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Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Eznik

Eznik, a writer of the fifth century, b. at Golp, in the province of Taikh, a tributary valley of the Chorokh, in Northern Armenia. He was a pupil of Isaac, the catholicos, and of Mesrop. At their request he went first to Edessa, then to Constantinople to perfect himself in the various sciences and to collect or copy Syriac and Greek manuscripts of the Bible, and the writings of the Fathers of the Church. He returned to Armenia after the Council of Ephesus (431), and is probably identical with Eznik, Bishop of Bagrevand, who took part in the Synod of Artashat in 449. In addition to his labors in connection with the new version of the Bible (see Versions of the Bible) and various translations, he composed several works, the principal of which is his remarkable treatise "Against the Sects". It was written between 441 and 449, and contains four books or chapters. In the first, against the heathens, Eznik combats the eternity of matter and the substantial existence of evil. In the second he refutes the chief doctrines of Parseeism. The third is directed against the Greek philosophers (Pythagoreans, Platonists, Peripatetics, Stoics, and Epicureans), the writer taking his arguments from the

Bible rather than from reason. The fourth book is an exposition and refutation of Marcionism. In the work Eznik displays much acumen and an extensive erudition. He was evidently as familiar with Persian as with Greek literature. His Armenian diction is of the choicest classical type, although the nature of his subject-matter forced him to use quite a number of Greek words. The work "Against the Sects" was first published at Smyrna in 1762; again, much more correctly and from several manuscripts, by the Mechitarists at Venice in 1826 and in 1865. An indifferent French translation was made by LeVaillant de Florival, "Refutation des differentes sectes", etc. (Paris, 1853). A good German translation is that by J. M. Schmid, "Eznik von Kolb, Wider die Sekten" (Leipzig, 1900). Langlois published a general introduction to the whole treatise and a translation of part of book II (section 5, 1-11, containing Magism) in his "Collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'Armenie", II, pp. 371 sq. Eznik is also the author of a short collection of moral precepts, printed with his more important treatise.

H. HYVERNAT

title: Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Eznik


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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Boston

BOSTON (see ). The pop. of the area incorporated as the “City of Boston” was in 1920, 748,060; in 1910, 670,585, an increase of 77,475 or 11.6%, being by far the smallest percentage of increase in the history of the city, and the smallest numerical increase for 50 years. But the two figures are not precisely comparable, as the municipal area was increased from 43 to 48 sq. m. in 1912 by the inclusion of Hyde Park which in 1910 had a pop. of 15,507. During the five years 1915-20 the increase of pop. was less than 1%. The “metropolitan area,” constituted by the Legislature of Massachusetts for certain purposes of common action, includes in addition to municipal Boston 38 adjacent

cities and towns and had in 1920 a pop. of 1,641,756 (according to the provisional U.S. census returns), and in 1910 1,423,439. The percentage of pop. in “the city” as compared with that of the “metropolitan” area thus decreased from 47.8% in 1910 to 45.5% in 1920.

Buildings, Libraries and Museums. — In 1910 the old Museum of Fine Arts was demolished and on the site was erected the Copley Plaza Hotel, built at a cost of $3,800,000 and opened in 1911. The new building of the Museum of Fine Arts, erected on Huntington Ave., was opened Nov. 15 1909, and a second section opened Feb. 3 1915, the total cost at that time being $3,900,000. To the State House east and west wings were added during 1914-9, at a cost approximating $3,000,000. John Sargent's series of panels in the public library was practically completed in 1916, when he added a third sequence, the “Theme of the Madonna.” In Jan. 1919 the public library contained 1,197,498 volumes (922,348 in Jan. 1908). It continued to be the largest free circulating library in the world, with a circulation of 2,300,732 for 1919 (1,529,111 for 1907). The New England Conservatory of Music remained the largest in the United States, having in 1919 3,700 students. The Boston Opera House was erected on Huntington Ave. in 1909.

History and Finance. — Boston, as a metropolitan district, has retained much of the institutional structure of the old towns which have grown together and become consolidated for certain purposes by legislation. Several things have happened in the 10 years 1910-20 indicating a drift toward political unification. What was called the “Boston 1915” movement resulted in better business leadership, in more ample support given to the chamber of commerce and other trade bodies; and legislation looking toward a unified harbour place. A new charter adopted in 1909 gave to the city a small council (9 members) elected “at large.” In 1920, under the leadership of Mayor Peters, a first effort was made to consolidate the several independent cities and towns under a “Greater Boston” charter. In many ways the whole metropolitan district had developed the habit of acting together, as was exemplified in the Liberty Loan and Victory Loan drives, the results of which were as follows: First Liberty Loan $133,790,360; Second Liberty Loan $147,259,650; Third Liberty Loan, $77,202,500; Fourth Liberty Loan, $139,008,150; Victory Loan, $83,852,700; total amount subscribed $581,113,350.

 * (Author:Frederick Albert Cleveland)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Boston


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Author:Frederick Albert Cleveland

Works

 * Growth of Democracy in the United States (1898)
 * Funds and their Uses (1902)
 * First Lessons in Finance (1903)
 * The Bank and the Treasury (1905)
 * Railroad Promotion and Capitalization in the United States (1908)
 * Chapters on Municipal Administration and Accounting (1909)
 * Railroad Finance (1912)
 * Organized Democracy (1913)
 * American Citizenship (1927)
 * Modern Scientific Knowledge (1929)

title: Author:Frederick Albert Cleveland


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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Buckle, George Earle

BUCKLE, GEORGE EARLE (1854-), English editor and man of letters, was born at Tiverton-on-Avon, Som., June 10 1854, eldest son of Canon George Buckle of Wells. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, being a scholar of his college, and graduated first class both in literae humaniores (1876) and in modern history (1877). He won the Newdigate prize poem in 1875. In 1877 he was elected to a fellowship at All Souls College, which he held until 1885. In 1880 he joined the staff of The Times; four years later, at the age of thirty, he succeeded Thomas Chenery as its editor. This position he occupied for nearly thirty years, retiring in Aug. 1912. When Mr. Monypenny, the biographer originally entrusted with the official Life of Disraeli, died in 1912 leaving his task unfinished, Mr. Buckle took over the work of completing it; under his authorship vol. 3 was published in 1914, vol. 4 in 1916, and the concluding vols. 5 and 6 in 1920.


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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Budapest

BUDAPEST (see ). In 1910 the civil pop. of Budapest was 863,735, showing an increase of 20.55% in the decade. To this must be added a garrison of 16,636 men, making a total pop. of 880,371. Of the total pop. 756,070 were Magyars, 78,882 Germans, 20,359 Slovaks and the small remainder was composed of Poles, Ruthenians, Serbs, Croatians, Rumanians and others. According to religion there were 526,175 Roman Catholics, 9,428 Greek Catholics, 6,962 Greek Orthodox, 86,990 were Protestants of the Helvetic and 43,562 of the Augsburg Confessions, 203,687 were Jews and the remainder belonged to various other creeds. During the World War the extraordinary increase in the population of Budapest diminished, the census Jan. 1 1921 showing a pop. of 1,184,616.

In the years immediately preceding the war there were over 6,000 students at the university, and from 4,000 to 5,000 at the Polytechnic Institute. A new faculty of political economy was founded at the university in 1919, and the Geological and Meteorological Institutes are also of recent foundation.

The new Tisher rampart in Romanesque-Gothic transition style, with a bronze statue of St. Stephen, rises round the Matthias church. At the N. extremity of the fortress is the Gothic building of the National Archives, unfinished in 1921.

The development of Budapest came to a standstill during the war, and the lack of housing accommodation caused great distress among the increased population. The city suffered

severely during the Bolshevist ascendancy, and many robberies were committed by the Rumanian troops who occupied it in disregard of the decisions of the other Allied Powers (see ). Fortunately, the English, American and Italian missions prevented the sacking of the museums and art galleries.

See Eugen Cholnoky, “The Geographical Position of Budapest,” Bulletin of the Hungarian Geographical Society, 1914–20, abridged.

title: 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Budapest


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 HIS is a little story which was told me by Yves. It happened one evening when he had gone into the Roads to carry in his gunboat a cargo of convicts to the transport vessel which was to take them to New Caledonia.

Among them was a very old convict (seventy at least), who carried with him very tenderly a poor sparrow in a small cage.

Yves, to pass the time, had entered into conversation with this old fellow, who had not, it appears, a bad face, but who was tied by his chain to a young gentleman—ignoble-looking, sneering, with the glasses of the short-sighted on a small, pale nose.

An old highwayman arrested for the fifth or sixth time for vagabondage and robbery, he said he was. "How can a man avoid stealing when he has once commenced, and when he has no trade whatever, and when people won't have anything to do with him anywhere? He must, must n't he? My last sentence was for a sack of


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60 potatoes which I took in a field with a wagoner's whip and a pumpkin. Might n't they have allowed me to die in France, I ask you, instead of sending me down there, old as I am?" . . . And then, quite happy at finding that somebody was willing to listen to him with sympathy, he showed to Yves his most precious possession in the world, the little cage and the sparrow.

The sparrow was quite tame, and knew his voice, and for more than a year had lived with him in his cell, perched on his shoulder. . . . Ah, it was not without trouble he had obtained permission to take it with him to New Caledonia, and then, he had besides to make for it a cage which would be suitable for the voyage, to procure some wood, a little old wire, and a little green paint to paint the whole and make it pretty.

Here I recall the very words of Yves. "Poor sparrow! It had for food in its cage a piece of that gray bread which is given in prisons, but it had the appearance of being quite happy, nevertheless. It jumped about just like any other bird."

Some hours afterward, when they reached the transport vessel and the convicts were about to embark for their long voyage, Yves, who had forgotten this old man, passed once more by chance near him.

