 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Creation Story and Science, a general article in the One Volume Bible commentary, first edition January 1909, edited by the Reverend J. R. Dumalo, MA. Many of the difficulties felt in connection with the Bible's story of creation arise from a misunderstanding of the bearing of modern science upon it. A few general considerations, therefore, may help to obviate them. A. There is a vague idea in many minds that science demands a much greater antiquity for the world than the Bible account will allow. This impression has probably been gathered from the statement in the margin of many Bibles that creation took place in the year 4004 BC. It is well, therefore, to be reminded that this marginal note is not a part of the Bible. It originated in calculations, both Jewish and Christian, which are now admitted to have been based upon imperfect knowledge. The sacred writer and genesis does not commit himself to any definite limits of time, but simply speaks of the creation as taking place in the beginning, and this phrase is elastic enough to cover the modern scientific position. B. Another difficulty is caused by the apparent antagonism between modern scientific theories and the statement of genesis 1 that the work of creation was completed in six days. Attempts have been made, from several points of view, to get rid of this antagonism by taking the language of the scripture in a figurative sense. For example, it has been suggested by some that the sublime panorama of creation was flashed into some primeval prophet's consciousness in a series of visions that occupied a space of six days, and by others that the days are not to be interpreted as natural days of 24 hours each, but as age-long periods of time corresponding to the successive stages in the evolution of the world. Whatever truth there may be in these suggestions, and however helpful they may be to many minds, others may be able to obtain a more satisfactory rendering of the Bible account of creation by looking at it in the light of the three following considerations. 1. The story was written in the very childhood of our race when human knowledge was only at the dawn, and men's minds were awakening for the first time to the problems of life and the world. It was inevitable, therefore, that it should be cast in a simple and childlike form if it was to be at all intelligible to those among whom it appeared, and the wisdom of giving it such a setting has been more than justified by the impression it has left and still continues to make upon the thought of the world. 2. It is now widely admitted that the Genesis account of creation contains elements of belief which existed perhaps thousands of years before the book of Genesis was written among the peoples of Babylonia and Assyria. The connection between the traditions of these early nations and the story of Genesis is still a matter of discussion, but one thing has emerged clearly from their comparison. Whatever elements the sacred writer and Genesis may have in common with the Babylonian and Assyrian beliefs, he has been able to redeem and purify them from their base of form and invest them with the presence and power of a sovereign God, the one only creator of heaven and earth. 3. The purpose of the writer in Genesis 1 is not scientific but religious. His scientific knowledge may be bounded by the horizon of the age in which he lived, but the religious truths he teaches are irrefutable and eternal. To put the matter in another way, the scientific account of creation has been written by the finger of God upon the crust of the earth and men are slowly spelling it out, but the religious account of creation is written in the first chapter of Genesis in letters that all can read. Both accounts are from God and should be received accordingly. As Dr Marcus Dodds has said, the greatest mistake is made when men seek in the one record what can only be found in the other, when they either refuse to listen to the affirmations of nature because they seem to disagree with what is found in the Bible, or when they are content with the teaching of nature as if nature could tell us all we need to know about ourselves, about the world and about God. What was necessary in the primitive world to save men from grovelling, debasing polytheism was the knowledge that it was God, holy and good who made all things, and that the crown and summit of his work was man, and this is the knowledge set forth in the book of Genesis. The real question for us is then, does the story of Genesis so accomplish what seems to be its purpose and what only inspiration from God can account for it? To ask, is it a completely scientific account of creation is to raise an issue that is scarcely fair? See. These considerations must be kept in mind for they are equally helpful in dealing with the further difficulty that has arisen in connection with the theory of evolution and the marvellous discoveries with which it has been associated. Science is now teaching that the order and beauty of the world are not the result of one directly creative act, but the outcome of a long and gradual process continued probably over myriads of years and that the varied life of nature is not as it was fixed in the beginning, but as it has been evolved through age-long periods and many lower stages from original germs. On the face of it, this teaching seems to conflict with the teaching of the Bible and in particular to throw suspicion upon the story of creation as given in Genesis. It was thus it was received at first, but in recent years, as men have gone back to the old creation story and pondered it afresh in view of the teaching of science, their difficulties and perplexities have largely disappeared. Besides making allowances for the considerations already urged under B, they have come to see that creation would be just as divine and miraculous if it was slow and gradual as it would be if it was sudden and complete. The power necessary to originate and support a ceaseless and prolonged process of development in the world would be no less than that required to bring it into being in a moment and sustain it in its ordered course. Doubtless, God could instantaneously make a mighty oak, but it is no less wonderful that he should make it gradually, causing it to grow out of the little acorn of which we can carry a dozen in the hand, yet every one of which contains within it a germ endued with the power to carry on the succession of mighty oaks through ages to come. To realise this is to advance a long way in the solution of the difficulty arising from the theory of evolution and rob it of its power to disturb a genuine faith in the Bible. A further reflection, however, may be called in to support the mind of the biblical believer. Not only is evolution itself only a theory which may in the future undergo modification and may possibly be displaced by some other theory, but even if it is a true and final account of the origin of created things, the old creation story of Genesis is, to say the least, not incompatible with it. The process of creation, as unfolded in Genesis, when viewed in the light of the new scientific teaching, reveals a law of continuous development which is at least a foreshadowing of the process of evolution and so the apparent irreconcilability between them becomes largely reduced if it does not indeed altogether disappear. These, we read, are the generations of the heavens when they were created. The inspired historians saw no almighty hand building up the galleries of creation. There had no sound of hammer nor confused noise of workmen. The spirit of the Lord moved upon the face of the deep. Chaos took form and comeliness before his inspired vision and the solar system grew through a succession of days to its present order and beauty. At last, when all things were ready, after how many myriads of years we know not, man came forth, the summit of the whole creation, for God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul. End of the creation story and science. Recorded by Tim McKenzie. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Karl Manchester, 2007. God and the State. By Mikhail Bakunin. Chapter one. Who is right? The idealists or the materialists? The question once stated in this way, hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before ideas. Yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower whose root lies in the material conditions of existence. Yes, the whole history of humanity, intellectual and moral, political and social, is but a reflection of its economic history. All branches of modern science, of true and disinterested science, concur in proclaiming this grand truth, fundamental and decisive. The social world, properly speaking, the human world, in short, humanity, is nothing other than the last and supreme development, at least on our planet and as far as we know, the highest manifestation of animality. But as every development necessarily implies a negation, that of its base or point of departure, humanity is at the same time and essentially the deliberate and gradual negation of the animal element in man. And it is precisely this negation, as rational as it is natural, and rational only because natural, at once historical and logical, as inevitable as the development and realisation of all the natural laws in the world that constitutes and creates the ideal, the world of intellectual and moral convictions. Ideas. Yes, our first ancestors, our Adams and our Eves, were, if not gorillas, very near relatives of gorillas. Omnivorous, intelligent and ferocious beasts, endowed in a higher degree than the animals of other species with two precious faculties, the power to think and the desire to rebel. These faculties, combining their progressive action in history, represent the essential factor, the negative power in the positive development of human animality and create consequently all that constitutes humanity in man. The Bible, which is a very interesting and here and there very profound book, when considered as one of the oldest surviving manifestations of human wisdom and fancy, expresses this truth very naively in its myth of original sin. Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men, was certainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most unjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile to human dignity and liberty. Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve to satisfy we know not what caprice, no doubt to while away his time, which must weigh heavy on his hands in his eternal egoistic solitude, or that he might have some new slaves. He generously placed at their disposal the whole earth with all its fruits and animals and set but a single limit to this complete enjoyment. He expressly forbade them from touching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished therefore that man, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal beast, ever on all fours before the eternal God, his creator and his master. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first free thinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience. He emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge. We know what followed. The good God, whose foresight, which is one of the divine faculties, should have warned him of what would happen, flew into a terrible and ridiculous rage. He cursed Satan, man, and the world created by himself, striking himself, so to speak, in his own creation, as children do when they get angry. And not content with smiting our ancestors themselves, he cursed them in all the generations to come, innocent of the crime committed by their forefathers. Our Catholic and Protestant theologians look upon that as very profound and very just, precisely because it is monstrously iniquitous and absurd. Then, remembering that he was not only a God of vengeance and wrath, but also a God of love, after having tormented the existence of a few milliards of poor human beings and condemned them to an eternal hell, he took pity on the rest, and to save them and reconcile his eternal and divine love with his eternal and divine anger, always greedy for victims and blood, he sent into the world, as an expiatory victim, his only son, that he might be killed by men. That is called the mystery of the redemption, the basis of all the Christian religions. Still, if the divine Saviour had saved the human world, but no, in the paradise promised by Christ, as we know, such being the formal announcement, the elect will number very few. The rest, the immense majority of the generations present in to come, will burn eternally in hell. In the meantime, to consolers, God, ever just, ever good, hands over the earth to the government of the Napoleon III, of the William I, of the Ferdinand of Austria, and of the Alexanders of all the Russia's. Such are the absurd tales that are told, and the monstrous doctrines that are taught, in the full light of the nineteenth century, in all the public schools of Europe, at the express command of the government. They call this civilising the people. Is it not plain that all these governments are systematic poisoners, interested stupifiers of the masses? I have wandered from my subject, because anger gets hold of me whenever I think of the base and criminal means which they employ to keep the nations in perpetual slavery. Undoubtedly, that they may be the better able to fleece them. Of what consequence are the crimes of all the trotmans in the world, compared with this crime of treason against humanity committed daily, in broad day, over the whole surface of the civilised world, by those who dare call themselves the guardians and fathers of the people? I return to the myth of original sin. God admitted that Satan was right. He recognised that the devil did not deceive Adam and Eve in promising them knowledge and liberty as a reward for the act of disobedience which he had induced them to commit, for immediately they had eaten of the forbidden fruit. God himself said, see Bible, behold, man is become as of the gods, knowing both good and evil. Prevent him therefore from eating of the fruit of eternal life, lest he become immortal like ourselves. Let us disregard now the fabulous portion of this myth and consider it's true meaning, which is very clear. Man has emancipated himself. He has separated himself from animality and constituted himself a man. He has begun his distinctively human history and development by an act of disobedience that is by rebellion and by thought. Three elements or if you like, three fundamental principles constitute the essential condition of all human development, collective or individual in history. One, human animality. Two, thought and three, rebellion. To the first properly corresponds social and private economy. And science. To the third, liberty. Idealists of all schools, aristocrats and bourgeois, theologians and metaphysicians, politicians and moralists, religionists, philosophers or poets not forgetting the liberal economists, unbounded worshippers of the ideal as we know, are much offended when told that man with his magnificent intelligence, his sublime ideas and his boundless considerations, is, like all else existing in the world, nothing but matter, only a product of vile matter. We may answer that the matter of which materialists speak, matter spontaneously and eternally mobile, active, productive, matter chemically or organically determined and manifested by the properties of forces, mechanical, physical, animal and intelligence which necessarily belong to it, that this matter has nothing in common with the vile matter of the idealists. The latter, a product of their false abstraction is indeed a stupid, inanimate, immobile thing incapable of giving birth to the smallest product, a capital mortuum, an ugly fancy in contrast to the beautiful fancy which they call God. As the opposite of this supreme being, matter, their matter, stripped by that which constitutes its real nature, necessarily represents supreme nothingness. They have taken away intelligence, life, all its determining qualities, active relations or forces, motion itself, without which matter would not even have weight, leaving it nothing but impenetrability and absolute immobility and space. They have attributed all these natural forces, properties and manifestations to the imaginary being created by their abstract fancy. Then, interchanging roles, they have called this product of their imagination, this phantom, this God who is nothing, supreme being, and, as a necessary consequence, have declared that the real being, matter, the world, is nothing. After which they gravely tell us that this matter is incapable of producing anything, not even of setting itself in motion, and consequently must have been created by their God. At the end of this book I exposed the fallacies and truly revolting absurdities to which one is inevitably led by this imagination of a God. Let him be considered as a personal being, the creator and organiser of worlds, or even as impersonal, a kind of divine soul spread over the whole universe and constituting thus its eternal principle. Or let him be an idea, infinite and divine, always present and active in the world and always manifested by the totality of material and definite beings. Here I shall deal with one point only. The gradual development of the material world as well as of organic animal life and of the historically progressive intelligence of man individually or socially is perfectly conceivable. It is a wholly natural movement from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the superior. A movement in conformity with all our daily experiences and consequently in conformity also with our natural logic, with the distinctive laws of our mind, which being formed and developed only by the aid of these same experiences is, so to speak, but the mental cerebral reproduction or reflected summary thereof. The system of the idealists is quite the contrary of this. It is the reversal of all human experiences and of that universal and common good sense which is the essential condition of all human understanding and which, in rising from the simple and unanimously recognised truth that twice to a four to the sublimist and most complex scientific considerations admitting, moreover, nothing that has not stood the severest tests of experience or observation of things and facts becomes the only serious basis of human knowledge. Very far from pursuing the natural order from the lower to the higher, from the inferior to the superior and from the relatively simple to the more complex, instead of wisely and rationally accompanying the progressive and real movement from the world called inorganic to the world organic, vegetable animal and then distinctively human, from chemical matter or chemical being to living matter or living being and from living being to thinking being, the idealists obsessed, blinded and pushed on by the divine phantom which they have inherited from theology take precisely the opposite course. They go from the higher to the lower, from the superior to the inferior, from the complex to the simple. They begin with God, either as a person or as a divine substance or idea, and the first step that they take is a terrible fall from the sublime states of the eternal ideal into the mire of the material world from absolute perfection into absolute imperfection from thought to being or rather from supreme being to nothing. When, how and why the divine being, eternal, infinite absolutely perfect probably weary of himself decided upon this desperate Salto Mortale is something which no idealist no theologian, no metaphysician no poet has ever been able to understand himself or explain to the profane all religions past and present and all the systems of transcendental philosophy hinge on this unique iniquitous mystery. Footnote I call it iniquitous because as I believe I have proved in the appendix alluded to, this mystery has been and still continues to be the consecration of all the horrors which have been and are being committed in the world. I call it unique because all other theological and metaphysical absurdities which debase the human mind are but its necessary consequences. End footnote Holy men inspired law givers, prophets messiahs have searched it for life and found only torment and death. Like the ancient Sphinx it has devoured them because they could not explain it. Great philosophers from Heraclitus and Plato down to Descartes, Spinoza Leibniz, Kant, Thicht Schelling and Hegel not to mention the Indian philosophers have written heaps of volumes and built systems as ingenious as sublime in which they have said by the way many beautiful and grand things and discovered immortal truths but they have left this mystery the principal object of their transcendental investigations as unfathomable as before. The gigantic efforts of the most wonderful geniuses that the world has known and who, one after another for at least thirty centuries have undertaken anew this labour of Sisyphus have resulted only in rendering this mystery still more incomprehensible. Is it to be hoped that it will be unveiled to us by the routine speculations of some pedantic disciple of an artificially warmed over metaphysics at a