The Dedalus Book of Decadence: (Moral Ruins) (25 page)

“Ah!”
exclaimed Earl Lavender, a look of pain crossing his face.
“Now, indeed, you put me to the test.
But although at this moment you were to become old and shrivelled, weak and rheumatic, I should still maintain that you are the fittest of women, confident that the first kiss of love would restore you to youth and grace like the bewitched lady in the ballad.
Were you to ransack the harems of the East, the palaces of Russia, the homes of the English nobility, and place before me the choice beauties of the world, I should still select you, for I can trust Evolution and read the signs provided.
The moment I saw you sitting veiled in the Café Benvenuto, I said to Lord Brumm, “Behold the fittest among women!”
And you, dear lady, whipered within yourself, I am certain, “Behold the man of men!”
You see with what ease I pass this second ordeal.
The third has no terrors for me.
You accuse me coldly of being mad.
I am as astonished that you make the accusation as I would have been had the twins not made it.
I am not mad, and I know, although you act well, you are only pretending to think me insane.
Some sterner ordeal, lady!”

Again the lady looked long at him through her
eyelashes before replying.

“I shall devise an ordeal,” she said suddenly, as if ending a debate in her own mind.
“But tell me in the meantime what you think of the new stimulant.”

“The new stimulant?”

“Yes; whipping.
Examine yourself.
Has the intoxication worn off yet?”

“No,” answered Earl Lavender; “the exalted mood continues.
Was it the whipping?
– Yes, I believe it was the whipping that roused all my senses.”

“Not all your senses,” rejoined the lady; “it sets the soul more broad awake than wine.
Wine rouses the lower nature also, and the soul, only half-enlightened, continues still surrounded by the fleshly dream, which is the body.
The scourge frees the soul and quells the body.
You must have been drunk with wine when you came here, or you would not have talked to me of love.”

“How is this?”
began Earl Lavender, remembering some old passages in his reading, wherein whipping is said to rouse the animal passions; but the lady interrupted him.

“I anticipate your objection,” she said.
“Many novices make it, coming here for the first time full-fed and wine-flushed.
If the body is already over-stimulated with food and drink, the effect of a moderate whipping is to intensify the existing excitment.
Had you drunk much to-night?”

“Not very much,” said Earl Lavender.
“A little whisky, a little beer, and a fair quantity of champagne.”

“Ah!”
exclaimed the lady sitting up, “And your companion.
Did he drink as much?”

“Yes, but that is not much.
We had no port nor liqueurs.”

“Let us find your friend,” said the lady.

They returned to the Dancing Hall and searched
the eddying throng that now seemed to cover its vast floor; but Lord Brumm was not there.
Before withdrawing they turned round on the threshold of the Whipping Room and watched the dancers.
Their robes, arms, faces, hair, and twinkling feet, and the floor and the pillars of the hall were all embroidered and enamelled with rich hues and set with many-coloured jewels from the stained and warmly-lit windows.
The slow, searching music of strings and wood-pipes seemed always about to open up some new secret of joy, but the cymbals and drums and triangles were unable to reveal it.

“Why have they no trumpets?”
whipered Earl Lavender.
“The music aches to burst bounds and soar.”

“This music and this dance,” replied the lady, “go on in this room endlessly.
In the underground world we know neither night nor day.
New-comers take the places continually of the players and the dancers who withdraw.
The music itself is unresolved.
Listen attentively, and it seems a softly-wailing question which haunts and troubles forever all who hear it.
An answer, an illusive answer comes only in dancing to it.
To play it is exquisite pain.
See how often the players are changed.
Watch their sad faces.”

Earl Lavender looked and sighed.

“And what may this mean?”
he said.
“This must be some great allegory.”

“Seek for no meaning in it; it has none.
What meaning is there in pain and pleasure?
They are twins; that is all we know.
Seek no meaning in anything you see here.
Images, ideas, flashes of purpose will peer out in all our ways and deeds, but there is no intention here below.
Is there any intention anywhere?”

“Intention,” cried Earl Lavender aloud, startling the dancers near him.
“Intention is another name for Evolution; the great purpose that is in the universe.
Ho!
all ye sad-souled players,” he called out, ascending the steps of the minstrels’ gallery, “and you self-deceived dancers!
Is it purpose or is it meaning you cannot find?
Behold in me the purpose of the ages, Earl Lavender, the fittest of men.”