"Here, take it," said the old man, with a voice that had altogether changed, holding out to him


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Rh his little cage, "I give it to you. You may, perhaps, find some use for it; perhaps it may give you pleasure."

"Certainly not," replied Yves. "On the contrary, you must take it with you. It will be your little comrade down there."

"Oh," replied the old man, "he is no longer inside. You did n't know that; you did n't hear then? He is no longer there," and two tears of indescribable misery ran down his cheeks.

Through a lurch of the vessel the door of the cage had opened; the sparrow took fright, flew out, and immediately fell into the sea because of its cut wing. Oh, what a moment of horrible grief to see it fight and die, swept away by the rapid current, and he all the time helpless to rescue it. At first, by a natural impulse, he wished to cry out for help; to address himself to Yves; to implore him. . . . But the impulse was immediately stopped by the recollection and consciousness of his personal degradation. An old wretch like him! Who would be ready to hear the prayer of such as he? Could he ever imagine that the ship would be stopped to fish up a drowning sparrow the poor bird of a convict? The idea was absurd. Accordingly he remained silent in his place, looking at the little gray body as it disappeared on the foam of the sea, struggling to the end. He felt terribly lonely now, and for ever, and great tears of


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62 and supreme despair dimmed his eyes. Meantime, the young gentleman with the eyeglasses, his chain-fellow, laughed to see an old man weep.

Now that the bird was no longer there, he did not wish to preserve its cage, made with so much solicitude for the lonely dead bird. He offered it to this good soldier who had condescended to listen to his story, anxious to leave him this legacy before departing for his long and last voyage.

And Yves sadly had accepted the empty cage as a present, so that he might not cause any more pain to this old abandoned wretch by appearing to disdain this thing which had cost him so much labor.

I feel that I have not been able to do full justice to all the sadness that there was in this story as it was told me.

It was evening and very late, and I was about to go to bed. I, who had in the course of my life seen with little emotion so many loud-sounding sorrows and dramas and deaths, perceived with astonishment that the distress of this old man tore my heart, and even threatened to disturb my sleep.

"I wonder," said I, "if means could be found of sending him another?"

"Yes," replied Yves, "I also thought of that. I thought of buying him a beautiful bird at a


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Rh and bringing it back to him to-morrow with the little cage if there were time to do so before his departure. It would be a little difficult. Moreover, you are the only person who could go into the Roads to-morrow and go on board the transport to find out this old man; and I do not even know his name. And, then, would not people think it very odd?"

"Ah, yes, certainly. As to its being thought odd, there cannot be any mistake about that." And for a moment I dwelt with pleasure upon the idea, laughing that good inner laugh which scarcely appears upon the surface.

However, I did not follow up the project, and the following morning when I awoke, and with the first impression gone, the thing appeared to me childish and ridiculous. This disappointment was not one of those which a mere plaything could console. The poor old convict, all alone in the world the most beautiful bird in Paradise would never replace for him the humble gray little sparrow with cut wing, reared on prison bread, who had been able to awake once more in him a tenderness infinitely sweet, and to draw tears from a heart that was hardened and half-dead.


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 HAD entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity-venders, who are called marchands de bric-à-brac in that Parisian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere in France.

You have doubtless glanced occasionally through the windows of some of these shops, which have become so numerous now that it is fashionable to buy antiquated furniture, and that every petty stockbroker thinks he must have his chambre au may en âge.

There is one thing there which clings alike to the shop of the dealer in old iron, the wareroom of the tapestry-maker, the laboratory of the chemist, and the studio of the painter:—in all those gloomy dens where a furtive daylight filters in through the window-shutters, the most manifestly ancient thing is dust;—the cobwebs are more authentic than the guimp laces; and the old pear-tree furniture on exhibition is actually younger than the mahogany which arrived but yesterday from America.


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68 The warehouse of my bric-à-brac dealer was a veritable Capharnaum; all ages and all nations seemed to have made their rendezvous there; an Etruscan lamp of red clay stood upon a Boule cabinet, with ebony panels, brightly striped by lines of inlaid brass; a duchess of the court of Louis XV. nonchalantly extended her fawn-like feet under a massive table of the time of Louis XIII. with heavy spiral supports of oak, and carven designs of chimeras and foliage intermingled.

Upon the denticulated shelves of several sideboards glittered immense Japanese dishes with red and blue designs relieved by gilded hatching; side by side with enamelled works by Bernard Palissy, representing serpents, frogs, and lizards in relief.

From disembowelled cabinets escaped cascades of silver-lustrous Chinese silks and waves of tinsel, which an oblique sunbeam shot through with luminous beads; while portraits of every era, in frames more or less tarnished, smiled through their yellow varnish.

The striped breastplate of a damascened suit of Milanese armor glittered in one corner; Loves and Nymphs of porcelain; Chinese Grotesques, vases of céladon and crackle-ware; Saxon and old Sèvres cups, encumbered the shelves and nooks of the apartment.

The dealer followed me closely through the


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Rh tortuous way contrived between the piles of furniture; warding off with his hand the hazardous sweep of my coat-skirts; watching my elbows with the uneasy attention of an antiquarian and a usurer.

It was a singular face, that of the merchant:—an immense skull, polished like a knee, and surrounded by a thin aureole of white hair, which brought out the clear salmon tint of his complexion all the more strikingly, lent him a false aspect of patriarchal bonhomie, counteracted, however, by the scintillation of two little yellow eyes which trembled in their orbits like two louis-d'or upon quicksilver. The curve of his nose presented an aquiline silhouette, which suggested the Oriental or Jewish type. His hands—thin, slender, full of nerves which projected like strings upon the finger-board of a violin, and armed with claws like those on the terminations of bats' wings—shook with senile trembling; but those convulsively agitated hands became firmer than steel pincers or lobsters' claws when they lifted any precious article,—an onyx cup, a Venetian glass, or a dish of Bohemian crystal. This strange old man had an aspect so thoroughly rabbinical and cabalistic that he would have been burnt on the mere testimony of his face three centuries ago.

"Will you not buy something from me to-day, sir? Here is a Malay kreese with a blade


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70 like flame: look at those grooves contrived for the blood to run along, those teeth set backward so as to tear out the entrails in withdrawing the weapon,—it is a fine character of ferocious arm, and will look well in your collection: this two-handed sword is very beautiful,—it is the work of Josepe de la Hera; and this colichemarde, with its fenestrated guard,—what a superb specimen of handicraft!"

"No; I have quite enough weapons and instruments of carnage;—I want a small figure, something which will suit me as a paper-weight, for I cannot endure those trumpery bronzes which the stationers sell, and which may be found on everybody's desk."

The old gnome foraged among his ancient wares, and finally arranged before me some antique bronzes,—so-called, at least; fragments of malachite; little Hindoo or Chinese idols,—a kind of poussah toys in jade-stone, representing the incarnations of Brahma or Vishnoo, and wonderfully appropriate to the very undivine office of holding papers and letters in place.

I was hesitating between a porcelain dragon, all constellated with warts,—its mouth formidable with bristling tusks and ranges of teeth,—and an abominable little Mexican fetish, representing the god Vitziliputzili au naturel, when I caught sight of a charming foot, which I at first took for a fragment of some antique Venus.


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Rh It had those beautiful ruddy and tawny tints that lend to Florentine bronze that warm living look so much preferable to the gray-green aspect of common bronzes, which might easily be mistaken for statues in a state of putrefaction: satiny gleams played over its rounded forms, doubtless polished by the amorous kisses of twenty centuries; for it seemed a Corinthian bronze, a work of the best era of art,—perhaps moulded by Lysippus himself.

"That foot will be my choice," I said to the merchant, who regarded me with an ironical and saturnine air, and held out the object desired that I might examine it more fully.

I was surprised at its lightness; it was not a foot of metal, but in sooth a foot of flesh,—an embalmed foot,—a mummy's foot: on examining it still more closely the very grain of the skin, and the almost imperceptible lines impressed upon it by the texture of the bandages, became perceptible. The toes were slender and delicate, and terminated by perfectly formed nails, pure and transparent as agates; the great toe, slightly separated from the rest, afforded a happy contrast, in the antique style, to the position of the other toes, and lent it an aerial lightness,—the grace of a bird's foot;—the sole, scarcely streaked by a few almost imperceptible cross lines, afforded evidence that it had never touched the bare ground, and had only come in contact


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72 with the finest matting of Nile rushes, and the softest carpets of panther skin.

"Ha, ha!—you want the foot of the Princess Hermonthis,"—exclaimed the merchant, with a strange giggle, fixing his owlish eyes upon me "ha, ha, ha!—for a paper-weight!—an original idea!—artistic idea! Old Pharaoh would certainly have been surprised had some one told him that the foot of his adored daughter would be used for a paper-weight after he had had a mountain of granite hollowed out as a receptacle for the triple coffin, painted and gilded,—covered with hieroglyphics and beautiful paintings of the Judgment of Souls,"—continued the queer little merchant, half audibly, as though talking to himself!

"How much will you charge me for this mummy fragment?"

"Ah, the highest price I can get; for it is a superb piece: if I had the match of it you could not have it for less than five hundred francs;—the daughter of a Pharaoh! nothing is more rare."

"Assuredly that is not a common article; but, still, how much do you want? In the first place let me warn you that all my wealth consists of just five louis: I can buy anything that costs five louis, but nothing dearer;—you might search my vest pockets and most secret drawers without even finding one poor five-franc piece more."

"Five louis for the foot of the Princess


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Rh ! that is very little, very little indeed; 't is an authentic foot," muttered the merchant, shaking his head, and imparting a peculiar rotary motion to his eyes. "Well, take it, and I will give you the bandages into the bargain," he added, wrapping the foot in an ancient damask rag—' very fine! real damask—Indian damask which has never been redyed; it is strong, and yet it is soft," he mumbled, stroking the frayed tissue with his fingers, through the trade-acquired habit which moved him to praise even an object of so little value that he himself deemed it only worth the giving away.

