——I should not make such a speech as that, you know, without having pretty substantial indorsers to fall back upon, in case my credit should be disputed. Will you run up stairs, Benjamin Franklin, (for B.F. hadnotgone right off, of course,) and bring down a small volume from the left upper corner of the right-hand shelves?
[Look at the precious little black, ribbed-backed, clean-typed, vellum-papered 32mo. "DESIDERII ERASMI COLLOQUIA. Amstelodami. Typis Ludovici Elzevirii. 1650." Various names written on title-page. Most conspicuous this: Gul. Cookeson: E. Coll. Oum. Anim. 1725. Oxon.
——O William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, Oxford,—then writing as I now write,—now in the dust, where I shall lie,—is this line all that remains to thee of earthly remembrance? Thy name is at least once more spoken by living men;—is it a pleasure to thee? Thou shalt share with me my little draught of immortality,—its week, its month, its year, whatever it may be,—and then we will go together into the solemn archives of Oblivion's Uncatalogued Library!]
——If you think I have used rather strong language, I shall have to read something to you out of the book of this keen and witty scholar,—the great Erasmus,—who "laid the egg of the Reformation which Luther hatched." Oh, you never read hisNaufragium, or "Shipwreck," did you? Of course not; for, if you had, I don't think you would have given me credit—or discredit—for entire originality in that speech of mine. That men are cowards in the contemplation of futurity he illustrates by the extraordinary antics of many on board the sinking vessel; that they are fools, by their praying to the sea, and making promises to bits of wood from the true cross, and all manner of similar nonsense; that they are fools, cowards, and liars all at once, by this story: I will put it into rough English for you,—"I couldn't help laughing to hear one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris—the monstrous statue in the great church there—that he would give him a wax taper as big as himself. 'Mind what you promise!' said an acquaintance that stood near him, poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, you donkey!' said the fellow,—but softly, so that Saint Christopher should not hear him,—'do you think I'm in earnest? If I once get my foot on dry ground, catch me giving him so much as a tallow candle!'"
Now, therefore, remembering that those who have been loudest in their talk about the great subject of which we were speaking have not necessarily been wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have very often been wanting in one or two or all of the qualities these words imply, I should expect to find a good many doctrines current in the schools which I should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, and false.
——So you would abuse other people's beliefs, Sir, and yet not tell us your own creed!—said the divinity-student, coloring up with a spirit for which I liked him all the better.
——I have a creed,—I replied;—none better, and none shorter. It is told in two words,—the two first of the Paternoster. And when I say these words I mean them. And when I compared the human will to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant todefinemoral obligations, and not weaken them, this was what I intended to express: that the fluent, self-determining power of human beings is a very strictly limited agency in the universe. The chief planes of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization, education, condition. Organization may reduce the power of the will to nothing, as in some idiots; and from this zero the scale mounts upwards by slight gradations. Education is only second to nature. Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo to change places! Condition does less, but "Give me neither poverty nor riches" was the prayer of Agur, and with good reason. If there is any improvement in modern theology, it is in getting out of the region of pure abstractions and taking these every-day working forces into account. The great theological question now heaving and throbbing in the minds of Christian men is this:—
No, I won't talk about these things now. My remarks might be repeated, and it would give my friends pain to see with what personal incivilities I should be visited. Besides, what business has a mere boarder to be talking about such things at a breakfast-table? Let him make puns. To be sure, he was brought up among the Christian fathers, and learned his alphabet out of a quarto "Concilium Tridentinum." He has also heard many thousand theological lectures by men of various denominations; and it is not at all to the credit of these teachers, if he is not fit by this time to express an opinion on theological matters.
I know well enough that there are some of you who had a great deal rather see me stand on my head than use it for any purpose of thought. Does not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two letters a week, requesting him to ….. .. ….. .. .. …,—on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency of autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin?
——Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting to laugh, and I like to make you laugh, well enough, when I can. But then observe this: if the sense of the ridiculous is one side of an impressible nature, it is very well; but if that is all there is in a man, he had better have been an ape at once, and so have stood at the head of his profession. Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power; that is all. I have often heard the Professor talk about hysterics as being Nature's cleverest illustration of the reciprocal convertibility of the two states of which these acts are the manifestations; but you may see it every day in children; and if you want to choke with stifled tears at sight of the transition, as it shows itself in older years, go and see Mr. Blake playJesse Rural.
It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to indulge his love for the ridiculous. People laughwithhim just long as he amuses them; but if he attempts to be serious, they must still have their laugh, and so they laughathim. There is in addition, however, a deeper reason for this than would at first appear. Do you know that you feel a little superior to every man who makes you laugh, whether by making faces or verses? Are you aware that you have a pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you condescend so far as to let him turn somersets, literal or literary, for your royal delight? Now if a man can only be allowed to stand on a dais, or raised platform, and look down on his neighbor who is exerting his talent for him, oh, it is all right!—first-rate performance!—and all the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at once the performer asks the gentleman to come upon the floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins to talk down at him,—ah, that wasn't in the programme!
I have never forgotten what happened when Sydney Smith—who, as everybody knows, was an exceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, every inch of him—ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The "Quarterly," "so savage and tartarly," came down upon him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even. If I were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all means to keep his wit in the background until after he had made a reputation by his more solid qualities. And so to an actor:Hamletfirst, andBob Logicafterwards, if you like; but don't think, as they say poor Liston used to, that people will be ready to allow that you can do anything great withMacbeth'sdagger after flourishing about withPaul Pry'sumbrella. Do you know, too, that the majority of men look upon all who challenge their attention,—for a while, at least,—as beggars, and nuisances? They always try to get off as cheaply as they can; and the cheapest of all things they can give a literary man—pardon the forlorn pleasantry!—is thefunny-bone. That is all very well so far as it goes, but satisfies no man, and makes a good many angry, as I told you on a former occasion.
——Oh, indeed, no! I am not ashamed to make you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you something I have in my desk that would probably make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its place in the universe; it is not a human invention, but one of the Divine idea; illustrated in the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it is that we always consider solemnity and the absence of all gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the idea of the future life of those whom we thus deprive of half their faculties and then callblessed!There are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be preparing themselves for that smileless eternity to which they look forward, by banishing all gayety from their hearts and all joyousness from their countenances. I meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a person of intelligence and education, but who gives me (and all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling look of recognition,—something as if he were one of Heaven's assessors, come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met,—that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell me, who taught her to play with it?
No, no!—give me a chance to talk to you, my fellow-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shall have any scruples about entertaining you, if I can do it, as well as giving you some of my serious thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know nothing in English or any other literature more admirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne: "EVERY MAN TRULY LIVES, SO LONG AS HE ACTS HIS NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OF HIMSELF."
——I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind that is really moving onward. It is this: that one cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a string of thought tied to him, and look—I am afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious compassion—to see the rate at which the string reels off, while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow! and we are dashing along with the white foam and bright sparkle at our bows;—the ruffled bosom of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of diamonds stuck in it! But this is only the sentimental side of the matter; for grow we must, if we outgrow all that we love.
Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of movement by those with whom we have long been in the habit of comparing ourselves; and when they once become stationary, we can get our reckoning from them with painful accuracy. We see just what we were when they were our peers, and can strike the balance between that and whatever we may feel ourselves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be mistaken. If we change our last simile to that very old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the harbor and sailing in company for some distant region, we can get what we want out of it. There is one of our companions;—her streamers were torn into rags before she had got into the open sea, then by and by her sails blew out of the ropes one after another, the waves swept her deck, and as night came on we left her a seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of canvas. But lo! at dawn she is still in sight,—it may be in advance of us. Some deep ocean-current has been moving her on, strong, but silent,—yes, stronger than these noisy winds that puff our sails until they are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim. And when at last the black steam-tug with the skeleton arms, that comes out of the mist sooner or later and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all wrecks are refitted, and where, alas! we, towering in our pride, may never come.
So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of old friendships, because we cannot help instituting comparisons between our present and former selves by the aid of those who were what we were, but are not what we are. Nothing strikes one more, in the race of life, than to see how many give out in the first half of the course. "Commencement day" always reminds me of the start for the "Derby," when the beautiful high-bred three-year olds of the season are brought up for trial. That day is the start, and life is the race. Here we are at Cambridge, and a class is just "graduating." Poor Harry! he was to have been there too, but he has paid forfeit; step out here into the grass back of the church; ah! there it is:—
But this is the start, and here they are,—coats bright as silk, and manes as smooth aseau lustralecan make them. Some of the best of the colts are pranced round, a few minutes each, to show their paces. What is that old gentleman crying about? and the old lady by him, and the three girls, all covering their eyes for? Oh, that istheircolt that has just been trotted up on the stage. Do they really think those little thin legs can do anything in such a slashing sweepstakes as is coming off in these next forty years? Oh, this terrible gift of second-sight that comes to some of us when we begin to look through the silvered rings of thearcus senilis!
Ten years gone. First turn in the race. A few broken down; two or three bolted. Several show in advance of the ruck.Cassock, a black colt, seems to be ahead of the rest; those black colts commonly get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first quarter.Meteorhas pulled up.
Twenty years. Second corner turned.Cassockhas dropped from the front, andJudex, an iron-gray, has the lead. But look! how they have thinned out! Down flat,—five,—six,—how many? They lie still enough! they will not get up again in this race, be very sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing off"! Anybody can see who is going to win,—perhaps.
Thirty years. Third corner turned.Dices, bright sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins to make play fast; is getting to be the favorite with many. But who is that other one that has been lengthening his stride from the first, and now shows close up to the front? Don't you remember the quiet brown coltAsteroid, with the star in his forehead? That is he; he is one of the sort that lasts; look out for him! The black "colt," as we used to call him, is in the background, taking it easy in a gentle trot. There is one they used to callthe Filly, on account of a certain feminine air he had; well up, you see; the Filly is not to be despised, my boy!
Forty years. More dropping off,—but places much as before.
Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the course are coming in at a walk; no more running. Who is ahead? Ahead? What! and the winning-post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from that turf where there is no more jockeying or straining for victory! Well, the world marks their places in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter very little, if they have run as well as they knew how!
——Did I not say to you a little while ago that the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and analogies? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, or Wordsworth, just now, to show you what thoughts were suggested to them by the simplest natural objects, such as a flower or a leaf; but I will read you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by looking at a section of one of those chambered shells to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble ourselves about the distinction between this and the Paper Nautilus, theArgonautaof the ancients. The name applied to both shows that each has long been compared to a ship, as you may see more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the "Encyclopedia," to which he refers. If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you will find a figure of one of these shells, and a section of it. The last will show you the series of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this?
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,Sails the unshadowed main,—The venturous bark that flingsOn the sweet summer wind its purpled wingsIn gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,And coral reefs lie bare,Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;Wrecked is the ship of pearl!And every chambered cell,Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,Before thee lies revealed,—Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toilThat spread his lustrous coil;Still, as the spiral grew,He left the past year's dwelling for the new,Stole with soft step its shining archway through,Built up its idle door,Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,Child of the wandering sea,Cast from her lap, forlorn!From thy dead lips a clearer note is bornThan ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!While on mine ear it rings,Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,As the swift seasons roll!Leave thy low-vaulted past!Let each new temple, nobler than the last,Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,Till thou at length art free,Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea!
* * * * *
Béranger is certainly the most popular poet there has ever been in France; there was convincing proof of it at the time of and after his death. He had not printed anything since 1833, the epoch when he published the last collection of his poems; when he died, then, on the 16th of July, 1857, he had been silent twenty-four years. He had, it is true, appeared for a moment in the National Assembly, after the Revolution of February, 1848; but it was only to withdraw again almost immediately and to resign his seat. In spite of this long silence and this retirement, in which he seemed a little forgotten, no sooner did the news of his last illness spread and it was known that his life was in danger, than the interest, or we should rather say the anxiety, of the public was awakened. In the ranks of the people, in the most humble classes of society, everybody began inquiring about him and asking day by day for news; his house was besieged by visitors; and as the danger increased, the crowd gathered, restless, as if listening for his last sigh. The government, in charging itself with his obsequies and declaring that his funeral should be celebrated at the cost of the State, may have been taking a wise precaution to prevent all pretext for disturbance; but it responded also to a public and popular sentiment. At sight of the honors paid to this simple poet, with as much distinction as if he had been a Marshal of France,—at sight of that extraordinary military pomp, (and in France military pomp is the great sign of respectability, and has its place whenever it is desired to bestow special honor,) no one among the laboring population was surprised, and it seemed to all that Béranger received only what was his due.
And since that time there has been in the French journals nothing but a succession of hymns to the memory of Béranger, hymns scarcely interrupted by now and then some cooler and soberer judgments. People have vied with each other in making known his good deeds done in secret, his gifts,—we will not call them alms,—for when he gave, he did not wish that it should have the character of alms, but of a generous, brotherly help. Numbers of his private letters have been printed; and one of his disciples has published recollections of his conversations, under the title ofMémoires de Béranger. The same disciple, once a simple artisan, a shoemaker, we believe, M. Savinien Lapointe, has also composedLe petit Évangile de la Jeunesse de Béranger. M. de Lamartine, in one of the numbers of hisCours familier de Littérature, has devoted two hundred pages to an account of Béranger and a commentary on him, and has recalled curious conversations which he had with him in the most critical political circumstances of the Revolution of 1848. In short, there has been a rivalry in developing and amplifying the memory of the national songster, treating him as Socrates was once treated,—bringing up all his apophthegms, reproducing the dialogues in which he figured,—going even farther,—carrying him to the very borders of legend, and evidently preparing to canonize in him one of the Saints in the calendar of the future.
What is there solid in all this? How much is legitimate, and how much excessive? Béranger himself seems to have wished to reduce things to their right proportions, having left behind him ready for publication two volumes: one being a collection of his last poems and songs; the other an extended notice, detailing the decisive circumstances of his poetic and political life, and entitled "My Biography."