He was not permitted to say more.
Five of the dancers, joined by the Lady of the Veil, seized him and led him along a passage he had not yet traversed to a lofty room which bore some resemblance to a court of justice.
On a platform sat three reverend-looking men; before them a table covered with books and scrolls.
He who occupied the middle seat was clad in a white robe; his co-mates, in red and blue respectively.
Opposite the platform, and occupying more than half of the room, was a gallery which speedily filled on the entrance of Earl Lavender and those who accompanied him.

“Judgment, oh, sages!”
said the Lady of the Veil.

“And again judgment, oh, sages!
cried another voice.

Looking behind him, Earl Lavender beheld Lord Brumm, also conducted by six denizens of the Underworld, including the roguish damsel who had whipped him.
Earl Lavender’s henchman presented a very woebegone appearance.
His robe was torn from his shoulders, and his hair tumbled.
He was gagged, and his hands tied behind his back; tears stood in his eyes.

“Why, what have you done, my good Brumm?”
asked Earl Lavender.

“Silence,” said the white-robed sage in a stern voice.

Earl Lavender bowed in submission to the sage’s decision, and he and Lord Brumm were placed at the bar.

In reply to a sign from the white-robed sage, the Lady of the Veil, making a profound obeisance, addressed the court.

“Oh, sages,” she said, “of what the second misdemeanant is accused I cannot tell, but in charging the first, I must speak to the presence of both in this city.
I saw these men in the Café Benvenuto, where I tasted a little macaroni after a railway journey of six hours.
He, against whom I bear witness, seemed to me worthy of admission to the Underworld, and in accordance with our established custom, I brought him along with me; his comrade was apparently undetachable.
Just now, as we passed through the Hall of Dancing, he ascended the steps of the gallery and cried aloud – I remember his exact words, – “Intention is another name for Evolution; the great purpose that is in the universe.
Ho!
all ye sad-souled players, and you self-deceived dancers!
Is it purpose, is it meaning you cannot find?
Behold in me the purpose of the ages, Earl Lavender, the fittest of men.”
Before he could proceed further, we seized him and brought him hither.”

“Has she spoken truly in all points so far as you know?”
asked the white-robed sage of those who had brought Earl Lavender before the judgment-seat.
The dancers acquiesced silently in the lady’s deposition.

When the sages had consulted together in whispers, their spokesman announced that they intended to proceed with the second case before sentencing Earl Lavender.

“Oh, sages,” at once began the roguish damsel, making her obeisance, “you have heard already how this misdemeanant obtained entrance to the Underworld.
Judging from his appearance and disinclination to be whipped, I thought him more fitted for the Hall of Fancy than for the Hall of Dancing.
There he behaved well, and appeared to enjoy everything that was said.
His conduct, however, became foolish during the narration of a love story.
He cast what are called sheep’s eyes at me, and furtively kissed my hand.
I promptly revealed his crime,
and we brought him hither.
When we seized him he struggled and bellowed, afraid of another whipping, whereupon we gagged and bound him.

“Has she spoken truly in all points so far as you know?”
asked the white-robed sage of the roguish girl’s companions.
They bowed an affirmative.

After a second whispered consultation, the white-robed sage announced the decision of the court, which was the same in both cases, viz., – that Earl Lavender and Lord Brumm should be taken at once to the dormitory, put to bed, and in the morning, expelled from the underground city.

“Well, what did I tell you?”
said Earl Lavender, when he and Lord Brumm, hurried away before either could attempt a reply, had been locked into a spacious double-bedded apartment, one of a suite which formed the men’s dormitory.
“Here are the best beds in London, and changes of linen hanging ready aired.”

Lord Brumm only groaned in reply.

**********

THE TRANSLATOR AND THE CHILDREN

by James Elroy Flecker

While I translated Baudelaire,

Children were playing out in the air.

Turning to watch, I saw the light

That made their clothes and faces bright.

I heard the tune they meant to sing

As they kept dancing in a ring;

But I could not forget my book,

And thought of men whose faces shook

When babies passed them with a look.