He poured the gold coins into a sort of mediæval alms-purse hanging at his belt, repeating:

"The foot of the Princess Hermonthis, to be used for a paper-weight!"

Then turning his phosphorescent eyes upon me, he exclaimed in a voice strident as the crying of a cat which has swallowed a fish-bone:

"Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased; he loved his daughter,—the dear man!"

"You speak as if you were a contemporary of his: you are old enough, goodness knows! but you do not date back to the Pyramids of Egypt," I answered, laughingly, from the threshold.

I went home, delighted with my acquisition.

With the idea of putting it to profitable use as soon as possible, I placed the foot of the divine


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1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer

CHURCHILL, WINSTON LEONARD SPENCER (1874-), English statesman (see ). Mr. Churchill's tenure of the presidency of the Board of Trade, from April 1908, was marked by the production of a scheme in the autumn of that year for the setting up of a court of arbitration in labour disputes, consisting of three persons nominated by the Board, respectively from panels of employers, workmen and “persons of eminence and impartiality.” He also welcomed on behalf of the Government an Eight Hours Miners bill. In 1910 he was promoted to the Home Office. Here he had to deal with the dangers arising from the increasing hordes of undesirable aliens who poured into the East End of London. He was present in person at an extraordinary affray in Sidney St., Mile End Road, on Jan. 3 1911, when the police, after a time reinforced by soldiers, were kept at bay for many hours by two foreign burglars who defended themselves in a house with Mauser pistols, and who ultimately perished when the building caught fire and was burnt.

In the autumn of 1911, to the surprise of the public, an exchange of offices was effected between him and Mr. McKenna, and he became First Lord of the Admiralty. Hitherto he had been wont to pose as a disbeliever in the German menace, and an advocate of reductions in British armaments. In Aug. 1908, for instance, he rebuked Lord Cromer for uttering grave words of warning, and ridiculed the bare possibility of an Anglo-German conflict in arms. Early in 1909 he had assisted Mr. Lloyd George in the Cabinet in his unsuccessful endeavour to cut down Mr.

McKenna's estimates. But the Agadir crisis of July 1911 seems to have opened his eyes as it did those of Mr. Lloyd George. At any rate, he spoke at Guildhall on Lord Mayor's Day in a worthy manner; admitting that the growth of the German navy was a main factor in British construction, and pointing out that no power was better able to bear the strain or less likely to fail than Great Britain. Similarly at Glasgow in Feb. 1912 he submitted that naval power to the Germans was a luxury; it was existence to the English, it was expansion to them. “We shall face the future as our ancestors would have faced it, without disquiet, without arrogance, but in solid and inflexible determination.” He had in the previous month announced the establishment of a naval war staff, and in the autumn he reorganized the internal administration of his office. The same tone was maintained in his speech on introducing the naval estimates. If any one nation, he said, were able to back the strongest fleet with an overwhelming army, the whole world would be in jeopardy. Great Britain must never conduct her affairs so that the navy of any one power could engage her at any moment with a reasonable prospect of success. He announced a complete reorganization of the navy, which was to be grouped in four fleets, three being for home defence, based on home ports (the third being the Atlantic fleet previously based on Gibraltar), and the fourth, based on Gibraltar, to operate either in home waters or in the Mediterranean. The significance of this new orientation was at once perceived. It was hailed with satisfaction by the Unionists, but the pure economists complained that he had thrown sobriety and thrift to the winds. These changes were mainly due to the inspiration of Lord Fisher, and of Sir Arthur Wilson, Lord Fisher's successor as First Sea Lord. There was a slight decline of £300,000 in the total of these estimates; but this was merely a pause after the £12,000,000 increase of the past three years; and by the summer a new German navy law necessitated a supplementary estimate of about a million. In 1913 there was a further increase of about a million and a quarter. Once more a supplementary estimate, largely due to aircraft development, added two millions and a half; and in 1914 Mr. Churchill introduced the highest estimates hitherto on record, £51,550,000 — an increase on the total of 1913 of some two millions and three-quarters. He grasped, moreover, at an early date the vital importance of oil fuel, and forwarded eagerly the arrangement by which oil was to be obtained for the navy from Persia. Meanwhile, he had thrown out, on the estimates of 1913, a hint to Germany that all naval Powers might well take a year's holiday from shipbuilding; but, though he repeated and emphasized his plea for this “naval holiday” in a speech in the autumn of 1913, it met with no response from Berlin. Large as the estimate for 1914 was, it was attacked by naval experts as inadequate.

There would perhaps have been more general satisfaction with the results of Mr. Churchill's undoubtedly energetic and patriotic administration at the Admiralty, if he had not shown himself so vehement a partisan in internal politics. But he was in the van of controversy over the Parliament bill, over Home Rule, and especially over the Ulster resistance. “Full steam ahead” was his motto for his party in the turbulent session of 1911. In Feb. 1912 he made a daring incursion into Ulster, in order to advocate Home Rule at Belfast; but he was wise enough to give up his original intention of making the Ulster Hall, with its Orange and Protestant associations, the scene of his meeting, and also to represent the Government plan as an integral part of parliamentary devolution. He developed this line of argument when moving the second reading of the Home Rule bill in April, and at Dundee in the autumn outlined a general policy under which England would be cut up into self-governing areas. But both in the House and at Dundee he emphatically declared that Ulster, though she had a claim to special treatment, must not be allowed to bar the way. Next year he declared at Dundee in Oct. that, if a single province could interpose a “bully's veto,” constitutional and peaceful agitation would be discredited throughout the British Empire and the civilized world. But the speech which most exasperated his political opponents was one which he delivered at Bradford in March 1914, just after

the incident of the Curragh. Against any attempt in action to subvert parliamentary government, there was no lawful measure, he said, from which ministers would or could shrink. If British civil and parliamentary systems were to be brought to the challenge of force, he could only say “Let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof.” His dispositions of naval forces in the Irish Channel were bitterly resented by the Unionists, who accused him of being in a “plot” to provoke Ulster to armed resistance and then coerce her. In return, he described these accusations as “a vote of censure by the criminal classes on the police,” and averred that the measures taken were purely precautionary.

These controversies were stilled by the war. Here Mr. Churchill showed that he appreciated the situation better than the majority of his colleagues. On Monday, July 20, at Spithead, there was a great review by the King of the most powerful fleet ever assembled, numbering some 200 vessels in all, manned by 70,000 officers and men. While the ships were still engaged in tactical exercises, Austria's ultimatum to Serbia was issued (July 23) and the 12 anxious days which culminated in the World War began. In the ordinary course the fleet would have been demobilized at the close of the week; but with the outlook so disturbed, the First Lord and the First Sea Lord (Prince Louis of Battenberg, afterwards Lord Milford Haven) took the responsibility of keeping it on a war footing, ready for action. Hence, when the rupture occurred, the fleet was already at its stations in the North Sea, and Adml. Jellicoe was promptly appointed commander-in-chief. The Expeditionary Force was conveyed across the Channel in perfect safety, and its communications safeguarded; and the German mercantile marine was soon cleared from the seas. But there were some naval disasters for which the public were not prepared. The German battle cruiser “Goeben” eluded the British Mediterranean fleet and got safely into the Sea of Marmora; three British cruisers were sunk by submarines in the North Sea; and a British squadron under Adml. Cradock was heavily defeated by a German squadron off the coast of Chile. Prince Louis of Battenberg, a most patriotic and capable sailor, unjustly attacked because of his German origin, tendered his resignation as First Sea Lord, and Mr. Churchill put in his place the indefatigable veteran, Lord Fisher. Meanwhile Mr. Churchill heartened his countrymen by patriotic speeches at a non-party meeting in the London Opera House in Sept., and at Guildhall in November. He rushed to Antwerp when there were hopes of saving it from the Germans, but though he exerted himself indefatigably both in diplomacy and in the actual work of defence, and sent a British naval division to help, the effort was in vain. When a war council was formed on Nov. 25, he was one of the original members and, along with the Prime Minister and Lord Kitchener, bore the main responsibility. The naval situation was sensibly relieved by the destruction in Dec. by Adml. Sturdee, off the Falkland Islands, of the German squadron which had defeated Cradock, and by a successful action under Adml. Beatty in Feb. 1915 off the Dogger Bank. On the other hand, German sporadic attacks by sea and air on British watering places and the increasing activity of German submarines gave Mr. Churchill and the Admiralty much concern. He determined to treat prisoners captured from submarines, in view of their breaches of the laws of war, with more severity than ordinary prisoners; but the Germans retaliated harshly on the most noteworthy English prisoners in their hands, and Mr. Balfour, on succeeding Mr. Churchill, gave up this discrimination. But Mr. Churchill's great coup in the war was the attack on the Dardanelles, which he pressed forward in spite of the increasing reluctance of Lord Fisher. The idea was a captivating one, and an appeal from the Russians for help in that quarter was difficult to resist. It is arguable, and he was disposed to maintain, that the movement would have succeeded if resolutely pushed by those in command, both in the initial stage, when it was a purely naval attack, and in the later stage, when considerable military forces had been landed and fought many desperate fights. But, in fact, it failed; and the friction engendered between the First Lord and the First Sea Lord was one of the causes which drove

Mr. Asquith to invite the Unionists in May to join in a Coalition Government. A change at the Admiralty was imperative. Mr. Churchill had shown enormous vigour, industry, imagination and patriotism; but insufficient judgment and discretion. He was transferred to the sinecure office of the Duchy of Lancaster, but held it only till Nov., when, on the appointment of a small war committee of the Cabinet from which he was excluded, he resigned, being unwilling to accept a position of general responsibility for war policy if he had no effective control. He placed himself at the disposal of the military authorities and was sent to France as a major in the Grenadier Guards. He was accordingly little seen in Parliament for the next year or more, though he was in his place to criticize the navy estimates of his successor Mr. Balfour, to reproach him for want of energy, and to recommend the recall of Lord Fisher.