The collection of his last songs, let us say it frankly, has not answered expectation. In reading them, we feel that the poet has grown old, that he is weary. He complains continually that he has no longer any voice,—that the tree is dead,—that even the echo of the woods answers only in prose,—that the source of song is dried up; and says, prettily,—
"If Time still make the clock run on,He makes it strike no longer."
And unhappily he is right. We find here and there pretty designs, short felicitous passages, smiling bits of nature; but obscurity, stiffness of expression, and the dragging in of Fancy by the hair continually mar the reading and take away all its charm. Even the pieces most highly lauded in advance, and which celebrate some of the most inspiring moments in the life of Napoleon,—such as his Baptism, his Horoscope cast by a Gypsy, and others,—have neither sparkle nor splendor. The prophet is not intoxicated, and wants enthusiasm. On the theme of Napoleon, Victor Hugo has done incomparably better; and as to the songs, properly so called, of this last collection, there are at this moment in France numerous song-writers (Pierre Dupont and Nadaud, for instance) who have the ease, the spirit, and the brilliancy of youth, and who would be able easily to triumph over this forced and difficult elevation of the Remains of Béranger, if one chose to institute a comparison. We may well say that youth is youth; to write verses, and especially songs, when one is old, is to wish still to dance, still to mount a curvetting horse; one gains no honor by the experiment. Anacreon, we know, succeeded; but in French, with rhyme and refrain, (that double butterfly-chase,) it seems to be more difficult.
But in prose, in the Autobiography, the entire Béranger, the Béranger of the best period, the man of wit, freshness, and sense, is found again; and it is pleasant to follow him in the story of his life, till now imperfectly known. He was born at Paris, on the 19th of August, 1780; and he glories in being a Parisian by birth, saying, that "Paris had not to wait for the great Revolution of 1789 to be the city of liberty and equality, the city where misfortune receives, perhaps, the most sympathy." He came into the world in the house of a tailor, his good old grandfather, in the Rue Montorgueil,—one of the noisiest of the Parisian streets, famous for itsrestaurantsand the number of oysters consumed in them. "Seeing me born," he says, "in one of the dirtiest and noisiest streets, who would have thought that I should love the woods, fields, flowers, and birds so much?" It is true that Béranger loved them,—but he loved them always, as his poems show, like a Parisian and child of the Rue Montorgueil. A pretty enclosure, as many flowers and hedges as there are in the Closerie des Lilas, a little garden, a courtyard surrounded by apple-trees, a path winding beside wheat-fields,—these were enough for him. His Muse, we feel, has never journeyed, never soared, never beheld its first horizon in the Alps, the ocean, or the illimitable prairie. Lamartine, born in the country, amid all the wealth of the old rural and patriarchal life, had a right to oppose him, to put his own first instincts as poet in contrast with his, and to say to him, "I was born among shepherds; but you, you were born among citizens, among proletaries." Béranger loved the country as people love it on a Sunday at Paris, in walks just without the suburbs. How different from Burns, that other poet of the people, with whom he has sometimes been compared! But, on the other hand, Béranger loved the dweller in the city, the mechanic, theouvrier, industrious, intellectual, full of enthusiasm and also of imprudence, passionate, with the heart of a soldier, and with free, adventurous ideas. He loved him even in his faults, aided him in his poverty, consoled him with his songs. Before all things he loved the street, and the street returned his love.
His father was a careless, dissipated man, who had tried many employments, and who strove to rise from the ranks of the people without having the means. His mother was a pretty woman, a dress-maker, and thoroughgrisette, whom his father married for her beauty, and who left her husband six months after their marriage and never gave a thought to her child. The little Béranger, born with difficulty and only with the aid of instruments, put out to nurse in the neighborhood of Auxerre, and forgotten for three years, was the object of no motherly cares. He may be said never to have had a mother. His Muse always showed traces of this privation of a mother's smile. The sentiment of home, of family, is not merely absent from his poems,—it is sometimes shocked by them.
Returning to his grandparents in Paris, and afterwards sent to a school in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where, on the 14th of July, 1789, he saw the Bastille taken, he pursued his primary studies very irregularly. He never learned Latin, a circumstance which always prejudiced him. Later in life, he sometimes blushed at not knowing it, and yet mentioned the fact so often as almost to make one believe he was proud of it. The truth is, that this want of classical training must have been felt more painfully by Béranger than it would have been by almost any other person; for Béranger was a studied poet, full of combinations, of allusion and artifice, even in his pleasantry,—a delicate poet, moreover, of the school of Boileau and Horace.
Thepensionin the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, even, was too much for the narrow means of his father. He was taken away and sent to Péronne, in Picardy, to an aunt who kept an inn in one of the suburbs, at the sign of the Royal Sword. It was while he was with this excellent person, who had a mind superior to her condition, that he began to form himself by the reading of good French authors. His intelligence was not less aroused by the spectacle of the events which were passing under his eyes. The Terror, the invasion by the armies of the Coalition, the roar of cannon, which could be heard at this frontier town, inspired him with a patriotism which was always predominant in him, and which at all decisive crises revived so strongly as even to silence and eclipse for the moment other cherished sentiments which were only less dear.
"This love of country," said he, emphatically, "was the great, I should say the only, passion of my life." It was this love which was his best inspiration as poet,—love of country, and with it of equality. Out of devotion to these great objects of his worship, he will even consent that the statue of Liberty be sometimes veiled, when there is a necessity for it. That France should be great and glorious, that she should not cease to be democratic, and to advance toward a democracy more and more equitable and favorable to all,—such were the aspirations and the programme of Béranger. He goes so far as to say that in his childhood he had an aversion, almost a hatred, for Voltaire, on account of the insult to patriotism in his famous poem ofLa Pucelle; and that afterwards, even while acknowledging all his admirable qualities and the services he rendered to the cause of humanity, he could acquire only a very faint taste for his writing. This is a striking singularity, if Béranger does not exaggerate it a little; it is almost an ingratitude,—for Voltaire is one of his nearest and most direct masters.
There is, indeed, a third passion which disputes with those for country and equality the heart of Béranger, and which he shares fully with Voltaire,—the hatred, namely, we will not say of Christianity, but of religious hypocrisy, of Jesuitic Tartufery. What Voltaire did in innumerable pamphlets,facetioe, and philosophic diatribes, Béranger did in songs. He gave a refrain, and with it popular currency to the anti-clerical attacks and mockeries of Voltaire; he set them to his violin and made them sing with the horsehair of his bow. Béranger was in this respect only the minstrel of Voltaire.
Bold songs against hypocrites, the Reverend Fathers and the Tartufes, so much in favor under the Restoration, and some which carry the attack yet higher, and which sparkle with the very spirit of buffoonery, likeLe Bâtard du Pape; beautiful patriotic songs, likeLe vieux Drapeau; and beautiful songs of humanity and equality, likeLe vieux Vagabond;—these are the three chief branches which unite and intertwine to make the poetic crown of Béranger in his best days, and they had their root in passions which with him were profound and living,—hatred of superstition, love of country, love of humanity and equality.
