The Best Horrors by F. Marion Crawford. Francis Marion Crawford
everybody who can say with Voltaire: ' I have three or four kings whom I coddle — j'ai trois ou quatre rois que je mitonne.' But history presents us with the real king, in flesh and blood; his actions are harmonious, because they have actually been performed by the same man. Few writers of fiction nowadays have the combined imagination, accuracy and versatility necessary to invent and describe a series of actions, thoughts and words, so harmonious as to make the reader feel that one man could really have spoken, thought and acted as the author makes his hero act, speak and think. The writer then separates himself from romantism altogether and confines himself to describing things he has actually seen and of which he is positively sure. But he finds it hard to make his books interesting with such materials. Failing greatness, he sees that there is a short cut to popularity. If a writer cannot be sublime, he can at least be disgusting; and to excite disgust is, he thinks, better than to excite no notice at all."
"I think you are unjust to the realists," said Gwendoline. "I do not think that realistic books are always disgusting, by any means."
"No," answered Heine. "But they are more likely to be. With the genius of Goethe one may be realistic without being repulsive. But Goethe himself said that to call a thing bad which is bad doss no good, whereas to call a bad thing good does immeasurable harm. Many realists call bad things good."
"So do many romantists," objected Gwendoline. " And I do not see that we are any nearer to knowing what romance really is. Your beautiful woman with the starry eyes does not satisfy me. That is poetry, but it does not explain my feelings."
"I believe I can define romance, after listening to you all," said Chopin, who had not spoken for some time. "My own definition only applied to music, but it can be extended. In the first place romance consists in the association of certain ideas with certain people, either in history or in fiction. The people must belong to some race of beings of whom we know enough to understand their passions and to sympathise with them. The ideas must be connected with the higher passions of love, patriotism, devotion, noble hatred, profound melancholy, divine exaltation and the like. The lower passions in romance are invariably relegated to the traditional villain, who serves as a foil for the hero. Shorten all that and say that our romantic sense is excited by associating ideas of the higher passions, good and bad, with people whom we can understand, and in such a way as to make us feel with them."
"I do not think we shall get any nearer than that," said Augustus Chard. " It explains at once why we think that Alexander was a romantic character, whereas Julius Caesar was not. Alexander was always full of great passions, good or bad. Csesar was calm, impassive, superior to events. Alexander burnt a city to please a woman. Caesar found in a woman's love a pretext for conquering her kingdom and reducing the queen who loved him to the position of his vassal. Cleopatra was a romantic character, but she was unfortunate in her choice of men. Csesar was murdered, she murdered her husband, Antony killed himself for her and she concluded the tragedy by killing herself for Antony, after her son and Cassar's had also been put to death. There is material for a dozen romances in her life, but if she were a character of fiction we should say her story was absurdly impossible. As it is, her history is a romance of the most tremendous proportions."
"I think Caesar was romantic too," said Diana. " He had outgrown romance when he conquered the world. He must have been very different when he was young."
"Very different," said a placid voice from one of the tall windows.
A man stood outside in the moonlight, looking in. His tall and slender figure was wrapped in a dark mantle of some rich material; the folds reflected the moonbeams with a purple sheen, circling the straight neck and then falling to the ground behind the shoulder. On his brow a dark wreath of oak and laurel leaves sat like a royal crown above his high white forehead. The aquiline nose, broadly set on at the nostrils, but very clearly cut and delicate, gave to his face an expression of supreme, refined force, well borne out in the even and beautifully chiselled mouth and the prominent square chin. His eyes were very black, but without lustre, of that peculiar type in which it is impossible to distinguish the pupil from the surrounding iris.
"It is Caesar," said Augustus, under his breath, as he rose to greet the new-comer.
"Yes, I am Caesar," answered the calm voice of the dead conqueror. He came forward and stood in the midst of the party, so that the lamplight fell upon his grand face. " You spoke of me and I was near and heard you. You are not afraid to take a dead man's hand ? No — why should you be ? "
The hand he held out was long and nervous and white, looking as though the fingers possessed the elastic strength of steel.
"Are we in a dream ?" asked Diana in low tones, turning to Heine. The poet sighed.
"You are but a dream to us," he said, softly. " We are the reality — the sleepless reality of death."
"Yes we are very real," said Caesar, seating himself in a huge carved chair that might have served for an imperial throne, and looking slowly around upon the assembled party. "You were speaking of my life. You were saying that I was not a romantic character. Do not smile at my using the word. In nineteen centuries of wandering I have learned to speak of romantists and realists. I was not romantic. Could Homer himself have made an epic poem about my life ? I think not. Homer had traditions to help him, and Virgil had both Homer and the traditions. The purpose of my life was to overthrow tradition and to found a new era for the world. I was a modern. I was a source of realism. There was nothing mythical about me. Romance grew out of the decay of what I founded. I do not think that the romantic sense existed in men of my day, though the popular respect for the ancients was even then immense, and Rome was full of traditions. It is only by extending the term that anything can be called romantic which happened earlier than ten centuries after my death."
Too much awed to speak as yet by the strange presence, the living members of the party held their breath while Caesar was speaking, and the smooth inflexions of his calm voice filled the quiet air. A few moments of silence followed his speech and it seemed as though no one would answer him; but at last Chopin lifted his delicate face and spoke.
"Nineteen centuries!" he exclaimed. " Ah, Caesar, why could you not have lived on through all those years ? Poland would still have been free and the Poles would still have been a people."
"The world would have been free," rejoined the dead conqueror, sadly. " I believed in unity, not in partition. I meant to build, not to destroy. My heart sinks when I see the world divided into nations, of which I would have made one nation."
"Every individual man is himself a world,' " said Heine. "'A world that is born with him and dies with him, and under every gravestone lies the history of a world.' "
"That is true," answered Chopin, " and my world was Poland and is Poland still."
"Mine is the whole world of living beings," returned the poet.
"Yes," replied Chopin, with a fine smile. "I know it. But the world according to Saint-Simon would not resemble the world according to Julius Caesar."
"And yet," said Caesar, "I watched the development of Saint-Simon's doctrines with interest. They failed as all socialist movements have failed and always must fail, to the end of time, until they proceed upon a different basis."
"Why?" asked Lady Brenda, taking courage.
"The usual mistake. The followers of Saint Simon, or the stronger part of them, tried to abolish marriage and they tried to invent a religion. Religions are not easily invented which can be imposed upon any considerable body of mankind, and no considerable body of civilised mankind has ever shown itself disposed to dispense with the institution of matrimony. The desire to obtain wealth without labour, the negation of religion and the degradation of women have ruined all socialistic systems which have ever been tried, and have undermined many powerful nations. It is impossible to govern men except by defending the security of property, upholding the existing form of religion and exacting a rigorous respect for the institution of marriage."
"That is true," said Heine, thoughtfully. " The object of the Saint-Simonists was to create a common property, to be shared equally for ever, and to inculcate a form of religion which they had invented. They might have succeeded in that. But Enfantin had the unlucky idea that free