The report of the Dardanelles commission, which was published in March 1917, confirmed the view of the public that some of the blame for that mismanaged enterprise rightly attached to Mr. Churchill. It was therefore with surprise and some disapproval that people found Mr. Lloyd George, who appreciated his powers, admitting him into his Government in July 1917 as Minister of Munitions, a post in which he did good work for a year and a half, but did not come specially before the public. After the war, however, when Mr. Lloyd George reconstructed his Government, he became Secretary of State both for War and for Air, a conjunction of offices which was much criticized. As War Minister he had the gigantic task of demobilizing armies of between four and five millions who had been in the war, of providing armies of occupation and forces for immediate garrisoning of the Empire, of building up an after-war army, and of re-creating the territorial army. He made considerable progress in the following two years, but he was greatly criticized for the size of his estimates, and especially for the large forces retained in Mesopotamia and Palestine. On Lord Milner's retirement in the spring of 1921 he succeeded him as Secretary of State for the Colonies; and a new arrangement was made by which the responsibility for Mesopotamia and Palestine was taken over by the Colonial Office. Mr. Churchill went out to Egypt, and held in Cairo a conference of the British civil and military officers then administering those countries. On his return, he outlined to Parliament a scheme by which the cost might be greatly reduced, mainly through the transference of authority to Arab chiefs.

He and his wife had a son and three daughters. His mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, divorced her second husband, George Cornwallis-West, in 1913; and married in 1918, as her third husband, Montague Phippen Porch, formerly a Government official in Nigeria. She died June 29 1921. (G. E. B.)


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74 Princess Hermonthis upon a heap of papers scribbled over with verses, in themselves an undecipherable mosaic work of erasures; articles freshly begun; letters forgotten, and posted in the table drawer instead of the letter-box,—an error to which absent-minded people are peculiarly liable. The effect was charming, bizarre, and romantic.

Well satisfied with this embellishment, I went out with the gravity and pride becoming one who feels that he has the ineffable advantage over all the passers-by whom he elbows, of possessing a piece of the Princess Hermonthis, daughter of Pharaoh.

I looked upon all who did not possess, like myself, a paper-weight so authentically Egyptian, as very ridiculous people; and it seemed to me that the proper occupation of every sensible man should consist in the mere fact of having a mummy's foot upon his desk.

Happily I met some friends, whose presence distracted me in my infatuation with this new acquisition: I went to dinner with them; for I could not very well have dined with myself.

When I came back that evening, with my brain slightly confused by a few glasses of wine, a vague whiff of Oriental perfume delicately titillated my olfactory nerves: the heat of the room had warmed the natron, bitumen, and myrrh in which the paraschistes, who cut open


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Rh the bodies of the dead, had bathed the corpse of the princess;—it was a perfume at once sweet and penetrating,—a perfume that four thousand years had not been able to dissipate.

The Dream of Egypt was Eternity: her odors have the solidity of granite, and endure as long.

I soon drank deeply from the black cup of sleep: for a few hours all remained opaque to me; Oblivion and Nothingness inundated me with their sombre waves.

Yet light gradually dawned upon the darkness of my mind; dreams commenced to touch me softly in their silent flight.

The eyes of my soul were opened; and I beheld my chamber as it actually was; I might have believed myself awake, but for a vague consciousness which assured me that I slept, and that something fantastic was about to take place.

The odor of the myrrh had augmented in intensity: and I felt a slight headache, which I very naturally attributed to several glasses of champagne that we had drunk to the unknown gods and our future fortunes.

I peered through my room with a feeling of expectation which I saw nothing to justify: every article of furniture was in its proper place; the lamp, softly shaded by its globe of ground crystal, burned upon its bracket; the water-color


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76 sketches shone under their Bohemian glass; the curtains hung down languidly; everything wore an aspect of tranquil slumber.

After a few moments, however, all this calm interior appeared to become disturbed; the woodwork cracked stealthily; the ash-covered log suddenly emitted a jet of blue flame; and the disks of the pateras seemed like great metallic eyes, watching, like myself, for the things which were about to happen.

My eyes accidentally fell upon the desk where I had placed the foot of the Princess Hermonthis.

Instead of remaining quiet—as behooved a foot which had been embalmed for four thousand years,—it commenced to act in a nervous manner; contracted itself, and leaped over the papers like a startled frog;—one would have imagined that it had suddenly been brought into contact with a galvanic battery: I could distinctly hear the dry sound made by its little heel, hard as the hoof of a gazelle.

I became rather discontented with my acquisition, inasmuch as I wished my paper-weights to be of a sedentary disposition, and thought it very unnatural that feet should walk about without legs; and I commenced to experience a feeling closely akin to fear.

Suddenly I saw the folds of my bed-curtain stir; and heard a bumping sound, like that caused


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Rh by some person hopping on one foot across the floor. I must confess I became alternately hot and cold; that I felt a strange wind chill my back; and that my suddenly rising hair caused my nightcap to execute a leap of several yards.

The bed-curtains opened and I beheld the strangest figure imaginable before me.

It was a young girl of a very deep coffee-brown complexion, like the bayadere Amani, and possessing the purest Egyptian type of perfect beauty: her eyes were almond-shaped and oblique, with eyebrows so black that they seemed blue; her nose was exquisitely chiselled, almost Greek in its delicacy of outline; and she might indeed have been taken for a Corinthian statue of bronze, but for the prominence of her cheekbones and the slightly African fulness of her lips, which compelled one to recognize her as belonging beyond all doubt to the hieroglyphic race which dwelt upon the banks of the Nile.

Her arms, slender and spindle-shaped, like those of very young girls, were encircled by a peculiar kind of metal bands and bracelets of glass beads; her hair was all twisted into little cords; and she wore upon her bosom a little idol-figure of green paste, bearing a whip with seven lashes, which proved it to be an image of Isis: her brow was adorned with a shining plate of gold; and a few traces of paint relieved the coppery tint of her cheeks.


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78 As for her costume, it was very odd indeed.

Fancy pagne or skirt all formed of little strips of material bedizened with red and black hieroglyphics, stiffened with bitumen, and apparently belonging to a freshly unbandaged mummy.

In one of those sudden flights of thought so common in dreams I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-à-brac dealer, repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so enigmatical an intonation:

"Old Pharaoh will not be well pleased: he loved his daughter, the dear man!"

One strange circumstance, which was not at all calculated to restore my equanimity, was that the apparition had but one foot; the other was broken off at the ankle!

She approached the table where the foot was starting and fidgeting about more than ever, and there supported herself upon the edge of the desk. I saw her eyes fill with pearly-gleaming tears.

Although she had not as yet spoken, I fully comprehended the thoughts which agitated her: she looked at her foot—for it was indeed her own—with an exquisitely graceful expression of coquettish sadness; but the foot leaped and ran hither and thither, as though impelled on steel springs.

Twice or thrice she extended her hand to seize it, but could not succeed.


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Rh Then commenced between the Princess Hermonthis and her foot—which appeared to be endowed with a special life of its own—a very fantastic dialogue in a most ancient Coptic tongue, such as might have been spoken thirty centuries ago in the syrinxes of the land of Ser: luckily, I understood Coptic perfectly well that night.

The Princess Hermonthis cried, in a voice sweet and vibrant as the tones of a crystal bell:

"Well, my dear little foot, you always flee from me; yet I always took good care of you. I bathed you with perfumed water in a bowl of alabaster; I smoothed your heel with pumice-stone mixed with palm oil; your nails were cut with golden scissors and polished with a hippopotamus tooth; I was careful to select tatbebs for you, painted and embroidered and turned up at the toes, which were the envy of all the young girls in Egypt: you wore on your great toe rings bearing the device of the sacred Scarabæus; and you supported one of the lightest bodies that a lazy foot could sustain."

The foot replied, in a pouting and chagrined tone:

"You know well that I do not belong to myself any longer;—I have been bought and paid for; the old merchant knew what he was about; he bore you a grudge for having refused to espouse him;—this is an ill turn which he has done


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80 you. The Arab who violated your royal coffin in the subterranean pits of the necropolis of Thebes was sent thither by him: he desired to prevent you from being present at the reunion of the shadowy nations in the cities below. Have you five pieces of gold for my ransom?"

"Alas, no!—my jewels, my rings, my purses of gold and silver, were all stolen from me," answered the Princess Hermonthis, with a sob.

"Princess," I then exclaimed, "I never retained anybody's foot unjustly;—even though you have not got the five louis which it cost me, I present it to you gladly: I should feel unutterably wretched to think that I were the cause of so amiable a person as the Princess Hermonthis being lame."

I delivered this discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone, which must have astonished the beautiful Egyptian girl.

She turned a look of deepest gratitude upon me; and her eyes shone with bluish gleams of light.

She took her foot—which surrendered itself willingly this time—like a woman about to put on her little shoe, and adjusted it to her leg with much skill.

This operation over, she took a few steps about the room, as though to assure herself that she was really no longer lame.


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Rh "Ah, how pleased my father will be!—he who was so unhappy because of my mutilation, and who from the moment of my birth set a whole nation at work to hollow me out a tomb so deep that he might preserve me intact until that last day, when souls must be weighed in the balance of Amenthi! Come with me to my father;—he will receive you kindly; for you have given me back my foot."

I thought this proposition natural enough. I arrayed myself in a dressing-gown of large-flowered pattern, which lent me a very Pharaonic aspect; hurriedly put on a pair of Turkish slippers, and informed the Princess Hermonthis that I was ready to follow her.

Before starting, Hermonthis took from her neck the little idol of green paste, and laid it on the scattered sheets of paper which covered the table.

"It is only fair," she observed smilingly, "that I should replace your paper-weight."