His aunt at Péronne was superstitious, and during thunder-storms had recourse to all kinds of expedients, such as signs of the cross, holy-water, and the like. One day the lightning struck near the house and knocked down young Béranger, who was standing on the door-step. He was insensible for some time, and they thought him killed. His first words, on recovering consciousness, were, "Well, what good did your holy-water do?"
At Péronne he finished his very irregular course of study at a kind of primary school founded by a philanthropic citizen. During the Directory, attempts were made all over France to get up free institutions for the young, on plans more or less reasonable or absurd, by men who had fed upon Rousseau'sÉmileand invented variations upon his system. On leaving school, Béranger was placed with a printer in the city, where he became a journeyman printer and compositor, which has occasioned his being often compared to Franklin,—a comparison of which he is not unworthy, in his love for the progress of the human race, and the piquant and ingenious turn he knew how to give to good sense. From this first employment as printer Béranger acquired and retained great nicety in language and grammar. He insisted on it, in his counsels to the young, more than seems natural in a poet of the people. He even exaggerated its importance somewhat, and might seem a purist.
Béranger's father reappeared suddenly during the Directory and reclaimed his son, whom he carried to Paris. The father had formed connections in Brittany with the royalists. He had become steward of the household of the Countess of Bourmont, mother of the famous Bourmont who was afterwards Marshal of France and Minister of War. Bourmont himself, then young, was living in Paris, in order the better to conspire for the restoration of the Bourbons. The elder Béranger was neck-deep in these intrigues, and was even prosecuted after the discovery of one of the numerous conspiracies of the day, but acquitted for want of proof. He was the banker and money-broker of the party,—a wretched banker enough! The narrative of the son enables us to see what a miserable business the father was engaged in. This near view of political intriguers, of royalists driven to all manner of expedients and standing at bay, of adventurers who did not shrink from the use of any means, not even the infernal-machine, did not dispose the young man already imbued with republican sentiments to change them, and this initiation into the secrets of the party was not likely to inspire him with much respect for the future Restoration. He had too early seen men and things behind the scenes. His father, in consequence of his swindling transactions, made a bankruptcy, which reduced the son to poverty and filled him with grief and shame.
He was now twenty years old; he had courage and hope, and he already wrote verses on all sorts of subjects,—serious, religious, epic, and tragic. One day, when he was in especial distress, he made up a little packet of his best verses and sent them to Lucien Bonaparte, with a letter, in which he set forth his unhappy situation. Lucien loved literature, and piqued himself on being author and poet. He was pleased with the attempts of the young man, and made him a present of the salary of a thousand or twelve hundred francs to which he was entitled as member of the Institute. It was Béranger's first step out of the poverty in which he had been plunged for several years, and he was indebted for the benefit to a Bonaparte, and to the most republican Bonaparte of the family. He was always especially grateful for it to Lucien, and somewhat to the Bonapartes in general.
Receiving a small appointment in the bureau of the University through the intervention of the Academician Arnault, a friend of Lucien Bonaparte, Béranger lived gayly during the last six years of the Empire. He managed to escape the conscription, and never shouldered a musket. He reserved himself to sing of military glory at a later day, but had no desire to share in it as soldier. He was elected into a singing club calledThe Cellar, all of whose members were songwriters and good fellows, presided over by Désaugiers, the lord of misrule and of jolly minstrels. Béranger, after his admission to theCaveau, at first contended with Désaugiers in his own style, but already a ground of seriousness and thought showed through his gayety. He wrote at this time his celebrated song of theRoi d'Yvetot, in which, while he caricatured the little play-king, the king in the cotton nightcap, he seemed to be slyly satirizing the great conquering Emperor himself.
The Empire fell, and Béranger hesitated for some time to take part against the Bourbons. It was not till after the battle of Waterloo and the return of Louis XVIII. under convoy of the allied armies, that he began to feel the passion of patriotism blaze up anew within him and dictate stinging songs which soon became darts of steel. Meanwhile he wrote pretty songs, in which a slight sentiment of melancholy mingled with and heightened the intoxication of wine and pleasure.La bonne Vieilleis hischef-d'oeuvrein this style. He arranged the design of these little pieces carefully, sketching his subjects beforehand, and herein belongs to the French school, that old classic school which left nothing to chance. He composed his couplets slowly, even those which seem the most easy. Commonly the song came to him through the refrain;—he caught the butterfly by the wings;—when he had seized the refrain, he finished at intervals, and put in the nicer shadings at leisure. He wrote hardly ten songs a year at the time of his greatest fecundity. It has since been remarked that they smell of the lamp here and there; but at first no one had eyes except for the rose, the vine, and the laurel.
The Bourbons, brought back for the second time in 1815, committed all manner of blunders: they insulted the remains of the oldgrande armée; they shot Marshal Ney and many others; a horrible royalist reaction ensanguined the South of France. The Jesuit party insinuated itself at Court, and assumed to govern as in the high times of the confessors of Louis XIV. It was hoped to conquer the spirit of the Revolution, and to drive modern France back to the days before 1789; hence thousands of hateful things impossible to be realized, and thousands of ridiculous ones. Towards 1820 the liberal opposition organized itself in the Chambers and in the press. The Muse of Béranger came to its assistance under the mask of gay raillery. He was the angry bee that stung flying, and whose stings are not harmless; nay, he would fain have made them mortal to the enemy. He hated even Louis XVIII., a king who was esteemed tolerably wise, and more intelligent than his party. "I stick my pins," said Béranger, "into the calves of Louis XVIII." One must have seen the fat king in small-clothes, his legs as big as posts and round as pin-cushions, to appreciate all the point of the epigram.
Béranger had been very intimate since 1815 with the Deputy Manuel, a man of sense and courage, but very hostile to the Bourbons, and who, for words spoken from the Tribune, was expelled from the Chamber of Deputies and declared incapable of reëlection. Though intimate with many influential members of the opposition, such as Laffitte the banker, and General Sebastiani, it was only with Manuel that Béranger perfectly agreed. It is by his side, in the same tomb, that he now reposes in Père la Chaise, and after the death of Manuel he always slept on the mattress upon which his friend had breathed his last. Manuel and Béranger were ultra-inimical to the Restoration. They believed that it was irreconcilable with the modern spirit of France, with the common sense of the new form of society, and they accordingly did their best to goad and irritate it, never giving it any quarter. At certain times, other opposition deputies, such as General Foy, would have advised a more prudent course, which would not have rendered the Bourbons impossible by attacking them so fiercely as to push them to extremes. However this might have been, poetry is always more at home in excess than in moderation. Béranger was all the more a poet at this period, that he was more impassioned. The Bourbons and the Jesuits, his two most violent antipathies, served him well, and made him write his best and most spirited songs. Hence his great success. The people, who never perceive nice shades of opinion, but love and hate absolutely, at once adopted Béranger as the singer of its loves and hatreds, the avenger of the old army, of national glory and freedom, and the inaugurator or prophet of the future. The spirit prisoned in these little couplets, these tiny bodies, is of amazing force, and has, one might almost say, a devilish audacity. In larger compositions, breath would doubtless have failed the poet,—the greater space would have been an injury to him. Even in songs he has a constrained air sometimes, but this constraint gave him more force. He produces the impression of superiority to his class.
