Last Tales. Isak Dinesen
stage of life, draped his grandeur and loneliness round him in heavy folds of black marble, and lay down to rest in the mausoleum, at Dionysio’s side. Even that fair lady the Princess Benedetta, like to a child at eventide, yawned and let go of her dolls. Her son, by then a bishop, had the happiness of administering extreme unction to her.
* * * *
“I have seen your mother,” said the lady in the armchair. “She was a friend of Mama’s and, when I was a very little girl, from time to time came to the house—in the most lovely frocks and bonnets! I adored her because she could smile and weep at the same time. She made me a present of a bowl of goldfish.”
“A week ago,” said the Cardinal, “in going through the drawers of an old cabinet, I came upon a small flask of the perfume which she had made for her in Bologna—the recipe will have been lost by now. The flask was empty, but still gave out a faint fragrance. A multitude of things were in it, all in one. Smiles, as you say, and tears, dauntlessness and fear, unconquerable hope and the certainty of failure—in short: what will, I suppose, be found in the belongings of most deceased ladies.”
“And so her son,” said the lady after a pause, “early trained in the art of equipoise, was left to promenade in the high places of this world, in one single magnificently harmonious form, two incompatible personalities.”
“Oh, no, Madame,” said the Cardinal, “use not that word. Speak not of incompatibility. Verily, I tell you: you may meet one of the two, speak to him and listen to him, confide in him and be comforted by him, and at the hour of parting be unable to decide with which of them you have spent the day.
“For who,” he continued very slowly, “who, Madame, is the man who is placed, in his life on earth, with his back to God and his face to man, because he is God’s mouthpiece, and through him the voice of God is given forth? Who is the man who has no existence of his own—because the existence of each human being is his—and who has neither home nor friends nor wife—because his hearth is the hearth of and he himself is the friend and lover of all human beings?”
“Alas!” whispered the lady.
“Pity him not, this man,” said the Cardinal. “Doomed he will be, it is true, and forever lonely, and wherever he goes his commission will be that of breaking hearts, because the sacrifice of God is a broken and contrite heart. Yet the Lord indemnifies his mouthpiece. If he is without potency, he has been given a small bit of omnipotence. Calmly, like a child in his father’s house binding and loosening his favorite dogs, he will bind the influence of Pleiades and loose the bands of Orion. Like a child in his father’s house ordering about his servants, he will send lightnings, that they may go and say to him: ‘Here we are.’ Just as the gate of the citadel is opened to the vice-regent, the gates of death have been opened to him. And as the heir apparent will have been entrusted with the regalia of the King, he knows where light dwells, and as to darkness, where is the place thereof.”
“Alas!” the lady again whispered.
The Cardinal smiled a little.
“Oh, do not sigh, dear and kind lady,” he said. “The servant was neither forced nor lured into service. Before taking him on, his Master spoke straightly and fairly to him. ‘You are aware,’ he said, ‘that I am almighty. And you have before you the world which I have created. Now give me your opinion on it. Do you take it that I have meant to create a peaceful world?’ ‘No, my Lord,’ the candidate replied. ‘Or that I have,’ the Lord asked, ‘meant to create a pretty and neat world?’ ‘No, indeed,’ answered the youth. ‘Or a world easy to live in?’ asked the Lord. ‘O good Lord, no!’ said the candidate. ‘Or do you,’ the Lord asked for the last time, ‘hold and believe that I have resolved to create a sublime world, with all things necessary to the purpose in it, and none left out?’ ‘I do,’ said the young man. ‘Then,’ said the Master, ‘then, my servant and mouthpiece, take the oath!’
“But if indeed,” the Cardinal went on after a moment, “your kind heart yearns to melt in compassion, I may tell you, at the same time, that to this chosen officeholder of the Lord—so highly favored in many things—certain spiritual benefits, granted to other human beings, are indeed withheld.”
“Of what benefits are you speaking?” she asked in a low voice.
“I am speaking,” he answered, “of the benefit of remorse. To the man of whom we speak it is forbidden. The tears of repentance, in which the souls of nations are blissfully cleansed, are not for him. Quod fecit, fecit!”
He was silent for a second, then added thoughtfully: “In this way, because of his steadfast renunciation of repentance, and even though he be rejected as a judge and as a human being, Pontius Pilate took immortal rank amongst these elect at the moment when he proclaimed: ‘Quod scripsi, scripsi.’
“For the man of whom I speak,” he once more added, after a longer pause, “within the play and strife of this world, is the bow of the Lord.”
“. . . the arrow of which,” the lady exclaimed, “each time strikes the heart!”
“An ingenious jeu-de-mots, Madame,” said he and laughed, “but I myself used the word in a different sense and had in mind that frail implement, mute in itself, which in the hand of the master will bring out all music that stringed instruments contain, and be at the same time medium and creator.
“Then answer me now, Madame,” he concluded, “who is this man?”
“It is the artist,” she answered slowly.
“You are right,” he said. “It is the artist. And who more?”
“The priest,” said the lady.
“Yes,” said the Cardinal.
She rose from her chair, dropping her lace mantilla over the back and arms of it, walked up to the window and looked out, first down into the street, then up into the sky. She came back, but remained standing, as in the beginning of the conversation.
“Your Eminence,” she said, “in answer to a question, has been telling me a story, in which my friend and teacher is the hero. I see the hero of the story very clearly, as if luminous even, and on a higher plane. But my teacher and adviser—and my friend—is farther away than before. He no more looks to me quite human, and alas, I am not sure that I am not afraid of him.”
The Cardinal lifted an ivory paper-knife from the table, turned it between his fingers and put it down.
“Madame,” he said, “I have been telling you a story. Stories have been told as long as speech has existed, and sans stories the human race would have perished, as it would have perished sans water. You will see the characters of the true story clearly, as if luminous and on a higher plane, and at the same time they may look not quite human, and you may well be a little afraid of them. That is all in the order of things. But I see, Madame,” he went on, “I see, today, a new art of narration, a novel literature and category of belles-lettres, dawning upon the world. It is, indeed, already with us, and it has gained great favor amongst the readers of our time. And this new art and literature—for the sake of the individual characters in the story, and in order to keep close to them and not be afraid—will be ready to sacrifice the story itself.
“The individuals of the new books and novels—one by one—are so close to the reader that he will feel a bodily warmth flowing from them, and that he will take them to his bosom and make them, in all situations of his life, his companions, friends and advisers. And while this interchange of sympathy goes on, the story itself loses ground and weight and in the end evaporates, like the bouquet of a noble wine, the bottle of which has been left uncorked.”
“Oh, Your Eminence,” said the lady, “do not speak ill of the new fascinating art of narration, to which I am myself a devotee. Those live and sympathetic persons of the modern novels at times have meant more to me than my acquaintances of flesh and blood. They have indeed seemed to embrace me, and when, reading by candlelight, I have wetted my pillow with the tears of Ellenore, this sister of mine—frail and faultful as myself—seems to have