She gave me her hand, which felt soft and cold, like the skin of a serpent; and we departed.

We passed for some time with the velocity of an arrow through a fluid and grayish expanse, in which half-formed silhouettes flitted swiftly by us, to right and left.

For an instant we saw only sky and sea.

A few moments later obelisks commenced to


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82 tower in the distance: pylons and vast flights of steps guarded by sphinxes became clearly outlined against the horizon.

We had reached our destination.

The princess conducted me to the mountain of rose-colored granite, in the face of which appeared an opening so narrow and low that it would have been difficult to distinguish it from the fissures in the rock, had not its location been marked by two stelæe wrought with sculptures.

Hermonthis kindled a torch, and led the way before me.

We traversed corridors hewn through the living rock: their walls, covered with hieroglyphics and paintings of allegorical processions, might well have occupied thousands of arms for thousands of years in their formation;—these corridors, of interminable length, opened into square chambers, in the midst of which pits had been contrived, through which we descended by cramp-irons or spiral stairways;—these pits again conducted us into other chambers, opening into other corridors, likewise decorated with painted sparrow-hawks, serpents coiled in circles, the symbols of the tau and pedum,—prodigious works of art which no living eye can ever examine,—interminable legends of granite which only the dead have time to read through all eternity.

At last we found ourselves in a hall so vast, so enormous, so immeasurable, that the eye could


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Rh not reach its limits; files of monstrous columns stretched far out of sight on every side, between which twinkled livid stars of yellowish flame;—points of light which revealed further depths incalculable in the darkness beyond.

The Princess Hermonthis still held my hand, and graciously saluted the mummies of her acquaintance.

My eyes became accustomed to the dim twilight, and objects became discernible.

I beheld the kings of the subterranean races seated upon thrones,—grand old men, though dry, withered, wrinkled like parchment, and blackened with naphtha and bitumen,—all wearing pshents of gold, and breastplates and gorgets glittering with precious stones; their eyes immovably fixed like the eyes of sphinxes, and their long beards whitened by the snow of centuries. Behind them stood their peoples, in the stiff and constrained posture enjoined by Egyptian art, all eternally preserving the attitude prescribed by the hieratic code. Behind these nations, the cats, ibixes, and crocodiles cotemporary with them,—rendered monstrous of aspect by their swathing bands,—mewed, flapped their wings, or extended their jaws in a saurian giggle.

All the Pharaohs were there—Cheops, Chephrenes, Psammetichus, Sesostris, Amenotaph—all the dark rulers of the pyramids and syrinxes:—on yet higher thrones sat Chronos and


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Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Capitularies

Capitularies (Lat. Capitularia), collections of laws or ordinances, chiefly of the Frankish kings, divided into many single laws or chapters (capitula), so that a capitulare meant the sum total of such single laws. Sometimes such collections consisted of only one law or capitulum; even then they were called capitularia. The word capitulare was used officially for the first time (779) in an enactment of Charlemagne (Mon. Germ. Hist: Leges, II, i, 47). It was also applied to certain legislative acts of bishops.

EPISCOPAL CAPITULARIES.—The capitularies or capitula of the bishops were compilations of ecclesiastical laws, drawn as a rule from previous legislation, and proposed to the clergy and people for their guidance. Their general purpose was, on the one hand, to make it easy for ecclesiastics to know the canons or laws of the Church, at least in the summaries thus compiled; on the other, to keep intact and uniform the discipline of the Church, and to maintain the religious life of both clergy and laity at as high a standard as possible. There are yet extant many such compilations, which may. be divided into two categories. Those of the first contain laws whose content shows that they were not restricted to one diocese, but were applicable to several. Those of the second were meant primarily for one diocese and are more properly called capitularies. To the first order of capitularies belong the capitula of St. Martin, Metropolitan of Braga (571-80) in Gallicia, the present Portugal (Mansi, Sacr. Conc. Coll., IX, 845, sqq.). His object was to render more intelligible the canons of the Greek Church by a new translation into Latin, and to arrange them in a systematic order. The collection became very important in subsequent ages, when it was incorporated with the "Collectio Hispana", and with this passed into the work of Pseudo-Isidore. After the tenth century it formed part of nearly every compilation of ecclesiastical law. Then follow two collections made by St. Boniface (d. 754). The first contains twenty-eight capitula issued about 744 (Mansi, op. cit., XII, App. 107, sqq.); the second has thirty-six statuta issued about 745 (op. cit., XII, 383, sqq.). The collection of Egbert, Archbishop of York (735-51), known as "Excerptiones Egberti Eboracensis Archiepiscopi" (op. cit., XII, 411, sqq.), is but a summary made by the deacon Huncar about 1040 from a larger work of Egbert (q.v.) entitled "De jure sacerdotali". The collection attributed to Isaac, Bishop of Langres in France (859-80), and known as "Cannes Isaac Episcopi Lingonensis" (op. cit., XVI, App. 633, sqq.), is merely an extract from the three books of capitularies of Benedictus Levita. The capitula of Angilramnus, Bishop of Metz (768-91), are said to have been published by him after he had received them from Adrian I (772-95). They are intimately connected with the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, and hence not genuine; they were written about the middle of the ninth century (Hinschius, Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianie, 757, sqq.).

Among the capitularies of the second class we may mention first the Rule of St. Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz (742-66), written about 760 (Mani, op. cit., XIV, 313, sqq.), which regulated the common or canonical life of his diocesan clergy. These decrees, modified by Amalarius of Metz, were eventually made obligatory upon the clergy of the whole Frankish Empire at the Diet of Aachen (817). Then follow: the capitulary of Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans (797-821), issued towards the end of the eighth century, with several additions (op. cit., XIII, 993, sqq.); the capitulary of Hatto, Bishop of Basle (836), issued about 822 (op. eft., XIV, 393, sqq.); the capitula of Rodulf, Archbishop of Bourges, issued about 850 (op. cit., XIV, 943, sqq.); the capitula of Herard, Archbishop of Tours (855-70), issued in 858 (op. cit., XVI, App. 677, sqq.); the various capitula of Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims (845-82), issued in 852, 856, and 874 (op. cit., XV, 475, sqq., 493, sqq.); the capitula of Walter, Bishop of Orleans, issued about 871 (op. cit., XV, 503, sqq.); finally, the constitutio of Riculf, Bishop of Soissons, issued about 889 (op. cit., XVIII, 81, sqq.). A number of these capitularies were published in diocesan synods, e.g. those of Herard of Tours, of Hincmar of Reims (at least the ones of 852 and 874), and of Walter of Orleans. Perhaps this was the usual custom, since the capitula of Theodulf of Orleans and of Rodulf of Bourges mention the diocesan synod as of obligation at stated intervals.

ROYAL CAPITULARIES.—The capitularies of the Frankish kings were legislative or administrative enactments. In the Merovingian period they were known as epistola, praiceptum, edictum, decretio, or pactus if issued by several kings together. In the present acceptation of the word the capitularies comprise legislative acts issued by the Frankish rulers, either Merovingians or Carlovingians, from the beginning of the sixth century to the end of the ninth. They are usually distinguished from leges, or laws, not because they: lack legislative force, but because since the sixth century the term leges is usually applied to the written or formally codified customs prevailing among the various Germanic nations; thus we have the "Lex Salica", the "Lex Alamannorum", and the like. The capitularies, on the contrary, may have a wider application. They were usually drawn up without any specific order and without such formalities as the royal seal or signature; hence they differed from other royal acts, e.g. the diplomats and mandata. The capitularies were executed by the royal officers or by the king himself; therefore they did not need the formalities required for other documents as evidences of the royal will. The contents of the capitularies are manifold. Sometimes they contain only directions given to royal officers, chiefly the missi dominici; sometimes additions to, or modifications of, the leges; more generally they contain ordinances bearing on almost every form of civil and ecclesiastical life. Among the civil ordinances are regulations affecting the royal magistracy, commerce, customs-duties, markets, currency, the army, safety of travellers, procedure in criminal and civil suits, private rights or prerogatives, and many other subjects. Concerning ecclesiastical matters there are regulations on the organization of the Church, its relation, to the civil power, monastic life, discipline of the Church, education, manner of worship, ecclesiastical feast-days, and the like. A division or systematic classification of the capitularies is practically impossible. While some deal exclusively with ecclesiastical matters; in many of them things ecclesiastical and civil are so intermingled that it is difficult to distinguish in them two kinds of capitularies. Nor can the capitularies bearing on civil matters be divided into classes, though some have imagined that they could distinguish three different kinds. Those of the first class were called capitularia legibus addenda, and were said to contain modifications of the leges, made with the consent of the nation whose laws were thus affected. Those of the second class were called capitularia per se scribenda, said to contain ordinances affecting the people of the Frankish Empire generally, issued by the king with or without the consent of the men of rank. Those of the third class were called capitularia missorum, and were said to contain merely instructions for the royal officers or counts known as the missi dominici.