Béranger had given up his little post at the University before declaring open war against the government. He was before long indicted, and in 1822 condemned to several months' imprisonment, for having scandalized the throne and the altar. His popularity became at once boundless; he was sensible of it, and enjoyed it. "They are going to indict your songs," said some one to him. "So much the better!" he replied,—"that will gilt-edge them." He thought so well of thisgilding, that in 1828, during the ministry of M. Martignac, a very moderate man and of a conciliatory semi-liberalism, he found means to get indicted again and to undergo a new condemnation, by attacks which some even of his friends then thought untimely. Once again Béranger was impassioned; he declared his enemies incurable and incorrigible; and soon came the ordinances of July, 1830, and the Revolution in their train, to prove him right.
In 1830, at the moment when the Revolution took place, the popularity of Béranger was at its height. His opinion was much deferred to in the course taken during and after "the three great days." The intimate friend of most of the chiefs of the opposition who were now in power, of great influence with the young, and trusted by the people, it was essential that he should not oppose the plan of making the Duke of Orleans King. Béranger, in his Biography, speaks modestly of his part in these movements. In his conversations he attributed a great deal to himself. He loved to describe himself in the midst of the people who surrounded the Hôtel of M. Laffitte, going and coming, listening to each, consulted by all, and continually sent for by Laffitte, who was confined to his armchair by a swollen foot. Seeing the hesitation prolonged, he whispered in Laffitte's ear that it was time to decide, for, if they did not take the Duke of Orleans for King pretty soon, the Revolution was in danger of turning out anémeute. He gave this advice simply as a patriot, for he was not of the Orleans party. When he came out, his younger friends, the republicans, reproached him; but he replied, "It is not a king I want, but only a plank to get over the stream." He set the first example of disrespect for the plank he thought so useful; indeed, the comparison itself is rather a contemptuous one.
He afterwards behaved, however, with great sense and wisdom. He declined all offices and honors, considering his part as political songster at an end. In 1833 he published a collection in which were remarked some songs of a higher order, less partisan, and in which he foreshadowed a broader and more peaceful democracy. After this he was silent, and as he was continually visited and consulted, he resolved upon leaving Paris for some years, in order to escape this annoyance. He went first to the neighborhood of Tours, and then to Fontainebleau; but the free, conversational life of Paris was too dear to him, and he returned to live in seclusion, though always much visited by his troops of friends, and much sought after. In leaving Paris during the first years of Louis Philippe's reign, andclosing, as he called it,his consulting office, his chief aim was to escape the questions, solicitations, and confidences of opposite parties, in all of which he continued to have many friends who would gladly have brought him over to their way of thinking. He did not wish to be any longer what he had been so much,—a consulting politician; but he did not cease to be a practical philosopher with a crowd of disciples, and a consulting democrat. Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Lamartine,—the chiefs of parties at first totally opposed to his own,—came to seek his friendship, and loved to repose and refresh themselves in his conversation. He enjoyed, a little mischievously, seeing one of them (Chateaubriand) lay aside his royalism, another (Lamennais) abjure his Catholicism, and the third (Lamartine) forget his former aristocracy, in visiting him. He looked upon this, and justly, as a homage paid to the manners and spirit of the age, of which he was the humble but inflexible representative.
When the Revolution of 1848 burst unexpectedly, he was not charmed with it,—nay, it made him even a little sad. Less a republican than a patriot, he saw immense danger for France, as he knew her, in the establishment of the pure republican form. He was of opinion that it was necessary to wear out the monarchy little by little,—that with time and patience it would fall of itself; but he had to do with an impatient people, and he lamented it. "We had a ladder to go down by," said he, "and here we are jumping out of the window!" It was the same sentiment of patriotism, mingled with a certain almost mystical enthusiasm for the great personality of Napoleon, nourished and augmented with growing years, which made him accept the events of 1851-2 and the new Empire.
The religion of Béranger, which was so anti-Catholic, and which seems even to have dispensed with Christianity, reduced itself to a vague Deism, which in principle had too much the air of a pleasantry. HisDieu des bonnes gens, which he opposed to the God of the congregation and the preachers, could not be taken seriously by any one. Nevertheless, the poet, as he grew older, grew more and more attached to this symbol of a Deity, indulgent before all else, but very real and living, and in whom the poor and the suffering could put their trust. What passed in the days preceding his death has been much discussed, and many stories are told about it. He received, in fact, some visits from the curate of the parish of Saint Elizabeth, in which he lived. This curate had formerly officiated at Passy,—a little village near Paris, where Béranger had resided,—and was already acquainted with the poet. The conversations at these visits, according to the testimony of those best informed, amounted to very little; and the last time the curate came, just as he was going out, Béranger, already dying, said to him, "Your profession gives you the right to bless me; I also bless you;—pray for me, and for all the unfortunate!" The priest and the old man exchanged blessings,—the benedictions of two honest men, and nothing more.
Béranger had one rare quality, and it was fundamental with him,—obligingness, readiness to perform kind offices, humanity carried to the extent of Charity. He loved to busy himself for others. To some one who said that time lay heavy on his hands, he answered, "Then you have never occupied yourself about other people?" "Take more thought of others than of yourself" was his maxim. And he did so occupy himself,—not out of curiosity, but to aid, to succor with advice and with deeds. His time belonged to everybody,—to the humblest, the poorest, the first stranger who addressed him and told him his sorrows. Out of a very small income (at most, four or five thousand francs a year) he found means to give much. He loved, above all, to assist poor artisans, men of the people, who appealed to him; and he did it always without wounding the fibre of manhood in them. He loved everything that wore a blouse. He had, even stronger than the love of liberty, the love of equality, the great passion of the French.
He spent the last years of his life with an old friend of his youth by the name of Madame Judith. This worthy person died a few months before him, and he accompanied her remains to the church. He was seventy-seven years old when he died.
Estimating and comparing chiefly literary and poetic merits, some persons in France have been astonished that the obsequies of Béranger should have been so magnificently celebrated, while, but a few months before, the coffin of another poet, M. Alfred de Musset, had been followed by a mere handful of mourners; yet M. de Musset was capable of tones and flights which in inspiration and ardor surpassed the habitual range of Béranger. Without attempting here to institute a comparison, there is one thing essential to be remarked: in Béranger there was not only a poet, but a man, and the man in him was more considerable than the poet,—the reverse of what is the case with so many others. People went to see him, after having heard his songs sung, to tell him how much they had been applauded and enjoyed,—and, after the first compliments, found that the poet was a man of sense, a good talker on all subjects, interested in politics, a wonderful reasoner, with great knowledge of men, and characterizing them delicately with a few fine and happy touches. They became sincerely attached to him; they came again, and delighted to draw out in talk that wisdom armed with epigram, that experience full of agreeable counsels. His passions had been the talent of the poet; his good sense gave authority to the man. Even by those least willing to accept popular idols, Béranger will always be ranked as one of the subtilest wits of the French school, and as something more than this,—as one of the acutest servants of free human thought.
