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Necromancy in Naat

Dead longing, sundered evermore from pain: How dim and sweet the shadow-hearted love, The happiness that perished lovers prove In Naat, far beyond the sable main. Song of the Galley-Slaves.

Yadar, prince of a nomad people in the half-desert region known as Zyra, had followed throughout many kingdoms a clue that was often more elusive than broken gossamer. For thirteen moons he had sought Dalili, his betrothed, whom the slave traders of Sha-Rag, swift and cunning as desert falcons, had reft from the tribal encampment with nine other maidens while Yadar and his men were hunting the black gazelles of Zyra. Fierce was the grief of Yadar, and fiercer still his wrath, when he came back at eve to the ravaged tents. He had sworn then a great oath to find Dalili, whether in a slave-mart or brothel or harem, whether dead or living, whether tomorrow or after the lapse of gray years.

Disguised as a rug merchant, with four of his men in like attire, and guided only by the gossip of bazaars, he had gone from capital to capital of the continent Zothique. One by one his followers had died of strange fevers or the hardships of the route. After much random wandering and pursuit of vain rumors, he had come alone to Oroth, a western seaport of the land of Xylac.

There he heard a rumor that might concern Dalili; for the people of Oroth were still gossiping about the departure of a rich galley bearing a lovely outland girl, answering to her description, who had been bought by the emperor of Xylac and sent to the ruler of the far southern kingdom of Yoros as a gift concluding a treaty between these realms.

Yadar, now hopeful of finding his beloved, took passage on a ship that was about to sail for Yoros. The ship was a small merchant galley, laden with grain and wine, that was wont to coast up and down, hugging closely the winding western shores of Zothique and venturing never beyond eyesight of land. On a clear blue summer day it departed from Oroth with all auguries for a safe and tranquil voyage. But on the third morn after leaving port, a tremendous wind blew suddenly from the low-lying shore they were then skirting; and with it, blotting the heavens and sea, there came a blackness as of night thickened with clouds; and the vessel was swept far out, going blindly with the blind tempest.

After two days the wind fell from its ravening fury and was soon no more than a vague whisper; and the skies cleared, leaving a bright azure vault from horizon to horizon. But nowhere was there any land visible, only a waste of waters that still roared and tossed turbulently without wind, pouring ever westward in a tide too swift and strong for the galley to stem. And the galley was borne on irresistibly by that strange current, even as by the hurricane.

Yadar, who was the sole passenger, marveled much at this thing; and he was struck by the pale terror on the faces of the captain and crew. And, looking again at the sea, he remarked a singular darkening of its waters, which assumed from moment to moment a hue as of old blood commingled with more and more of blackness: though above it the sun shone untarnished. So he made inquiry of the captain, a graybeard from Yoros, named Agor, who had sailed the ocean for forty summers; and the captain answered:

'This I had apprehended when the storm bore us westward: for we have fallen into the grip of that terrible ocean-stream which mariners call the Black River. Evermore the stream surges and swiftens toward the place of the sun's outermost setting, till it pours at last from the world's rim. Between us now and that final verge there is no land saving the evil land of Naat, which is called also the Isle of Necromancers. I know not which were the worse fate, to be wrecked on that infamous isle or hurled into space with the waters falling from earth's edge. From either place there is no return for living men such as we. And from the Isle of Naat none go forth except the ill sorcerers who people it, and the dead who are raised up and controlled by their sorcery. In magical ships that breast the Black River, the sorcerers sail at will to other strands; and beneath their necromancy. to fulfill their wicked errands, the dead men swim without pause for many nights and days whither-so-ever the masters may send them.'

Yadar, who knew little of sorcerers and neocromancy, was somewhat incredulous concerning these matters. But he saw that the blackening waters streamed always more wildly and torrentially towards the skyline; and verily there was small hope that the galley could regain its southward course. And he was troubled chiefly by the thought that he should never reach the kingdom of Yoros, where he had dreamt to find Dalili.

All that day the vessel was borne on by the dark seas racing weirdly beneath an airless and immaculate heaven. It followed the orange sunset into a night filled with large, unquivering stars; and at length it was overtaken by the flying amber morn. But still there was no abating of the waters; and neither land nor cloud was discernible in the vastness about the galley.

Yadar held little converse with Agor and the crew, after questioning them as to the reason of the ocean's blackness, which was a thing that no man understood. Despair was upon him; but, standing at the bulwark, he watched the sky and wave with an alertness born of his nomad life. Toward afternoon he descried far off a strange vessel with funereal purple sails, that drove steadily on an eastering course against the mighty current. He called Agor's attention to the vessel; and Agor, with a muttering of sailors' oaths, told him that it was a ship belonging to the necromancers of Naat.

Soon the purple sails were lost to vision; but a little later, Yadar perceived certain objects resembling human heads, that passed in the high-billowing water to the galley's leeward. Deeming that no mortal living men could swim thus, and remembering that which Agor had said concerning the dead swimmers who went forth from Naat, Yadar was aware of such trepidation as a brave man may feel in the presence of things beyond nature. And he did not speak of the matter; and seemingly the head-like objects were not noticed by his companions.

Still the galley drove on, its oarsmen sitting idle at the oars, and the captain standing listless beside the untended helm.

Toward night, as the sun declined above that tumultuous ebon ocean, it seemed that a great bank of thunder-cloud arose from the west, long and low-lying at first, but surging rapidly skyward with the mountainous domes. Ever higher it loomed, revealing the menace as of piled cliffs and somber, awful sea-capes; but its form changed not in the fashion of clouds; and Yadar knew it at last for an island bulking far aloft in the long-rayed sunset. From it a shadow was thrown for leagues, darkening still more the sable waters, as if with the fall of untimely night; and in the shadow the foam-crests flashing upon hidden reefs were white as the bared teeth of death. And Yadar needed not the shrill frightened cries of his companions to tell him that this was the terrible Isle of Naat.

Direly the current swiftened, raging, as it raced onward for battle with the rock-fanged shore; and the voices of the mariners, praying loudly to their gods, were drowned by its clamor. Yadar, standing in the prow, gave only a silent prayer to the dim, fatal deity of his tribe; and his eyes searched the towering isle like those of a sea-flown hawk, seeing the bare horrific crags, and the spaces of dark forest creeping seaward between the crags, and the white mounting of monstrous breakers an a shadowy strand.

Shrouded, and ominous of bale was the island's aspect. and the heart of Yadar sank like a plummet in unsunned seas. As the galley hove nearer to land, he thought that he beheld people moving darkly, visible in the lapsing of surges on a low beach, and then hidded once more by foam and spindrift. Ere he saw them a second time, the galley was hurled with thunderous crashing and grinding on a reef buried beneath the torrent waters. The fore-part of its prow and bottom were broken in, and being lifted from the reef by a second comber, it filled instantly and sank. Of those who had sailed from Oroth, Yadar alone leapt free ere its foundering; but, since he was little skilled as a swimmer, he was drawn under quickly and was like to have drowned in the maelstroms of that evil sea.

His senses left him, and in his brain, like a lost sun returned from yesteryear, he beheld the face of Dalili; and with Dalili, in a bright fantasmagoria, there came the happy days that had been ere his bereavement. The visions passed, and he awoke struggling, with the bitterness of the sea in his mouth, and its loudness in his ears, and its rushing darkness all about him. And, as his seases quickened, he became aware of a form that swam close behind him, and arms that supported him amid the water.

He lifted his head and saw dimly the pale neck and halfaverted face of his rescuer, and the long black hair that floated from wave to wave. Touching the body at his side, he knew it for that of a woman. Mazed and wildered though he was by the sea's buffeting, a sense of something familiar stirred within him, and he thought that he had known somewhere, at some former time. a woman with like hair and similar curving of cheek. And, trying to remember, he touched the woman again, and felt in his fingers a strange coldness from her naked body.

Miraculous was the woman's strength and skill, for she rode easily the dreadful mounting and falling of the surges. Yadar, floating as in a cradle upon her arm, beheld the nearing shore from the billows' summits; and hardly it seemed that any swimmer, however able, could win alive through the wildness of that surf. Dizzily; at the last, they were hurled upward, as if the surf would fling them against the highest crag; but, as if checked by some enchantment, the wave fell with a slow, lazy undulation; and Yadar and his rescuer, released by its ebbing, lay unhurt on a shelfy beach.

Uttering no word, nor turning to look at Yadar, the woman rose to her feet; and, beckoning him to follow, she moved away in the deathly blue dusk that had fallen upon Naat. Yadar, arising and following the woman, heard a strange and eery chanting of voices above the sea's tumult, and saw a fire that burned weirdly, with the colors of driftwood, at some distance before him in the dusk. Straightly, toward the fire and the voices, the woman walked. And Yadar, with eyes grown used to that doubtful twilight, saw that the fire blazed in the mouth of a low-sunken cleft between crags that overloomed the beach; and behind the fire, like tall, evilly posturing shadows, there stood the dark-clad figures of those who chanted.

Now memory returned to him of that which the galley's captain had said regarding the necromancers of Naat and their practises. The very sound of that chanting, albeit in an unknown tongue, seemed to suspend the heartward flowing of his veins, and to set the tomb's chillness in his marrow. And though he was little learned in such matters, the thought came to him that the words uttered were of sorcerous import and power.

Going forward, the woman bowed low before the chanters, like a slave. The men, who were three in number, continued their incantation without pausing. Gaunt as starved herons they were, and great of stature, with a common likeness; and their sunk eyes were visible only by red sparks reflected within them from the blaze. And their eyes, as they chanted, seemed to glare afar on the darkling sea and on things hidden by dusk and distance. And Yadar, coming before them, was aware of swift horror and repugnance that made his gorge rise as if he had encountered, in a place given to death, the powerful evil ripeness of corruption.

High leaped the fire, with a writhing of tongues like blue and green serpents coiling amid serpents of yellow. And the light flickered brightly on the face and breasts of that woman who had saved Yadar from the Black River; and he, beholding her closely, knew why she had stirred within him a dim remembrance: for she was none other than his lost love, Dalili!

Forgetting the presence of the dark chanters, he sprang forward to clasp his beloved, crying out her name in an agony of rapture. But she answered him not, and responded to his embrace only with a faint trembling. And Yadar, sorely perplexed and dismayed, was aware of the deathly coldness that crept into his fingers and smote through his very raiment from her flesh. Mortally pale and languid were the lips that he kissed, and it seemed that no breath emerged between them, nor was there any rising and falling of the wan bosom against his. In the wide, beautiful eyes that she turned to him, he found only a drowsy voidness, and such recognition as a sleeper gives when but half awakened, relapsing quickly into slumber thereafter.