time when all living and serious spirits have abandoned that ambiguous science born of a compromise historically explicable no doubt between the unreason of faith and sound scientific reason. It is evident that this terrible mystery is inexplicable that is absurd because only the absurd admits of no explanation. It is evident that whoever finds it essential to his happiness and life must renounce his reason and return as he can to naive, blind, stupid faith to repeat with tertulianus and all sincere believers these words which sum up the very quintessence of theology. Credo Queer Absurdum I believe because it is absurd then all discussion ceases and nothing remains but the triumphant stupidity of faith but immediately there arises another question what becomes an intelligent and well-informed man ever to feel the need of believing in this mystery? Nothing is more natural than that the belief in God the creator, regulator, judge, master, cursor, saviour and benefactor of the world should still prevail among the people especially in the rural districts where it is more widespread than amongst the proletariat of the cities the people unfortunately are still very ignorant and are kept in ignorance by the systematic efforts of all the governments who consider this ignorance not without good reason as one of the essential conditions of their own power weighted down by their daily labour deprived of leisure of intellectual intercourse of reading in short of all the means and a good portion of the stimulants that develop thought in men the people generally accept religious traditions without criticism and in a lump these traditions surround them from infancy in all the situations of life and artificially sustained in their minds by a multitude of official poisoners of all sorts priests and laymen are transformed therein into a sort of mental and moral babbit too often more powerful even than their natural good sense there is another reason which explains and in some sort justifies the absurd beliefs of the people namely the wretched situation where they find themselves fatally condemned by the economic organisation of society in the most civilised countries of Europe reduced intellectually and morally as well as materially to the minimum of human existence confined in their life like a prisoner in his prison without horizon, without outlet without even a future if we believe the economists the people would have the singularly narrow souls and blunted instincts of the bourgeois if they did not feel a desire to escape but have escaped there are but three methods two shemerical and a third real the first two are the dram shop and the church debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind the third is social revolution hence I conclude that this last will be much more potent than all the theological propagandism of the free thinkers to destroy to the last vestige the religious beliefs and disillute habits of the people beliefs and habits much more intimately connected than is generally supposed in substituting for the at once illusory and brutal enjoyments of bodily and spiritual licentiousness the enjoyments as refined as they are real of humanity developed in each and all the social revolution alone will have the power to close at the same time all the dram shops and all the churches till then the people taken as a whole will believe and if they have no reason to believe they will have at least a right there is a class of people who if they do not believe must at least make a semblance of believing this class comprising all the tormentors all the oppressors and all the exploiters of humanity priests monarchs statesmen soldiers public and private financiers officials of all sorts policemen john dames jailers and executioners monopolists capitalists tax leeches contractors and landlords lawyers economists politicians of all shades down to the smallest vendor of sweet meets all will repeat in unison those words of Voltaire if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him for you understand the people must have a religion that is the safety valve there exists finally a somewhat numerous class of honest but timid souls who too intelligent to take the christian dogmas seriously reject them in detail but have neither the courage nor the strength nor the necessary resolution to summarily renounce them all together they abandon to your criticism all the special absurdities of religion they turn up their noses at all the miracles but they cling desperately to the principal absurdity the source of all the others to the miracle that explains and justifies all the other miracles the existence of God their God is not the vigorous and powerful being the brutally positive God of theology it is a nebulous diaphanous illusory being that vanishes into nothing at the first attempt to grasp it it is a mirage an igneous fatugues that neither warms nor illuminates and yet they hold fast to it and believe that were it to disappear or would disappear with it they are uncertain, sickly souls who have lost their reckoning in the present civilisation belonging to neither the present nor the future pale phantoms eternally suspended between heaven and earth and occupying exactly the same position between the politics of the bourgeois and the socialism of the proletariat they have neither the power nor the wish nor the determination to follow out their thought and they waste their time and pains in constantly endeavouring to reconcile the irreconcilable in public life these are known as bourgeois socialists with them or against them discussion is out of the question they are too puny but there are a few illustrious men of whom no one will dare to speak without respect and whose vigorous health of mind and good intention no one will dream of calling in question I need only cite the names of Matzini, Michelet Quinnet, John Stuart Mill footnote Mr. Stuart Mill is perhaps the only one whose serious idealism may be fairly doubted and that for two reasons first that if not absolutely the disciple he is a passionate admirer and adherent of the positive philosophy of Auguste Comte a philosophy which in spite of its numerous reservations is really atheistic second that Mr. Stuart Mill is English and in England to proclaim oneself an atheist is to ostracise oneself even at this late day end footnote generous and strong souls great hearts, great minds, great writers and the first the heroic and revolutionary regenerator of a great nation they are all apostles of idealism and bitter despisers and adversaries of materialism and consequently of socialism also in philosophy as well as in politics against them then we must discuss this question first let it be remarked that not one of the illustrious men I have just named nor any other idealistic thinker of any consequence in our day any attention to the logical side of this question properly speaking not one has tried to settle philosophically the possibility of the divine Salto Mortale from the pure and eternal regions of the spirit into the mire of the material world have they feared to approach this irreconcilable contradiction and despaired of solving it after the failures of the greatest geniuses of history or have they looked upon it as already sufficiently well settled that is their secret the fact is that they have neglected the theoretical demonstration of the existence of a God and have developed only its practical motives and consequences they have treated it as a fact universally accepted and as such no longer susceptible of any doubt whatever for soul proof thereof limiting themselves to the establishment of the antiquity and this very universality of life in God this imposing unanimity in the eyes of many illustrious men and writers to quote only the most famous of them who eloquently expressed it Joseph de Maistre and the great Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini is of more value than all the demonstrations of science and if the reasoning of a small number of logical and even very powerful but isolated thinkers is against it so much the worse they say and their logic for their universal consent the general and primitive adoption of an idea has always been considered the most triumphant testimony to its truth the sentiment of the whole world a conviction that is found and maintained always and everywhere cannot be mistaken it must have its root in a necessity absolutely inherent in the very nature of man and since it has been established that all peoples past and present have believed in the existence of God it is clear that those who have the misfortune to doubt it, whatever the logic that led them to this doubt are abnormal exceptions monsters thus then the antiquity and universality of a belief should be regarded contrary to all science and all logic as sufficient and unimpeachable proof of its truth why? until the days of Copernicus and Galileo everybody believed that the sun revolved about the earth was not everybody mistaken what is more ancient and more universal than slavery? cannibalism perhaps from the origin of historic society down to the present day there has been always and everywhere exploitation of the compulsory labour of the masses slaves, serfs or wage workers by some dominant minority oppression of the people by the church by the state must it be concluded that this exploitation and this oppression are necessities absolutely inherent in the very existence of human society these are examples which show that the argument of the champions of God proves nothing nothing in fact is as universal or as ancient as the iniquitous and absurd truth and justice on the contrary are the least universal the youngest features in the development of human society in this fact too lies the explanation of a constant historical phenomenon namely the persecution of which those who first proclaim the truth have been and continue to be the objects at the hands of the official privileged and interested representatives of universal and ancient beliefs and often also at the hands of the same masses who after having tortured them always end by adopting their ideas and rendering them victorious to us materialists and revolutionary socialists there is nothing astonishing or terrifying in this historical phenomenon strong in our conscience in our love of truth at all hazards in that passion for logic which of itself alone constitutes a great power and outside of which there is no thought strong in our passion for justice takeable faith in the triumph of humanity over all theoretical and practical bestialities strong finally in the mutual confidence and support given each other by the few who share