How runs the Hindoo saw? "Are we not to milk when there is a cow?" When India is giving down generous streams of paragraphy to all the greedy buckets of the press, shall we not hold our pretty pail under? As our genial young friend, Ensign Isnob, of the "Sappies and Minors," would say,—"I believe you, me boy!"
Then come with us to Cossitollah, and we'll have a tiffin of talk; some cloves of adventure, with a capsicum or two of tragic story, shall stand for the curry; the customs of the country may represent the familiar rice; a whiff of freshness and fragrance from the Mofussil will be as the mangoes and the dorians; in the piquancy and grotesqueness of the first pure Orientalism that may come to hand we shall recognize the curious chow-chow of the chutney; and as for the beer,—why, we will be the beer ourselves.
"Kitmudgar, remove that scorpion from the punka, before it drops into the Sahib's plate.—Hold, miscreant! who told you to kill it?
"'Take it up tenderly,Lift it with care,—Fashioned so slenderly,Young, and so fair!'
"For know, O Kitmudgar, that there is one beauty of women, and another beauty of scorpions; and if the beauty of scorpions be to thee as the ugliness of women, the fault is in thy godless eye.
"'Only a crawling kafir,' sayest thou, O heathen! and straightway goest about to stick a fork into a political symbol? Verily, the hapless wretch shall be sacrificed unto Agnee, god of Fire, that a timely warning may enter into thy purblind soul!
"Here, take this bottle of brandy,—'Sahibbrandy,' you perceive,—genuine old 'London Dock,'—and pour a cordon of ardent spirits on the table, to 'weave a circle round him thrice.' So! that's for British Ascendency!
"Now drop your subjugated brother into the midst thereof. See how, in his senseless, drunken rage, he wriggles and squirms,—then desperately dashes, and venomously snaps! That's Indian Revolt!
"Quickly, now! light the train; so!—What think you of Anglo-Saxon power and hereditary pride?
"Oho, my Kitmudgar! you begin to understand!—the living fable is not lost on you!
"But watch your Great Mogul! Barrackpore, Meerut, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Delhi,—five imposing plunges, but impotent; for at every point the Sahib's fatal fire, fire, fire, fire, fire!—insurmountable, all-subduing 'destiny'!
"Maimed, discomfited, dismayed, shivering, at wits' end, a crippled wriggler, in the midst of the exulting flames,—there lies your Great Mogul!
"But see!—the scorpion, brave wretch! with a gladiator's fortitude, loosens the shameful coil in which its last agonies have twisted it, fiercely erects its head once more, lashes defiantly with its tail, and then—_click! click! click!—_stings itself to death.
"And with that ends our figure of speech; for only the pitifulness of the defeat is the Great Mogul's; the sublimity of suicide is proper to the scorpion alone.
"Take away the fable, Kitmudgar!"
I lay in bed this morning half an hour after the sun had risen, watching my Parsee neighbor on his house-top, and thereby lost my drive on the Esplanade. But I console myself with imagining that the pretty Chee-chee spinster who comes every morning from Raneemoody Gully in a green tonjon, and makes romantic eyes at me through the silk curtains, missed the Boston gentleman with the gray moustache, and was lonesome.
My Parsee neighbor is quite as fat, but by no means as saucy, as ever. Last week his youngest boy died,—little Kirsajee Samsajee Bonnarjee, a contemplative young fire-worshipper, with eyes as profound as the philosophy of Zoroaster. I saw the dismal procession depart from the house, and my heart ached for the little Gheber.
Four awful creatures, that were like ghosts, clad all in white, solemnly dumb and veiled, bore him away on an iron bier. When they arrived at the drawbridge, great sheets of copper were spread before them, and they crossed upon those; for wood is sacred to their adored Element, and the touch of "them on whose shoulders the dead doth ride" would pollute it.
So they carried little Kirsajee to Golgotha, their Place of Skulls, which is a dreary, treeless field, encompassed round about with a blank wall; and they laid him naked in a stone trough on the edge of a great pit, and left him there, betaking them, still solemnly veiled and mute, to their homes again.
All but my Parsee neighbor; he went and sat him down, like Hagar in the wilderness, over against the dead Kirsajee, "a good way off, as it were a bowshot"; and he lifted up his voice, and wept for the lad that was dead. But still he waited there, till the crows and the Brahminee kites should come to perform the last horrid rites; for to Parsee custom the sepulture most becoming to men and most acceptable to God is in the stomachs of the fowls of the air, in the craws of ghoulish vultures and sacrilegious crows.
And presently there came a great Pondicherry eagle, sniffing the feast from afar; and he came alone. Swiftly sailing, poised on silent wings, he circled over Golgotha, circle within circle, circle below circle, over the child sleeping naked, over the father watching veiled.
One moment he flutters, as for a foothold on the pinnacle of his purpose; then
"Like a thunderbolt he falls."
Sitting solemnly on the breast of the dead boy, the "grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird" peers with sidelong glance into his face, gloating; and then—
Immediately my Parsee neighbor uprises in his place, throws aside his veil, and, shouting, runs forward. The Pondicherry eagle soars screaming to the clouds, and the sorrow-stricken Gheber bends over the dear corpse. Is it Heaven or Hell?the right eye or the left?Alas, the left!
He beats his breast, he falls upon his knees, and cries with frantic gestures to the setting Sun; but the sullen god only draws a cloud before his face, and leaves his poor worshipper to despair. Then my Parsee neighbor arises and girds up his loins, muffles his haggard face more closely than before, and with dishevelled beard, and chin sadly sunk upon his breast, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, and meeting no man's gaze, wends silently homeward.
To-morrow he will take his wife and go to Bombay, to feed with consecrated sandal-wood and oil the Sacred Flame the Magi brought from Persia, when they were driven thence with all their people to Ormuz. But the name of little Kirsajee will cross their lips no more; his memory is a forbidden thing in the household; he is as if he never had been.
When Brahminee kite, and adjutant, and white-breasted crow have done their ghoulish office on little Kirsajee, his bones shall lie bleaching under the pitiless eye of his people's blazing god, till the rains come, and fill the pit, and carry the waste of Gheber skeletons by subterraneous sewers down to the sea. But the Pondicherry eagle took theleft eyefirst; wherefore the most pious deeds of merit, to be performed by my Parsee neighbor,—even a hospital for maimed dogs, or feeding the Sacred Flame with great store of sandal-wood and precious gums, or tilling the earth with a diligence equivalent to the efficacy of ten thousand prayers,—can hardly suffice to save the soul of little Kirsajee, the Forbidden!