'Art thou indeed Dalili?' he said. And she answered somnolently, in a toneless, indistinct voice: 'I am Dalili.'

To Yadar, baffled by mystery, forlorn and aching, it was as if she had spoken from a land farther away than all the weary leagues of his search for her. Fearing to understand the change that had come upon her, he said tenderly:

'Surely thou knowest me, for I am thy lover, the Prince Yadar, who has sought thee through half the kingdoms of earth, and has sailed afar for thy sake on the unshored sea.

And she replied like one bemused by some heavy drug, as if echoing his words without true comprehension: 'Surely I know thee.' And to Yadar there was no comfort in her reply; and his concernment was not allayed by the parrotings with which she answered all his other loving speeches and queries.

He knew not that the three chanters had ceased their incantation; and, verily, he had forgotten their presence. But as he stood holding the girl closely, the men came toward him, and one of them clutched his arm. And the man hailed him by name and addressed him, though somewhat uncouthly, in a language spoken throughout many parts of Zothique, saying: 'We bid thee welcome to the Isle of Naat.'

Yadar, feeling a dread suspicion, imterrogated the man fiercely: 'What manner of beings are ye? And why is Dalili here? And what have ye done to her?'

'I am Vacharn, a necromancer,' the man replied, 'and these others with me are my sons, Vokal and Uldulla, who are also necromancers. We dwell in a house behind the crags, and are attended by the drowned people that our sorcery has called up from the sea. Among our servants is this girl, Dalili, together with the crew of that ship in which she sailed from Oroth. Like the vessel in which thou camest later, the ship was blown far asea and was taken by the Black River and wrecked finally on the reefs of Naat. My sons and I, chanting that powerful formula which requires no use of circle or pentacle, summoned ashore the drowned company: even as we have now summoned the crew of that other vessel, from which thou alone wert saved alive by the dead swimmer, at our command.'

Vacharn ended, and stood peering into the dusk intently; and Yadar heard behind him a noise of slow footsteps coming upward across the shingle from the surf. Turning, he saw emerge from the livid twilight the old captain of that galley in which he had voyaged to Naat; and behind the captain were the sailors and oarsmen. With the paces of sleep-walkers they approached the firelight, the sea-water dripping heavily from their raiment and hair, and drooling from their mouths. Some were sorely bruised, and others came stumbling or dragging with limbs broken by the rocks on which the sea had flung them; and on their faces was the look of men who had suffered the doom of drowning.

Stiffly, like automatons, they made obeisance to Vacharn and his sons, acknowledging thus their thralldom to those who had called them from deep death. In their glassily staring eyes there was no recognition of Yadar, no awareness of outward things; and they spoke only in dull, rote-like recognition of certain obscure words addressed to them by the necromancers.

To Yadar, it was as if he too stood and moved like the living dead in a dark, hollow, half-conscious dream. Walking beside Dalili, and followed by those others, he was led by the enchanters through a dim ravine that wound secretly toward the uplands of Naat. In his heart there was small joy at the finding of Dalili; and his love was companioned with a sick despair.

Vacharn lit the way with a brand of driftwood plucked from the fire. Anon a bloated moon rose red as with sanies-mingled blood, over the wild, racing sea; and before its orb had cleared to a deathlike paleness, they emerged from the gorge on a stony fell where stood the house of the three necromancers.

The house was built of dark granite, with long low wings that crouched amid the foliage of close-grown cypresses. Behind it a cliff beetled; and above the cliff were somber slopes and ridges piled in the moonlight rising afar toward the mountainous center of Naat.

It seemed that the mansion was a place pre-empted by death: for no lights burned in its portals and windows; and a silence came from it to meet the stillness of the wan heavens. But, when the sorcerers neared the threshold, a word was spoken by Vachara, echoing distantly in the inner halls; and as if in answer, lamps glowed suddenly everywhere, filling the house with their monstrous yellow eyes; and people appeared instantly within the portals like bowing shadows. But the faces of these beings were blanched by the tomb's pallor, and some were mottled with green decay, or marked by the tortuous gnawing of maggots...

In a great hall of the house, Yadar was bidden to seat himself at a table where Vacharn and Vokal and Uldulla commonly sat alone during their meals. The table stood on a dais of gigantic flagstones; and below, in the main hall, the dead were gathered about other tables, numbering nearly two score; and among them sat the girl Dalili, looking never toward Yadar. He would have joined her, unwilling to be parted from her side: but a deep languor was upon him, as if an unspoken spell had enthralled his limbs and he could no longer move of his own volition.

Dully he sat with his grim, taciturn hosts who, dwelling always with the silent dead, had assumed no little part of their manner. And he saw more clearly than before the common likeness of the three: for all, it seemed, were as brothers of one birth rather than parent and sons; and all were like ageless things, being neither old nor young in the fashion of ordinary men. And more and more was he aware of that weird evil which emanated from the three, powerful and abhorrent as an exhalation of hidden death.

In the thralldom that weighed upon him, he scarcely marveled at the serving of that strange supper: though meats were brought in by no palpable agency, and wines poured out as if by the air itself; and the passing of the bearers to and fro was betrayed only by a rustle of doubtful footsteps, and a light chillness that came and went.

Mutely, with stiff gestures and movements, the dead began to eat at their tables. But the necromancers refrained from the victuals before them, in an attitude of waiting; and Vacharn said to the nomad: 'There are others who will sup with us tonight.' And Yadar then perceived that a vacant chair had been set beside the chair of Vacharn.

Anon, from an inner doorway, there entered with hasty strides a man of great thews and stature, naked, and brown almost to blackness. Savage of aspect was the man, and his eyes were dilated as with rage or terror, and his thick purple lips were flecked with foam. And behind him, lifting in menace their heavy, rusted scimitars, there came two of the dead seamen, like guards who attend a prisoner.

'This man is a cannibal,' said Vacharn. 'Our servants have captured him in the forest beyond the mountains, which is peopled by such savages.' He added: 'Only the strong and courageous are summoned living to this mansion... Not idly, O Prince Yadar, wert thou chosen for such honor. Observe closely all that follows.'

The savage had paused within the threshold, as if fearing the hall's occupants more than the weapons of his guards. One of the liches slashed his left shoulder with the rusty blade, and blood rilled from a deep wound as the cannibal came forward beneath that prompting. Convulsively he trembled, like a frightened animal, looking wildly to either side for an avenue of escape; and only after a second prompting did he mount the dais and approach the necromancers' table. But, after certain hollow-sounding words had been uttered by Vacharn, the man seated himself, still trembling, in the chair beside the master, opposite to Yadar. And behind him, with high-raised weapons, there stationed themselves the ghastly guards, whose features were those of men a fortnight dead.

'There is still another guest,' said Vacharn. 'He will come later; and we need not wait for him.'

Without further ceremony he began to eat, and Yadar. though with little appetence, followed suit. Hardly did the prince perceive the savor of those viands with which his plate was piled; nor could he have sworn whether the vintages he drunk were sour or dulcet. His thoughts were divided between Dalili and the strangeness and horror about him.

As he ate and drank, his senses were sharpened weirdly, and he grew aware of eldritch shadows moving between the lamps, and heard the chill sibilance of whispers that checked his very blood. And there came to him, from the peopled hall, every odor that is exhaled by mortality between the recentness of death and the end of corruption. Vacharn and his sons addressed themselves to the meal with the unconcern of those long used to such surroundings. But the canibal, whose fear was still palpable, refused to touch the food before him. Blood, in two heavy rills, ran unceasingly down his bosom from his wounded shoulders, and dripped audibly on the stone flags.

Finally, at the urging of Vacharn, who spoke in the cannibal's own tongue, he was persuaded to drink from a cup of wine. This wine was not the same that had been served to the rest of the company, being of a violet color, dark as the nightshade's blossom, while the other wine was a poppy red. Hardly had the man tasted it when he sank back in his chair with the appearance of one smitten helpless by palsy. The cup, rilling the remnant of its contents, was still clutched in his rigid fingers; there was no movement, no trembling of his limbs; and his eyes were wide open and staring as if consciousness still remained within him.

A dire suspicion sprang up in Yadar, and no longer could he eat the food and drink the wine of the necromancers. And he was puzzled by the actions of his hosts who, abstaining likewise, turned in the chairs and peered steadily at a portion of the door behind Vacharn, between the table and the hall's inner end. Yadar, rising a little in his seat, looked down across the table, and perceived a small hole in one of the flagstones. The hole was such as might be inhabited by a small animal: but Yadar could not surmise the nature of a beast that burrowed in solid granite.

In a loud clear voice, Vacharn spoke the single word, 'Esrit,' as if calling the name of one that he wished to summon. Not long thereafter, two little sparks of fire appeared in the darkness of the hole, and from it sprang a creature having somewhat the size and form of a weasel, but even longer and thinner. The creature's fur was a rusted black, and its paws were like tiny hairless hands; and its beaded eyes of flaming yellow seemed to hold the malign wisdom and malevolence of a demon. Swiftly, with writhing movements that gave it the air of a furred serpent, it ran forward beneath the chair occupied by the cannibal, and began to drink greedily the pool of blood that had dripped down on the floor from his wounds.

Then, while horror fastened upon the heart of Yadar. it leapt to the cannibal's knees, and thence to his left shoulder, where the deepest wound had been inflicted. There the thing applied itself to the still bleeding cut from which it sucked in the fashion of a weasel; the blood ceased to flow down on the man's body. And the man stirred not in his chair; but his eyes still widened, slowly, with a horrible glaring, till the ball were isled in livid white; and his lips fell slackly apart, showing teeth that were strong and pointed, as those of a shark.

The necromancers had resumed their eating, with eyes attentive on the small bloodthirsty monster; and it came to Yadar that this was the other guest expected by Vacharn. Whether the thing was an actual weasel, or a sorcerer's familiar, he did not know; but anger followed upon his horror before the plight of the cannibal; and drawing a sword he had carried through all his travels, he sprang to his feet and would have tried to kill the monster. But Vacharn described in the air a peculiar sign with his forefinger; and the prince's arm was suspended in mid-stroke, and his fingers became weak as those of a babe, and the sword fell from his hand, ringing loudly on the dais. Thereafter, as if by the unspoken will of Vacharn, he was constrained to seat himself again at the table.