our convictions we resign ourselves to all the consequences of this historical phenomenon in which we see the manifestation of a social law as natural as necessary and as invariable as all the other laws which govern the world this law is a logical inevitable consequences of the animal origin of human society for in face of all the scientific physiological, psychological and historical proofs accumulated at the present day as well as in the face of the exploits of the Germans conquering France which now furnish so striking a demonstration thereof it is no longer possible to really doubt this origin from the moment that this animal origin of man is accepted all is explained history then appears to us as the revolutionary negation now slow, apathetic, sluggish now passionate and powerful of the past it consists precisely in the progressive negation of the primitive animality of man by the development of his humanity man, a wild beast cousin of the gorilla has emerged from the profound darkness of animal instinct into the light of the mind which explains in a wholly natural way all his past mistakes and partially consoles us for his present errors he has gone out from animal slavery and passing through divine slavery a temporary condition between his animality and his humanity he is now marching on to the conquest and realisation of human liberty whence it results that the antiquity of a belief far from proving anything in its favour ought on the contrary to lead us to suspect it for behind us is our animality and before us our humanity human light the only thing that can warm and enlighten us the only thing that can emancipate us give us dignity freedom and happiness and realise fraternity among us is never at the beginning but relatively to the epoch in which we live always at the end of history let us then never look back let us look ever forward for forward is our sunlight forward our salvation if it is justifiable and even useful and necessary to turn back to study our past it is only in order to establish what we have been and what we must no longer be what we have believed and thought and what we must no longer believe or think what we have done and what we must do nevermore so much for antiquity as for the universality of an error it proves but one thing the similarity if not the perfect identity of human nature in all ages and under all skies and since it establishes that all peoples at all periods of their life have believed and still believe in God we must simply conclude that the divine idea an outcome of ourselves is an error historically necessary in the development of humanity and ask why and how it was produced in history and why an immense majority of the human race still accept it as a truth until we shall account to ourselves for the manner in which the idea of a supernatural or divine world was developed and had to be developed in the historical evolution of the human conscience all our scientific conviction of its absurdity will be in vain until then we shall never succeed in destroying it in the opinion of the majority because we shall never be able to attack it in the very depths of the hut man being where it had birth condemned to a fruitless struggle without issue and without end we should forever have to content ourselves with fighting it solely on the surface in its innumerable manifestations whose absurdity will be scarcely beaten down by the blows of common sense before it will reappear in a new form no less nonsensical while the root of all the absurdities that torment the world belief in God remains intact it will never fail to bring forth new offspring thus at the present time in certain sections of the higher society spiritualism tends to establish itself upon the ruins of Christianity it is not only in the interest of the masses it is in that of the health of our own minds that we should strive to understand the historic genesis the succession of causes which developed and produced the idea of God in the consciousness of men in vain shall we call and believe ourselves atheists until we comprehend these courses for until then we shall always suffer ourselves to be more or less governed by the clamours of this universal conscience whose secret has been discovered and considering the natural weakness of even the strongest individual against the all-powerful influence of the social surroundings that trample him we are always in danger of relapsing sooner or later in one way or another into the abyss of religious absurdity examples of these shameful conversions are frequent in society today End of Chapter 1 Chapter 13 of Far From the Madding Crowd This is LibriVox Recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Leanne Howlett Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Chapter 13 Sorta Sanctorum The Valentine It was Sunday afternoon in the farmhouse on the 13th of February Dinner being over, Bathsheba for want of a better companion had asked Liddy to come and sit with her The moldy pile was dreary in wintertime before the candles were lighted and the shutters closed The atmosphere of the place seemed as old as the walls Every nook behind the furniture had a temperature of its own where the fire was not kindled in this part of the house early in the day and Bathsheba's new piano which was an old one by the way, Liddy and her annals looked particularly sloping and out of level on the warped floor before night through a shade over its less prominent angles and hid the unpleasantness Liddy, like a little brook though shallow was always rippling her presence had not so much weight as to task thought and yet enough to exercise it On the table lay an old quarto Bible bound in leather Did you ever find out Miss who you are going to marry by means of the Bible and key Don't be so foolish Liddy as if such things could be Well, there's a good deal in it all the same Nonsense child And it makes your heart beat fearful Some believe in it Some don't, I do Very well Let's try it, said Bathsheba bounding from her seat with that in its regard of consistency which can be indulged in towards a dependent and entering into the spirit of divination at once Go and get the front door key Liddy fetched it I wish it wasn't Sunday she said on returning, perhaps tis wrong What's right weekdays is right Sundays replied her mistress in a tongue which was a proof in itself The book was opened The leaves, drab with age were worn away at much red verses by the forefingers of unpracticed readers in former days where they were moved along under the line as an aid to the vision The special verse in the book of Ruth was sought out by Bathsheba and the sublime words met her eye They slightly thrilled and abashed her It was wisdom in the abstract facing folly in the concrete Folly in the concrete blushed persisted in her intention and placed the key on the book A rusty patch immediately upon the verse caused by previous pressure from an iron substance thereon told that this was not the first time the old volume had been used for the purpose Now keep steady and be silent, said Bathsheba The verse was repeated The book turned round Bathsheba blushed guiltily Who did you try? said Liddy curiously I shall not tell you Did you notice Mr. Boldwood's doings in church this morning, Miss? Liddy continued Adam braiding by the remark the track her thoughts had taken No indeed, said Bathsheba was serene in difference His pew is exactly opposite yours, Miss I know it And you did not see his goings on? Certainly I did not I tell you Liddy assumed a smaller physiognomy and shut her lips decisively This move was unexpected and proportionally disconcerting What did he do? Bathsheba said perforce Didn't turn his head to look at you once all the service Why should he? Again demanded her mistress wearing a nettle look I didn't ask him to Oh no But everybody else was noticing you and it was odd he didn't There, tis like him Rich and gentlemanly, what does he care? Bathsheba dropped into a silence intended to express that she had opinions on the matter too abstruse for Liddy's comprehension rather than that she had nothing to say Dear me, I had nearly forgotten the Valentine I bought yesterday She exclaimed at length Valentine? Who for, Miss? said Liddy Farmer Boldwood It was a single name among all possible wrong ones that just at this moment seemed to Bathsheba more pertinent than the right Well, no It is only for little Teddy Coggin I have promised him something and this will be a pretty surprise for him Liddy, you may as well bring me my desk and I'll direct it at once Bathsheba took from her desk a gorgeously illuminated and embossed design in post octavo which had been bought on the previous market day at the chief stationers in Casterbridge In the center was a small oval enclosure This was left blank that the sender might insert tender words more appropriate to the special occasion than any generalities by a printer could possibly be Here's a place for writing said Bathsheba What shall I put? Something of this sort I should think returned Liddy promptly The rose is red The violet blue Carnation sweet and so are you Yes, that shall be it It just suits itself to a chubby face child like him said Bathsheba She inserted the words in a small though legible handwriting enclosed the sheet in an envelope and dipped her pen for the direction What fun it would be to send it to the stupid old boldwood and how he would wonder said the irrepressible Liddy lifting her eyebrows and indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought of the moral and social magnitude of the man contemplated Bathsheba paused to regard the idea at full length Boldwoods had begun to be a troublesome image. A species of Daniel in her kingdom who persisted in kneeling eastward when reason and common sense said that he might just as well follow suit with the rest and afford her the official glance of admiration which cost nothing at all. She was far from being seriously concerned about his nonconformity. Still it was faintly depressing that the most dignified and valuable man in the parish should withhold his eyes and that a girl like Liddy should talk about it. So Liddy's idea was first rather harassing than pecan. No, I won't do that. He wouldn't see any humor in it. He'd worry to death said the persistent Liddy. Really, I don't care particularly to send it to Teddy, remarked remistress. He's rather a naughty child sometimes. Yes, that he is. Let's toss his mendu, said Bathsheba, idly. Now then head boldwood, tail Teddy. No, we won't toss money on a Sunday. That would be tempting the devil indeed. Toss this hymn book. There can't be no sin felice in that miss. Very well. Open