Donec gratus eram tibi ...
Donec gratus eram tibi ...
Donec gratus eram tibi ...
Donec gratus eram tibi ...
and which ends (he speaks glowingly)—
... Iracundior HadriaTecum vivere amem; tecum obeam libens!
... Iracundior HadriaTecum vivere amem; tecum obeam libens!
... Iracundior HadriaTecum vivere amem; tecum obeam libens!
... Iracundior Hadria
Tecum vivere amem; tecum obeam libens!
Madame d'Escurolles(doubtfully). Are you quite sure you have the Latin right? (She ponders awhile.) For my own part I prefer the simple songs of our own people about here and the rhymes of children. Do you know
Nous n'irons plus aux boisLes lauriers sont coupés?
Nous n'irons plus aux boisLes lauriers sont coupés?
Nous n'irons plus aux boisLes lauriers sont coupés?
Nous n'irons plus aux bois
Les lauriers sont coupés?
Monsieur de Noirétable(almost yawning). Oh! Bless you, yes. Who does not.... Madame?
(The music ceases and the reverences to the Queen begin. Madame d'Escurolles, as she moves forward, says in a low tone to Monsieur de Noirétable as she passes him, "When do you next come to Compiègne?")
Monsieur de Noirétable(as he goes out alone, to himself). When Compiègne comes to meet me halfway; which is perhaps a little difficult for so much stone.
(The Marquisde la Mise-en-Scèneis discovered writing at a little inlaid table. He is about 42 years of age, and looks worse than that. He believes himself to be alone in the room, when he is somewhat suddenly addressed from the open door by the Duchessde la Tour-de-Force, who has just entered. She is a woman of about 55, somewhat too commanding. The place is Versailles, and the time is 1753.)
(The Marquisde la Mise-en-Scèneis discovered writing at a little inlaid table. He is about 42 years of age, and looks worse than that. He believes himself to be alone in the room, when he is somewhat suddenly addressed from the open door by the Duchessde la Tour-de-Force, who has just entered. She is a woman of about 55, somewhat too commanding. The place is Versailles, and the time is 1753.)
The Duchess de la Tour-de-Force.What are you doing, Monsieur de la Mise-en-Scène?
The Marquis de la Mise-en-Scène(continuing to write and without turning round). I am writing, Duchess, as you can plainly see.
Duchess.Unfortunately I cannot see through your body, but I see you are seated at a table, and from the constrained attitude of your elbow and the awkward wagging of your head I can well believe that you are occupied as you say.
The Marquis(without turning round). Come, Duchess, would you have me jump up like a bourgeois? Shall I ask after your health, which I knowto be robust, or murmur something polite about your niece? Shall I come and hold the door for you, or do any of those things to which you are used in provincial hotels? Or shall I go on writing? (He goes on writing.) (A pause.) (TheDuchesswalks into the room, shuts the door rather noisily, and sits down upon a chair. She sighs.)
The Marquis(still writing, murmuring to himself). "Indifferent"! Tut, tut, how does one spell "indifferent"? "You cannot be indifferent to my plea" ... "plea." ... I know how to spell "plea," but how does one spell "indifferent"? (Turning round for the first time to the Duchess and showing a set, half-ironical face, with thin lips and steady grey eyes.) Duchess, how do you spell "indifferent"?
Duchess(carelessly). Oh, I spell it sometimes one way, sometimes another. But I believe there are two f's.
Marquis(turning again to his letters). "Indifferent" (with two f's) "to my plea...." (He leans back and looks at the paper with his head on one side as though he were examining a picture.) It looks all right, Duchess. I always go by that, though I think it is easier to tell whether a bit of spelling is right if you can see it in print.
Duchess(gravely). I thoroughly agree with you, Marquis de la Mise-en-Scène. (A pause during which the scratching of the quill continues.) I do not think she will mind about the spelling; but if I knowanything of her sex she will not read the end of the letter if you make it too long.
Marquis(still writing away busily). Yes, she will, for it is full of business.
Duchess(with some interest in her voice). Why? What kind of business?
Marquis.I'm writing a proposal of marriage, Madam.
Duchess(really startled). Good heavens, Monsieur de la Mise-en-Scène! I always thought you were married!
Marquis(continuing to write). Madame de la Tour-de-Force, that is the malicious sort of thing people say at Versailles about provincials. (He continues to write.)
Duchess.I don't care how much business you put into it; if you make it as long as that she won't read to the end.
Marquis.Oh, yes, she will. The letter isn't very long, but I'm writing it out several times.
Duchess.Really! Your cynicism! And suppose the various ladies meet, or suppose two of them accept you at once! What then?
Marquis(getting up quickly). I never thought of that! (He puts his left hand on to the hilt of his sword, puts his right hand to his chin, and thoughtfully paces up and down the room.) Yes, Duchess, that would be very awkward. In fact (going to the window and looking out)—in fact, now that you have suggested it ... of course I might write to the second andsay I already had an engagement ... but I think I shall drive tandem and not send off the second letter until I have received an answer to the first; nor the third until I have received an answer to the second, and so forth.... On the other hand, I'm glad I've got the work done, because the business part at the end is very complicated.
Duchess(as though to make conversation). Have you ever written a proposal of marriage before, Monsieur de la Mise-en-Scène?
Marquis.No, Duchess, I have not; and, what is more curious, no lady has ever shown me one. But I have a book in which various forms of letters are set down to be used upon different occasions in life. I have taken all the first part of this letter of mine from this book. The long part at the end which is all about business I got out of a letter from my solicitor.
Duchess(quietly, as she folds her hands upon her lap). If you will take my advice, Marquis, you will not put in so much business upon the very first occasion. I should have asked—Have you actually met any of these ladies?
Marquis(stoutly). Yes, all of them, and one of them three or four times. Tell me, Duchess, since you know something of the world, in what form is a declaration most pleasing?