Insatiable, it seemed, was the thirst of the weasel-like creature: for, after many minutes had gone by, it continued to suck the blood of the savage. From moment to moment the man's mighty thews became strangely shrunken, and the bones and taut sinews showed starkly beneath wrinkling folds of skin. His face was like the chapless face of death, his limbs were lean as those of an old mummy: but the thing that battened upon him had increased in size only so much as a stoat increases by sucking the blood of some farmyard fowl.

By this token, Yadar knew that the thing was indeed a demon and was no doubt, the familiar of Vacharn. Entranced with terror, he sat regarding it, till the creature dropped from the dry bones and skin of the cannibal, and ran with an evil writhing and slithering to its hole in the flagstone.

Weird was the life that now began for Yadar in the house of the necromancers. Upon him there rested always the malign thralldom that had over-powered him during that first supper; and he moved as one who could not wholly awake from some benumbing dream. It seemed that his volition was in some way controlled by those masters of the living dead. But, more than this, he was held by the old enchantment of his love for Dalili: though the love had now turned to a spell of despair.

Something he learned of the necromancers and their mode of existence: though Vacharn spoke seldom except with grim ironies; and the sons of Vacharn were taciturn as the dead. He learned that the weasel-like familiar, whose name was Esrit, had undertaken to serve Vacharn for a given term, receiving in guerdon, at the full of each moon, the blood of a living man chosen for redoubtable strength and valor. And it was clear to Yadar that, in default of some miracle, or sorcery beyond that of the necromancers, his days of life were limited by the moon's period. For, other than himself and the masters, there was no person in all that mansion who had not already passed through the bitter gates of death...

Lonely was the house, standing far apart from all neighbors. Other necromancers dwelt on the shores of Naat; but betwixt these and the hosts of Yadar there was little intercourse. And beyond the wild mountains that divided the isle, there dwelt only certain tribes of anthropophagi, who warred with each other in the black woods of pine and cypress.

The dead were housed in deep catacomb-like caves behind the mansion, lying all night in stone coffins, and coming forth in daily resurrection to do the tasks ordained by the masters. Some tilled the rocky gardens on a slope sheltered from sea-wind; others tended the sable goats and cattle; and still others were sent out as divers for pearls in the sea that ravened prodigiously, not to be dared by living swimmers, on the bleak atolls and headlands horned with granite. Of such pearls, Vacharn had amassed a mighty store through years exceeding the common span of life. And sometimes, in a ship that sailed contrary to the Black River, he or one of his sons would voyage to Zothique with certain of the dead for crew, and would trade the pearls for such things as their magic was unable to raise up in Naat.

Strange it was to Yadar, to see the companions of his voyage passing to and fro with the other liches, greeting him only in mindless echo of his own salutations, And bitter it was, yet never without a dim sorrowful sweetness, to behold Dalili and speak with her, trying vainly to revive the lost ardent love in a heart that had gone fathom-deep into oblivion and had not returned therefrom. And always, with a desolate yearning, he seemed to grope toward her across a gulf more terrible than the stemless tide that poured for ever about the Isle of the Necromancers.

Dalili, who had swum from childhood in the sunken lakes of Zyra, was among those enforced to dive for pearls. Often Yadar would accompany her to the shore and await her return from the mad surges; and at whiles he was tempted to fling himself after her and find, if such were possible, the peace of very death. This he would surely have doae: but amid the eery wilderments of his plight, and the gray webs of sorcery woven about it, it seemed that his old strength and resolution were wholly lacking.

One day, toward sunset-time, as the month drew to its end, Vokal and Uldulla approached the prince where he stood waiting on a rock-walled beach while Dalili dived far out in the torrent waters. Speaking no word, they beckoned to him with furtive signs; and Yadar, vaguely curious as to their intent, suffered them to lead him from the beach and by perilous paths that wound from crag to crag above the curving sea-shore. Ere the fall of darkness, they came to a small landlocked harbor whose existence had been heretofore unsuspected by the nomad. In that placid bay, beneath the deep umbrage of the isle, there rode a galley with somber purple sails, resembling the ship that Yadar had discerned moving steadily toward Zothique against the full tide of the Black River.

Yadar was much bewondered, nor could he divine why they had brought him to the hidden harbor, nor the import of their gestures as they pointed out the strange vessel. Then, in a hushed and covert whisper, as if fearing to be overheard in that remote place, Vokal said to him:

'If thou wilt aid my brother and me in the execution of a certain plan, thou shalt have the use of yonder galley in quitting Naat. And with thee, if such be thy desire, thou shalt take the girl Dalili, together with certain of the dead mariners for oarsmen. Favored by the powerful gales which our enchantments will evoke for thee, thou shalt sail against the Black River and return to Zothique... But if thou helpest us not, then shall the weasel Esrit suck thy blood, till the last member of thy body has been emptied thereof; and Dalili shall remain as the bond-slave of Vacharn, toiling for his avarice by day in the dark waters ... and perchance serving his lust by night.'

At the promise of Vokal, Yadar felt something of hope and manhood revive within him, and it seemed that thebaleful sorcery of Vacharn was lifted from his mind; and an indignation against Vacharn was awakened by Vokal's hintings. And he said quickly: 'I will aid thee in thy plan, whatever it may be, if such aid is within my power to give.'

Then, with many fearful glances about and behind him, Uldulla took up the furtive whispering.

'It is our thought that Vacharn has lived beyond the allotted term, and has imposed his authority upon us too long. We, his sons, grow old: and we deem it no more than rightful that we should inherit the stored treasures and the magical supremacy of our father ere age has debarred us from their enjoyment. Therefore we seek thy help in the slaying of Vacharn.'

It came to Yadar, after brief reflection, that the killing of the necromancer should be held in all ways a righteous deed, and one to which he could lend himself without demeaning his valor or his manhood. So he said without demur: 'I will help thee in this thing.'

Seeming greatly emboldened by Yadar's consent, Vokal spoke again in his turn, saying: 'This thing must be accomplished ere tomorrow's eve, which will bring a full-rounded moon from the Black River upon Naat, and will call the weasel-demon Esrit from his burrow. And tomorrow's forenoon is the only time when we can take Vacharn unaware in his chamber. During those hours, as is his wont, he will peer entranced on a magic mirror that yields visions of the outer sea, and the ships sailing over the sea, and the lands lying beyond. And we must slay him before the mirror, striking swiftly and surely ere he awakens from his trance.

At the hour set for the deed. Vokal and Uldulla came to Yadar where he stood awaiting them in the outer hall. Each of the brothers bore in his right hand a long and coldly glittering scimitar; and Vokal also carried in his left a like weapon, which he offered to the prince, explaining that these scimitars had been tempered to a muttering of lethal runes, and inscribed afterward with unspeakable deathspells. Yadar, preferring his own sword, declined the wizard weapon; and, delaying no more, the three went hastily and with all possible stealth toward Vacharn's chamber.

The house was empty, for the dead had all gone forth to their labors; nor was there any whisper or shadow of those invisible beings, whether sprites of the air or mere phantoms, that waited upon Vacharn and served him in sundry ways. Silently the three came to the portals of the chamber, where entrance was barred only by a black arras wrought with the signs of night in silver, and bordered with a repetition of the fives names of the archfiend Thasaidon in scarlet thread. The brothers paused, as if fearing to lift the arras; but Yadar, unhesitating, held it aside and passed into the chamber; and the twain followed him quickly as if for shame of their poltroonery.

The room was large, high-vaulted, and lit by a dim window looking forth between unpruned cypresses toward the black sea, No flames arose from the myriad lamps to assist that baffled daylight; and shadows brimmed the place like a spectral fluid, through which the vessels of wizardry, the great censers and alembics and braziers, seemed to quiver like animate things. A little past the room's center, his back to the doorway, Vacharn sat on an ebon trivet before the mirror of clairvoyance, which was wrought from electrum in the form of a huge delta; and was held obliquely aloft by a serpentining copper arm. The mirror flamed brightly in the shadow, as if lit by some splendor of unknown source; and the intruders were dazzled by glimpsing of its radiance as they went forward.

It seemed that Vacharn had indeed been overcome by the wonted trance, for he peered rigidly into the mirror, immobile as a seated mummy. The brothers held back, while Yadar, thinking them close behind him, stole toward the necromancer with lifted blade. As he drew nearer, he perceived that Vacharn held a great scimitar across his knees; and, deeming that the sorcerer was perhaps forewarned, Yadar ran quickly up behind him and aimed a powerful stroke at his neck. But, even while he aimed, his eyes were blinded by the strange brightness of the mirror, as though a sun had blazed into them from its depth across the shoulder of Vacharn; and the blade swerved and bit slantingly into the collar-bone, so that the necromancer, though sorely wounded, was saved from decapitation.

Now it seemed likely that Vacharn had foreknown the attempt to slay him, and had thought to do battle with his assailers when they came. But, sitting at the mirror in pretended trance, he had no doubt been overpowered against his will by the weird brilliance, and had fallen into a mantic slumber.

Fierce and swift as a wounded tiger, he leapt from the trivet, swinging his scimitar aloft as he turned upon Yadar. The prince, still blinded, could neither strike again nor avoid the stroke of Vacharn; and the scimitar clove deeply into his right shoulder, and he fell mortally wounded and lay with his head upheld a little against the base of the snakish copper arm that supported the mirror.

Lying there, with his life ebbing slowly, he beheld how Vokal sprang forward as with the desperation of one who sees imminent death, and hewed mightily into the neck of Vacharn. The head, almost sundered from the body, toppled and hung by a strip of flesh and skin: yet Vacharn, reeling, did not fall or die at once, as any mortal man should have done: but, still animated by the wizard power within him, he ran about the chamber, striking great blows at the parricides. Blood gushed from his neck like a fountain as he ran; and his head swung to and fro like a monstrous pendulum on his breast. And all his blows went wild because he could no longer see to direct them, and his sons avoided him agilely, hewing into him oftentimes as he went past. And sometimes he stumbled over the fallen Yadar, or struck the mirror of electrum with his sword, making it ring like a deep bell. And sometimes the battle passed beyond sight of the dying prince, toward the window that looked seaward; and he heard the strange crashings, as if some of the magic furniture were shattered by the strokes of the warlock; and there were loud breathings from the sons of Vacharn, and the dull sound of blows that went home as they still pursued their father. And anon the fight returned before Yadar, and he watched it with dimming eyes.

Dire beyond telling was that combat, and Vokal and Uldulla panted like spent runners ere the end. But, after a while, the power seemed to fail in Vacharn with the draining of his life-blood. He staggered from side to side as he ran and his paces halted, and his blows became enfeebled. His raiment hung upon him in blood-soaked rags from the slashings of his sons, and certain of his members were half sundered, and his whole body was hacked and overscored like an executioner's block. At last, with a dexterous blow, Vokal severed the thin strip by which the head still depended; and the head dropped and rolled with many reboundings about the floor.