boldwood, shut Teddy. No, it's more likely to fall open. Open Teddy, shut boldwood. The book went fluttering in the air and came down shut. Bathsheba, a small yawn upon her mouth, took the pen and with offhand serenity directed the missive to boldwood. Now light a candle, Liddy. Which seal shall we use? Here's a unicorn's head. There's nothing in that. What's this? Two doves? No. It ought to be something extraordinary. Aught it not, Liddy? Here's one with a motto. I remember it is some funny one but I can't read it. We'll try this and if it doesn't do, we'll have another. A large red seal was duly affixed. Bathsheba looked closely at the hot wax to discover the words. Capital, she exclaimed, throwing down the letter frolicsimly, twid it set the solemnity of a parson and clerk, too. Liddy looked at the words of the seal and read, Marry me. The same evening the letter was sent and was duly sorted in Castorbridge Post Office that night to be returned to Weatherbury again in the morning. So very idly and unreflectingly was this deed done. A spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge, but of love, subjectively she knew nothing. End of chapter 13 Recording by Leanne Howlett. THE MARRIAGE OF LITLIT by Jack London When John Fox came into a country where whiskey freezes solid and may be used as a paperweight for a large part of the year, he came without the ideals and illusions that usually hamper the progress of more delicately nurtured adventurers. Born and reared on the frontier fringe of the United States, he took with him into Canada a primitive cast of mind, an elemental simplicity and grip on things, as it were, that ensured him immediate success in his new career. From a mere servant of the Hudson Bay Company, driving a paddle with the voyagers and carrying goods on his back across the portages, he swiftly rose to a factorship and took charge of a trading post at Fort Angeles. Here, because of his elemental simplicity, he took to himself a native wife, and, by reason of the cannubial bliss that followed, he escaped the unrest and vain longings that cursed the days of more fastidious men, spoiled their work and conquered them in the end. He lived contentedly, was at single purposes with the business he was set there to do, and achieved a brilliant record in the service of the company. About this time his wife died, was claimed by her people, and buried with savage circumstance in a tin trunk in the top of a tree. To sons she had borne him, and when the company promoted him, he journeyed with them still deeper into the vastness of the northwest territory to a place called Sin Rock, where he took charge of a new post in a more important fur-field. Here he spent several lonely and depressing months eminently disgusted with the unpre-possessing appearance of the Indian maidens, and greatly worried by his growing sons who stood in need of a mother's care. Then his eyes chanced upon Lit Lit. Lit Lit, well, she is Lit Lit, was the fashion in which he despairingly described her to his chief clerk Alexander MacLean. MacLean was too fresh from his Scottish upbringing, not dry behind the ears yet, John Fox put it, to take to the marriage customs of the country. Nevertheless he was not averse to the factors imperiling his own immortal soul, and especially feeling an ominous attraction himself for Lit Lit, he was somberly content to clinch his own soul's safety by seeing her married to the factor. Nor is it to be wondered that MacLean's austere Scotch soul stood in danger of being thought in the sunshine of Lit Lit's eyes. She was pretty and slender and willowy, without the massive face and temperamental stillitity of the average squaw. Lit Lit, so called from her fashion, even as a child, of being fluttery, of darting about from place to place like a butterfly, of being inconsequent and merry, and of laughing as lightly as she darted and danced about. Lit Lit was the daughter of Snettoshane, a prominent chief in the tribe, by a half-breed mother, and to him the factor fared casually one summer day to open negotiations of marriage. He sat with the chief in the smoke of a mosquito smudge before his lodge, and together they talked about everything under the sun, or at least everything that in the Northland is under the sun, with the sole exception of marriage. John Fox had come particularly to talk of marriage. Snettoshane knew it, and John Fox knew he knew it, wherefore the subject was religiously avoided. This is alleged to be Indian subtlety. In reality it is transparent simplicity. The hours slipped by, and Fox and Snettoshane smoked interminable pipes, looking each other in the eyes with the guilelessness superbly histrionic. In the mid-afternoon, McLean and his brother, Clerk McTavish, strolled past innocently uninterested on their way to the river. When they strolled back again an hour later, Fox and Snettoshane had attained to a ceremonious discussion of the condition and quality of the gunpowder and bacon which the company was offering in trade. Meanwhile Lit Lit, divining the factors errand, had crept in under the rear wall of the lodge, and through the front flap was peeping out at the two logomachists by the mosquito smudge. She was flushed and happy-eyed, proud that no lesser man than the Factor, who stood next to God in the Northland hierarchy, had singled her out, femininely curious to see at close range what manner of man he was. Sunglair on the ice, camp smoke and weather beat had burned his face to a copper-brown, so that her father was as fair as he, while she was fairer. She was remotely glad of this, and more immediately glad that he was large and strong, though his great black beard half-frightened her it was so strange. Being very young, she was unversed in the ways of men. Seventeen times she had seen the sun travel south and lose itself beyond the skyline, and seventeen times she had seen it travel back again and ride the sky day and night till there was no night at all. And through these years she had been cherished jealously by Snettoshane, who stood between her and all suitors, listening disdainfully to the young hunters as they bid for her hand, and turning them away as though she were beyond price. Snettoshane was mercenary. Lit-lit was to him an investment. She represented so much capital from which he expected to receive not a certain definite interest, but an incalculable interest. And having thus been reared in a manner as near to that of the nunnery as tribal conditions would permit, it was with a great and maidenly anxiety that she peeped out at the man who had surely come for her, at the husband who was to teach her all that was yet unlearned of life, at the masterful being whose word was to be her law, and who was to meet and bound her actions and comportment for the rest of her days. But peeping through the front flap of the lodge, flushed and thrilling at the strange destiny reaching out for her, she grew disappointed as the day wore along, and the factor and her father still talked pompously of matters concerning other things and not pertaining to marriage things at all. As the sun sank lower and lower towards the north and midnight approached, the factor began making unmistakable preparations for departure. As he turned to stride away, Lit-lit's heart sank, but it rose again as he halted, half turning on one heel. Oh, by the way, Snetoshane, he said, I want a squaw to wash for me and mend my clothes. Snetoshane grunted and suggested Wannadani, who was an old woman and toothless. No, no, interposed the factor. What I want is a wife. I've been kind of thinking about it, and the thought just struck me that you might know of someone that would suit. Snetoshane looked interested, whereupon the factor retraced his steps, casually and carelessly to linger and discuss this new and incidental topic. Ketu, suggested Snetoshane, she has but one eye, objected the factor. Laska, her knees can be wide apart when she stands upright. Kipps, your biggest dog, can leap between her knees when she stands upright. Sanity went on the imperturbable, Snetoshane. But John Fox feigned anger, crying, What foolishness is this? Am I old that thou shouldst make me with old women? Am I toothless, lame of leg, blind of eye? Or am I poor that no bright-eyed maiden may look with favor upon me? Behold, I am the factor, both rich and great, a power in the land whose speech makes men tremble and is obeyed. Snetoshane was inwardly pleased, though his sphinx-like visage never relaxed. He was drawing the factor, and making him break ground. Being a creature so elemental as to have room for but one idea at a time, Snetoshane could pursue that one idea a greater distance than could John Fox. For John Fox, elemental as he was, was still complex enough to entertain several glimmering ideas at a time, which debarred him from pursuing the one as single heartedly or as far as did the chief. Snetoshane calmly continued, calling the roster of eligible maidens which, name by name, as fast as uttered, were stamped ineligible by John Fox with specified objections appended. Again he gave it up and started to return to the fort. Snetoshane watched him go, making no effort to stop him, but seeing him in the end stop himself. Come to think of it, the factor remarked, we both of us forgot Lit Lit. Now I wonder if she'll suit me. Snetoshane met the suggestion with a mirthless face behind the mask of which his soul grinned wide. It was a distinct victory. Had the factor gone but one step farther, perforce Snetoshane would himself have mentioned the name of Lit Lit, but the factor had not gone that one step farther. The chief was non-committal concerning Lit Lit's suitability, till he drove the white man into taking the next step in order of procedure. Well, the factor meditated aloud. The only way to find out is to make a try of it. He raised his voice. So I will give for Lit Lit ten blankets and three pounds of tobacco, which is good tobacco. Snetoshane replied with a gesture which seemed to say that all the blankets and tobacco in all the world could not compensate him for the loss of Lit Lit and her manifold virtues. When pressed by the factor to set a price, he coolly placed it at five hundred blankets, ten guns, fifty pounds of tobacco, twenty scarlet cloths, ten bottles of rum, a music box, and lastly the goodwill and best offices of the factor, with a place by his fire. The factor apparently suffered a stroke of apoplexy, which stroke was successful in reducing the blankets to two hundred and in cutting out the place by the fire, an unheard of condition in the marriages of white men with the daughters of the soil. In the end, after three hours