Duchess(serenely). By word of mouth, Monsieur de la Mise-en-Scène.
Marquis.Oh, by word of mouth! And underwhat conditions? On horseback? During a gentle stroll? In a ball-room?
Duchess.No, rather under the conditions of ordinary life, in an ordinary room such as this, in the midst of one's ordinary avocations.
Marquis(stops in his pacing up and down, stands near her, and, looking at her fixedly, says): I attach the greatest possible value to your judgment and advice, Duchess. And I fear I have wasted a good deal of time writing those letters at the little table. Here is an ordinary room, here are we both at our ordinary avocations, which consist in doing nothing, now sauntering up and down the floors, now sitting upon chairs; all is as you would desire it. We are not on horseback, we are not at a ball, we are not strolling through the park. Will you marry me?
Duchess(composedly). Certainly not!
Marquis.Oh, well then, I'm very glad I did write those letters after all. It's a great thing to have one's work behind one instead of in front of one. But before I get to the tedious task again I do particularly beg you to consider my proposal. (He sits down in a chair opposite her and begins to tick off the fingers of his left hand with the forefinger of his right.) My first point is this——
Duchess(wearily). Oh, Monsieur de la Mise-en-Scène, are you going to put it under three heads?
Marquis.No, Madam, I act in this fashion because I have seen the attitude adopted invariably by all diplomats when they would convince some greatand powerful Sovereign; and my first point is this: We know each other and we know the world. On the other hand, we are not intimate friends, which would be fatal. We are both free. We are both careless as to differences in rank.
Duchess.I am not.
Marquis.Well, well, let us pass that: it is a matter one can soon get used to after the first years of married life.
Duchess.I assure you, you are wasting your time. I have not the slightest intention of marrying you or anybody else. But I will help you to get married if you like. My advice will be useful to you, as you say. And, first of all, show me those letters.
Marquis(warmly). Thank you, Madam; thank you a thousand times! This one here is to Madame de Livaudan (hands her one letter and holds the other ready in his hand).
Duchess(glancing at it). It is too formal!
Marquis.This one (he hands her another) is to an Italian lady, whose name I will get hold of before I write the direction outside; for the moment it escapes me, but she is a Contessa, something like Marolio, and I met her in a coach.
Duchess(reads it). It is far too long.
Marquis.This one (he hands her a third) is to a distant cousin of mine in Madrid, formerly the wife of——
Duchess(in surprise). But are they all widows?
Marquis(gravely). Yes, Madam, they are all widows—and all rich.
Duchess(sighing profoundly). It certainly seems a pity that with your knowledge of Versailles and your pleasant habit of friendship ... and your gallant record in the war ... you should be compelled to such adventures.
Marquis(lightly). There! there! Madam, do not pity me. Many a poor fellow is worse off than I. The fourth one.... (He produces yet another letter.)
Duchess(waving it aside). No, no, I have already seen too much of that correspondence! Trust me, Marquis, it will all end in smoke, and may even very possibly make you ridiculous.
Marquis(apologetically). Madam, I have done my best. I have put before you the very reasonable proposal that we should marry. I put it before you in the very manner which you suggest. It did not, for the moment at least, meet with your approval: and surely it was common-sense to keep my line of retreat open upon the four widows, by any one of which roads I might have fallen back after my defeat at your hands.
Duchess(thoughtfully). No, I do not think we should get married. There are too many doubts.... I have seen such experiments fail ... and (shrugging her shoulders) succeed ... I confess I have seen them fail and succeed.
Marquis.Indeed?
Duchess(still ruminating, but in a quiet way). Yes....On one's own land.... Yes, that is how it always has to begin. And then there would be the getting of a post (she still continues to think it over, frowning with the interest of her subject; at last she rises promptly, and looking the Marquis full in the face she says): We have half-an-hour or more before the hunt comes home. We will walk round the gardens together and give this very important matter the discussion it deserves.
Marquis(cheerfully). By all means, Duchess, so that you do not make me miss the courier who is to take the first of these missives. I am entirely at your disposal.
Duchess.It is my deliberate advice to you not to post the first of those letters to-day. Come! (She goes out of the door in a rather majestic manner, and he follows, smiling.)
(A young man in the uniform of a Lieutenant of Dragoons is riding on the edge of a wood in a thick fog. The month is the month of November, and the year is the year 1793. The young man has a simple, open face, with rather protuberant blue eyes and sandy hair. His mouth is at a half smile, and he does not seem to mind having lost his way. His name is Boutroux.)
(A young man in the uniform of a Lieutenant of Dragoons is riding on the edge of a wood in a thick fog. The month is the month of November, and the year is the year 1793. The young man has a simple, open face, with rather protuberant blue eyes and sandy hair. His mouth is at a half smile, and he does not seem to mind having lost his way. His name is Boutroux.)
Boutroux.The more I see of warfare the more I am astonished!... It is true I have only seen four months of it.... My father would be very much astonished if he could see me now!... My mother would be more than astonished: she would be positively alarmed! On the other hand (musing) it is a great relief to me, and would be a still greater relief to her, that I cannot hear the sound of firearms.... The more I see of warfare the more and more perplexed I become. (Looking up at the edge of the wood on his left.) Now what is that wood? Before the fog fell I could have sworn we were in an open rolling country with spinneys here andthere, and I could almost have told you very roughly where we were and where the enemy were—more or less—so to speak—and now here is a horrid great wood! And where am I?
(At this moment a single voice is heard through the fog. The single voice belongs to a man called Metris. He is as yet unseen.)
(At this moment a single voice is heard through the fog. The single voice belongs to a man called Metris. He is as yet unseen.)