Then, with a wild tottering, as if still fain to stand erect, the body of Vacharn toppled down and lay thrashing like a great, headless fowl, heaving itself up and dropping back again, incessantly. Never, with all its rearings, did the body quite regain its feet: but the scimitar was still held firmly in the right hand, and the corpse laid blindly about it, striking from the floor with sidelong slashes, or slicing down as it rose half-way to a standing posture. And the head still rolled, unresting, about the chamber, and maledictions came from its mouth in a pipy voice no louder than that of a child.

At this, Yadar saw that Vokal and Uldulla drew back, as if somewhat aghast; and they turned toward the door, manifestly intending to quite the room. But before Vokal, going first had lifted the portal-arras, there slithered beneath its folds the long, black, snakish body of the weaselfamiliar, Esrit. And the familiar launched itself in air, reaching at one bound the throat of Vokal; and it clung there with teeth fastened to his flesh, sucking his blood steadily, while he staggered about the room and strove in vain to tear it away with maddened fingers.

Uldulla, it seemed, would have made some attenpt to kill the creature, for he cried out, adjuring Vokal to stand firm, and raised his sword as if waiting for a chance to strike at Esrit. But Vokal seemed to hear him not, or was too frenzied to obey his adjuration. And at that instant the head of Vachara, in its rolling, bounded against Uldulla's feet; and the head, snarling ferociously, caught the hem of his robe with its teeth and hung there as he sprang back in panic fright. And though he sliced wildly at the head with his scimitar, the teeth refused to relinquish their hold. So he dropped his garment, and leaving it there with the still pendant head of his father, he fled naked from the room. And even as Uldulla fled, the life departed from Yadar, and he saw and heard no more...

Dimly, from the depths of oblivion, Yadar beheld the flaring of remote lights, and heard the chanting of a far voice. It seemed that he swam upward from black seas toward the voice and the lights, and he saw as if through a thin, watery film the face of Uldulla standing above him, and the fuming of strange vessels in the chamber of Vacharn. And it seemed that Uldulla said to him: 'Arise from death, and be obedient in all things to me the master.'

So, in answer to the unholy rites and incantations of necromancy, Yadar arose to such life as was possible for a resurrected lich. And he walked again, with the black gore of his wound in a great clot on his shoulder and breast, and made reply to Uldulla in the fashion of the living dead. Vaguely, and as matters of no import, he remembered something of his death and the circumstances preceding it; and vainly, with filmed eyes, in the wrecked chamber, he looked for the sundered head and body of Vacharn, and for Vokal and the weasel-demon.

Then it seemed that Uldulla said to him: "Follow me," and he went forth with the necromancer into the light of the red, swollen moon that had soared from the Black River upon Naat. There, on the fell before the house, was a vast heap of ashes where coals glowed and glared like living eyes. Uldulla stood in contemplation before the heap; and Yadar stood beside him, knowing not that he gazed on the burnt-out pyre of Vacharn and Vokal, which the dead slaves had built and fired at Uldulla's direction.

Then, with shrill, eery wailings, a wind came suddenly from the sea, and lifting all the ashes and sparks in a great, swirling cloud, it swept them upon Yadar and the necromancer. The twain could hardly stand against that wind, and their hair and beards and garments were filled with the leavings of the pyre, and both were blinded thereby. Then the wind went up, sweeping the cloud of ashes over the mansion and into its doorways and windows; and through all its apartments. And for many days thereafter, little swirls of ash rose up under the feet of those who passed along the halls; and though there was a daily plying of besoms by the dead at Uldulla's injunction, it seemed that the place was never again wholly clean of those ashes...

Regarding Uldulla, there remains little enough to be told: for his lordship over the dead was a brief thing. Abiding always alone, except for those liches who attended him, he became possessed by a weird melancholy that turned quickly toward madness. No longer could he conceive the aims and objects of life; and the languor of death rose up around him like a black, stealthy sea, full of soft murmurs and shadow-like arms that were fain to draw him downward. Soon he came to envy the dead, and to deem their lot desirable above any other. So carrying that scimitar he had used at the slaying of Vacharn, he went into his father's chamber, which he had not entered since the raising up of Prince Yadar. There, beside the sun-bright mirror of divinations, he disembowled himself, and fell amid the dust and the cobwebs that had gathered heavily over all. And, since there was no other necromancer to bring him back even to a semblance of life, he lay rotting and undisturbed for ever after.

But in the gardens of Vacharn the dead people still labored, heedless of Uldulla's passing; and they still kept the goats and cattle, and dived for pearls in the dark, torrent And Yadar, being with Dalili in that state now common to them both, was drawn to her with a ghostly yearning; and he felt a ghostly comfort in her nearness. The quick despair that had racked him aforetime, and the long torments of desire and separation, were as things faced and forgot; and he shared with Dalili a shadowy love and a dim contentment.

title: Necromancy in Naat


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 his father and published in England. After leaving India Lewis travelled largely, collecting materials for an ethnographical work, which, in consequence of subsequent ill-health and other difficulties, was never published. He died suddenly at Genoa, 26 May 1875, aged 62. Lewis's portrait of Keith Milnes was engraved as a private plate by his father.

LEWIS, GEORGE (1763–1822), dissenting divine, born in 1763 at Trelech, Carmarthenshire, was admitted in 1781 to the Presbyterian College at Carmarthen, where he studied under Robert Gentleman [q. v.] In 1786 he became pastor of a congregation at Carnarvon, from which charge, in 1795, he was called to Llanuwchllyn, Merionethshire. Here he stayed seventeen years, immersed in theological studies, yet finding time to promote and sustain a powerful religious revival. In 1796 he issued his ‘Drych Ysgrythyrol; neu Gorph o Dduwinyddiaeth; yn cynnwys eglurhad a phrawf o amrywiol ganghenau yr athrawiaeth sydd yn ol duwioldeb … Yr ail argraffiad,’ Bala, 1812, 8vo—a small manual of divinity, which, popular from the first, has passed through numerous editions. This was followed in 1802 by his valuable Welsh commentary on the New Testament (‘Esboniad ar y Testament Newydd,’ 7 vols. 8vo), the result of about twenty years' assiduous labour. The work met with almost universal acceptance in Wales, and in 1812 the author was summoned to Wrexham to succeed Jenkin Lewis as head of the Independent Academy or Theological College, originally founded in 1755 at Abergavenny. In 1816 Lewis removed from Wrexham to Llanfyllin, Montgomeryshire, and the board in London consented to move the academy with him. In 1821 it was thought desirable to move it again to Newtown in the same county. Some nine months after the removal, on 5 June 1822, Lewis died at Newtown, and was buried in the New Chapel there, funeral sermons being preached both in English and Welsh.

All Lewis's works were written in the last-mentioned language. His Calvinism was of the type of Dr. (1616–1683) [q. v.], one of the few Welsh nonconformists by whom he was surpassed in learning. Besides the works mentioned above and some sermons, Lewis wrote:
 * 1) ‘Cyfiawnhad trwy Ffydd,’ Machynlleth, 1803, 12mo. ‘Arweinydd i'r Anwybodus, yn cynnwys cyfarwyddiadau i'r anllythyrennog i ddysgu darllen, ynghyd a hyfforddiadau byrrion tu ag at cyrhaedd gwybodaeth o egwyddorion crefydd. … Y pummed argraphiad,’ &c., Gwrecsam, 1812, 12mo.
 * 2) ‘Catecism Athrawiaethol ac ymarferol. Neu gasgliad o wirioneddau a dyledswyddau Cristnogol. … Y degfed argraffiad,’ Llanfyllin, 1818, 16mo; new ed. Wrexham, 1870.

LEWIS, GEORGE CORNEWALL (1806–1863), statesman and author, the elder son of Sir  [q. v.] of Harpton Court, Radnorshire, by his first wife, Harriet, fourth daughter of Sir George Cornewall of Moccas, Herefordshire, bart., was born in London on 21 April 1806. He was first sent to Monsieur Clement's school at Chelsea, but in January 1819 was removed to Eton, where he distinguished himself by his facility and elegance as a writer of Latin verse; many of his compositions are still preserved in a manuscript volume in the library at Harpton. Leaving school in December 1823, Lewis matriculated at Oxford on 10 Feb. 1824, and after travelling abroad for a few months commenced his residence at Christ Church in the Michaelmas term of that year. In Easter term 1828 he gained a first class in classics and a second in mathematics, and in June of the same year was elected a student of Christ Church. He graduated B.A. in 1829, M.A. in 1831, and was created D.C.L. on 24 June 1857. Having been admitted a student of the Middle Temple in June 1828, he became a pupil in the chambers of Mr. (afterwards Sir) Barnes Peacock, then a special pleader, and in 1830 he attended Austin's lectures on jurisprudence at London University. Lewis was called to the bar on 25 Nov. 1831, and joined the Oxford circuit, but owing to ill-health soon abandoned law for literature. He had now become an advanced classical scholar, could both speak and read French, German, and Italian, and had studied Spanish, Provençal, and Anglo-Saxon. In 1833 he was appointed an assistant-commissioner to inquire into the condition of the poorer classes in Ireland, and on 28 Dec. 1833 was directed by the home secretary ‘to make a particular inquiry into the state of the Irish labourers’ in the larger towns of Lancashire, and in the south-western portions of Scotland. His report, embodying the result of his investigations, is dated Dublin, 1 Dec. 1834, and was published as an appendix to the ‘First Report

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


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Rh of the Irish Poor Inquiry Commissioners’ (Parl. Papers, 1836, xxxiv. 427–642). On 4 June 1834 he became a member of the commission of inquiry into the state of religious and other instruction in Ireland (ib. 1835, vols. xxxiii. xxxiv.). At the desire of the chancellor of the exchequer (Thomas Spring Rice) Lewis, in July 1836, wrote his ‘Remarks on the Third Report of the Irish Poor Inquiry Commissioners,’ &c. (London, 1837, 8vo; also printed in vol. li. of the ‘Parliamentary Papers’ for 1837, pp. 253–290). Lewis disagreed with the recommendations of the commissioners, and in a letter to Sir Edmund Head declared that ‘their utter misconception of the entire subject, both the state of Ireland and the English poor law, is less provoking than the impudent way in which they beg the question while professing to argue it’ (Letters, p. 54).