more of chaffering, they came to an agreement. For Lit Lit Snetoshane was to receive one hundred blankets, five pounds of tobacco, three guns, and a bottle of rum, goodwill and best offices included, which according to John Fox was ten blankets and a gun more than she was worth. And as he went home through the wee small hours, the three o'clock sun blazing in the due northeast, he was unpleasantly aware that Snetoshane had bested him over the bargain. Snetoshane, tired and victorious, sought his bed and discovered Lit Lit before she could escape from the lodge. He grunted knowingly, Thou hast seen, Thou hast heard, wherefore it be plain to thee thy father's very great wisdom and understanding. I have made for thee a great match. Eat my words and walk in the way of my words. Go when I say go, come when I bid thee come, and we shall grow fat with the wealth of this big white man who is a fool according to his bigness. The next day no trading was done at the store. The factor opened whiskey before breakfast to the delight of McClain and McTavish, gave his dogs double rations, and wore his best moccasins. Outside the fort, preparations were underway for a potlatch. Potlatch means a giving, and John Fox's intention was to signalize his marriage with Lit Lit by a potlatch as generous as she was good-looking. In the afternoon the whole tribe gathered to the feast. Men, women, children, and dogs, gorged to repletion, nor was there one person, even among the chance visitors and stray hunters from other tribes, who failed to receive some token of the bridegroom's largesse. Lit Lit, tearfully shy and frightened, was bedecked by her bearded husband with a new calico dress, splendidly beaded moccasins, a gorgeous silk handkerchief over her raven hair, a purple scarf about her throat, brass earrings and finger-rings, and a whole pint of pinch-beck jewelry, including a water-burry watch. Snitcheshane could scarce contain himself at the spectacle, but watching his chance drew her aside from the feast. Not this night, nor the next night, he began pondersly, but in the nights to come, when I shall call like a raven by the riverbank, it is for thee to rise up from thy big husband who is a fool, and come to me. Nay, nay, he went on hastily, at sight of the dismay in her face at turning her back upon her wonderful new life. For no sooner shall this happen than thy big husband who is a fool will come wailing to my lodge. Then it is for thee to wail likewise, claiming that this thing is not well, and that the other thing thou dost not like, and that to be the wife of the factor is more than thou dost bargain for, only wilt thou be content with more blankets and more tobacco and more wealth of various sorts for thy poor old father's snitcheshane. Remember well when I call in the night like a raven from the riverbank. Lit Lit nodded, for to disobey her father was a peril she knew well, and furthermore it was a little thing he asked, a short separation from the factor, who would know only greater gladness at having her back. She returned to the feast, and, midnight being well at hand, the factor sought her out, and led her away to the fort amid joking and outcry, in which the squaws were especially conspicuous. Lit Lit quickly found that married life with the headman of a fort was even better than she had dreamed. No longer did she have to fetch wood and water and wait-handed foot upon contankerous menfolk. For the first time in her life she could lie a bed till breakfast was on the table. And what a bed! Clean and soft, and comfortable as no bed she had ever known. And such food! Flower cooked into biscuits, hot cakes and bread, three times a day and every day, and all one wanted. Such prodigality was hardly believable. To add to her contentment the factor was cunningly kind. He had buried one wife, and he knew how to drive with a slack rein that went firm only on occasion, and then went very firm. Lit Lit is boss of this place, he announced significantly at the table the morning after the wedding. What she says goes, understand? And McClain and McTavish understood. Also, they knew that the factor had a heavy hand. But Lit Lit did not take advantage, taking a leaf from the book of her husband. She at once assumed charge of his own growing sons, giving them added comforts and a measure of freedom like to that which he gave her. The two sons were loud in the praise of their new mother. McClain and McTavish lifted their voices, and the factor bragged of the joys of matrimony till the story of her good behavior and her husband's satisfaction became the property of all the dwellers in the Sinrock District. Whereupon Snetoshane, with visions of his incalculable interest keeping him awake of nights, thought it time to bestur himself. On the tenth night of her wedded life Lit Lit was awakened by the croaking of a raven, and she knew that Snetoshane was waiting for her by the riverbank. In her great happiness she had forgotten her pact, and now it came back to her with behind it all the childish terror of her father. For a time she lay in fear and trembling loath to go afraid to stay, but in the end the factor won the silent victory, and his kindness, plus his great muscles and square jaw, nerved her to disregard Snetoshane's call. But in the morning she arose very much afraid and went about her duties in momentary fear of her father's coming. As the day wore along however she began to recover her spirits. John Fox, soundly berating McClain and McTavish for some petty dereliction of duty, helped her to pluck up courage. She tried not to let him go out of her sight, and when she followed him into the huge cache and saw him twirling and tossing great bales around as though they were feather-pillows, she felt strengthened in her disobedience to her father. Also, it was her first visit to the warehouse, and Sin Rock was the chief distributing point to several chains of lesser posts. She was astounded at the endlessness of the wealth there stored away. This sight and the picture in her mind's eye of the bear lords of Snetoshane put all doubts at rest, yet she capped her conviction by a brief word with one of her step-sons. White Daddy Good was what she asked, and the boy answered that his father was the best man he had ever known. That night the raven croaked again. On the night following the croaking was more persistent. It awoke the factor who tossed restlessly for a while. Then he said aloud, damn that raven, and Lit Lit laughed quietly under the blankets. In the morning, bright and early, Snetoshane put in an ominous appearance, and was set to breakfast in the kitchen with Wannadani. He refused squaw food, and a little later bearded his son-in-law in the store where the trading was done, having learned, he said, that his daughter was such a jewel, he had come for more blankets, more tobacco, and more guns, especially more guns. He had certainly been cheated in her price, he held, and he had come for justice. But the factor had neither blankets nor justice to spare, whereupon he was informed that Snetoshane had seen the missionary at Three Forks, who had notified him that such marriages were not made in heaven, and that it was his father's duty to demand his daughter back. I am good Christian man now, Snetoshane concluded. I want my Lit Lit to go to heaven. The factor's reply was short and to the point, for he directed his father-in-law to go to the heavenly antipodes, and by the scruff of the neck and the slack of the blanket propelled him on that trail as far as the door. But Snetoshane sneaked around and in by the kitchen, cornering Lit Lit in the great living-room of the fort. May have thou did sleep over sound last night when I called by the river-bank, he began, glowering darkly. Nay, I was awakened heard. Her heart was beating as though it would choke her, but she went on steadily, and the night before I was awakened heard, and yet again the night before. And there at, out of her great happiness, and out of the fear that it might be taken from her, she launched into an original and glowing address upon the status and rights of woman, the first new woman lecture delivered north of fifty-three. But it fell on unheeding ears. Snetoshane was still in the dark ages. As she paused for breath, he said threateningly, Tonight I shall call again like the raven. At this moment the factor entered the room and again helped Snetoshane on his way to the heavenly antibodies. That night the raven croaked more persistently than ever. Lit Lit, who was a light sleeper, heard and smiled. John Fox tossed restlessly. Then he awoke and tossed about with greater restlessness. He grumbled and snorted, swore under his breath and over his breath, and finally flung out of bed. He groped his way to the great living-room, and from the rack took down a loaded shotgun, loaded with bird-shot, left therein by the careless MacTavish. The factor crept carefully out of the fort and down to the river. The croaking had ceased, but he stretched out in the long grass and waited. The air seemed a chilly balm, and the earth, after the heat of the day, now and again breathed soothingly against him. The factor, gathered into the rhythm of it all, dozed off with his head upon his arm and slept. Fifty yards away, head resting on knees, and with his back to John Fox, Snetta Shane likewise slept, gently conquered by the quietude of the night. An hour slipped by, and then he awoke, and without lifting his head, set the night vibrating with the hoarse gutterls of the raven call. The factor roused, not with the abrupt start of civilized man, but with the swift and comprehensive glide from sleep to waking of the savage. In the nightlight he made out a dark object in the midst of the grass and brought his gun to bear upon it. A second croak began to rise, and he pulled the trigger. The cricket ceased from their singsong chant, the wild fowl from their squabbling, and the raven croak broke midmost and died away in gasping silence. John Fox ran to the spot and reached for the thing he had killed, but his fingers closed on a coarse mop of hair, and he turned Snetta Shane's face upward to the starlight. He knew how a shotgun scattered at fifty yards, and he knew that he had peppered Snetta Shane across the shoulders and in the small of the back, and Snetta Shane knew that he knew, but neither referred to it. What dost thou hear, the factor demanded? It were time old bones should be in bed. But Snetta Shane was stately in spite of the bird-shot burning under his skin. Old bones will not sleep, he said solemnly. I weep for my daughter, for my daughter Lytlit, who liveth, and who yet is dead, and who goeth without doubt to