* * * * *
There is a blood-feud of three months' standing between two members of our household.
One day, Lootee, the chuprassey's cat, took Tchoop, the khansamah's monkey, unawares, as he was sunning himself on the house-top, and with scratching and spitting, sudden and furious, so startled him, that he threw himself over the parapet into the crowded Cossitollah, and would have been killed by the fall, had he not chanced to alight on the voluminous turban of a dandy hurkaru from the Mint. As it was, one of his arms sustained a compound fracture, and his nerves suffered so frightful a shock, that it was only by a miracle of surgery, and the most patient nursing, that he was ever restored to his wonted agility and sagacity.
But the day of retribution has arrived; Lootee has had kittens. There were five of them in the original litter; but only one remains. Tchoop tossed two of them from the house-top when no dandy hurkaru from the Mint was below to soften the fall; the old adjutant-bird, that for three years has stood on one leg on the Parsee's godown, gobbled up another as it lay choked in the south veranda; while the dismayed sirdar found the head of a fourth jammed inextricably in the neck of his sacred lotah, wherewith he performs his pious ablutions every morning at the ghaut.
On the other hand, Lootee has made prize of about three inches of Tehoop's tail, and displays it all over the house for a trophy.—It is a blood-feud, fierce and implacable as any between Afghans, and there's no knowing where it will all end.
In Europe the monkey is a cynic, in South America an overworked slave, in Africa a citizen, but in India an imp,—I mean to the eye of the Western stranger, for in the estimation of the native he is mythologically a demigod, and socially a guest. At Ahmedabad, the capital of Guzerat, there are certainly two—Mr. De Ward says three—hospitals for sick and lame monkeys, who are therein provided with salaried physicians, apothecaries, and nurses.
In the famous Hindoo epic, the "Ramayana" of Valmiki,—"by singing and hearing which continually a man may attain to the highest state of enjoyment, and be shortly admitted to fraternity with the gods,"—the exploits of Hoonamunta, the Divine Monkey, are gravely related, with a dramatic force and figurativeness that hold a street audience spell-bound; but to the European imagination the childish drollery of the plot is irrestistible.
Boodhir, the Earth, was beset by giants, demons, and chimeras dire; so she besought Vishnu, with many tears, and vows of peculiar adoration, to put forth his strength of arms and arts against her abominable tormentors, and rout them utterly. The god was gracious; whence his nine avatars, or incarnations,—as fish, as tortoise, as boar, as man-lion, as dwarf Brahmin, as Pursuram,—the Brahmin-warrior who overthrew the Kshatriya, or soldier-caste; the eighth avatar appeared in the person of Krishna, and the ninth in that of Boodh.
But the seventh incarnation was the avatar of Rama, and it is this that the "Ramayana" celebrates.
Vishnu proceeds to be born unto Doosurath, King of Ayodhya, (Oude,) as the Prince Rama, or Ramchundra. Nothing remarkable occurs thereupon until Rama has attained the marriageable age, when he espouses Seeta, daughter of the King of Mithili.
Immediately old Mrs. Mithili, our hero's mother-in-law, being of an intriguing turn of mind, applies herself to the amiable task of worrying the poor old King of Ayodhya out of his crown or his life; and so well does she succeed, that Doosurath, for the sake of peace and quietness, would fain abdicate in favor of his son.
But Rama will have none of his royalty. Was it for bored kings and mischief-making mothers-in-law, he asks, speaking with the ante-natal memories of Vishnu, that he came among the sons of men? Not at all! he has a mission, and he bides his time. For the present he will take his wife Seeta, whose will is his, and go out into the wilderness, there to build him a hut of bamboos and banian-boughs and palmyra-leaves, and be—Seeta and he—two jolly yogees, that is, religious gypsies,—living on grass-roots, wild rice, and white ants, and being dirty and devout to their heart's content.
So they went; and for a little while they enjoyed, undisturbed, their yogeeish ideas of a good time. But by-and-by tidings came to Rawunna—the giant with ten heads and twice ten arms, that was King of Lunka (Ceylon)—of the plots of Mrs. Mithili, the disgust of old Doosurath, the distraction of the kingdom of Ayodhya, and the whimsical adventure of Rama and Seeta.
And immediately Rawunna, the giant, is seized in all his heads and arms with a great longing to know what manner of man this Rama may be, that he should prefer the yogee's breech-cloth to the royal purple, a hut of leaves, with only his Seeta, to a harem of a hundred wives, white ants and paddy to the white camel's flesh and golden partridges of Ayodhya's imperial repasts. Especially is he curious as to the charms of Seeta, as to the mighty magic wherewithal she renders monogamy acceptable to an Ayodhyan prince.
By Indra! he will see for himself! So, pleading exhaustion from the cares of state, and ten headaches of trouble and dyspepsia, he announces his intention to make an excursion a few hundred coss into the country for the benefit of his health; and taking twenty carpet-bags in his hands, he sets out, in his monstrous way, for Ayodhya, leaving his kingdom in the care of a blue dwarf with an eye in the back of his neck.
With seven-coss strides he comes to Ayodhya, and straightway finds the banian hut in the forest, where Rama dwells with Seeta in the devout dirtiness of their jolly yogeery.
The god has gone abroad in search of a dinner, and is over the hills to the sandy nullahs, where the white ants are fattest; while that greasy Joan, Seeta, "doth keel the pot" at home.
Then Rawunna, the giant, assuming the shape of a pilgrim yogee rolling to the Caves of Ellora,—with Gayntree, the mystical text, on his lips, and the shadow of Siva's beard in his soul,—rolls to Rama's door, and cries, "Alms, alms, in the name of the Destroyer!"
And Seeta comes forth, with water in a palm-leaf and grass-roots in the fold of her saree; and when she beholds the false yogee her heart blooms with pity, so that her smile is as the alighting of butterflies, and her voice as the rustling of roses.
But, behold you, as she bends over the prostrate yogee, and, saying, "Drink from the cup of Vishnu!" offers the crisp leaf to his dusty lips, a great spasm of desire impels the impostor; and, flinging off the yogee, he leaps erect, Rawunna, the Abhorred!
With ten mouths he kisses her; with twenty arms he clasps her; and away, away to Lunka! while yet poor Seeta gasps with fear.
When Rama returned and found no Seeta, his soul was seized with a mighty horror; and a blankness, like unto the mystery of Brahm, fell upon his heart. He shed not a tear, but the sky wept floods; he uttered not a groan, but Earth shook from her centre, and the mountains fell on their faces. But Rama, stupefied, stood stock still where he was stricken, and stared, till his eyelids stiffened, at the desolate hut, at the desolate hearth.
Then all the angels in heaven, who had witnessed the crime of Rawunna, and his flight, passed into the forms of monkeys; and a million of them made a monkey chain, that the rest of the celestial host might descend into the banian-groves of Ayodhya. The tails glide swiftly through each glowing hand, and quick as lightning on the trees they stand.