On 10 Sept. 1836 he was appointed joint-commissioner with John Austin (1790–1859) [q. v.] to inquire into the affairs of Malta, where he spent eighteen months in reporting on the condition of the island, and proposed various changes in the laws (Parl. Papers, 1838 vol. xxix., 1839 vol. xvii.). He returned to England in May 1838, and in January 1839 succeeded his father as one of the poor-law commissioners for England and Wales. This post, which was both a difficult and a thankless one, Lewis held for more than seven years. The board was attacked on all sides, and while the local authorities protested that it interfered too much, the philanthropists declared that it did too little. The difficulties of the board, moreover, were intensified by the want of a representative in parliament (Letters, pp. 149–151), as well as by the action of its secretary, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Edwin Chadwick, who was the chief opponent of the policy of the commissioners. Matters were at length brought to a crisis by the report of the select committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the administration of the poor laws in the Andover union, and into the management of the union workhouse (Parl. Papers, 1846, vol. v. pts. i. ii.) This report cast a slur upon the conduct of the commissioners, who replied to the charges made against them in ‘Letters addressed … to the Secretary of State respecting the Transaction of the Business of the Commission’ (London, 1847, 8vo). In the same year (1846) Lewis filed a criminal information against W. B. Ferrand, M.P. for Knaresborough, for a libel charging him with conspiracy and falsehood in connection with the Keighley union inquiry in 1842. The rule was made absolute on 24 Nov., but it would appear that the action was never brought to trial. In consequence of the general dissatisfaction with the board, a bill was brought in by the government for remodelling the commission (10 & 11 Vict. c. 109), and Lewis resigned office in July 1847.

At the general election in August 1847 Lewis was returned to the House of Commons for Herefordshire in the Liberal interest, and in November following was appointed one of the secretaries to the board of control in Lord John Russell's first administration. He spoke for the first time in the House of Commons on 26 Nov. 1847 (Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. xcv. 254–5), and on 4 May 1848 supported the third reading of the Jewish Disabilities Removal Bill (ib. xcviii. 631–3, 668). On 15 May 1848 he became under-secretary for the home department, and in the following year endeavoured without success to carry through the house a bill for the abolition of turnpike trusts and the management of highways by a mixed county board (ib. cii. 1339–45, 1364, ciii. 417–30, 441). In 1850 his Highways Bill, from which all reference to the turnpike trusts had been omitted (ib. cviii. 746–9), met with no better success.

In May and June 1850 he was examined before the select committee of the House of Lords appointed to consider the laws relating to parochial assessments. His evidence, which was of a very comprehensive character, was reprinted from the report (Parl. Papers, 1850, vol. xvi.) as a separate pamphlet (London, 1850, 8vo). On 9 July 1850 Lewis became financial secretary to the treasury, an office which he retained until Lord John Russell's downfall in February 1852. In September 1851 Lewis was entrusted with Lord John Russell's proposals to Sir James Robert George Graham [q. v.], but the negotiations were unsuccessful (Greville Memoirs, pt. ii. vol. iii. pp. 411–12). He lost his seat for Herefordshire at the general election in July 1852, and in November following unsuccessfully contested Peterborough, where he was defeated by G. H. Whalley by fifteen votes. In December 1852 Lewis accepted the post of editor of the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ in succession to William Empson [q. v.], but the first number really edited by him did not appear until April 1853 (Letters, p. 261). In 1853 he went up to Oxford to examine for the Ireland scholarship, and in the summer of the same year refused the offer of the governorship of Bombay. On the death of his father in January 1855 Lewis succeeded to the baronetcy, and in the following month to his father's seat for the Radnor boroughs, for which he was returned without opposition, and which he


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Weird Tales/Volume 30/Issue 3/The Death of Ilalotha

The Death of Ilalotha by Clark Ashton Smith

Black Lord of bale and fear, master of all confusion!

By thee, thy prophet saith,

New power is given to wizards after death,

And witches in corruption draw forbidden breath

And weave such wild enchantment and illusion

As none but lamiae may use;

And through thy grace the charneled corpses lose

Their horror, and nefandous loves are lighted

In noisome vaults long nighted;

And vampires make their sacrifice to thee —

Disgorging blood as if great urns had poured

Their bright vermilion hoard

About the washed and weltering sarcophagi.

- Ludar's Litany to Thasaidon.

According to the custom in old Tasuun, the obsequies of Ilalotha, lady-in-waiting to the self-widowed Queen Xantlicha, had formed an occasion of much merrymaking and prolonged festivity. For three days, on a bier of diverse-colored silks from the Orient, under a rose-hued canopy that might well have domed some nuptial couch, she had lain clad with gala garments amid the great feasting-hall of the royal palace in Miraab. About her, from morning dusk to sunset, from cool even to torridly glaring dawn, the feverish tide of the funeral orgies had surged and eddied without slackening. Nobles, court officials, guardsmen, scullions, astrologers, eunuchs, and all the high ladies, waiting-women and female slaves of Xantlicha, had taken part in that prodigal debauchery which was believed to honour most fitly the deceased. Mad songs and obscene ditties were sung, and dancers whirled in vertiginous frenzy to the lascivious pleading of untirable lutes. Wines and liquors were poured torrentially from monstrous amphorae; the tables fumed with spicy meats piled in huge hummocks and forever replenished. The drinkers offered libation to Ilalotha, till the fabrics of her bier were stained to darker hues by the spilt vintages. On all sides around her, in attitudes of disorder or prone abandonment, lay those who had yielded to amorous license of the fullness of their potations. With halfshut eyes and lips slightly parted, in the rosy shadow cast by the catafalque, she wore no aspect of death but seemed a sleeping empress who ruled impartially over the living and the dead. This appearance, together with a strange heightening of her natural beauty, was remarked by many: and some said that she seemed to await a lover's kiss rather than the kisses of the worm.

On the third evening, when the many-tongued brazen lamps were lit and the rites drew to their end, there returned to court the Lord Thulos, acknowledged lover of Queen Xantlicha, who had gone a week previous to visit his domain on the western border and had heard nothing of Ilalotha's death. Still unaware, he came into the hall at that hour when the saturnalia began to flag and the fallen revelers to outnumber those who still moved and drank and made riot.

He viewed the disordered hall with little surprise, for such scenes were familiar to him from childhood. Then, approaching the bier, he recognized its occupant with a certain startlement. Among the numerous ladies of Miraab who had drawn his libertine affections, Ilalotha had held sway longer than most; and, it was said, she had grieved more passionately over his defection than any other. She had been superseded a month before by Xantlicha, who had shown favor to Thulos in no ambiguous manner; and Thulos, perhaps, had abandoned her not without regret: for the role of lover to the queen, though advantageous and not wholly disagreeable, was somewhat precarious. Xantlicha, it was universally believed, had rid herself of the late King Archain by means of a tomb-discovered vial of poison that owed its peculiar subtlety and virulence to the art of ancient sorcerers. Following this act of disposal, she had taken many lovers, and those who failed to please her came invariably to ends no less violent than that of Archain. She was exigent, exorbitant, demanding a strict fidelity somewhat irksome to Thulos; who, pleading urgent affairs on his remote estate, had been glad enough of a week away from court.

Now, as he stood beside the dead woman, Thulos forgot the queen and bethought him of certain summer nights that had been honeyed by the fragrance of jasmine and the jasmine-white beauty of Ilalotha. Even less than the others could he believe her dead: for her present aspect differed in no wise from that which she had often assumed during their old intercourse. To please his whim, she had feigned the inertness and complaisance of slumber or death; and at such times he had loved her with an ardor undismayed by the pantherine vehemence with which, at other whiles, she was wont to reciprocate or invite his caresses.

Moment by moment, as if through the working of some powerful necromancy, there grew upon him a curious hallucination, and it seemed that he was again the lover of those lost nights, and had entered that bower in the palace gardens where Ilalotha waited him on a couch strewn with overblown petals, lying with bosom quiet as her face and hands. No longer was he aware of the crowded hall: the high-flaring lights, the wine-flushed faces, had become a moonbright parterre of drowsily nodding blossoms, and the voices of the courtiers were no more than a faint suspiration of wind amid cypress and jasmine. The warm, aphrodisiac perfumes of the June night welled about him; and again, as of old, it seemed that they arose from the person of Ilalotha no less than from the flowers. Prompted by intense desire, he stooped over and felt her cool arm stir involuntarily beneath his kiss.

Then, with the bewilderment of a sleep-walker awakened rudely, he heard a voice that hissed in his ear with soft venom: "Hast forgotten thyself, my Lord Thulos? Indeed I wonder little, for many of my bawcocks deem that she is fairer in death than in life." And, turning from Ilalotha, while the weird spell dissolved from his senses, he found Xantlicha at his side. Her garments were disarrayed, her hair was unbound and disheveled, and she reeled slightly, clutching him by the shoulder with sharp-nailed fingers. Her full, poppy-crimson lips were curled by a vixenish fury, and in her long-lidded yellow eyes there blazed the jealousy of an amorous cat.

Thulos, overwhelmed by a strange confusion, remembered but partially the enchantment to which he had succumbed; and he was unsure whether or not he had actually kissed Ilalotha and had felt her flesh quiver to his mouth. Verily, he thought, this thing could not have been, and a waking dream had momentarily seized him. But he was troubled by the words of Xantlicha and her anger, and by the half-furtive drunken laughters and ribald whispers that he heard passing among the people about the hall.

"Beware, my Thulos," the queen murmured, her strange anger seeming to subside; "For men say that she was a witch."

"How did she die? " queried Thulos.

"From no other fever than that of love, it is rumored."

"Then, surely, she was no witch," Thulos argued with a lightness that was far from his thoughts and feelings; "for true sorcery should have found the cure."

"It was from love of thee," said Xantlicha darkly; "and as all women know, thy heart is blacker and harder than black adamant. No witchcraft, however potent, could prevail thereon." Her mood, as she spoke, appeared to soften suddenly. "Thy absence has been long, my lord. Come to me at midnight: I will wait for thee in the south pavilion."

Then, eyeing him sultrily for an instant from under drooped lids, and pinching his arm in such a manner that her nails pierced through cloth and skin like a cat's talons, she turned from Thulos to hail certain of the harem-eunuchs.

Thulos, when the queen's attention was disengaged from him, ventured to look again at Ilalotha; pondering, meanwhile, the curious remarks of Xantlicha. He knew that Ilalotha, like many of the court-ladies, had dabbled in spells and philtres; but her witchcraft had never concerned him, since he felt no interest in other charms or enchantments than those with which nature had endowed the bodies of women. And it was quite impossible for him to believe that Ilalotha had died from a fatal passion: since, in his experience, passion was never fatal.