Metris.Get back a little! When I said follow me I did not mean bunching up like a lot of dirty linesmen. I meant keeping your spaces.... Charles, you are as pig-headed as ever! There are times when one does not answer a superior, but there are other times when one does. (Angrily.) Charles! (There is no reply.) Something has gone very definitely wrong with my troop! That is the worst of fog.
(As he says this he emerges in a vast and murky way into the vision of Boutroux. The two men stop their horses and look at each other through the mist.)
(As he says this he emerges in a vast and murky way into the vision of Boutroux. The two men stop their horses and look at each other through the mist.)
Boutroux.Have you seen the Thirty-second?
Metris.(Boutroux perceives him to be a tall man quite ten years his senior, very lean, with menacing moustaches, and clothed in a uniform with which he is unfamiliar.) No, sir, I have not seen the Thirty-second. (He salutes with a sword.) I take it you are an officer in the Republican service?
Boutroux(wearily). Oh yes!
Metris(with elaborate courtesy). Then, sir, youare my prisoner! My name is Georges de Metris, of Heyren in this country, and my father's name will be familiar to you.
Boutroux.Your father's name is not familiar to me, sir. And what is more,myfather's name would not be familiar to you. For my poor old dad (God bless him!) is at the present moment in Bayonne, where he is a grocer—in a large way of business, I am glad to say. And talking of prisoners, you are my prisoner! It is as well I should tell you this before we go further. For if there is one thing I detest more than another in this new profession of mine it is the ambiguity thereof. (He salutes with his sword in rather an extravagant fashion and smiles broadly.)
Metris(making his horse trot up quite close to Boutroux and halting stiffly while he lowers his sword). Sir! I should be loath to quarrel with one so young and evidently so new to arms.
Boutroux.And I, sir (lowering his sword as far as ever he can stretch), would be still more loath to quarrel with one so greatly my senior and one evidently too used to this lethal game.
Metris(biting his lips). I detest your principles, sir, but I respect your uniform.
Boutroux.You have the advantage of me, sir. Your uniform seems to me positively grotesque. But your principles I admire enormously.
Metris(stiffly). Sir, I serve the Emperor. You have heard my name.
Boutroux.I have heard your name, and now thatyou tell me that you serve the Emperor I am willing to believethatalso. So it seems that we are enemies. I thought as much when you first showed out of the fog. It was not your uniform which gave me this opinion.
Metris.Then what is it?
Boutroux.It was your singular habit of commanding men who were not there.
Metris(in a boiling passion, which he restrains). I did not come here, sir, for a contest of words.
Boutroux(genially, putting up his sword). I take it you did not come here with any direct motive. You got here somehow, just as I did, and neither of us knows why.
Metris(in extreme anger). But you will know why very soon, sir! And I hope I shall know why, too! Sir, I call upon you to draw!
Boutroux(seating himself back in the saddle with great ease while his horse munches the wet grass). Now, there you are. I have been a soldier only these few weeks, and I thought I had got hold of all the muddlement there was; "lines" which aren't lines, and "positions strongly held" which anybody can walk round for fun; and communications "cut," when, as a fact, one could go right along them on horseback, and "destructive fire" that hits nobody, and "excellent morale" when one's men are on the point of hitting one on the nose. But if you will allow me, sir, you positively take the prize in the matter! You suggest the duello or some such phantasy. Doyou want us to fight with these cavalry swords from the saddle?
Metris.I do not know if you are trying to gain time, sir. I suggest that you should meet me on foot here and now.
Boutroux.What! and lose my horse?
Metris.Sir, we can tie the two beasts by their bridles, and we can hang their bridles so tied to the branch of one of these trees.
Boutroux(frowning). I have a very short experience of warfare—I think I have said that before—and I hesitate to correct a man of your experience. But if you can reallytietwo bridles together and then have enough leather left to get it over the branch of a tree, you'll teach me something about the art of campaigning of which I was quite innocent.... (Getting down from his horse.) Come, I think in the French service we have a better way than that. (He unbuckles one end of the snaffle-rein.) You see (looking up genially), we leave the curb on. If I had time I would explain to you why.... Now, sir, will you not unbuckle the end of your snaffle-rein?
Metris(stiffly). No, sir, I will not.
Boutroux(sighing). They are all the same! The service simply fossilises them, especially, it would seem, the enemy; though I confess (turning courteously toMetrisand bowing to him) you are the first of the enemy I have ever met.
Metris(restraining himself). Pray, sir, do not delay.
Boutroux(full of good humour). I will not! See,I pass my snaffle-rein in through the buckle of your horse's curb; and pardon me, sir, but what a fine horse! Is it yours or the Emperor's?
Metris(ominously). It is mine, sir.
Boutroux.Keep it. This (jerking his thumb at his weedy mount) belongs to the Republic—if it is still a Republic, for news travels slowly to the armies. At any rate, it doesn't belong to me. (He slowly takes the end of his snaffle-rein and looks for something to fasten it to; he shakes his head doubtfully. At last, holding the end of the snaffle-rein in his left hand while the two horses begin to browse peacefully, he draws his sword with his right, and putting himself in a theatrical posture, says): Come on, sir, I'm damned if I will let go of these horses.
Metris(solemnly). I do not jest upon these occasions.
Boutroux.Neither do I, sir. Indeed, I have not been in such an occasion before; and I make it a rule never to jest when I do anything for the first time. Come, draw, and put yourself in a posture of defence, or, by Heaven (so far as these two animals will allow me) I will make a mincemeat of you with my sword.
Metris(boiling over). This is far more than any gentleman can endure! (He stands beforeBoutrouxwith his left hand clenched behind his back, his right foot well advanced, and his sabre in tierce.) Now, sir.
Boutroux(very simply). Now! (Nothing happens.)
Metris.Sir, are you upon your guard?