And Hoonamunta, their chief, prostrated himself before Rama, and said, "Behold, my Lord, we are here! I and all my host are yours,—command us!"
But Rama spoke not; he only stood where he was stricken, and stared at his desolation.
Then Hoonamunta turned him to his host, and said, "Bide here till I come, and be silent; break not the quiet of divine sorrow." And he went forth with mighty bounds.
That night he came to Lunka. But the city slept; if Seeta yet lived, she, too, was silent; no cry of sorrow rose on the night; no stir, as of an unusual event, disturbed the stillness and the gloom.
So Hoonamunta took upon himself the form of a rat, and sped nimbly through the huts of dwarfs and the towers of giants, through the hiding-places of misery and the high seats of power, through the places of trouble and the places of ease; till at last he came to an ivory dome, hard by the silver palace of Rawanna, the Monstrous; and there lay Seeta, buried in a profound trance of despair.
Hoonamunta bit, very tenderly, her slender white finger; but she stirred not, she made no sign.
Then he whispered softly in her ear, "Rama comes!" and Seeta started from her death-sleep, and sat erect; her eyes were open, and she cried, "My Lord, I am here!"
So Hoonamunta spake to her, bidding her be of good cheer, for Brahm was with her, and the Omnipotent Three,—bade her be of good heart and wait. And Seeta's smile was as the alighting of many butterflies, and her voice of murmured joy was as the rustling of all the roses of Ayodhya.
Then Hoonamunta took counsel with his cunning; and he said unto himself, "I will arouse the sleepers; I will take the strength of the city; I will count the heads of Rawunna, and the arms of him."
So straightway he resumed his monkey shape, and went forth into the streets, by the tanks and through the bazaars, among the places of the oppressed and the places of the powerful.
And he bit the ears of the Pariah dogs, so that they howled; he twisted the tails of the Brahmin bulls, so that they rushed, bellowing, down to the ghauts; he plucked the beards of gorged adjutants, till they snapped their great beaks with a terrible clatter.
He made a great splashing in the tanks; he ran through the bazaars, banging the gongs of the bell-makers, and smashing the brittle wares of the potters; he tore holes in the roofs of houses, and threw down tiles upon them that were buried in slumber; he cried with a loud voice, "Siva, Siva, the Destroyer, cometh!"
So that the city awoke with a great outcry and a din, with all its torches and all its dogs. And the multitude filled the streets, and the compounds, and the open places round about the tanks; and all cried, "Siva, Siva!"
But when they beheld Hoonamunta, how he tore off roofs, and pelted them with tiles,—how he climbed to the tops of pagodas, and jangled the sacred bells,—how he laid his shoulder to the city walls and overthrew them, so that the noise of their fall was as the roar of the breakers on the far-off coast of Lunka when the Typhoon blows,—then they cried, "A demon! a fiend from the halls of Yama!" and they gave chase with a mighty uproar,—the gooroos, and the yogees, and the jugglers going first.
Then Hoonamunta took counsel with his cunning; and he came down and stood in the midst of the angry people, and asked, "What would you with me? and where is this demon you pursue?"
But they cried, "Hear him, how he mocks us! Hear him, how he flouts us!" and they dragged him into the presence of Rawunna, the king.
And when the giant would have questioned him, who he was, and whence he came, and what his mission, he only mocked, and mimicked the fee-faw-fumness of Rawunna's tones, and said, "Lo! This beggar goes a-foot, but his words ride in a palanquin!"
And the king said, "I have been foolish, I have been weak, to waste words on this kafir. Am not I a mighty monarch? Am not I a terrible giant? Let him be cast out!"
And again Hoonamunta mocked him, saying, "His insanity is past! fetch him the rice-pounder that he may gird himself! fetch him the gong that he may cover his feet!"
And Hoonamunta would have sat on the throne, on Rawunna's right hand; but Rawunna thrust him off, and cursed him.
So Hoonamunta took his tail in his hand, and pulled and pulled; and the tail grew, and grew,—a fathom, a furlong, a whole coss.
And Hoonamunta coiled it on the floor, a lofty coil, on the right hand of the throne, higher and higher, till it overlooked the golden cushion of the king; and Hoonamunta laughed.
Then Rawunna turned him to his counsellors, and said, "What shall we do with this audacious fellow?"
And with one voice all the counsellors cried, "Burn his tremendous tail!"
And the king commanded:—
"Let all the dwarfs of LunkaBring rags from near and far;Call all the dwarfs of LunkaTo soak them all in tar!"
So they went, and brought as many rags as ten strong giants could lift, and a thousand maunds of tar.
And they soaked the rags in the tar, even as Kawunna had commanded, and bound them all at once on the tremendous tail of Hoonamunta.
And when they had done this, the king said, "Lead him forth, and light him!"
And they led him forth into the great Midaun, hard by the triple pagoda; and they lighted his tail with a torch. And immediately the flames leaped to the skies, and the smoke filled all the city.
Then Hoonamunta broke away from his captors, and with a loud laugh started on his fiery race,—over house-tops and hay-ricks, through close bazaars and dry rice-fields, through the porticoes of palaces and the porches of pagodas,—kindling a roaring conflagration as he went.
And all the people pursued him, screaming with fear, imploring mercy, imploring pardon, crying, "Spare us, and we will make you our high-priest! Spare us, and you shall be our king!"
But Hoonamunta staid not, till, having laid half the city in flames, he ascended to the top of a lofty tower to survey his work with satisfaction.
Thither the great men of Lunka followed him,—the princes, and the Brahmins, and the victorious chieftains, the strong giants, and the cunning dwarfs.
And when they were all gathered underneath the tower, and in the porch of it, he shook it, till it fell and crushed a thousand of the first citizens.
Then Hoonamunta sped away northward to Ayodhya, extinguishing his tail in the sea as he went.
And when he came to where his army lay, he found them all waiting in silence. When he entered the hut of Rama, the bereaved one still lay on his face. But Hoonamunta spake softly in his ear: "My Lord, arise! for Seeta calls you, and her heart sickens within her that you come not!"
Immediately Rama uprose, and stood erect, and all the god blazed in his eyes; and he grew in the sight of Hoonamunta until his stature was as the stature of Rawunna, the giant, and his countenance was as the countenance of Indra, King of Heaven.
And he went forth, and stood at the head of Hoonamunta's monkey host, and called for a sword; and when they gave him one, it became alive in his hand, and was a sword of flame; and when they gave him a spear, lo! it became his slave, flying whithersoever he bade it, and striking where he listed.
So Rama and Hoonamunta, with all their monkey host, took up their march for Lunka.
When they came to the sea (which is the Gulf of Manaar) there was no bridge; but Rama mounted the back of Hoonamunta, and called to the host to follow him; and all the monkeys leaped across.
Then immediately they fell upon Lunka; and Rama slew Rawunna, theMonster, and rescued the delighted Seeta.
And now those three sit together on a throne in heaven,—Seeta, the faithful wife, on the left hand of Rama,—and Hoonamunta on his right hand, the shrewd and courageous friend.