Indeed, as he regarded her with confused emotions, he was again beset by the impression that she had not died at all. There was no repetition of the weird, half-remembered hallucination of other time and place; but it seemed to him that she had stirred from her former position on the wine stained bier, turning her face toward him a little, as a woman turns to an expected lover; that the arm he had kissed (either in dream or reality) was outstretched a little farther from her side.

Thulos bent nearer, fascinated by the mystery and drawn by a stranger attraction that he could not have named. Again, surely, he had dreamt or had been mistaken. But even as the doubt grew, it seemed that the bosom of Ilalotha stirred in faint respiration, and he heard an almost inaudible but thrilling whisper: "Come to me at midnight. I will wait for thee... in the tomb."

At this instant there appeared beside the catafalque certain people in the sober and rusty raiment of sextons, who had entered the hall silently, unperceived by Thulos or by any of the company. They carried among them a thin-walled sarcophagus of newly welded and burnished bronze. It was their office to remove the dead woman and bear her to the sepulchral vaults of her family, which were situated in the old necropolis lying somewhat to northward of the palace-gardens.

Thulos would have cried out to restrain them from their purpose; but his tongue clove tightly; nor could he move any of his members. Not knowing whether he slept or woke, he watched the people of the cemetery as they placed Ilalotha in the sarcophagus and bore her quickly from the hall, unfollowed and still unheeded by the drowsy bacchanalians. Only when the somber cortège had departed was he able to stir from his position by the empty bier. His thoughts were sluggish, and full of darkness and indecision. Smitten by an immense fatigue that was not unnatural after his day-long journey, he withdrew to his apartments and fell instantly into death-deep slumber.

Freeing itself gradually from the cypress-boughs, as if from the long, stretched fingers of witches, a waning and misshapen moon glared horizontally through the eastern window when Thulos awoke. By this token, he knew that the hour drew toward midnight, and recalled the assignation which Queen Xantlicha had made with him: an assignation which he could hardly break without incurring the queen's deadly displeasure. Also, with singular clearness, he recalled another rendezvous... at the same time but in a different place. Those incidents and impressions of Ilalotha's funeral, which, at the time, had seemed so dubitable and dream-like, returned to him with a profound conviction of reality, as if etched on his mind by some mordant chemistry of sleep... or the strengthening of some sorcerous charm. He felt that Ilalotha had indeed stirred on her bier and spoken to him; that the sextons had borne her still living to the tomb. Perhaps her supposed demise had been merely a sort of catalepsy; or else she had deliberately feigned death in a last effort to revive his passion. These thoughts awoke within him a raging fever of curiosity and desire; and he saw before him her pale, inert, luxurious beauty, presented as if by enchantment.

Direly distraught, he went down by the lampless stairs and hallways to the moonlit labyrinth of the gardens. He cursed the untimely exigence of Xantlicha. However, as he told himself, it was more than likely that the queen, continuing to imbibe the liquors of Tasuun, had long since reached a condition in which she would neither keep nor recall her appointment. This thought reassured him: in his queerly bemused mind, it soon became a certainty; and he did not hasten toward the south pavilion but strolled vaguely amid the wan and somber boscage.

More and more it seemed unlikely that any but himself was abroad: for the long, unlit wings of the palace sprawled as in vacant stupor; and in the gardens there were only dead shadows, and pools of still fragrance in which the winds had drowned. And over all, like a pale, monstrous poppy, the moon distilled her death-white slumber. Thulos, no longer mindful of his rendezvous with Xantlicha, yielded without further reluctance to the urgence that drove him toward another goal... Truly, it was no less than obligatory that he should visit the vaults and learn whether or not he had been deceived in his belief concerning Ilalotha. Perhaps, if he did not go, she would stifle in the shut sarcophagus, and her pretended death would quickly become an actuality. Again, as if spoken in the moonlight before him, he heard the words she had whispered, or seemed to whisper, from the bier: "Come to me at midnight... I will wait for thee... in the tomb."

With the quickening steps and pulses of one who fares to the warm, petal-sweet couch of an adored mistress, he left the palace-grounds by an unguarded northern postern and crossed the weedy common between the royal gardens and the old cemetery. Unchilled and undismayed, he entered those always-open portals of death, where ghoul-headed monsters of black marble, glaring with hideously pitted eyes, maintained their charnel postures before the crumbling pylons.

The very stillness of the low-bosomed graves, the rigor and pallor of the tall shafts, the deepness of bedded cypress shadows, the inviolacy of death by which all things were invested, served to heighten the singular excitement that had fired Thulos' blood. It was as if he had drunk a philtre spiced with mummia. All around him the mortuary silence seemed to burn and quiver with a thousand memories of Ilalotha, together with those expectations to which he had given as yet no formal image....

Once, with Ilalotha, he had visited the subterranean tomb of her ancestors; and, recalling its situation clearly, he came without indirection to the low-arched and cedar-darkened entrance. Rank nettles and fetid fumitories, growing thickly about the seldom-used adit, were crushed down by the tread of those who had entered there before Thulos; and the rusty, iron-wrought door sagged heavily inward on its loose hinges. At his feet there lay an extinguished flambeau, dropped, no doubt, by one of the departing sextons. Seeing it, he realized that he had brought with him neither candle nor lantern for the exploration of the vaults, and found in that providential torch an auspicious omen.

Bearing the lit flambeau, he began his investigation. He gave no heed to the piled and dusty sarcophagi in the first reaches of the subterrane: for, during their past visit, Ilalotha had shown to him a niche at the innermost extreme, where, in due time, she herself would find sepulture among the members of that decaying line. Strangely, insidiously, like the breath of some vernal garden, the languid and luscious odor of jasmine swam to meet him through the musty air, amid the tiered presence of the dead; and it drew him to the sarcophagus that stood open between others tightly lidded. There he beheld Ilalotha lying in the gay garments of her funeral, with half-shut eyes and half- parted lips; and upon her was the same weird and radiant beauty, the same voluptuous pallor and stillness, that had drawn Thulos with a necromantic charm.

"I knew that thou wouldst come, O Thulos," she murmured, stirring a little, as if involuntarily, beneath the deepening ardor of his kisses that passed quickly from throat to bosom...

The torch that had fallen from Thulos' hand expired in the thick dust...

Xantlicha, retiring to her chamber betimes, had slept illy. Perhaps she had drunk too much or too little of the dark, ardent vintages; perhaps her blood was fevered by the return of Thulos, and her jealousy still troubled by the hot kiss which he had laid on Ilalotha's arm during the obsequies. A restlessness was upon her; and she rose well before the hour of her meeting with Thulos, and stood at her chamber window seeking such coolness as the night air might afford.

The air, however, seemed heated as by the burning of hidden furnaces; her heart appeared to swell in her bosom and stifle her; and her unrest and agitation were increased rather than diminished by the spectacle of the moon-lulled gardens. She would have hurried forth to the tryst in the pavilion; but, despite her impatience, she thought it well to keep Thulos waiting. Leaning thus from her sill, she beheld Thulos when he passed amid the parterres and arbors below. She was struck by the unusual haste and intentness of his steps, and she wondered at their direction, which could bring him only to places remote from the rendezvous she had named. He disappeared from her sight in the cypress-lined alley that led to the north garden-gate; and her wonderment was soon mingled with alarm and anger when he did not return.

It was incomprehensible to Xantlicha that Thulos, or any man, would dare to forget the tryst in his normal senses; and seeking an explanation, she surmised that the working of some baleful and potent sorcery was probably involved. Nor, in the light of certain incidents that she had observed, and much else that had been rumored, was it hard for her to identify the possible sorceress. Ilalotha, the queen knew, had loved Thulos to the point of frenzy, and had grieved inconsolably after his desertion of her. People said that she had wrought various ineffectual spells to bring him back; that she had vainly invoked demons and sacrificed to them, and had made futile invultuations and death-charms against Xantlicha. In the end, she had died of sheer chagrin and despair, or perhaps had slain herself with some undetected poison... But, as was commonly believed in Tasuun, a witch dying thus, with unslaked desires and frustrate cantrips, could turn herself into a lamia vampire and procure thereby the consummation of all her sorceries...

The queen shuddered, remembering these things; and remembering also the hideous and malign transformation that was said to accompany the achievement of such ends: for those who used in this manner the power of hell must take on the very character and the actual semblance of infernal beings. Too well she surmised the destination of Thulos, and the danger to which he had gone forth if her suspicions were true. And, knowing that she might face an equal danger, Xantlicha determined to follow him.

She made little preparation, for there was no time to waste; but took from beneath her silken bed-cushion a small, straight-bladed dagger that she kept always within reach. The dagger had been anointed from point to hilt with such venom as was believed efficacious against either the living or the dead. Bearing it in her right hand, and carrying in the other a slot-eyed lantern that she might require later, Xantlicha stole swiftly from the palace.

The last lees of the evening's wine ebbed wholly from her brain, and dim, ghastly fears awoke, warning her like the voices of ancestral phantoms. But, firm in her determination, she followed the path taken by Thulos; the path taken earlier by those sextons who had borne Ilalotha to her place of sepulture. Hovering from tree to tree, the moon accompanied her like a worm-hollowed visage. The soft, quick patter of her cothurns, breaking the white silence, seemed to tear the filmy cobweb pall that withheld from her a world of spectral abominations. And more and more she recalled, of those legendries that concerned such beings as Ilalotha; and her heart was shaken within her: for she knew that she would meet no mortal woman but a thing raised up and inspirited by the seventh hell. But amid the chill of these horrors, the thought of Thulos in the lamia's arms was like a red brand that seared her bosom.

Now the necropolis yawned before Xantlicha, and her path entered the cavernous gloom of far-vaulted funereal trees, as if passing into monstrous and shadowy mouths that were tusked with white monuments. The air grew dank and noisome, as if filled with the breathing of open crypts. Here the queen faltered, for it seemed that black, unseen cacodemons rose all about her from the graveyard ground, towering higher than the shafts and boles, and standing in readiness to assail her if she went farther. Nevertheless, she came anon to the dark adit that she sought. Tremulously she lit the wick of the dot-eyed lantern; and, piercing the gross underground darkness before her with its bladed beam, she passed with ill-subdued terror and repugnance into that abode of the dead... and perchance of the Undead.