the white man's hell. Weep henceforth on the far bank beyond earshot of the fort, said John Fox turning on his heel, for the noise of thy weeping is exceeding great, and will not let one sleep of nights. My heart is sore, Snetta Shane answered, and my days and nights be black with sorrow. As the raven is black, said John Fox, as the raven is black, Snetta Shane said. Never again was the voice of the raven heard by the river bank. Lytlit grows maternly day by day and is very happy. Also, there are sisters to the sons of John Fox's first wife who lies buried in a tree. Old Snetta Shane is no longer a visitor at the fort, and spends long hours raising a thin aged voice against the filial ingratitude of children in general and of his daughter Lytlit in particular. His declining years are embittered by the knowledge that he was cheated, and even John Fox has withdrawn the assertion that the price for Lytlit was too much by ten blankets and a gun. End of The Marriage of Lytlit. Recording by Zachary Brewstergeis, Greenbelt, Maryland, July 2007. I drove on then to Mr. Moss's mansion in Curseta Street and was duly inducted into that dismal place of hospitality. Morning was breaking over the cheerful housetops of Chanceery Lane as the rattling cab woke up the echoes there. A little pink-eyed boy with a head as ruddy as the rising morn let the party into the house, and Rodin was welcomed to the grand floor apartments by Mr. Moss, his travelling companion and host, who cheerfully asked him if he would like a glass of something warm after his drive. The Colonel was not so depressed as some mortals would be who, quitting a palace and the black-end's ooksore, find themselves barred into a sponging-house. For if the truth must be told, he had been a lodger at Mr. Moss's establishment once or twice before. We have not thought it necessary in the previous course of this narrative to mention these trivial little domestic incidents, but the reader may be assured that they can't unfrequently occur in the life of a man who lives on nothing a year. Pony's first visit to Mr. Moss, a Colonel, Ben a Bachelor, had been liberated by the generosity of his aunt. On the second mishap, little Becky, with the greatest spirit and kindness, had borrowed a sum of money from Lord Southdown, and had coaxed her husband's creditor, who was her shawl, velvet gown, lace-pocket handkerchief, trinket, and Jimcrack purveyor, indeed, to take a portion of the sum claimed, and Rodin's promissory note for the remainder. So on both these occasions the capture and release had been conducted with the utmost gallantry on all sides, and Moss and the Colonel were therefore on the very best of terms. You'll find your old bed, Colonel, and everything comfortable, that gentleman said, as I may honestly say, you may be pretty sure it's kept aired and by the best of company, too. It was slept in the night forelust by the honourable Captain Femish of the 50th Dragoons, whose ma took him out after a fortnight just to punish him, she said. But, Lord Blessure, I promise you, he punished my champagne, and had a party here every night. Regular tip-top swells done from the clubs and the West End. Captain Ragh, the honourable Duceus, who lives in the temple, and some fellows as knows a good glass of wine, I warrant you. I've got a doctor of divinity upstairs, five gents in the coffee-room, and Mrs. Moss as a tably deity at our past five, and a little cards or music afterwards, when we shall be most happy to see you. I'll ring when I want anything, said Rodin, and went quietly to his bedroom. He was an old soldier, we have said, and not to be disturbed by any little shocks of fate. A weaker man would have sent off a letter to his wife on the instant of his capture. But what is the use of disturbing her night's rest, thought Rodin? She won't know whether I'm in my room or not. It will be time enough to write to her when she has had her sleep out, and I have had mine. It's only a hundred and seventy, and the Duce is in it if we can't raise that. And so, thinking about little Rodin, whom he would not have known that he was in such a queer place, the colonel turned into the bed, lately occupied by Captain Famish, and fell asleep. It was ten o'clock when he woke up, and the ruddy-headed youth brought him with conscious pride a fine silver dressing-case wherewith he might perform the operation of shaving. Indeed, Mr. Moss's house, though somewhat dirty, was splendid throughout. There were dirty trays, and wine-coolers on Permanos on the sideboard, huge dirty-guilt cornices with dingy yellow satin hangings to the barred windows which looked into Cursita Street, vast and dirty-guilt picture frames surrounding pieces, sporting and sacred, all of which works were by the greatest masters, and fetched the greatest prices, too, in the bill transactions, in the course of which they were sold and bought over and over again. The colonel's breakfast was served to him in the same dingy and gorgeous plated wear. Miss Moss, a dark-eyed maid in curl-papers, appeared with the teapot, and, smiling, asked the colonel how he had slept, and she brought him in the morning post with the names of all the great people who had figured at Lord Stain's Entertainment the night before. It contained a brilliant account of the festivities, and of the beautiful and accomplished Mrs. Rodden Crawley's admirable personifications. After a lively chat with this lady, who sat on the edge of the breakfast table in an easy attitude, displaying the drapery of her stocking, and an ex-white satin shoe which was down at heel, Colonel Crawley called for pens and ink and paper, and being asked how many sheets chose one which was brought to him between Miss Moss's own finger and thumb. Many a sheet had that dark-eyed damsel brought in. Many a poor fellow had scrawled and blotted hurried lines of entreaty, and paced up and down that awful room until his messenger brought back the reply. Poor men always use messengers instead of the post. Who has not had their letters with the wafer's wet and the announcement that a person is waiting in the hall? Now on the score of his application Rodden had not many misgivings. Dear Becky, Rodden wrote, I hope you slept well. Don't be frightened if I don't bring you in your coffee. Last night, as I was coming home smoking, I met with an accident. I was nabbed by Moss of Curseta Street, from whose gilt and splendid parlour I write this, the same that had me this time two years. Miss Moss brought in my tea, she has grown very fat, and as usual had her stockings down at heel. It's Nathan's business, one hundred and fifty, with costs one hundred and seventy. Please send me my desk and some cloths. I'm in pumps and a white tie. Something like Miss M's stockings. I've seventy in it, and as soon as you get this, drive to Nathan's. Offer him seventy-five down, and ask him to renew. Say I'll take wine. We may as well have some dinner sherry, but not pictures. They're too dear. If he won't stand it, take my ticker and such of your things as you can spare, and send them to balls. We must, of course, have the sum to-night. It won't do to let it stand over as tomorrow's Sunday. The beds here are not very clean, and there may be other things out against me. I'm glad it ain't Rodin's Saturday for coming home. God bless you. Yours in haste. R. C. P. S. Make haste and come. This letter, sealed with a wafer, was dispatched by one of the messengers, who were always hanging about Mr. Moss's establishment, and Rodin, having seen him depart, went out in the courtyard and smoked his cigar with a tolerably easy mind, in spite of the bars overhead, for Mr. Moss's courtyard is railed in like a cage, lest the gentleman who are boarding with him should take a fancy to escape from his hospitality. Three hours he calculated would be the utmost time required before Becky should arrive and open his prison doors. And he passed these pretty cheerfully in smoking, in reading the paper, and in the coffee-room, with an acquaintance, Captain Walker, who happened to be there, and with whom he cut for sixpences, for some hours with pretty equal luck on either side. But the day passed away, and no messenger returned, no Becky. Mr. Moss's tably deotie was served at the appointed hour of half-past five, when such of the gentleman lodging in the house as could afford to pay for the banquet came and partook of it in the splendid front parlor before described, and with which Mr. Crawley's temporary lodging communicated, when Miss M., Miss Hem, as her papa called her, appeared without the co-papers of the morning, and Mrs. Hem did the honors of a prime-boiled leg of mutton and turnips, of which the Colonel yet with a very faint appetite. Asked whether he would stand a bottle of champagne for the company, he consented, and the ladies drank to his elf, and Mr. Moss, in the most polite manner, looked towards him. In the midst of this repast, however, the doorbell was heard. Young Moss, of the ruddy hair, rose up with the keys and answered the summons, and coming back, told the Colonel that the messenger had returned with a bag, a desk, and a letter, which he gave him. No ceremony, Colonel, I begged, said Mrs. Moss with a wave of her hand, and he opened the letter rather tremulously. It was a beautiful letter, highly scented, on a pink paper, and with a light green seal. Mon pauvre cher petit, Mrs. Crawley wrote, I could not sleep one wink for thinking of what had become of my odious old monstre, and only got to rest in the morning after sending for Mr. Blench, for I was in a fever, who gave me a composing draft, and left orders with Finette, that I should be disturbed on no account, so that my poor old man's messenger, who had bien mauvaises mines, Finette says, and centoiles de junievres, remained in the hall for some hours, waiting my bell. You may fancy my state when I read your poor dear old ill-spelled letter. Ill-as-I was, I instantly called for the carriage, and as soon as I was dressed, though I couldn't drink a drop of chocolate, I assure you I couldn't without my monstre to bring it to me. I drove ventretaire to Nathan's. I saw him, I wept, I cried, I fell at his odious knees. Nothing would mollify the horrid man. He would have all the money, he said, or keep my poor monstre in prison. I drove home with the intention of paying that triste visite chez mon oncle. When every trinket I have should be at your disposal, though they would not fetch a hundred pounds, for some you know are with ce cher oncle already, and found Millor there with the Bulgarian old sheep-faced monster, who had come to compliment me upon last night's performances. Paddington came in