There is no sufficient basis, however, in the text of the capitularies for this classification. While the matter contained therein has a bearing on all those subjects, still it is put together so indiscriminately that no systematic division can be made; in fact, no uniform system was aimed at in this legislation. There is, moreover, no sufficient foundation for the assertion that for a certain class of capitularies the consent of a nation was required. The laws or ordinances were enacted either by the king himself and alone, or after a consultation with his advisers, or with the men of rank in a diet or parliament. It was customary among the Franks, as indeed among the Germanic nations generally, to assemble once a year in the month of March, or at some other time in the spring or summer, for legislative, military, or other purposes. The attendance, which at first was general on the part of all freemen, gradually shrank to the men of rank or the nobles and ecclesiastical dignitaries, such as counts, bishops, and abbots. At such assemblies or diets legislative matters were discussed between the king and his attendants, in which all, bishops, abbots, counts, and other royal officers, took part. Once the subjects were sufficiently debated, they were drawn up as capitula and published as laws. For this reason a certain number of capitularies were prepared and issued in the annual diets. But the same cannot be asserted of all, since there are many which were not issued in the diets, or at least of which this cannot be stated with certainty. If matters of an ecclesiastical character came up for discussion, they were generally, though not always, submitted to the judgment of the bishops alone. In fact, the bishops of the Frankish Empire often held their synods contemporaneously with the diets. Sometimes also the diets presented an almost exclusively ecclesiastical character, and thus they were called synods as well as conventus or placita. In order to preserve the capitularies and through them the written law, they were reduced to writing and kept in the archives of the imperial palace. Copies of them were sent to the royal officers throughout the empire, or else the officers were themselves requested to secure copies, send them to each other, and in turn make them known to the people. In a capitulary of the year 825 Emperor Louis the Pious (814-40) ordered that the archbishops and counts should secure copies of the capitularies from the chancellor, and communicate them to other ecclesiastical or royal dignitaries in their districts for the purpose of publication. This publication was to be done in the judicial assemblies or courts of justice, in the marketplaces of cities, and also in the churches. These orders were apparently not executed conscientiously; otherwise translations into the vernacular would have been made, of which, however, there is practically no trace.

As the number of the capitularies kept growing, the need was felt of uniting them into one work. The first (incomplete) collection of this kind was made in 827 by Ansegisus (q.v.), Abbot of the monastery of Fontanelle, or, as it was called afterwards, St-Vandrille in Normandy. He divided his work into four books: the first contained the ecclesiastical capitularies of Charlemagne, the second the ecclesiastical capitularies of Louis the Pious, the third the capitularies of Charlemagne on civil matters, the fourth the capitularies of Louis the Pious and his son Lothaire on civil matters. Three appendixes were added to the work containing titles of capitularies, or capitularies that were doubled. This collection, though owing to the private initiative of Ansegisus received the sanction of Louis the Pious in 829, and in this way obtained an official character. Towards the middle of the ninth century a new collection in three books appeared, designed to continue and complete the work of Ansegisus. Its author states that it was made by Benedictus Levita, a deacon of Mainz (847), at the suggestion of Bishop Autgar of that city. In reality it contains few genuine capitularies; the greater part of the work is a forgery, the materials for which were taken from the Roman law, the Breviarium Alarici, the leges of the Visigoths and Bavarians, the canons of councils, the decretals of the popes, the penitential books, and the writings of the Fathers. It was published shortly after 847 and is intimately connected with the decretals of Pseudo-Isidore. Hence, according to many, it was most probably written either at Reims or Le Mans, the birthplace of the Isidorian decretals.

The capitularies enjoyed great authority through-out the Middle Ages. Bishops made use of them in their legislation; thus the above mentioned Herard of Tours in his capitula, Isaac of Langres in his canons, and Walter of Orleans in his capitula. The provincial councils of the ninth and tenth centuries recommended their perusal, or else adopted their constitutions, e.g. a synod of Reims (881), a synod of Mainz (888), a synod of Ravenna (904), and a synod of Trosly, Diocese of Soissons (909). Finally, the later compilers of canons, like Regino of Prum, Burchard of Worms, No of Chartres, and Gratian, borrowed much of their material from the capitularies. The text of the capitularies has often been printed. They were first edited by Vitus Aznenpach (Ingolstadt, 1545) from a manuscript of the monastery of Tegernsee (Bavaria). An incomplete edition of the capitularies of Ansegisus and Benedictus Levita was published by Jean du Tillet (Paris, 1548). Five books of capitularies were published by B. J. Herold (Basle, 1557), but this edition is rather incomplete and defective. The edition of du Tillet was completed by Pierre Pithou (Paris, 1588), and again by Francois Pithou (Paris, 1603). Jacques Sirmond published the capitularies of Charles the Bald and his successors (Paris, 1623). A very complete edition of the capitularies was produced by Etienne Baluze (Paris, 1677), was reprinted at Venice in 1772, and reedited by Pierre de Chiniac (Paris, 1780). The edition of Baluze has been inserted in various publications of law and history issued since then in Germany, France, and Italy. A new edition was made by Pertz for the "Monumenta Germanise Historica" (Leges, I-II, Hanover, 1835-37). A later and better edition appeared in the same great collection, the work of A. Boretius and V. Krause (Leges, I, II, Hanover, 1883-97). Baluze, Pertz, Boretius, and Krause sought to give the complete text of all existing capitularies and to arrange them in their chronological order; in their editions, therefore, the reader will find much more than the capitularies of Ansegisus and Benedictus Levita, which latter are now accessible in special reprints.

FRANCIS J. SCHAEFER


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84 ,—who was contemporary with the deluge; and Tubal Cain, who reigned before it.

The beard of King Xixouthros had grown seven times around the granite table, upon which he leaned, lost in deep reverie,—and buried in dreams.

Further back, through a dusty cloud, I beheld dimly the seventy-two Pre-adamite Kings, with their seventy-two peoples—for ever passed away.

After permitting me to gaze upon this bewildering spectacle a few moments, the Princess Hermonthis presented me to her father Pharaoh, who favored me with a most gracious nod.

"I have found my foot again!—I have found my foot!" cried the Princess, clapping her little hands together with every sign of frantic joy: "it was this gentleman who restored it to me."

The races of Kemi, the races of Nahasi,—all the black, bronzed, and copper-colored nations repeated in chorus:

"The Princess Hermonthis has found her foot again!"

Even Xixouthros himself was visibly affected.

He raised his heavy eyelids, stroked his moustache with his fingers, and turned upon me a glance weighty with centuries.

"By Oms, the dog of Hell, and Tmei, daughter of the Sun and of Truth! this is a brave and worthy lad!" exclaimed Pharaoh, pointing to me


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Rh with his sceptre, which was terminated with a lotus-flower.

"What recompense do you desire?"

Filled with that daring inspired by dreams in which nothing seems impossible, I asked him for the hand of the Princess Hermonthis;—the hand seemed to me a very proper antithetic recompense for the foot.

Pharaoh opened wide his great eyes of glass in astonishment at my witty request.

"What country do you come from? and what is your age?"

"I am a Frenchman; and I am twenty-seven years old, venerable Pharaoh."

"Twenty-seven years old! and he wishes to espouse the Princess Hermonthis, who is thirty centuries old!" cried out at once all the Thrones and all the Circles of Nations.

Only Hermonthis herself did not seem to think my request unreasonable.

"If you were even only two thousand years old," replied the ancient King, "I would willingly give you the Princess; but the disproportion is too great; and, besides, we must give our daughters husbands who will last well: you do not know how to preserve yourselves any longer; even those who died only fifteen centuries ago are already no more than a handful of dust;—behold! my flesh is solid as basalt; my bones are bars of steel!


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86 "I shall be present on the last day of the world, with the same body and the same features which I had during my lifetime: my daughter Hermonthis will last longer than a statue of bronze.

"Then the last particles of your dust will have been scattered abroad by the winds; and even Isis herself, who was able to find the atoms ot Osiris, would scarce be able to recompose your being.

"See how vigorous I yet remain, and how mighty is my grasp," he added, shaking my hand in the English fashion with a strength that buried my rings in the flesh of my fingers.

He squeezed me so hard that I awoke, and found my friend Alfred shaking me by the arm to make me get up.

"O you everlasting sleeper!—must I have you carried out into the middle of the street, and fireworks exploded in your ears? It is after noon; don't you recollect your promise to take me with you to see M. Aguado's Spanish pictures?"

"God! I forgot all, all about it," I answered, dressing myself hurriedly; "we will go there at once; I have the permit lying there on my desk."

I started to find it;—but fancy my astonishment when I beheld, instead of the mummy's foot I had purchased the evening before, the little green paste idol left in its place by the Princess Hermonthis!


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 WAS worn out with an arduous and anxious day. Bad news had reached me from Brazil, where, at the moment, I had interests so important that a crisis might sweep under the house which I had founded with so much effort, the establishment of which had absorbed my youth. So the future seemed to me big with menace, and sharp disquietude kept gnawing at my heart, as I thought of three dear people whose destiny depended solely on my own,—my wife and my two little girls. Happy to-day amid plenty, they might on the morrow be sunk in poverty. Tranquilly ignorant of the danger hovering over them, they smiled upon me, and the sight of their smiling refreshed me. One is seldom sentimental in business, and I am not more so than others. I believe, in fact, that in apprehending misfortune, I realized for the first time how much I love the little human group of which I am the head, who give motive to my work, and whose loving joy rewards me for my trouble. They know nothing


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90 of the battle in which I am engaged, of the blows I give and take, of the schemes I invent, and the anxieties that I endure for them, while they are occupied with the trivial tasks of their peaceful existence—directing the housekeeping, or learning lessons. Laurence and Juliette—twelve and ten—have dear faces, gentle and grave; both are blond, the elder is the more serious of the two, the younger is a shade more heedless—yet only a shade! I am well aware that Marguerite loves them better than she loves me: like so many other women, my dear wife lets herself be almost entirely conquered by maternity, and my share in her has come to be secondary. No matter! So it is and so it should be. I content myself with that part of her affection, knowing it to be warm and faithful. It is enough for me to be the keystone of that modest social edifice, a family; to maintain it in good condition, to keep it in repair, improve, and embellish it—that is my task and my delight. Affection is an indistinguishable cement, but it gives solidity to the walls. Do I manifest mine, profound as it is? Scarcely at all: I am sometimes surly, preoccupied, and cross. At such times Laurence will throw her arms about me and wheedle me like a little woman; Juliette, more easily disturbed, more sensitive and timid, watches me in silence. Marguerite bears sweetly with my unjust reproaches. Such womanly resignation is her lot, the


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Rh she suffers from the wounds I receive in that field of battle without, of which she knows nothing.