However, as she followed the first turnings of the catacomb, it seemed that she was to encounter nothing more abhorrent than charnel mold and century-sifted dust; nothing more formidable than the serried sarcophagi that lined the deeply hewn shelves of stone; sarcophagi that had stood silent and undisturbed ever since the time of their deposition. Here, surely the slumber of all the dead was unbroken, and the nullity of death was inviolate.

Almost the queen doubted that Thulos had preceded her there; till, turning her light on the ground, she discerned the print of his poulaines, long-tipped and slender in the deep dust amid those foot-marks left by the rudely shod sextons. And she saw that the footprints of Thulos pointed only in one direction, while those of the others plainly went and returned.

Then, at an undetermined distance in the shadows ahead, Xantlicha heard a sound in which the sick moaning of some amorous woman was bent with a snarling as of jackals over their meat. Her blood returned frozen upon her heart as she went onward step by slow step, clutching her dagger in a hand drawn sharply back, and holding the light high in advance. The sound grew louder and most distinct; and there came to her now a perfume as of flowers in some warm June night; but, as she still advanced, the perfume was mixed with more and more of a smothering foulness such as she had never heretofore known, and was touched with the reeking of blood.

A few paces more, and Xantlicha stood as if a demon's arm had arrested her: for her lantern's light had found the inverted face and upper body of Thulos, hanging from the end of a burnished, new-wrought sarcophagus that occupied a scant interval between others green with rust. One of Thulos' hands clutched rigidly the rim of the sarcophagus, while the other hand, moving feebly, seemed to caress a dim shape that leaned above him with arms showing jasmine-white in the narrow beam, and dark fingers plunging into his bosom. His head and body seemed but an empty hull, and his hand hung skeleton-thin on the bronze rim, and his whole aspect was vein-drawn, as if he had lost more blood than was evident on his torn throat and face, and in his sodden raiment and dripping hair.

From the thing stooping above Thulos, there came ceaselessly that sound which was half moan and half snarl. And as Xantlicha stood in petrific fear and loathing, she seemed to hear from Thulos' lips an indistinct murmur, more of ecstasy than pain. The murmur ceased, and his head hung slacklier than before, so that the queen deemed him verily dead. At this she found such wrathful courage as enabled her to step nearer and raise the lantern higher: for, even amid her extreme panic, it came to her that by means of the wizard-poisoned dagger she might still haply slay the thing that had slain Thulos.

Waveringly the light crept aloft, disclosing inch by inch that infamy which Thulos had caressed in the darkness...

It crept even to the crimson-smeared wattles, and the fanged and ruddled orifice that was half mouth and half beak... till Xantlicha knew why the body of Thulos was a mere shrunken hull... In what the queen saw, there remained nothing of Ilalotha except the white, voluptuous arms, and a vague outline of human breasts melting momently into breasts that were not human, like clay molded by a demon sculptor. The arms too began to change and darken; and, as they changed, the dying hand of Thulos stirred again and fumbled with a caressing movement toward the horror. And the thing seemed to heed him not but withdrew its fingers from his bosom, and reached across him with members stretching enormously, as if to claw the queen or fondle her with its dribbling talons.

It was then that Xantlicha let fall the lantern and the dagger, and ran with shrill, endless shriekings and laughters of immitigable madness from the vault.


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Rh continued to represent until his death. During the break in his parliamentary career Lewis wrote his ‘Enquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History’ (London, 1855, 8vo, 2 vols.; translated into German by F. Liebrecht, Hanover, 1858, 8vo, 2 vols.), in which he assailed the results of Niebuhr's investigations, as well as the method by which he arrived at them. Lewis succeeded Mr. Gladstone as chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Palmerston's first administration, and was sworn a member of the privy council on 28 Feb. 1855. He thereupon resigned the editorship of the ‘Edinburgh Review.’ He brought forward his budget on 20 April 1855 under circumstances of exceptional difficulty (Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. cxxxvii. 1555–80). To meet a deficit of twenty-three millions, Lewis raised sixteen millions by a new loan, three millions by exchequer bills, and the remaining four millions by increasing the income-tax from fourteenpence to sixteenpence in the pound, and by raising the duties on sugar, tea, coffee, and spirits. A proposed stamp duty, which would have produced 200,000l., was afterwards abandoned. By this budget the taxation of the country was raised to 68,639,000l. per annum, a sum ‘largely in excess of any that had ever before been so levied’ (, Twenty Years of Financial Policy, p. 268). The loan of two millions to Sardinia was readily agreed to, but the resolution adopting the convention by which the government, conjointly with France, agreed to guarantee the Turkish loan of five millions was violently attacked in the house, and carried by only 135 to 132 (Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. cxxxix. 1268). Owing to the continual drain of the war expenses, Lewis was compelled before the session closed to apply for power to issue seven millions of exchequer bills instead of three (ib. cxxxix. 1697–1703). During the same session Lewis succeeded in carrying through the House of Commons the Newspaper Stamp Duties Bill (18 and 19 Vict. c. xxvii.), which he had ‘received as an inheritance from Gladstone’ (Letters, p. 295). On 22 Feb. 1855 Lewis applied for authority to raise a loan of five millions, in order to supply the place of the surplus on which he had calculated in the previous year (Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. cxl. 1228–42). He introduced his second budget on 19 May 1856, when he estimated the whole cost of the Crimean war at 77,588,711l. (but see, Twenty Years of Financial Policy, p. 295; , Finance and Politics, i. 155). As no new taxes were to be levied, Lewis, in order to meet a deficiency of over eight millions, was once more compelled to find the money by means of a further loan (Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. cxlii. 329–55). By his third and last budget, which he brought in on 13 Feb. 1857, Lewis reduced the income-tax from sixteenpence to sevenpence in the pound, and made some small reductions in the tea, coffee, and sugar duties (ib. cxliv. 629–64). Though his financial proposals were severely attacked by Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone, they were subsequently carried in a slightly modified form. In consequence of the grave commercial crisis in the autumn of 1857, the Bank Charter Act was suspended on Lewis's recommendation (Annual Register, 1857, Chron. p. 513), and on 4 Dec. 1857 he moved for leave to bring in an Indemnity Bill (Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. cxlviii. 145–71), which was quickly passed through both houses, and received the royal assent on the 12th of the same month (ib. p. 672). He made one of his most successful speeches in the House of Commons on 12 Feb. 1858 in support of Lord Palmerston's motion for leave to bring in a bill for the better government of India (ib. pp. 1330–53), and resigned office with the rest of his colleagues on the defeat of the ministry a few days afterwards. On the formation of Lord Palmerston's second administration in June 1859, Lewis waived his claims to the chancellorship of the exchequer in favour of Mr. Gladstone, and accepted the post of home secretary. On the resignation of Sidney Herbert, lord Herbert of Lea [q. v.], Lewis, much against his wish, was appointed secretary for war (22 July 1861).

While still holding this uncongenial office, he died at Harpton Court on 13 April 1863, aged 56. The House of Commons was adjourned on the following day out of respect to his memory (ib. clxx. 13–16). He was buried on the 18th in the family vault under the lady-chapel in Old Radnor Church. A marble bust of Lewis, by Weekes, was placed in the north transept of Westminster Abbey, and monuments were erected in his honour in Old Radnor Church, in New Radnor, and in front of the Shire-hall at Hereford.

Lewis was a quiet, grave-looking man, of simple habits and undemonstrative manners. As a sober-minded, practical politician, of high principles, untiring industry, and great administrative ability, he secured the confidence of the moderate men of all parties. Greville describes him as ‘cold-blooded as a fish, totally devoid of sensibility or nervousness, of an imperturbable temper, calm and resolute, laborious and indefatigable, and exceedingly popular in the House of Com-


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A Pressing Concern on People's Minds

THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody! [applause] Thank you. Please, everybody have a seat. Well, good afternoon, everybody.

AUDIENCE: Good afternoon!

THE PRESIDENT: Welcome to the White House.

AUDIENCE: Thank you!

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you for having us. [laughter]

THE PRESIDENT: Now, I realize that the last thing you want to hear on New Year's Eve is another speech from me. But I do need to talk about the progress that’s being made in Congress today.

For the last few days, leaders in both parties have been working toward an agreement that will prevent a middle class tax hike from hitting 98 percent of all Americans, starting tomorrow. Preventing that tax hike has been my top priority, because the last thing folks like the folks up here on this stage can afford right now is to pay an extra $2,000 in taxes next year. Middle-class families can't afford it. Businesses can't afford it. Our economy can't afford it.

Now, today it appears that an agreement to prevent this New Year's tax hike is within sight, but it's not done. There are still issues left to resolve, but we're hopeful that Congress can get it done. But it's not done.

And so part of the reason that I wanted to speak to all of you here today is to make sure that we emphasize to Congress and that members of both parties understand that all across America, this is a pressing concern on people's minds.

Now, the potential agreement that’s being talked about would not only make sure that taxes don’t go up on middle-class families, it also would extend tax credits for families with children. It would extend our tuition tax credit that’s helped millions of families pay for college. It would extend tax credits for clean energy companies that are creating jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. It would extend unemployment insurance to 2 million Americans who are out there still actively looking for a job.

I have to say that ever since I took office, throughout the campaign, and over the last couple of months, my preference would have been to solve all these problems in the context of a larger agreement, a bigger deal, a grand bargain -- whatever you want to call it -- that solves our deficit problems in a balanced and responsible way, that doesn't just deal with the taxes but deals with the spending in a balanced way so that we can put all this behind us and just focusing on growing our economy.

But with this Congress, that was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time. [laughter] It may be we can do it in stages. We’re going to solve this problem instead in several steps.

Last year in 2011, we started reducing the deficit through $1 trillion in spending cuts. Those have already taken place. The agreement being worked on right now would further reduce the deficit by asking the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans to pay higher taxes for the first time in two decades, so that would add additional hundreds of billions of dollars to deficit reduction. So that's progress, but we’re going to need to do more.

Keep in mind that just last month Republicans in Congress said they would never agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans. Obviously, the agreement that's currently being discussed would raise those rates and raise them permanently. [applause]

But keep in mind, we’re going to still have more work to do. We still have deficits that have to be dealt with. We’re still going to have to think about how we put our economy on a long-term trajectory of growth, how we continue to make investments in things like education, things like infrastructure that help our economy grow.

And keep in mind that the threat of tax hikes going up is only one part of this so-called fiscal cliff that everybody has been talking about. What we also have facing us starting tomorrow are automatic spending cuts that are scheduled to go into effect. And keep in mind that some of these spending cuts that Congress has said will automatically go into effect have an impact on our Defense Department, but they also have an impact on things like Head Start. And so there are some programs that are scheduled to be cut that we’re using an axe instead of a scalpel -- may not always be the smartest cuts. And so that is a piece of business that still has to be taken care of.