too, drawing and lisping and twiddling his hair. So the champignac and his chef, everybody with foison of compliments and pretty speeches, plaguing poor me who longed to be rid of them, and was thinking every moment of the time of mon pauvre prisonier. When they were gone I went down on my knees to Millor, told him we were going to pawn everything, and begged and prayed him to give me two hundred pounds. He pished and shored in a fury, told me not to be such a fool as to pawn, and said he would see whether he could lend me the money. At last he went away, promising that he would send it me in the morning, when I will bring it to my poor old monster with a kiss from his affectionate Becky. I am writing in bed, oh I have such a headache such a heartache. When Rodin read over this letter he turned so red and looked so savage that the company at the table dote easily perceived that bad news had reached him. All his suspicions which he had been trying to banish returned upon him. She could not even go out and sell her trinkets to free him. She could laugh and talk about compliments paid to her whilst he was in prison. Who had put him there? Wenham had walked with him. Was there? He could hardly bear to think of what he suspected. Leaving the room hurriedly he ran into his own, opened his desk, wrote two hurried lines which he directed to Sir Pitt or Lady Crawley, and bad the messenger carried them at once to Gorn Street, bidding him to take a cab and promising him a guinea if he was back in an hour. In the note he besought his dear brother and sister for the sake of God, for the sake of his dear child and his honour, to come to him and relieve him from this difficulty. He was in prison, he wanted a hundred pounds to set him free, he entreated them to come to him. He went back to the dining room after dispatching his messenger and called for more wine. He laughed and talked with a strange boisterousness as the people thought. Sometimes he laughed madly at his own fears and went on drinking for an hour, listening all the while for the carriage which was to bring his fate back. At the expiration of that time wheels were heard whirling up to the gate. The young janitor went out with his gate keys. It was a lady whom he let in at the bailiff's door. Colonel Crawley, she said, trembling very much. He, with a knowing look, locked the outer door upon her, then unlocked and opened the inner one, and calling out, Colonel, you're wanted! Led her into the back parlour which he occupied. Rodin came in from the dining parlour where all those people were carousing, into his back room. A flare of coarse light following him into the apartment where the lady stood, still very nervous. It is I, Rodin, she said, in a timid voice which she strove to render cheerful. It is Jane. Rodin was quite overcome by that kind voice and presence. He ran up to her, quartering his arms, gasped out some inarticulate words of thanks, and fairly sobbed on her shoulder. She did not know the cause of his emotion. The bills of Mr. Moss were quickly settled. Perhaps to the disappointment of that gentleman who had counted on having the Colonel as his guest over Sunday, at least, and Jane, with beaming smiles and happiness in her eyes, carried away Rodin from the bailiff's house, and they went homewards in the cab in which she had hastened to his release. Pit was gone to a parliamentary dinner, she said, when Rodin's note came, and so, dear Rodin, I came myself. And she put her kind hand in his. Perhaps it was well for Rodin Crawley that Pit was away at that dinner. Rodin thanked his sister a hundred times, and with an ardour of gratitude which touched and almost alarmed that soft-hearted woman. Oh! said he in his rude, artless way. You don't know how I'm changed, since I've known you and little Roddy. I'd like to change, somehow. You see, I want—I want—I want to be. He did not finish the sentence, but she could interpret it. And that night, after he left her, and as she sat by her own little boy's bed, she prayed humbly for that poor, way-worn sinner. Rodin left her and walked home rapidly. It was nine o'clock at night. He ran across the streets and the great squares of Vanity Fair, and that length came up breathless opposite his own house. He started back and fell against the railings, trembling as he looked up. The drawing-room windows were blazing with light. She had said that she was in bed and ill. He stood there for some time the light from the rooms on his pale face. He took out his dorky and let himself into the house. He could hear laughter in the upper rooms. He was in the ball-dress in which he had been captured the night before. He went silently up the stairs, leaning against the banisters at the stair-head. Nobody was stirring in the house besides all the servants had been sent away. Rodin heard laughter within, laughter and singing. Becky was singing a snatch of the song of the night before. A hoarse voice shouted, Brother! Brother! It was Lord Stain's. Rodin opened the door and went in. A little table with a dinner was laid out, and wine and plate. Stain was hanging over the sofa on which Becky sat. The wretched woman was in a brilliant full toilette. Her arms and all her fingers sparkling with bracelets and rings, and the brilliance on her breast which Stain had given her. He had her hand in his, and was bowing over it to kiss it, when Becky started up with a faint scream as she caught sight of Rodin's white face. At the next instant she tried a smile, a horrid smile as if to welcome her husband, and Stain rose up grinding his teeth, pale and with fury in his looks. He too attempted a laugh and came forward holding out his hand. What! Come back! How'd you do, Crawley? He said, the nerves of his mouth twitching as he tried to grin at the intruder. There was that in Rodin's face which caused Becky to fling herself before him. I am innocent, Rodin, she said, before God I am innocent. She clung hold of his coat, of his hands. Her own were all covered with serpents and rings and baubles. I am innocent. Say I am innocent, she said to Lord Stain. He thought a trap had been laid for him, and was as furious with the wife as with the husband. You innocent! Damn you! he screamed out. You innocent! Why, every trinket you have on your body is paid for by me. I've given you thousands of pounds which this fellow has spent, and for which he is soldier. Innocent, by God, you're as innocent as your mother, the ballet girl, and your husband, the bully. Don't think to frighten me as you've done others. Make way, sir, and let me pass. And Lord Stain seized up his hat, and with flame in his eyes, and looking his enemy fiercely in the face marched upon him, never for a moment doubting that the other would give way. But Rodin Crawley, springing out, seized him by the neck-cloth, until Stain almost strangled, writhed, and bent under his arm. You lie, you dog! said Rodin, you lie, you coward and villain! And he struck the pier twice over the face with his open hand, and flung him, bleeding to the ground. It was all done before Rebecca could interpose. She stood there trembling before him. She admired her husband, strong, brave, and victorious. Come here, he said. She came up at once. Take off those things! She began trembling, pulling the jewels from her arms and the rings from her shaking fingers, and held them all in a heap, quivering, and looking up at him. Throw them down, he said, and she dropped them. He tore the diamond ornament out of her breast and flung it at Lord Stain. It cut him on his bald forehead. Stain wore the scar to his dying day. Come upstairs, Rodin said to his wife. Don't kill me, Rodin! she said. He laughed savagely. I want to see if that man lies about the money as he has about me. Has he given you any? No, said Rebecca. That is, give me your keys. Rodin answered, and they went out together. Rebecca gave him all the keys but one, and she was in hopes that he would not have remarked the absence of that. It belonged to the little desk which Amelia had given her in early days, and which she kept in a secret place. But Rodin flung open boxes and wardrobes, throwing the multifarious trumpery of their contents here and there, and at last he found the desk. The woman was forced to open it. It contained papers, love letters many years old, all sorts of small trinkets and women's memoranda. And it contained a pocketbook with banknotes. Some of these were dated ten years back too, and one was quite a fresh one. A note for a thousand pounds which Lord Stain had given her. Did he give you this? Rodin said. Yes, Rebecca answered. I'll send it to him today, Rodin said, for day had dawned again, and many hours had passed in this search. And I will pay Briggs, who was kind to the boy, and some of the debts. You will let me know where I shall send the rest to you. You might have spared me a hundred pounds, Becky, out of all this. I have always shared with you. I am innocent, said Becky. And he left her, without another word. What were her thoughts when he left her? She remained for hours after he was gone, the sunshine pouring into the room, and Rebecca sitting alone on the bed's edge. The drawers were all opened, and their contents scattered about, dresses and feathers, scarfs and trinkets, a heap of tumbled vanities lying in a wreck. Her hair was falling over her shoulders, her gun was torn, where Rodin had wrenched the brilliance out of it. She heard him go downstairs a few minutes after he left her, and the door slamming and closing on him. She knew he would never come back. He was gone forever. Would he kill himself? She thought, not until after he had met Lord Stain. She thought of her long past life and all the dismal incidents of it. Ah, her dreary it seemed, her miserable, lonely, profitless. Should she take Lordin'em and end it, too, have done with all hopes, schemes, debts and triumphs? The French maid found her in this position, sitting in the midst of her miserable ruins with clasped hands and dry eyes. The woman was her accomplice, and in Stain's pay. Monde madame, what has happened? She asked. What had happened? Was she guilty or not? She said not. But who could tell? What was truth which came from those lips? Or if that corrupt heart was, in this case, pure? All her lies and her schemes, all her selfishness and her wiles, all her wit and genius had come to this bankruptcy. The woman closed the curtains, and with some entreaty and show of kindness persuaded her mistress to lie down on the bed. Then she went below and gathered up the trinkets which had been lying on the floor, since Rebecca dropped them there at her husband's orders, and Lord Stain went away. End of chapter 53