That evening I was silent, to hide an uneasiness charged with emotion. At first I hardly replied to certain trifling questions from my wife. But Juliette chirped prettily, a dish that I like was served—a savory "stew" which our cook, who is from my part of the country, excels in preparing with certain special relishes.

Little by little my nerves relaxed and my mind grew calm under the influence of my comfortable surroundings. Just now in my office, reflection had shown me nothing but catastrophe close at hand, but here, in the peace of my abode, I gained confidence. Hackneyed arguments sufficed to drive away my anxiety—difficulties always turn out better than one expects. I have already passed successfully through similar crises—the worst seldom happens! The comforting warmth of a good glass of Bordeaux accentuated this better mood. I grew cheerful and commenced to talk of things and people as if the revolution in Brazil had never broken out. Just then a telegram was brought me. Immediately the tide of care swept over me anew, and I was conscious of trembling as I opened the despatch.

The emotion it aroused in me—a very different emotion from that which had shaken me since


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92 morning—was so violent and so obvious that my wife, rising from the table and coming to me, said at once:

"What ails you? What is the matter?"

"My father is very ill," I replied, and repeated mechanically, "very ill!"

Juliette, who has a lively imagination and cannot bear to hear of illness, gave a little cry like a frightened bird, while Laurence asked:

"Grandpapa, what is the matter with him?"

"They give me no details," I answered. "It is Aldouve who telegraphs, Aldouve, the gardener. I will go at once."

I had hardly uttered these words when solicitude for my business interests seized me again. I drove it away, trying to persuade myself that my absence was possible, as during the day I had done all that I was able, and could not further influence events taking place at a distance. I consulted the time-table. A train would leave about ten o'clock.

"Do you wish me to go with you?" asked Marguerite. Surprise and compassion were in her kind, faithful eyes; doubtless my emotion astonished her, for we seldom talked of my father.

"No," I replied, "I will first go alone. You will do better to stay here. I will telegraph you if you are needed."

The preparations were hurried through. Do


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Rh what I would my business cares regained possession of me. I thought rapidly of many things. I wrote three or four urgent letters. I entrusted to my wife a note containing divers directions for my head clerk. And all with that feverish agitation which unforeseen trouble provokes, when grief swoops down with fatal suddenness upon us, and we perceive the unexpected tokens of destiny.

All sorts of ideas jostled each other in my brain, obscuring the vision of suffering and death which had been called up by the telegram, so that in the confusion into which the news from my father had thrown me I hardly thought of him at all.

In the cab that took me to the Lyons station, a new wave of the tumultuous flood that was tossing me about brought his image before me, nor did the vision leave me. I had it all night for company as the train was speeding through the dark.

The last time I had seen my father—but could it be that this was many years ago? That visit to the old country home in which my childhood had been passed, and to which my father had welcomed me and my young family with jocund pleasure, came back to me by small degrees in its least details. I recalled him as he then was, tall, vigorous, solidly built, with roughly-hewn features softened by age, and by the


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94 of his flat-lying hair and of his thick rough beard, which he wore full. He had the powerful body and strong head of an old countryman whom the seasons have strengthened as they strengthen the elms and the oaks. Up early, active, drinking freely of the light white wine of his own vineyards, eating with a lusty appetite of hams smoked in his own tall chimney and of savory vegetables from his garden, he was in the habit of saying:

"I am cut out for a centenarian."

He thought he was, and so did I. When one is sturdy and healthy, it is easy to believe it will last for ever; then illness draws near, and its thin finger marks you with the irresistible sign, and there the man is—bending, shrivelling, dissolving, like a tree whose roots are dry, and whose wasted tissues must fall under the axe. It is a horrible universal drama, taking its cruel course throughout devastating time; but we are conscious of it only when we are among the actors or victims.

That reunion lasted a fortnight. It was in September; the peaches were ripening against the walls, the grapes were turning golden among the vines, and the sunsets were magnificent over the mountains on which snow had already begun to appear. My father took an extraordinary liking to my two little girls, who soon became his constant companions. They were everywhere


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96 "And you, father," said my wife, "you are coming to spend a little time with us, are n't you?"

"Certainly,—in the spring."

Just at that word, I remember, the vehicle commenced to jolt along, and we turned to wave our handkerchiefs. A little later, as our train passed in front of the house, we waved again from the door, and my father responded from one of his windows. Was that the last time I was ever to see him! For he did not keep his promise and come to Paris. A man of the old school, jealously attached to his corner of the earth and to his habits, my father detested travel, where everything offended him; the scenery because it differed from that which for seventy years his eyes had looked upon, the people because he knew them neither by name nor family, the cooking because it was not like his own. I trembled to recall a former visit he had made us; one of perpetual discontent, during which he complained of the adulterated wine, of the unsalted bread, of the butter which smelt of margarine, of the narrow rooms, the noise in the streets, the concierge who looked at him crossly, the cook who certainly took toll on her marketing. I confess I dreaded a repetition of those painful experiences. They will never, alas! be repeated. The chain of habit, stronger even than the attraction of the children, kept him away; he did not come.

The following year, instead of going back to


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Rh him, we were obliged, on Juliette's account, to go to the sea; the year after to Centeret on my wife's account, then again to the sea. Each time I wrote him a word to postpone our promised visit until the next year. I believed what I said, and so time passed. Our thoughts, moreover, were far from him. At long intervals we exchanged the short letters that one writes from a sense of duty without having much to say. At bottom he and I were but two strangers, united by only a fragile bond: I was trying to shape my life, absorbed by difficulties that my father had never known: he, on his part, was rounding out his life in his little home among the fields, preoccupied with cultivating his land, and battling against phylloxera, oïdium, and mildew; cared for by Josette and Joseph, his old servant and his gardener-coachman; and sometimes diverted by visits from his neighbors. Thus separated, we had no need of one another, and I was astonished by the profound sentiment which the telegram just received had aroused in my heart; the torture it had given me in that train of so slow a flight, to think that I should arrive perhaps too late, that the sight would have gone from his eyes, that the voice would have died on his lips, that he would pass away with strangers, by his bedside.

One moment this grievous death-scene would possess my mind, the next it would be dissipated in the darkness like a nightmare that is over and


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98 leaves you bruised, and other visions would rise about me, crowding memories of childhood and youth, faces and pictures etched in the book of memory. I recalled my father at different epochs, and seemed to see him among groups of people who looked blurred as through a heavy mist; I heard certain phrases that he used to be fond of repeating, with his own peculiar accent and the very sound of his voice. I went through the phases of feeling I had had for him. When I was little I was afraid of him, for he was often brusque to the point of violence, and there came before me the pale, delicate face of my mother, whose fragility suffered from these storms that swept over her, as a too fierce wind over a frail plant. But he changed from year to year; he softened as good wine mellows with age. What a faithful companion he was for me later, when I had become that insupportable being, a "young man!" Each summer I came to spend some weeks with him, and oh, how good the smile of his welcome! We used to stroll together through the neighboring woods, along the stream that runs the mill-wheel, among the bunches of meadow-sweet, whose pale clusters sway on slender stems. Often, also, of an evening we would go to the town and to the "Club," for a game of billiards. My father was very proud of me, Heaven knows why! and took pleasure in showing me to the old frequenters of the place, slow, grave men


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Rh who looked me over with slightly distrustful curiosity; methodical players, each of whom had his peculiarity. One, a very awkward man with a good, sunburnt face, and a grizzly goatee, would never let his ball go, without muttering despairingly, striking the floor with his cue, "A little too much to the right—a failure!" Another, long, thin, and bilious, could not miss a carom without crying, "No luck!" and greeted the successful shots of his adversaries with an envious, "What luck!" A third, a fat man, with a sleek face, and the look of a museum attendant, moved his lips while taking slow aim, as if he were mumbling a prayer, and followed the ball with his cue as if to continue directing its course. They were all worthy people who had known each other for years, and met each evening without tiring of each other, to exchange the same remarks over their ration of white wine, which was seldom varied. Those who did not play billiards played piquet. At ten o'clock the voice of the watchman was heard, according to the antiquated custom, calling out, "Ten o'clock! It has struck ten!" Then they hastened to finish their game, and went each to his home. How many happenings since that far time! Scarcely twenty years, and all that life passed away, all the waters of that stream which had united so many diverse elements and had borne one across so many imperceptible changes toward the unknown future.


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100 In the ego of to-day how much endures of the ego of those dead times? I could not say. And as for the man once so strong, and so gleeful in winning his game, how much of him remains in the old man for whom the death-pang is lying in wait?

Meanwhile, the slope of memory declined farther and farther down the past. Some years—those that bridged the space between early infancy and youth—fled away as if their dust had left no trace. I saw my father again, still younger, more robust, and gruffer as well, surrounded by other faces, the features of which seemed half-effaced like those of old daguerreo-types. I recalled him as he looked on the night of a fire, protecting the house and the singed horses from the flames that were devouring the farm buildings, shouting out orders in a loud voice like a sea-captain in a tempest. I recalled another night, when, with head bent, and hands clasped behind him, and sighing heavily, he paced the room in a corner of which I crouched, terrified and trembling at being for the first time in the presence of death which had just swept my mother away from me. I felt on my forehead the scalding moisture of his tears as he took me in his arms, murmuring, "Poor little one! you do not know! You do not know!"

I heard his grumbling voice reproaching my grandmother, so kind and so wrinkled, who


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Rh never came near me without her hands filled with dainties, scolding her for her indulgence and reiterating his favorite phrase: "Leave the boy alone, mother, you'll make a girl of him!" And then the holidays, across which passed his high and sombre silhouette; the Christmas-tree sparkling with candles, or the reunions about the great table of a family now dispersed or dissolved, or the distribution of prizes, after which the rugged fatherly hand gently patted my cheek,—a thousand episodes familiar to us all, recurring almost alike in all lives at their beginning, however bitter or culpable they may become, with the same gay and simple charm.

