet I cannot say I like Versailles Madame Des Groslées innocently and why not sir Monsignor de Notre-Bille looking vaguely at the distant candles and speaking as vaguely upon my soul I cannot say it it may be that Versailles is too frank or perhaps there is too much poise about it it is certainly majestic Madame Des Groslées as though merely to continue it must compare well with poor Compiègne Monsignor de Notre-Bille ceasing to look at the candles I would not compare Versailles with Compiègne because I have seen Versailles so much and Compiègne so little indeed Madame if you will believe me I have but twice visited Compiègne since my years in Garrison there that was 15 years ago and in those days as you will remember it was your father who befriended me I found Compiègne very hospitable and if I have returned there to seldom I very readily acknowledge my error Madame Des Groslées as though to change the subject Pracer do you not find Compiègne much older they say that age particularly affects Compiègne Monsignor de Notre-Bille I know that I have aged but I would not swear for Compiègne Madame Des Groslées with enthusiasm I cannot forbear to tell you that Compiègne in my eyes does not age but grows the walls of Compiègne are more subtle and her woods more deep her air is more gracious and full of certitude and peace than in those days I speak of when she held me for a full year Madame Des Groslées oh held you Monsignor de Notre-Bille you were under no constraint it was your garrison Monsignor de Notre-Bille rapidly Madame my youth was held but I have not told you all of my own ageing nor of this return to Compiègne you say the town is aged also ah you should see other towns there is in Compiègne today I swear to you more deep and more desirable laughter than the youngest and most virginal of towns Madame Des Groslées why Monsignor de Notre-Bille you grow lyrical smiling one would think you had seen too many towns Monsignor de Notre-Bille lightly and rapidly a man in the service must see many towns it is not only his choice I volunteered as well and saw more towns than I tell the truth a man is none the better for visiting too many towns Madame Des Groslées it is the appetite for travel Monsignor and the love of adventure Monsignor de Notre-Bille precisely Madame you put it very well the appetite Madame and the love of adventure you put it very well indeed abruptly it led me to Narbonne Madame Des Groslées shuddering Monsignor de Notre-Bille what dreadful names Monsignor de Notre-Bille lightly not at all Madame not at all delightful but passing very passing believe me in the presence of Campion no man desires to return to Florida to Narbonne nor even to Cahors Madame Des Groslées no but he may choose to visit other places Monsignor de Notre-Bille gravely he may be compelled to visit them Madame she looks away Madame Des Groslées is silent for a little while then looks up at him as gravely must he visit so many towns Monsignor de Notre-Bille slightly lifting his shoulders oh must must must is the strong word Madame but does does is a working word Madame and a man does visit many towns and he comes back to Campion Madame Des Groslées thoughtfully Sir Campion has age upon it though you are pleased to call it by prettier names Campion is even sad with age I will not deny her charm I will even concede her beauty but it is harder than ever today to be content with Campion with a sudden change of tone we have spoken too much of cities we old friends who do not dance treat the place too much like a card room and we converse when younger souls are full of the music tell me Monsignor de Notre-Bille since the subject is more consonant with music and with dancing are you fond of verse Monsignor de Notre-Bille solemnly I doubt upon it especially such verse as may be written in praise of Campion Madame Des Groslées laughing oh Monsignor de Notre-Bille you begin to be ridiculous calm is it a verse you may cite as your favorite Monsignor de Notre-Bille why Madame I fear to seem even more ridiculous if I quote Latin Madame Des Groslées good humorly not at all sir we know Latin in Campion Monsignor de Notre-Bille so I seem to remember well then I confess my favorite verse is the Horatian Ode which begins Dono Gratius Cram Tibi and which ends he speaks glowingly Irracador Haidre Tecum Viveri M.M. Tecum Obium Leibens Madame Des Groslées doubtfully are you quite sure you have the Latin right she found us a while for my own part I prefer the simple songs of our own people about here and the rhythms of children do you know Nausein Irons plus Osboy Les Lawyers Saint-Coupé Monsignor de Notre-Bille almost yawning oh bless you yes who does not Madame the music ceases and the reverence to the Queen begins Madame Des Groslées as she moves forward says in a low tone to Monsignor de Notre-Bille as she passes him when do you next come to Compiën Monsignor de Notre-Bille as he goes out alone to himself when Compiën comes to meet me halfway which is perhaps a little difficult for so much stone the end of section 29 section 30 on anything this is a Libra Vox recording all Libra Vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libra Vox dot org on anything by Hélère Belac section 30 on the candor of maturity the Marquis Dilamise N.C.N. is discovered writing at a little in the late table he is about 42 years of age than that he believes himself to be alone in the room when he is somewhat suddenly addressed from the open door by the Duchess Dela Tour de Force who has just entered she is a woman of about 55 somewhat too commanding the place is Versailles and the time 1753 the Duchess Dela Tour de Force what are you doing once your Dilamise N.C.N. the Marquis Dilamise N.C.N. continuing to write and without turning round I am writing Duchess as you can plainly see Duchess unfortunately I cannot see through your body but I see you are seated at a table and from the constrained attitude of your elbow and the awkward wagging of your head I can well believe that you are occupied as you say the Marquis without turning round come Duchess would you have me jump up like a bourgeois shall I ask after your health which I know to be robust or murmur something polite about your niece shall I come and hold the door for you or do any of those things to which you are used to in provincial hotels or shall I go on writing he goes on writing a pause the Duchess walks into the room shuts the door rather noisily and sits down upon a chair she sighs the Marquis still writing and murmuring to himself indifferent how does one spell indifferent you cannot be indifferent to my plea plea I know how to spell plea but how does one spell indifferent turning round for the first time to the Duchess and showing us at half-ironical face with thin lips and steady gray eyes Duchess how do you spell indifferent Duchess carelessly oh I spell it sometimes one way sometimes another but I believe there are two F's Marquis turning again to his letters indifferent with two F's to my plea he leans back and looks at the paper with his head on one side as though he were examining a picture it looks all right Duchess I always go by that though I