Boutroux.More or less (jerking the horses). Garrup! (ToMetris) Excuse me, sir, it seems that even in browsing grass this horse of mine has a devil of a hard mouth. He nearly sprained my wrist.... Well, then, are you upon your guard?
Metris(courteously). I am.
Boutroux(as in surprise). Oh, you are! (He gives a tremendous cut at the point of the neck, which his opponent skilfully parries and replies to by a thrust.) Never ... (rapidly parrying a sharp succession of thrusts that follow from his opponent) never ... thrust ... with a light cavalry sword.... I don't know much about (Ah, you missed that!)—much about ... this business. But—— (He suddenly gets round insideMetris'guard, but has the misfortune to cut with a spent blow into nothing better than cloth. They disengage.)
Metris.Sir, you play well enough for a man who is uninstructed, but I warn you you are depending upon luck.
Boutroux.I know that. Luckily for me my mind is divided, and I can form no plan. For these animals at the end of the snaffle-rein have nearly pulled my arm off. However, let us have a second bout. The great thing for men like me is not to plan too much. (Voices are heard through the fog.) Sir, let me warn you like a gentleman, though my father is but a grocer, and yours for all I know a Rouge Dragon, that I hear the voice of one who is most indubitably my Colonel. And talking ofhisprofession, he was, at the outbreak of this regrettable campaign, a butcher in Toulouse. He is a very brutal man, but I will not detain you, for your time is short.
Metris.This is more than I will stand. (They engage, andMetris,whose blood is now up and who means business, getsBoutrouxwith a slash on the cheek at the third pass.)
The Colonel(now apparent through the thick fog, with a group of misty figures behind him). Do I interrupt you, gentlemen?
Boutroux(with great respect). My Colonel, I had the misfortune to be separated from my troop during the fog, but I have taken this man (pointing at the Austrian with his sword) prisoner, but only after a sharp passage of arms, during which, my Colonel, I have been wounded. (He points to the scratch on his cheek.)
Colonel(coldly). Lieutenant Boutroux, you shall have forty days. (He turns to a soldier.) Undo that scrimmage of bridles. (The soldier obeys him. He turns toMetriswith great courtesy.) I take it, sir, you are an officer in the forces of the Emperor and that you hold his commission?
Metris.Undoubtedly.
Colonel.Then, sir, you will follow me, for I take it you constitute yourself my prisoner. (Turning to an officer upon his right.) Major Clement, you will see to the enforcement of my sentence upon Lieutenant Boutroux. Pray add upon the record that he jested with a superior officer when discovered, separatedfrom his command, fencing with a member of the enemy's forces. The Brigadier may deal with the complaint as he chooses.
Boutroux.Upon my soul, the longer I follow it, the less I comprehend the career of arms!
When I was in the French Army I met many men who had a constant tradition of the military past. These were not in the regiment, but one came across them in the garrison town where we were quartered, and among others there was an old man whose father had fought in the Peninsula and who retained a very vivid family memory of those wars. From this old man I gathered in particular what I had learned in general from reading, an impression of the Spaniard as a soldier, but that impression was false. It was false for many reasons, but chiefly for this: that Spain, like the United Kingdom, is very highly differentiated indeed, and province differs from province to an extent hardly ever grasped by those who have never visited the country.
When, many years later, I had the opportunity to visit Spain, this was the first point I noticed. It is particularly striking in the mountains. You will find yourself with one type of man talking Catalan in some small modern village; the way in which he tills his garden, the way in which his house is built, and the way in which he bargains with you, are allnative to his race. You set off over the hills and by evening you come to another village more different than is a Welsh village from an English one, for you have crossed from Catalonia into Aragon. Then, again, the boundary of the Basque Provinces, or at least of the Basque race, is as clean as a cut with a knife. One may argue indefinitely whether this is because the Basques have preferred the peculiar climate and soil of their inhabitance or whether it is their energy and tenacity which have changed the earth, but there it is. The Basque is much more separate from the people around him than is even (if he will pardon my saying so) the Irishman of the West from the Scotchman of the Lothians.
There is another form of differentiation in Spain which is so striking that I hesitate for adjectives to describe it lest those adjectives should seem excessive; but I will say this, it is more striking than the contrast between the oasis and the desert in Africa, and that is pretty strong. I mean the differentiation produced by the sudden change from the high plateaux to the sea-plains. The word "sea-plains" is not strictly accurate, the belt running back from the Mediterranean sometimes looks like a plain, sometimes like an enclosed valley, more often it is a system of terraces, hills upon hills, but at any rate when you are once out of the influence of the sea and on to the high plateaux which form, as it were, the body of the Spanish square, you pass fromluxuriance to sterility, from ease to hardship, and from the man who is always willing to smile to the stoic.
Then, again, you have the contrast between Andalusia and everything to the north of Andalusia. Andalusia was the very wealthy part of Spain under the Romans. It must always remain the very wealthy part of Spain so far as agriculture is concerned. It has easy communications and a climate like nothing on earth. Therefore, when the Moors came there they found a large, active, and instructed Christian population, and they ruined Andalusia less than any other part of Spain. Nay, in some odd (and not very pleasant) way they married the Asiatic to the European, and the European solidity, the European power over stone, the European sense of a straight line, were in Andalusia used by the vague imagination of the Asiatic to his own purpose, with marvellous results. All this has produced a quite distinct type of man; and it is remarkable that, as is to be found in so many similar cases in Europe, the people exactly limitrophous to Andalusia on the north are peculiarly sparse, impoverished and alone. There lies the wide and arid sweep of La Mancha, imperishable in European letters.
Now, having said so much as to this high differentiation of the Spanish people (and one could add much more: the Asturias, always unconquered; the Atlantic tides and rivers, the tideless Eastern harbours, the curious poverty of Estremadura; theFrench experiments of Madrid and its neighbourhood, so utterly ill-fitted to the climate and the genius of Spain), let me say something of the Spanish unity.
