For the Blood Is the Life. Francis Marion Crawford
of it overcame me. Visions rose before my eyes of the things I had not yet accomplished, but of which the accomplishment was certain if I lived. It was such a disappointment — more that than anything else. Such a heart-rending despair at being cut down before my work was half finished, before the world was half civilised. People forget that I invented civilisation — I, the dead man who am speaking to you. But it is true. And in that moment I felt that I was young without having realised in practice the theory, which was to change the world. That handful of low assassins cost the world fifteen centuries of darkness, and I knew it even then. Had I lived, I would have kneaded the earth as a baker kneads dough, and the leaven I had put into it would not have rotted and fermented for lack of stirring. As I felt one wound after another, I felt that my murderers were not only killing Caesar, they were killing civilisation; every thrust was struck at the heart of the world, making deep wounds in the future of man kind and letting out the breath of life from the body of law. That was my worst suffering, worse even than the death of my ambition. I had done enough already to be remembered, and I knew it. I was satisfied for myself to die. But I had conceived great thoughts which had grown to be a new self apart from the old, vain, ambitious Caesar, having a separate and better life — and that they slew also. Augustus did much, but he could not do what I would and could have done."
"No," said Lionardo, thoughtfully, " you were the greatest man who ever lived."
"That is saying too much," answered Caesar in quiet tones. " I meant to be. That is all. My fortune deserted me too soon. The greatest men, after all, are poets. They are also the most justly judged, for what they leave is their own. They leave themselves to mankind in their own words. We statesmen and soldiers are at the mercy of historians. I meant to have written the history of my whole life in the form of annual reports such as I made upon my wars in Gaul."
"Could you not do it now ? " asked Lady Brenda. " We know so little of the history of your youth, and I am sure it must have been most interesting."
Caesar smiled. "If I were able to write at all," he said, " I would not choose my youth as a subject upon which to make a report. My youth was a trifle over-full of movement, besides being very ostentatious. My first object in life was to become popular, for I knew that popularity was the surest way to power. I led the popular party for eighteen years before I ever attempted to lead an army, and when I turned soldier I was already a finished statesman. That is the reason why I knew what to do so soon as I had got the whole power into my hands. I had conquered the most important part of my world by art before I found it necessary to subdue the remainder by force. I was beginning to amalgamate a new world out of my two conquests when I was murdered."
"Do the dead forgive ? " The words were spoken by Gwendoline in a low tone and as though no response could be expected to such a question. But there were those present who could answer it. Lionardo da Vinci turned his soft eyes upon the questioner.
"Yes," he said, "we do forgive, and very freely too."
"Yes — and no," said Caesar.
"Both ? " asked the artist. " How can we both forgive and not forgive, illustrious friend? There must be caprice in that — there must be an uncertain vacillation between two thoughts. You never vacillated, nor stood long choosing between two paths, nor, having chosen, looked back and regretted."
"The sum of man's works," replied the greater spirit, " is composed of his intentions taken together with his deeds in such a way as the Greek geometer would have expressed it. The sum of his life is largest when the deeds are as great as the intentions which prompted them, for of four-sided figures the square, with equal lines, encloses the greatest space. But if the intentions be ever so great and the deeds few, the figure is long indeed, but narrow and of small area; and again if the deeds are numerous though the intentions small, then the deeds are the result of accident and must not all be imputed to man for good. My intentions were my own. I forgive them that said they were unworthy, or little or bad, for I know what they were. But my deeds were the world's, and those I left undone should have been the world's also. Wherefore I forgive not those men who cut them short, who clipped the sum of my life and made my square smaller than it should have been. For my life was the world's health, and though my nephew was a cunning physician, all his medicines could not cure the gangrene in the wounds my slayers made in the world's skin, nor could all his cleansing arrest the deepening darkness of the stain that spread from my blood over the body of the nation I sought to make clean and great. For my life was not sacrificed boldly for good in a great cause. I did not fall in the front of the fight at Pharsalus. I did not sink when the skiff overturned at Alexandria; I was not caught by the enemy in Germany when I slipped through their lines in a Gallic dress; I did not lose heart when my soldiers lost their way in the trenches at Dyrrachium, though I lost the place itself. I risked my life often enough to have deserved to lose it finally in some nobler way than by the hands of such butchers as made an end of me — fellows who knew not where to strike to kill—who in three and twenty thrusts could strike but one mortal blow. I stabbed Cassius in the arm with my writing point, but what could I do against so many ? I saw a sea of faces around me, cowardly pale faces of men who got courage cheaply from their numbers. I saw myself hemmed in by a hedge of steel knives and I knew that my hour was come. I saw their faces, but I would not let them see mine in death. I covered my head and my body with my garments and I died decently, since there was nothing left but to die. But I saw each one of those faces once more and in the instant of death, within three years, and I heard the lips of each dying man curse the hour in which he had slain Caesar. Even then I could not forgive them, for the sake of the world that might have been. I can pardon them for murdering me as a man. I will never pardon them for murdering my unborn deeds. Therefore I say we dead men both forgive and forgive not."
The conqueror's calm voice ceased and his dark, thoughtful eyes fixed themselves as though staring back through the mist of nineteen centuries to that morning when he had entered the curia, laughing at Spurinna's prophecies and unconsciously grasping in his hand the unread note which might have saved him from his fate. The look was sad, but the sadness had long passed from the stage of present despair to regret for the past, and again to a melancholy curiosity to see what should yet become of the world.
The gentle Lionardo bowed his head gravely, as though admitting his companion spirit to be right.
" I understand that," he said. " We should not forget that you, the dictator, have not only to pardon the injuries done you in your person, but you have to forgive also the injuries done in your person to the world, or as we should say, to history. In my little way, had I been foully murdered I could more easily have forgiven my murderers than I could forgive one who should wantonly destroy my painting of the Last Supper. It is but an artist's vanity — that is to say, it is the satisfaction of the artist in his work. I cannot say what I might have felt had I been violently prevented from finishing that picture. It is unfinished still — it would be so had I lived until to-day. I think it is a part of the temperament of some artists not to finish, though they work for ever. They search after that which never was nor ever can be; or, at all events, we searched in our day. I think it was better. We pursued the ideal. Modern painters pursue the real. I was not a realist because I painted grinning peasants for a study, and modelled ' heads of laughing women for my pleasure. We did not know what realism meant in those days, though people call us the founders of the realist school. We sought to represent nature's meaning; men now try to copy what nature is. You, Caesar, tried to make of men what heaven meant them to be, orderly, happy, prosperous within reasonable limits. Napoleon, like Alexander, ruined himself in attempting to create an unlimited empire out of unreasoning and often unwilling elements, believing that to command men's bodies was to command men's souls. You succeeded in spite of failure, for though you were killed at the most critical moment of your existence your work survived you; Napoleon failed in spite of success and survived to see the destruction of the greater part of his work, which followed almost immediately after he was conquered and taken prisoner."
"It was not his fault," said Caesar. " Any more than my poor young general Gains Curio was to blame when he was defeated by Juba. Napoleon's plans were admirably laid. He did not admire me. I admire him. If his work did not survive long, that is due to the fact that he was brought up as a soldier and had a soldier's instincts. I was trained as a statesman and attached more importance to the stability of the State than to extending its