And I want to make clear that any agreement we have to deal with these automatic spending cuts that are being threatened for next month, those also have to be balanced -- because remember, my principle has always been let’s do things in a balanced, responsible way. And that means that revenues have to be part of the equation in turning off the sequester, in eliminating these automatic spending cuts, as well as spending cuts.

Now, the same is true for any future deficit agreement. Obviously, we’re going to have to do more to reduce our debt and our deficit. I’m willing to do more, but it’s going to have to be balanced. We’re going to have to do it in a balanced, responsible way.

For example, I’m willing to reduce our government’s Medicare bills by finding new ways to reduce the cost of health care in this country. That's something that we all should agree on. We want to make sure that Medicare is there for future generations. But the current trajectory of health care costs is going up so high we've got to find ways to make sure that it’s sustainable.

But that kind of reform has to go hand-in-hand with doing some more work to reform our tax code so that wealthy individuals, the biggest corporations can't take advantage of loopholes and deductions that aren't available to most of the folks standing up here -- aren't available to most Americans. So there’s still more work to be done in the tax code to make it fairer, even as we're also looking at how we can strengthen something like Medicare.

Now, if Republicans think that I will finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts alone -- and you hear that sometimes coming from them, that sort of after today we're just going to try to shove only spending cuts down -- well -- [laughter] -- shove spending cuts at us that will hurt seniors, or hurt students, or hurt middle-class families, without asking also equivalent sacrifice from millionaires or companies with a lot of lobbyists, et cetera -- if they think that's going to be the formula for how we solve this thing, then they’ve got another thing coming. That's not how it’s going to work. We've got to do this in a balanced and responsible way. And if we're going to be serious about deficit reduction and debt reduction, then it’s going to have to be a matter of shared sacrifice -- at least as long as I'm President. And I'm going to be President for the next four years, I think, so -- [applause]

So, anyway, for now, our most immediate priority is to stop taxes going up for middle-class families, starting tomorrow. I think that is a modest goal that we can accomplish. Democrats and Republicans in Congress have to get this done, but they’re not there yet. They are close, but they’re not there yet. And one thing we can count on with respect to this Congress is that if there’s even one second left before you have to do what you're supposed to do -- [laughter] -- they will use that last second. So, as of this point, it looks like I'm going to be spending New Year’s here in D.C.

AUDIENCE: Awww --

THE PRESIDENT: You all are going to be hanging out in D.C., too. [laughter] I can come to your house? Is that what you said? [laughter] I don't want to spoil the party.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You are the party. [laughter]

THE PRESIDENT: But the people who are with me here today, the people who are watching at home, they need our leaders in Congress to succeed. They need us to all stay focused on them -- not on politics, not on special interests. They need to be focused on families, students, grandmas, folks who are out there working really, really hard and are just looking for a fair shot and some reward for that hard work.

They expect our leaders to succeed on their behalf. So do I. And so, keep the pressure on over the next 12 hours or so. Let’s see if we can get this thing done. And I thank you all. And if I don't see you, if I don't show up at your house -- [laughter] -- I want to wish everybody a Happy New Year. Thank you very much.

title: A Pressing Concern on People's Minds


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Rh mons, from his general good-humour and civility, and the credit given him for honour, sincerity, plain-dealing, and good intentions’ (Memoirs, pt. iii. vol. ii. p. 84). Lewis was a solid and shrewd thinker. He possessed a keen critical faculty, and was indefatigable in research. His accumulation of exact knowledge was so great that ‘there was no sort of definite information, whether relating to public business or to books, which he did not know how to acquire and where to find’ (, Works, iii. 231). He was neither a brilliant nor an eloquent speaker, but his conversation, in Bagehot's opinion, was superior both to his speeches and his writings on account of ‘the flavor of exact thought’ which they invariably possessed (ib. 263). His writings are more remarkable for scholarly research than for any elegance of style, and are distinguished by the same practical good sense, as well as the same absence of any desire for popularity, which were so noticeable in his parliamentary career. Lewis had a tendency to overestimate the effects of education, and was firmly convinced that ‘a well-educated man was competent to undertake any office and to write on any subject’ (ib. 231). His characteristic assertion that ‘life would be tolerable but for its amusements,’ though familiar to many, is frequently misquoted (Times, 18 Sept. 1872, p. 4).

He married, on 26 Oct. 1844, Maria Theresa, only daughter of the Hon. George Villiers, and widow of Thomas Henry Lister [q. v.] [see ]. During their married life their town residence was Kent House, Knightsbridge. Lewis numbered among his most intimate friends Sir Edmund Walker Head [q. v.], the Austins, the Duff Gordons, the Grotes, John Stuart Mill, Dean Milman, and Lord Stanhope. He was a great favourite with the queen and the prince consort (, Life of the Prince Consort, 1880, v. 252 n.) A full-length portrait of Lewis, by Henry Weigall, is now the property of a nephew. Lewis's brother, Sir Gilbert Frankland Lewis (1808–1883), canon of Worcester, succeeded him in the baronetcy, and edited the ‘Letters of the Right Hon. Sir G. C. Lewis to various Friends’ (London, 1870, 8vo).

Besides the ‘Essays on the Administrations of Great Britain from 1783 to 1830,’ which were edited by Sir Edmund Walker Head in 1864 (London, 8vo), Lewis contributed the following articles to the ‘Edinburgh Review:’ 1. ‘Eton’ (No. 101, art. 3). 2. ‘Westminster and Eton’ (No. 105, art. 3). 3. ‘Legislation for the Working Classes’ (No. 167, art. 3). 4. ‘Local Taxes of the United Kingdom’ (No. 171, art. 3). 5. ‘The State of the Nation—the Minority and the New Parliament’ (No. 175, art. 4). 6. ‘Grote's History of Greece, vols. iii–vi.’ (No. 183, art. 4). 7. ‘Lord Derby's Ministry and Protection’ (No. 194, art. 10). 8. ‘The Late Elections and Free-Trade’ (No. 196, art. 8). 9. ‘The Fall of the Derby Ministry’ (No. 197, art. 9). 10. ‘Lord Grey's Colonial Administration’ (No. 199, art. 3). 11. ‘Marshall on the Representation of Minorities’ (No. 203, art. 7). 12. ‘Parliamentary Opposition’ (No. 205, art. 1). 13. ‘The Second Derby Ministry’ (No. 218, art. 9). 14. ‘The Celts and Germans’ (No. 219, art. 6). 15. ‘The History and Prospects of Parliamentary Reform’ (No. 219, art. 9). 16. ‘The Diaries and Correspondence of George Rose’ (No. 227, art. 2). 17. ‘The Election of President Lincoln and its Consequences’ (No. 230, art. 10). 18. ‘The Military Defence of the Colonies’ (No. 233, art. 4). He contributed to the ‘Foreign Quarterly Review’ the following articles: 1. ‘Spix and Martius's Travels in Brazil’ (No. 10, art. 3). 2. ‘Tittmann's History of the Amphictyonic Confederacy’ (No. 11, art. 6). 3. ‘Schaefer's edition of Plutarch's Lives’ (No. 11, art. 11). 4. ‘On Codification and its Application to the Laws of England’ (No. 12, art. 2). 5. ‘The French Revolution of 1830’ (No. 12, art. 7). 6. ‘Mythology and Religion of Ancient Greece’ (No. 13, art. 2; see also No. 15, pp. 225–7). 7. ‘The Brunswick Revolution’ (No. 13, art. 9). 8. ‘Dindorf's Poetæ Scenici Græci’ (No. 13, art. 13). 9. ‘Raynouard's Ancient Municipal Institutions of France’ (No. 15, art. 6). 10. ‘Thierry's History of the Gauls’ (No. 19, art. 6). He contributed nine articles to the ‘Philological Museum,’ Cambridge, 1832–3, 8vo (i. 122–5, 126–41, 177–87, 280–304, 420–6, 679–86, ii. 38–71, 243–6, 689–94), and three to the ‘Classical Museum, a Journal of Philology and of Ancient History and Literature,’ London, 1844–50, 8vo (i. 113–24, 389–97, ii. 1–44). His article on ‘The Irish Church Question’ appeared in the third number of the ‘London Review’ (art. 8). Among his contributions to the ‘Law Magazine’ during Hayward's editorship were articles on ‘Secondary Punishments’ (vii. 1–44), and on ‘American Penitentiaries’ (xiv. 31–57). He was also an occasional contributor to ‘Fraser's Magazine’ and ‘Notes and Queries.’ His other publications were: 1. ‘The Public Economy of Athens, in four books; to which is added a Dissertation on the Silver Mines of Laurion. Translated from the German of Augustus Boeckh’ (anon.), London, 1828,


text:
Weird Tales/Volume 31/Issue 6/Farewell to Eros

Farewell to Eros by Clark Ashton Smith

Lord of the many pangs, the single ecstasy!

From all my rose-red temple builded in thy name,

Pass dawnward with no blasphemies of praise or blame,

No whine of suppliant or moan of psaltery.

Not now the weary god deserts the worshipper,

The worshipper the god ... but in some cryptic room

A tocsin tells with arras-deadened tones of doom

That hour which veils the shrine and stills the chorister.

Others will make libation, chant thy litanies....

But, when the glamored moons on immost Stygia glare

And quenchlessly, the demon-calling altars flare,

I shall go forth to madder gods and mysteries.

And through Zothique and primal Thule wandering,

A pilgrim to the shrines where elder Shadows dwell,

Perhaps I shall behold such lusters visible

As turn to ash the living opal of thy wing.

Haply those islands where the sunsets sink in rest

Will yield, O Love, the slumber that thou hast not given;

Or the broad-bosomed flowers of some vermilion heaven

Will make my senses fail as on no mortal breast.

Perchance the wind, on Aquilonian marches blowing

From the low mountains isled in seaas of russet grass,

Will make among the reeds a sweeter shuddering pass

Than tremors through the chorded flesh of women flowing.

Perchance the fountains of the dolorous rivers four

In Dis, will quench the thirst thy wine assuages never;

And in my veins will mount a twice-infuriate fever

When the black, burning noons upon Cimmeria pour.

Yea, in those ultimate lands that will outlast the Earth,

Being but dream and fable, myth and fantasy,

I shall forget ... or find some image reared of thee,

Dreadful and radiant, far from death, remote from birth.