They are as terrible as death,

Those children in the road beneath.

Their witless chatter is more dread

Than voices in a madman’s head:

Their dance more awful and inspired,

Because their feet are never tired,

Then silent revel with soft sound

Of pipes, on consecrated ground,

When all the ghosts go round and round.

**********

POPE JACYNTH

by Vernon Lee

It was Pope Jacynth who built anew the basilica over the bodies of the holy martyrs, Paul and John, brothers; and who wainscoted the choir, and laid down the flooring, and set up the columns of the nave, a row on either side, all of precious marble.
And it was of his death and the marvellous thing which was seen afterward, showing indeed the justice of God and His infinite mercy, that the following tale is told.

This Jacynth, whose name in the world and in the cloister was Odo, was known all through Italy, and through the Marquisate of Tuscany and the County of Benevento, and the Kingdom of Sicily and such dominions as belonged to the Grecian Emperors, for his great and unparalleled humility and his exceeding ardent and exclusive love of God.
And in these lay his ruin.
For, even as is written in the book of the Prophet Job, which it were sin for any layman to read, and damnation for any clerk to translate, that the Lord allowed Satan to try his faithful servant with many plagues and doubts and evil incitements, so it pleased Him who is the Mirror of all Truth, to make a wager with Satan concerning the soul of this man Odo or otherwise Jacynth.
And this when he was still in his mother’s womb.
For the Lord said to Satan: “I grant leave that thou tempt any man whatsoever at My choice among such as shall be born into the world before the sun, which turns for ever round earth, shall have gone back to the spot where it now is.”

And Satan caused the man Odo, afterwards Jacynth, to be born to the greatest dignity in his land,
even to be firstborn of Averard, Marquis of Tusculum.
But Odo cared not for the greatness of his birth, and the wealth of his father’s house.
And, being only fourteen years of age, he fled from his parents and went on the ship of a certain mariner, who brought even wine and tanned hides and fair white stone for building from Greece, Istria, and Salernum, to the port of Rome, which is below Mount Aventine, and took back the fleece of sheep and thin cheese, and slabs of porphyry and serpentine from the temples of the heathen.
But Satan caused Odo to grow most marvellously in beauty and shapeliness of body and loveliness of countenance and sweetness of voice, so that pirates captured him and sold him, being eighteen years of age, to Alecto, Queen of the Amazons, which inhabit the isles beyond the pillars of Hercules, and are the most wondrously fair women.
And Queen Alecto became enamoured of the beauty of Odo, otherwise Jacynth, and offered him her love and every delight.
But Jacynth scourged himself with ropes of thistles, and ate only of the fruit of the prickly pear and drank only of water from the marshes; and he shaved his head and stained his face with certain herbs, and consorted with lepers, and spurned the queen and her delicates.

Then Satan caused Odo, otherwise Jacynth, to increase most mightily in strength and courage, so that he could wrestle with the lions in the desert and cleave a strong man in twain with one blow.
So that the people, seeing his might and wondering greatly thereat, made him their captain, captain even over hundreds, that he might avenge them on certain wicked kings, their neighbours, and clear the country of robbers and wild beasts.
But when he had put the kings in chains and thrown the robbers into dungeons, and exterminated the wild beasts, Jacynth, who was then called Odo, put up his
sword and allowed not that any man should be killed or sold into captivity, and bade them desist from slaying the hares and deer and wild asses, saying that these also were creatures of God and worthy of kindness.
And he was at this time thirty-two years of age.

Then Satan caused Odo, later to be called Jacynth, to exceed all other men in subtlety of mind.
And he learned all languages, both living and dead, as those of the Grecians, Romans, Ethiopians, and even of Armorica and Taprobane; and studied all books on philosophy, divine and natural astrology, medicine, music, alchemy, the properties of herbs and numbers, magic and poetry and rhetoric, whatsoever books have been written since the building of Babel, when all languages were dispersed.
And he went from place to place teaching and disputing; and whithersoever he went, and mostly in Paris and at Salernum, did he challenge all doctors, rabbis, and men of learning to discuss with him on any subject of their choice, and always did he demonstrate before all men that their arguments were wrong and their science vain.
But when Odo, otherwise Jacynth, had done this, he burned his books, save the gospels, and retired to a monastery of his founding.
And he was at this time forty and five years of age.