And the train darted along, as swift as memory, among the black, invisible landscapes of the night. And the time thus filled with thoughts and dreams seemed to me infinitely slow in passing. I panted with eagerness to reach my father more quickly, to put my arms about him once more, to see the smile of greeting come into his eyes, to hear his words of welcome. As the night advanced this desire became more intense and despairing, aggravated into a sort of fever filled with ominous forebodings.

"I shall not see him again. . . . They sent me word too late! Ah! why did they, why did they!" And thus probing the secret depths of my heart, I discovered infinite affection which I had never known was there,—a world of love


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102 which I had never had the leisure to explore.

Carried along on the current of my busy life, I had fancied myself characterized by great indifference, by a tenacious will and a dry heart. Ah, how mistaken I was! My life, which I dreamed was given essentially over to ambition, belonged, root and sap, to these dear people. Oh, what a poor man of business I was just then! My solicitude concerning operations that were under way, whose issue might destroy the structure of my fortune, gave place to that other solicitude which seemed to me a thousand times more important. Death, entering my circle, lighted it with a sudden illumination, and I perceived hidden things with the dazzlement of one passing abruptly, with quivering lids, out of darkness into light.

At dawn I was obliged to leave the express and wait at a junction for the local train which should bring me to my journey's end. Against a misty sky, filled with clouds, in the uncertain glimmering light, the silhouettes of the mountains softly massed themselves, surrounding with a vast amphitheatre the hideous buildings of the station, the long lines of empty cars, the idle locomotives. Near by some factory chimneys, tall and unsymmetrical, sent their smoke into the morning twilight. I freshened myself up, swallowed a cup of chocolate, and wandered out on


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Rh the platform among the peasants with their baskets. When I got into another car—one of those disjointed, slovenly cars used by local lines,—I was more hopeful and more serene. The torture of the night became less harassing. I let myself be diverted by the spectacle of the daybreak, by the appearance of the sun, climbing like a flame up the sky, by the coming of the countrymen to their tasks, stretching themselves out on the ground or straightening themselves up to interrogate space, shielding their eyes with the hand, by the flight of birds who rose at the passing of the train, by the farms that filed past us, humming with activity like bee-hives. Upon the going of the long night comes the renewal of cheerful, laborious life, forbidding men to lie back upon their griefs or their regrets, pushing them to healthful action, to salutary effort, leading them through mirages the whole unreality of which they never know. The human beings whom I saw scattered over the fields were like myself. They had fathers, wives, children, they loved them, lost them, mourned them,—and went on living as before. For all, the task of the day was the chief affair; grief might interrupt it for a moment—then it began again, with its cruel and wholesome exigency, engrossing strength, attention,—soul! And, after all, what could one wish better? Detached from this commonplace duty of providing for current needs, our souls


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104 wander through space like lost birds; nothing guides them, nothing satisfies them, and such is our weakness, that to regulate their flight we must have this duty of gaining bit by bit our daily bread.

The train now stopped at petty stations, the names of which, called out by the employees, with a country accent, brought back another series of recollections. Between my twelfth and sixteenth years, my father was in the habit of taking me for a walk each Sunday, winter and summer, for health's sake he said. I was lazy about walking, and detested these excursions. But he would not give them up or let me escape them. Thus have I traversed the country with him, sometimes walking, sometimes driving, or else on this very railroad, the cars of which were never new, in order to reach a more distant station. In all these towns, scattered over the plain or perched on the lower buttresses of the Jura, my father had friends who welcomed us,—worthy people to whom I should have preferred comrades of my own age; or, perhaps we would stop at an inn to refresh ourselves with an omelette and a glass of white wine. I now recognized certain of those inns and hospitable homes, much the same as in old days, some of them a little more dilapidated, others renovated, and surrounded merely by thicker verdure; and I discovered also, in the depths of my memory, the


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made a great effort to keep the control of his body. The hillside, the gorse, when he stood up, seemed to have fallen back into shadowed vagueness about him. They were meaningless dark heaps at some distance, very great, it seemed.

“I can’t get hold of them,” he said distractedly to himself. He felt detached from the earth, from all the near, concrete, beloved things; as if these had melted away from him, and left him, sick and unsupported, somewhere alone on the edge of an enormous space. He wanted to lie down again, to relieve himself of the sickening effort of supporting and controlling his body. If he could lie down again perfectly still he need not struggle to animate the cumbersome matter of his body, and then he would not feel thus sick and outside himself.

But Helena was speaking to him, telling him they would see the moon path. They must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly, joyously, round his waist. Therein was his stability and warm support. Siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious. This pity for her drew him nearer to life.

He shuddered lightly now and again, as they stepped


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96 lurching down the hill. He set his jaws hard to suppress this shuddering. It was not in his limbs, or even on the surface of his body, for Helena did not notice it. Yet he shuddered almost in anguish internally.

“What is it?” he asked himself in wonder.

His thought consisted of these detached phrases, which he spoke verbally to himself. Between whiles he was conscious only of an almost insupportable feeling of sickness, as a man feels who is being brought from under an anaesthetic; also he was vaguely aware of a teeming stir of activity, such as one may hear from a closed hive, within him.

They swung rapidly downhill. Siegmund still shuddered, but not so uncontrollably. They came to a stile which they must climb. As he stepped over it needed a concentrated effort of will to place his foot securely on the step. The effort was so great that he became conscious of it.

“Good Lord!” he said to himself. “I wonder what it is.”

He tried to examine himself. He thought of all the organs of his body—his brain, his heart, his liver. There was no pain, and nothing wrong with any of them, he was sure. His dim searching resolved itself into another detached phrase. “There is nothing the matter with me,” he said.

Then he continued vaguely wondering, recalling the sensation of wretched sickness which sometimes follows drunkenness, thinking of the times when he had fallen ill.

“But I am not like that,” he said, “because I don’t feel tremulous. I am sure my hand is steady.”


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Rh Helena stood still to consider the road. He held out his hand before him. It was as motionless as a dead flower on this silent night.

“Yes, I think this is the right way,” said Helena, and they set off again, as if gaily.

“It certainly feels rather deathly,” said Siegmund to himself. He remembered distinctly, when he was a child and had diphtheria, he had stretched himself in the horrible sickness, which he felt was—and here he chose the French word “.” But his mother had seen and had cried aloud, which suddenly caused him to struggle with all his soul to spare her her suffering.

“Certainly it is like that,” he said. “Certainly it is rather deathly. I wonder how it is.”

Then he reviewed the last hour.

“I believe we are lost!” Helena interrupted him.

“Lost! What matter!” he answered indifferently, and Helena pressed him tighter, nearer to her in a kind of triumph. “But did we not come this way?” he added.

“No. See”—her voice was reeded with restrained emotion—“we have certainly not been along this bare path which dips up and down.”

“Well, then, we must merely keep due eastward, towards the moon pretty well, as much as we can,” said Siegmund, looking forward over the down, where the moon was wrestling heroically to win free of the pack of clouds which hung on her like wolves on a white deer. As he looked at the moon he felt a sense of companionship. Helena, not understanding, left him so much alone; the moon was nearer.

Siegmund continued to review the last hours. He 7


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98 had been so wondrously happy. The world had been filled with a new magic, a wonderful, stately beauty which he had perceived for the first time. For long hours he had been wandering in another—a glamorous, primordial world.

“I suppose,” he said to himself, “I have lived too intensely. I seem to have had the stars and moon and everything else for guests, and now they’ve gone my house is weak.”

So he struggled to diagnose his case of splendour and sickness. He reviewed his hour of passion with Helena.

“Surely,” he told himself, “I have drunk life too hot, and it has hurt my cup. My soul seems to leak out—I am half here, half gone away. That’s why I understand the trees and the night so painfully.”

Then he came to the hour of Helena’s strange ecstasy over him. That, somehow, had filled him with passionate grief. It was happiness concentrated one drop too keen, so that what should have been vivid wine was like a pure poison scathing him. But his consciousness, which had been unnaturally active, now was dulling. He felt the blood flowing vigorously along the limbs again, and stilling his brain, sweeping away his sickness, soothing him.

“I suppose,” he said to himself for the last time, “I suppose living too intensely kills you, more or less.”

Then Siegmund forgot. He opened his eyes and saw the night about him. The moon had escaped from the cloud-pack, and was radiant behind a fine veil which glistened to her rays, and which was broidered with a lustrous halo, very large indeed, the largest halo Siegmund had ever seen. When the little lane


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Rh turned full towards the moon, it seemed as if Siegmund and Helena would walk through a large Moorish arch of horse-shoe shape, the enormous white halo opening in front of them. They walked on, keeping their faces to the moon, smiling with wonder and a little rapture, until once more the little lane curved wilfully, and they were walking north. Helena observed three cottages crouching under the hill and under trees to cover themselves from the magic of the moonlight.

“We certainly did not come this way before,” she said triumphantly. The idea of being lost delighted her.

Siegmund looked round at the grey hills smeared over with a low, dim glisten of moon-mist. He could not yet fully realize that he was walking along a lane in the Isle of Wight. His surroundings seemed to belong to some state beyond ordinary experience—some place in romance, perhaps, or among the hills where Brünhild lay sleeping in her large bright halo of fire. How could it be that he and Helena were two children of London wandering to find their lodging in Freshwater? He sighed, and looked again over the hills where the moonlight was condensing in mist ethereal, frail, and yet substantial, reminding him of the way the manna must have condensed out of the white moonlit mists of Arabian deserts.

“We may be on the road to Newport,” said Helena presently, “and the distance is ten miles.”

She laughed, not caring in the least whither they wandered, exulting in this wonderful excursion! She, and Siegmund alone in a glistening wilderness of night at the back of habited days and nights! Siegmund looked at her. He by no means shared her