No nation in Europe is so united. By which I do not mean that no other nation is so homogeneous, even in those deep things which escape superficial differentiation. The Spaniard is united to the Spaniard by the three most powerful bonds that can bind man to man—religion, historical memory, isolation. It is not to be admitted by any careful traveller that the religious emotion of the modern Spaniard is either combative or profound. Indeed, I know of nothing more remarkable than the passage from Spanish to French thought in this respect. You leave, let us say, Huesca; you notice at the morning Mass a moving and somewhat small concourse of worshippers, few communicants, but above all in the temper of the place, in the written stuff of the somewhat belated newspapers, a sort of indifference; as though the things of the soul "muddled through." You bicycle a long day to Canfranc, the next day you are over the hills (and Lord! what hills), and there you are in the seething vat of the great French quarrel. From the little villages right up to the majestic capital, Toulouse, you feel the pulsation increasing. Religion and its enemies are there at war. The thing is vital, and men are quite ready to die on either side. Of this, I say, you find little or nothing in Spain; nevertheless, religion does bindthe Spaniard to the Spaniard, and it binds him firmly to his kind. For the very fact that there is so little opposition, while it produces so much indifference, produces also a singular national contempt; and every man speaking to every other man knows with precision how that man's mind stands upon the ultimate things, how careless he is and yet how secure.
Again, the Spaniards are united by that profound historical memory which is a necessity to all nations and a peculiar asset in those who retain it alive. We in this country feel the appetite for an historical memory; we attempt to satisfy that appetite by the creation of legends; we call ourselves "Anglo-Saxons"—there is even, I believe, a notable body which will have us descended from the ten Lost Tribes. The French satisfy that appetite by recurrent experiences: the reign of the Grand Monarque, the Revolution, 1870. Glorious or tragic, each national experience gives a new impetus to the historic memory of the French people. Not so the Spaniard. All Spain is bound together by the enormous recollection of the Reconquista. Here is a province in which the Faith and the Roman Order were not recovered by persuasion (as was the case with Britain) nor were utterly lost (as was the case with Africa for so long) but were got back mile by mile as the prize of hard fighting. That fighting was, so to speak, the very trade of the Spaniards, from the time when Charlemagne was a little boy to the time when Henry VIII was a little boy. All thestory of our European growth, the time when we were made, the time which is to the French the accomplishment of their unity, to the English the foundation of their institutions, to the Italians the development of their art, that to the Spaniard is the story of the Reconquista. And the Middle Ages, which have impressed themselves upon every European nation as the glorious transition of youth impresses itself upon the sad memory of a man, stand to the Spaniard for the Reconquista. This has nothing to do with his knowledge of names or with what is called "Education." It is in the blood. The best proof of its result is this, that the Englishman invariably says of the Spaniard that, while other nations show differences of manner changing from class to class, the Spaniard is always a "gentleman." The word "gentleman" is a very meagre word, but on the whole the man who uses it best means the tradition of the Middle Ages, and especially of the fighting men which the Middle Ages produced, and the Spaniard everywhere shows the external qualities of those men. For instance, you cannot insult him with impunity, and that characteristic, though we often write it down, is one which in other nations is somewhat rare. Take the modern for all in all, and outside Spain, if you insult him he will usually argue.
Finally, the Spaniards are bound together by their isolation. From the Straits of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees, different as province is from province, you feel everywhere something quite separate from thatwhich lies north of the Pyrenees, and from the Pyrenees on, all over the west of Europe. Roads are an exception, paths the rule; the hours of meals, the very habit in the wearing of the clothes, the form of salutation, the mule taking the place of the horse, the perceptible restraint in every kind of converse, all these mark out the harsh soil which lends a perpetual note of nobility to the story of Europe. No man who has known Spain but would be able to say, if he were taken there blindfold, and suddenly shown his surroundings, "This is Spain." The frontier is sharp, the division clear, the isolation absolute.
The limits of these few pages forbid me a thousand things in this respect. I wish I could describe (for instance) how there is in every Spanish building, from the least to the greatest, something at once severe and strange. Bowling into that great harbour of Barcelona one sees the Customs House, a building with wings. Coming over the northern slopes of the Guadarrama one sees Segovia sailing out in some immortal way as though the cathedral and palace intended to attempt the air. Spain lives, and will revive by such imaginations.
It should be added, by way of closing these few notes, that the Spanish man is not only silent (which is perhaps a fault in him) but square, and so healthy in his limbs and in his mind that when he is rested and can speak again something will be changed in Europe.
There is a province of Europe where a dead plain stretches out upon every side. It is not very extended if you judge by the map alone, it is perhaps but twenty-five or thirty miles from its centre to either of its boundary ranges; but to the eye it seems infinite, for it lies under that grey weather of the North in which the imagination exaggerates distance and so easily conceives imaginary flatnesses extending everywhere beyond the mist of the horizon.
In the midst of this plain there rises most abruptly a little market town. It stands upon a conical hill some 300 feet in height, and the impression it gives of being a rock or an island is enhanced by the height of its buildings, which, as is the case with nearly all mediæval work, are designed for a general effect, and are, whether consciously or unconsciously, as well planned and grouped as though one artist had sketched the whole and had left an inviolable design to posterity.