Then Satan caused Odo, later called Jacynth, to become wondrously knowing of the heart of man and his wickedness, and wondrous full of unction and fervour, and all men came to his monastery, which was called Clear Streams, and listened to his preaching and reformed their ways, and many put themselves under his rule, and of these there were such multitudes that the monastery would not hold them, and others had to be built in all parts of the world.
And kings and emperors confessed to him their sins, and stood at his bidding clothed in sackcloth at the church door, singing the penitential psalms
and holding lighted tapers.

But Odo, later called Jacynth, instituted abbots and heads of the order, and for himself retired into the wild places of the mountains and built himself there a hermitage of stone quarried with his own hands, and planted fruit-trees and pot-herbs, and lived there alone, praying and meditating, high up near the well-head of the river which runs down through the woods to the Tyrrhene Sea.
And he was sixty years of age.

And Satan went up before the Lord and said, “Verily I can tempt him yet.
Grant me, I pray Thee, but the use of Thine own tools, and I will bring Thee the soul of this man bound in mortal sin.”
And the Lord answered, “I grant it.”
And at the prayer of Satan, God caused him to be acclaimed as pope.
And the cardinals and prelates and princes of the earth journeyed to the hermitage, and sought for the man Odo, who henceforth was to be called Jacynth.
And they found him in his orchard pruning a fig-tree, and by his side were the herbs for his supper in a clean platter, and the gospel lay on his lectern, and there stood by it a tame goat, ready to be milked; and on a hook hung his red hat, and a crucifix was by the lectern.
And in the wall of his garden, which was small, with a well in the midst and set round with wooden pillars, was a window, with a pillar carved of stone in the middle, and through the window one could see the oak woods below, and the olive-yards, and the river winding through the valley, and the Tyrrhene Sea, with ships sailing, in the distance.
Now when he saw the cardinals and prelates and princes of the earth, Odo, who was thenceforth called Jacynth, put down his pruning-hook; and when he heard their message he wept, and knelt before the crucifix, and wept again, and cried, “Woe’s me!
Terrible are the trials of Thy servants, O Lord, and great must be Thy mercy.”
But he went with them to be crowned Pope, because his
heart was full of humbleness and the love of God.
And Pope Jacynth, formerly Odo, was seventy-five years of age when they set him on his throne.

And the Lord called to him Satan, and was angered, and said, “What wilt thou do next, Accursed One?”
And Satan replied, “I will do no more, O Lord.
Suffer this man but to live the space of five years, and then watch we for our wager.”

And they took Pope Jacynth, once called Odo, and carried him to the palace, which is over against the Church of St.
Peter, and before which stands the pine cone of brass, made as a talisman by the Emperor Adrian.
And they arrayed him in fine linen from Egypt, and silk from Byzantium, as befits a Pope; and his cope was of beaten gold, even gold beaten to the thinness of a leaf, wrought all over with the history of our Lord and His Apostles, with a border of lambs and lilies, a lamb and a lily all the way turn about.
And his stole was likewise of gold, gold plates cunningly riveted, and it was set all round with precious stones, emeralds, and opals, and beryls and sardonyxes, and the stone called
Melitta
, all perfectly round and the size of a pigeon’s egg; and two goodly graven stones of the ancients, one showing a chariot-race and the other the effigy of the Emperor Galba, most cunningly cut in relief.
And his mitre also was of riveted gold, and inside it was fastened the lance-head of Longinus, which touched the flesh of our Lord; and on the outside it was bordered with pearls, and in its midst was a sapphire the size of a swan’s egg, worked marvellously into a cup, which was the cup that the Angel brought to our Lord.
And when they had arrayed Pope Jacynth in this apparel, they placed him in his chair, which was of cedar-wood covered with plates of gold, and they bore him, eight bearers, namely, three counts, three marquises, a duke and the Exarch of the
Pentapolis, on their shoulders; and the cushions of his chair were of silk.
And over him they bore a canopy embroidered most marvellously with the signs of the Zodiac by the Matrons of Amalfi.
And before him went two carrying fans of the feathers of the white peacock, and two bearing censers filled with burning ambergris, and six blowing on clarions of silver.
And in this manner was he enthroned above the place where rests the body of the Apostle, behind the ambones of onion stone, and the railing of alabaster open-work showing peacocks and vine leaves, and under the dome where our Lord sits in judgment on a ground of purple and seagreen and gold, and the holy lambs pasture on green enamel, each with a palm-tree by his side, and the great gold vine rises on a ground of turquoise blue.
And on either side of the throne was a column of precious marble taken from a temple of the heathen, even a column of red porphyry from the temple of Mars, and a column of alabaster cunningly fluted, from the temple of Apollo.
And the bells in the belfry, which is set with discs of serpentine and platters from Majorca, began to ring, and the trumpets to sound, and all the people sang the psalm
Magnificat
.
And the heart of Pope Jacynth, formerly called Odo, was filled with joy and pride, because in the midst of his glory he knew himself to be more humble than the lepers outside the city gate.
And the people prostrated themselves before Pope Jacynth, and prayed for his blessing.