think it is easier to tell whether a bit of spelling is right if you can see it in print I thoroughly agree with you Marquis D. Lemmy's Unseen a pause during which the scratching of the quill continues I do not think she will mind about the spelling but if I know anything of her sex she will not read the end of the letter if you make it too long Marquis still writing away busily yes she will for it is full of business Duchess with some interest in her voice why what kind of business Marquis I am writing a proposal of marriage madam Duchess really startled good heavens mature D. Lemmy's Unseen I always thought you were married Marquis continuing to write Madam D. La Force that is the malicious sort of thing people say at Versailles about provincials he continues to write Duchess I don't care how much business you put into it if you make it as long as that read to the end Marquis oh yes she will the letter isn't very long but I'm writing it out several times Duchess really your cynicism and suppose the various ladies meet or suppose two of them except you at once what then Marquis getting up quickly I never thought of that he puts his left hand on to the hilt of his sword puts his right hand to his chin and thoughtfully paces up and down the room yes Duchess that would be very awkward in fact going to the window and looking out in fact now that you have suggested it of course I might write to the second and say I had already had an engagement but I think I shall drive tandem and not send off the second letter till I have received an answer to the first nor the third till I have received an answer to the second and so forth on the other hand I'm glad I've got the work done because the business part at the end is very complicated Duchess as though to make conversation have you ever written a proposal of marriage performance your dealing is unseen Marquis no Duchess I have not and what is more curious no lady has ever shown me one but I have a book in which various forms of letters come to be used upon different occasions in life I've taken all the first part of this letter of mine from this book the long part at the end which is all about business I got out of a letter from my solicitor Duchess quietly as she folds her hands upon her lap if you will take my advice Marquis you will not put in so much business upon the very first occasion I should have asked have you actually met any of these ladies Marquis doubly yes all of them and one of them three or four times tell me Duchess since you know something of the world in what form is the declaration most pleasing Duchess serenely by word of mouth Monsignor de la mesinsine Marquis oh by word of mouth and under what conditions on horseback during a gentle stroll in a ballroom Duchess no rather under the conditions of ordinary life in an ordinary room such as this in the midst of one's ordinary avocations Marquis stops his pacing up and down stands near her and looks at her fixedly and says I attached the greatest possible value to your judgment and advice Duchess here I have wasted a good deal of time writing those letters at the little table here is an ordinary room here are we both at our ordinary avocations which consistent doing nothing now sauntering up and down the floors now sitting upon chairs all is as you would desire it we are not on horseback we are not at a ball we are not strolling through the park will you marry me Duchess really not Marquis well then I am very glad I did write those letters after all it's a great thing to have one's work behind one instead of in front of one but before I get to the tedious task again I do particularly beg you to consider my proposal he sits down in a chair opposite her and begins to tick off the fingers of his left hand with the four fingers of his right my first point is this Duchess really are you going to put it under three heads Marquis no madam I act in this fashion because I have seen the attitude adopted invariably by all diplomats when they would convince some great and powerful sovereign and my first point is this we know each other and we know the world on the other hand we are not intimate friends which would be fatal we are both free we are both careless as to difference in rank Duchess I am not Marquis well let us pass that it's a manner one can soon get used to after the first years of married life Duchess I assure you you are wasting your time I have not the slightest intention of marrying you or anybody else but I will help you to get married if you like my advice will be useful to you as you say and first of all show me those letters Marquis warmly thank you madam thank you a thousand times this one here is to madam D. Leavaudon answer one letter and holds the other ready in his hand Duchess glancing at it it is too formal Marquis this one he hands her another is to an Italian lady whose name I will get hold of before I write the direction outside or the moment it escapes me but she is a contessa something like Marolio I met her in a coach Duchess reads it it is far too long Marquis this one he hands her a third is to a distant cousin of mine in Madrid formerly the wife of Marquise but are they all widows Marquis gravely yes madam they are all widows and all rich Duchess it certainly seems a pity that with your knowledge of Versailles and your pleasant habit of friendship and your gallant record in the war you should be compelled to such adventures Marquis lightly there there madam did not pity me many a poor fellow is worse off than I the fourth one he produces yet another letter Duchess waving it aside no no I have already seemed too much of that correspondence trust me Marquis it will all end in smoke and may even very possibly make you ridiculous Marquis apologetically madam I have done my best I have put before you the very reasonable proposal that we should marry I have put it before you in the very manner which you suggest it did not for the moment at least meet with your approval and surely it was common sense to keep my line of retreat open upon the four widows by any one of which roads I might have fallen back after my defeat at your hands Duchess thoughtfully no I do not think we should get married there are too many doubts I have seen such experiments fail and shrugging her shoulders succeed I confess I have seen them fail and succeed Marquis indeed Duchess still ruminating but in a quiet way yes on one's own land yes that is how it always has to begin and then there would be the getting of a post she still continues to think it over frowning with the interest of her subject at last she rises promptly and looking at the Marquis full in a face she says we have half an hour or more before the hunt comes home we will walk around the gardens together and give this very important matter the discussion it deserves Marquis cheerfully by all means Duchess so that you do not make me miss the courier who is to take the first of these missives I am entirely at your disposal Duchess it is my deliberate advice to you not to post the first of those letters today come she goes out of the door in a rather majestic manner and he follows smiling the end of section 30