In this little town I had business some years ago to stop for the night, and when the next morning I found that there were two hours between mybreakfast and my train I walked out on to the crest of the hill to see the view and to think about the past. It was autumn; the many artificially aligned trees which bordered the winding, deserted avenues all round the edge of the height were losing their leaves; the air was singularly clear, and the effect of the small but isolated height upon which one stood was very strong. I came to the north-eastern corner of the huge ramparts which still surround the little place, and there I found a most interesting man. He was upon the border between what are called now-a-days middle age and old age; that is, he was an old man, and if he lived would soon be a very old man. He was erect and spare; he was short, and he had all the bearing of a man who has been perpetually trained, and, indeed, I found out when I got to know him better that he had seen service in Africa and in Russia and in Mexico, three very distant places. He had never, however, risen beyond the rank of colonel; he was a gunner, and exceedingly poor, and he was finishing his life alone in this little town. They gave him meals at the hotel for a sum agreed upon between them. Where he lodged he did not choose to tell me, but I fancy in some very cheap and ruinous little room under one of the big Flemish roofs of the place. His only pleasure was to take these walks about the town, to read his newspaper before it was twenty-four hours old, and to remember the trade in which he had been engaged.
We sat together on the very edge of the rampart, and I asked him, since it was his business to know so much about these things, whether the place would ever in his opinion enter once again into the scheme of European war.
He told me that this was absolutely certain; he said there was no field so small nor no village so forgotten, but in its cycle was swept by one or other of those armies which the peoples of Europe send out one against the other, pursuing various ends. This little town in which we sat had never seen an enemy for over two hundred years; yet there beneath us was the enormous evidence of its past. The trench was like a street fifty feet or sixty feet deep, as the house fronts of a street are, as wide at least as the narrow streets of any of these old towns, and on the further side the enormous heap of earth, and beyond it the level descent of the glacis. Here was a town not larger than some of our smaller English cathedral towns, Ely for instance, yet having round it such a mighty effort and proof of military determination as would to-day seem worthy of a great city. These fortifications ran all round the place, the two only gates in and out of it (through which ran the great road which linked the stronghold with the capital) were flanked by such works as the great modern forts occasionally show, and upon every point of its circumference one perceived the fixed will of a crushing Government responsible for all the destinies of a nation that this place should be inviolable.
My companion said to me: "Many men choose many things as their examples of the way in which nothing human can remain, and to most men the best example is the change of taste in art or letters. They point out how great buildings put up with infinite care by men who loved them with all their souls seem tawdry to an immediate posterity; and they wonder why verse which was supreme in their childhood is ridiculed in their old age. But to me the most formidable proof of our futility is to be found in works such as these. They succeed each other all over Europe. Long before our written record began you have the Cyclopæan Wars; what you can see in Tuscany and further east in the Mediterranean. You have the Roman entrenchments, and the mediæval castles, and the new system of Vauban which the Italians created, and of which this earthquake before us is the finest work. And each in its turn bears on into its future the stamp of futility. Something changes in man: he makes a new weapon (or he forgets the old), he develops a new method of attack or a different mood in connection with war; nay, his very desires in the matter of victory change, for he will desire in one generation glory, and in another profit, and in a third the mere occupation of a particular piece of sacred land. And as these human things change in him, so the fortification of his cities become like garments out of fashion and are useless for their purpose and are thrown aside."
"You might then say," said I, "that those whofortify to-day are foolish; and, for that matter, you might add that those who have fortified in the past were foolish. For since each in turn is proved to be wrong with regard to the future, each generation might have spared itself this enormous labour."
"You are right when you call it enormous labour," said he, "but you are wrong when you say that it was ever futile. What a labour it is only those know who have looked closely into and meditated upon the fortifications of the past. The chalk hills and ramparts thrown up upon them by men perhaps who could use no spade and who depended for carriage upon baskets, which we to-day, when we estimate them in a modern method, reckon in fantastic sums of money; and this was done to defend, we know not what, by men every record of whom has perished. The ancient walls of the cities are much the largest and the strongest buildings they can boast, and much the most enduring. The transformation of a city two hundred years ago and more, when hardly a frontier place of Europe but had its elaborate system of main and out works, proves the same labour. Consider little Bayonne, never other than a little town, and yet flanked with a work which must have meant more than the building of a modern railway. And then, lastly, consider to-day the great garrisons circled with forts: Spezia and Metz, and the French frontier garrisons, and Antwerp and the line of the Meuse. And even, at the far ends of the world, Port Arthur, which, though it was never finished,was to have been among the greatest of all. Yes, it is a toil if you like, and that is why those who court defeat by boasting shirk it or ridicule it."
"But they are right to ridicule it," said I, "since time itself ridicules the walls of a city, and since it can be shown that no city has been made impregnable."
"You use a false argument," he insisted; "it is as though you were to say that because all men die therefore no man should live. These trenches and these walls and these circles of isolated forts to-day procure for men who fight under their shoulder a draft upon Time. That is what fortification is, and that is why all who have ever understood the art of war have fortified; and all who, upon the contrary, have in one way or another failed to understand the art of war, whether because they secretly desired to avoid arms or whether because they believed themselves invincible (which is the most unmilitary mood in the world!) have failed to fortify."
"I have heard it said," I answered him, "in the schools where such things are taught, that the Romans, as they were the chief masters of war, were also the most plodding in the use of the spade, and that not only would they fortify permanently every military post, but that they cast up a square fieldwork round them every night, wherever the army rested."
The little spare old gunner shrugged his shoulders. "They would have found it awkward," he said, "todo that in the case of a single battery quartered during manœuvres in a country house. But in general you are right: the Romans, who were the great masters of the art of war, thought of the spade and of the sword as of twin brothers, only the sword was the more noble, and in a fashion the elder of the two. At any rate, certainly those who are in the tradition of the Romans perpetually fortify...." Then he asked me abruptly: "Since you are a foreigner and since you say that you have travelled (for I had told him of my travels when we made acquaintance), have you not noticed that wherever men are boastful or inept they despise fortifications, and that it is absent, and that the bases of their military action, their depots, their political centres, their harbours and dockyards lie open?"
"I cannot tell," I answered, "for I have no knowledge of such things."