And Pope Jacynth slept on the rushes in his chamber, and drank only water from the well and ate only salad, and beneath his robe he wore a shirt of camel’s hair, mightly rough to the body.
And he gloried in this humbleness.
And he took of the money of the jubilee year, which twenty priests raked with silver rakes where the pilgrims passed the bridge by the
Emperor Adrian’s tomb, and would have none of it himself, but distributed half to the poor and the widows and orphans, and with the other he caused stonemasons to quarry for marble among the temples of the heathen, and draw thence the columns having flutings and sculptured capitals to set up in the nave, and to saw into slabs the pillars of porphyry and serpentine and Egyptian marble, for wainscoting and flooring.
And in this fashion he did build the basilica by the Ostian gate.
And he dedicated it to St.
John and St.
Paul, slaves and servants of Flavia, the sister of the Emperor Domitian, meaning to show thereby that in the love of God the lowest are highest; for he gloried in his humbleness.
And they brought him blind men, and those with grievous sores, and lepers, to bless, that they might recover.
And Pope Jacynth blessed them, and washed their sores and embraced them; and Pope Jacynth gloried in his humility.

Now when Satan saw this, he laughed; and the sound of his laughter was as a rushing wind, that burns the shoots of the wheat (for it was spring), and nipped the blossom of the almond-tree and plum-tree, causing it to fall in great profusion, as every man could testify.
And Satan went before the Lord and said: “Behold, O Lord, I have won my wager.
For the man Jacynth, once Odo, has sinned against Thee, even the sin of vaingloriousness; so do Thou give him to me, body and soul.”
And the Lord answered: “Take thou the man Jacynth, formerly Odo, his body and his soul, and do therewith whatsoever thou please, for he has sinned the sin of vaingloriousness; but for Myself I reserve that which remaineth.”

So Satan departed.
And he took the body of Pope Jacynth, and touched it with invisible fingers; and lo, it did gradually turn into stone; and he took the soul of Pope Jacynth, and blew on it, and behold, it shrank slowly and hardened, and became a stone, even a diamond, which,
as all know, burns for ever.

Now the people and the pilgrims were so amazed at the humility of Pope Jacynth, that they clamoured to see him; and they attacked the gate of the palace over against the Church of St.
Peter, the gate which has a gable, and in it our Lord clad in white, on a ground of gold, with a purple halo round his head, all done in mosaic by the Grecians.
So the priests and the barons were afraid of the violence of the people and particularly of the pilgrims from the north, and they promised to bring Pope Jacynth for them to worship.
And they dressed him in his vestments of beaten and riveted gold, set with precious stones and graven stones, and placed him on his throne of cedar-wood, and the eight bearers, three counts, two marquises, two dukes, and the Exarch of the Pentapolis, raised him on their shoulders and bore him through the square, with the censer-bearers before and the trumpeters and the fans of white peacock.
And the people fell on their knees.
Only there stood up one, who afterwards vanished, and was the Apostle Peter, and he cried, “Behold, Pope Jacynth has turned into an idol, even an idol of the heathen.”
But when the people had dispersed, and the procession had entered the church, the throne-bearers knelt down, and the throne was lowered, and behold, Pope Jacynth was dead.