"Well, you find it is so," he said, and he walked away. He was much ruder and more long-winded than if he had been in the Cavalry, but you cannot have everything at once.
One day I had occasion to travel, at the expense of a fund more or less public, and certainly collective, in a railway train of which the carriages werewagons-de-luxe. It was by its description a train for the Very Rich, yet few of that numerous class were travelling in it, for it was going in the depth of winter from one of the most desolate highlands of Europe to another of Europe's most offensive deserts. I had business with one and the other.
There was in the dining-car of this luxurious train a gentleman who sat opposite me. He was dressed, as are so many of his class, in boots and striped trousers and a black coat and waistcoat. He had on a quiet tie of grey silk and what is called upon the Continent an English collar. He was nearly bald, but his eyes were determined, and his moustaches were of the shape and seemed to be of the size of buffalo's horns. They were of a metallic colour and looked like steel.
It is the custom on the Continent of Europe for males when they meet to accost each other, even if they have not been introduced, as indeed is thecustom (if you will observe it narrowly) of the mass of the population at home. There is, indeed, a story of a man who stood upon the bridge at Lyons wringing his hands and shouting out as he gazed upon the arrowy Rhone which was bearing down very rapidly a drowning human head: "Will no one introduce me to that gentleman that I may save him? For I am an excellent swimmer." But this story would not apply to the mass of males upon the Continent. We therefore were ready to accost each other. He spoke to me in a curious language which I believed to be Hungarian—for though I do not know Basque I should have recognised the Basque terminations, and Finnish would not be used in the West of Europe, and save for Basque, Hungarian, and Finnish all other tongues have something in common. The Teutonic dialects, though they are infinite, can at once be distinguished, and a Russian does not address you in his own tongue in a foreign country. When, therefore, this stranger man had spoken to me in this tongue which I believed to be Hungarian, I replied to him gently in the Limousin dialect as being the most southern with which I had any acquaintance, and upon the principle, that with foreigners the more southern you are the better chance you have. He answered in pure Italian, which is of no use to me. I spoke to him then in the French of Paris, which he understood ill, but did not speak at all. At last we tumbled upon a mutual language, which, for the honour I bear you,I will not name; but it was neither Latin nor Arabic, nor the language of the Genoese; and if I called it lingua franca you would feel a legitimate annoyance.
We had not spoken of many things before he told me his own characteristics, which were these: that he was a brave man but modest; that he had a contempt for riches, and was content to live upon the small income derivable from funds inherited from his father; that he revered the memory of his father; that he was devoted to his mother, "who lived in a modest way in a provincial town, hating the extravagance of the capital. He further told me that he had been by profession a soldier, and upon my asking whether his stoical life were not diversified by some amusement he answered that he had permitted himself certain recreations, but only those befitting the uniform he wore, and notably was he addicted to the chase of wild and powerful beasts.
"It is often remarked," he said, "by those who know nothing of the business, that modern firearms have made the destruction of the larger carnivora too easy a task for the sportsman. This may in general be the case, but only if men are fighting under luxurious conditions. A man going out by himself with his gun, unaccompanied by a dog, and determined upon the destruction of some one considerable four-footed beast of prey, still runs a certain risk."
"You are right," said I, "and a relative of mine who under such conditions attempted the bear,though having only designed to attempt wild-fowl, in the impenetrable thickets of Scandinavia, was very bitterly disappointed and has been lamed for life."
At this my companion was a little put out. "The bear is not carnivorous," he said, "and a brave man should be able to tackle a bear with his hands. I really cannot understand how your relative (as you call him), if he had a fowling-piece or even so much as a pocket-pistol with a range of ten yards, could not shoot off a bear.... But to return to my original thesis, which is that the larger carnivora are really dangerous to a man walking alone, however well armed he may be. It was so armed but undefended by companions that I found myself on the borders of the Indian Ocean five years ago...."
"Which border of that vast sea did you inhabit?" said I with some curiosity, and I was beginning to make a list of all its boundaries, including the magnificent but undeveloped districts which fringe the north-west of the great island of Australia, when he went on as though I had not spoken—
" ... A tiger, or, I should rather say, a tigress, growled in the dense underwood, and I was immediately upon the alert."
"Knowledge," I replied, "is a remarkable thing; it amazes me and my friends who are familiar with the classics, though I believe there is very little to know in that department. Even the chemists astonish me, and the people who talk technically about warships are remarkable men; but I see that in your case, as in that of so many others, I havemore to learn with every day I live, for there came a growl from the underwood and you knew it to be that of a tiger—nay, of a tigress. But," I continued, lifting my hand as he would interrupt me, "though it fills me with admiration it does not make me hesitate, for I know men who can talk a language after passing a week in the country to which it is native, and I beg you to fulfil my curiosity."
"I heard the growl of a tigress," said he, eager to continue his narrative, "proceeding from the underwood, which is called in that countryrawak."
"Why is it calledrawak?" I interrupted.
"Because," he explained, with an intelligent look, "it is composed ofmeraroots andsinchuclosely interlaced, with a screen of reeds ten feet high or more waving above it."
I told him that I now perfectly understood and desired to hear more.
"I heard," said he, "the growl of a tigress, and I at once made ready my arm and prepared for the worst."
"When you say made ready your arm" (I again interrupted him) "I want to seize the matter clearly, for the interest of your tale absorbs me—what exactly did you do to the instrument, for I am acquainted with a certain number of firearms, and each has to be prepared in a different manner?"
"I pulled the bolt," said he coldly, and then maintained rather an offended silence.
"Did you not snap the safety catch?" said I, in some fear that I had put him out by my cross-examination.
"No, sir," said he, "my rifle (for such it was) was adorned by no such appliance. But I pulled the spring ratchet home. And by way of precaution I pressed my thumb upon the main-pin for fear that the ratchet of the cambor should slip from the second groove."
"Now I understand you perfectly," I said, "and I beg you to continue." And as I said this I leaned my head upon my hand so far as the jolting of the express train would allow me, and watched him with a thoughtful frown.
"Well, sir," went on the Unknown in an independent manner, "if you will believe me, when the beast sprang I missed him—I mean her."
"One moment," I said, "one moment. I cannot believe you. You mean that you missed some vital spot. That you missed so enormous an animal in mid-air, as large as a cottage, and in full career to bear you down, fraught with death, with pain, and with defeat, spreading its arms like windmills, and roaring to announce its approach—that I will not believe."
"You are right," said he, eyeing me in an iron manner, "I did not wholly miss the ferocious monster—or rather, monstress. When we sportsmen say 'miss' we mean hitting some part of the animal which is not vital or which still permits it to pursue its abominable purpose. At any rate the tigress (for such it was) fell to earth within a few feet of me. It did not reach me. It had miscalculated its spring...."
"It is a curious point," said I (always desirous to pursue a conversation and to prolong it), "how difficult it is for a man, or a beast for that matter, to estimate the distance which he has to jump. I well remember trying to jump the River Rother, which is near the eastern boundary of my own county...."
"You will allow me," he interrupted.
"No, sir," I continued, "pray let me tell you what I had to say, for it is in my mind and I wish to be rid of it. I well remember, I say, trying to jump the River Rother and missing by three feet, but if you will believe me——"
"Will you allow me?" he said, a little angrily.
"In a moment, sir," said I, "in a moment.... Well, I say I missed it by three feet, and many a friend of mine has missed things by a little minus, but the funny thing is that they never miss it by a little plus. Now, isn't that worth judging? I did indeed know one case...."
"I am determined you shall allow me," said my companion, becoming earnest.
"One moment," I pleaded, lifting my right hand slightly from the table. "I was once with a man who had to jump from an old piece of fortification on to the top of a wall about ten feet off, and if he jumped not far enough he fell into the soft ditch about five feet deep. But if he jumped too far he fell into an enormous fosse a hundred feet deep. And, by the Lord, he jumped exactly three inches too far! Poor devil!... Now, if this tigress ofyours had only jumped just over your head you would have had her at a disadvantage. You could have changed your front with the rapidity familiar to men of your profession, organised a concentrated fire against her just as she was executing her turning movement, and got her behind the shoulder-blade. But...."
"There is no 'but,'" said he, with an impressive but rather dangerous solemnity. "I say that the tigress came to earth just in front of me and advanced upon me by one and by two. I had no time to reload and to fire. I was all alone. What did I do?"
"That is what I was waiting to hear," I said. "It seems to me the climax of the whole story. I trust that you seized its—or I should say her—upper jaw with your left hand, lower jaw with your right hand, and tore the head asunder. There is no quicker way with a tigress."
"You are wrong," said he.
"Did you not, then," said I, "suddenly fasten both hands upon its throat and, digging your thumbs conversely from right and from left upon its windpipe, strangle it to death? Such a manœuvre is a matter of moments, and he laughs best who laughs last."
"I did not," said he, in a rising anger.
At this moment the train began to slow down, and I knew the place it was approaching, for I am very familiar with the line. A porter who did not know me, but whom I secretly bribed, perceiving the danger of the circumstances, took my bag andmade a great noise with it and asked a number of questions. Everybody got up, and the crowd of us began to jostle down the gangway of the eating-car. The Hero was at first just behind me, and was beginning to explain to me what exactly he did to the tigress when we were unfortunately separated by two commercial travellers, a professional singer, and a politician.
Fate dominates the lives of men, though Will is a corrective of Fate. Men in a restaurant-car are like the leaves that flutter from trees or like the particles of water in the eddying of a river. I drifted from him further and further still. When we came out upon the crowded platform I saw him, the Hero, waving his hand to me, desiring to re-establish with me human and communicable things and to tell me how he did at last destroy that mighty beast. But Fate, which is the master of human things, would not have it so, and Will, which is but a corrective of Fate for us poor humans, stood me in no stead. We drifted apart; we never met again. He was off perhaps to shoot (and miss) some other tigress (or, who knows, a tiger?) and I to another town where I might yet again wonder at the complexity of the world and the justice of God!
Anyhow, I never understood how he killed the tigress. Were it not for the evidence of my senses I should be willing to believe that the tigress killed him. But we must never believe anything that is even apparently against the evidence of our senses.
Farewell, dear mortals!
How noble is our inheritance. The more one thinks of it the more suffused with pleasure one's mind becomes; for the inheritance of a man living in this country is not one of this sort or of that sort, but of all sorts. It is, indeed, a necessary condition for the enjoyment of that inheritance that a man should be free, and we have really so muddled things that very many men in England are not free, for they have either to suffer a gross denial of mere opportunity—I mean they cannot even leave their town for any distance—or they are so persecuted by the insecurity of their lives that they have no room for looking at the world, but if an Englishman is free what an inheritance he has to enjoy!
It is the fashion of great nations to insist upon some part of their inheritance, their military memories, or their letters, or their religion, or some other thing. But in modern Europe, as it seems to me, three or four of the great nations can play upon many such titles to joy as upon an instrument. For a man in Italy, or England, or France, or Spain, if he is weary of the manifold literature of his owncountry can turn to its endurance under arms (in which respect, by the way, victory and defeat are of little account), or if he is weary of these military things, or thinks the too continued contemplation of them hurtful to the State (as it often is, for it goes to the head like wine), he can consider the great minds which his nation has produced, and which give glory to his nation not so much because they are great as because they are national. Then, again, he can consider the landscapes of his own land, whether peaceably, as do older men, or in a riot of enthusiasm as do all younger men who see England in the midst of exercising their bodies, as it says in the Song of the Man who Bicycled: