Lothair Part 48

Sometimes, when he observed a friend noticing with admiration, perhaps with astonishment, the splendor or finish of his equipments, he would say: "The world think I had a large fortune with Madame Phoebus. I had nothing. I understand that a fortune, and no inconsiderable one, would have been given had I chosen to ask for it. But I did not choose to ask for it. I made Madame Phoebus my wife because she was the finest specimen of the Aryan race that I was acquainted with, and I would have no considerations mixed up with the high motive that influenced me.

My father-in-law Cantacuzene, whether from a feeling of grat.i.tude or remorse, is always making us magnificent presents. I like to receive magnificent presents, but also to make them; and I presented him with a picture which is the gem of his gallery, and which, if he ever part with it, will in another generation be contended for by kings and peoples.

"On her last birthday we breakfasted with my father-in-law Cantacuzene, and Madame Phoebus found in her napkin a check for five thousand pounds.

I expended it immediately in jewels for her personal use; for I wished my father-in-law to understand that there are other princely families in the world besides the Cantacuzenes."

A friend once ventured inquiringly to suggest whether his way of life might not be conducive to envy, and so disturb that serenity of sentiment necessary to the complete life of an artist. But Mr. Phoebus would not for a moment admit the soundness of the objection. "No," he said, "envy is a purely intellectual process. Splendor never excites it; a man of splendor is looked upon always with favor--his appearance exhilarates the heart of man. He is always popular. People wish to dine with him, to borrow his money, but they do not envy him. If you want to know what envy is, you should live among artists. You should hear me lecture at the Academy. I have sometimes suddenly turned round and caught countenances like that of the man who was waiting at the corner of the street for Benvenuto Cellini, in order to a.s.sa.s.sinate the great Florentine."

It was impossible for Lothair in his present condition to have fallen upon a more suitable companion than Mr. Phoebus. It is not merely change of scene and air that we sometimes want, but a revolution in the atmosphere of thought and feeling in which we live and breathe. Besides his great intelligence and fancy, and his peculiar views on art and man and affairs in general, which always interested their hearer, and sometimes convinced, there was a general vivacity in Mr. Phoebus and a vigorous sense of life, which were inspiriting to his companions. When there was any thing to be done, great or small, Mr. Phoebus liked to do it; and this, as he averred, from a sense of duty, since, if any thing is to be done, it should be done in the best manner, and no one could do it so well as Mr. Phoebus. He always acted as if he had been created to be the oracle and model of the human race, but the oracle was never pompous or solemn, and the model was always beaming with good-nature and high spirits.

Mr. Phoebus liked Lothair. He liked youth, and good-looking youth; and youth that was intelligent and engaging and well-mannered. He also liked old men. But, between fifty and seventy, he saw little to approve of in the dark s.e.x. They had lost their good looks if they ever had any, their wits were on the wane, and they were invariably selfish. When they attained second childhood, the charm often returned. Age was frequently beautiful, wisdom appeared like an aftermath, and the heart which seemed dry and deadened suddenly put forth shoots of sympathy.

Mr. Phoebus postponed his voyage in order that Lothair might make his preparations to become his guest in his island. "I cannot take you to a banker," said Mr. Phoebus, "for I have none; but I wish you would share my purse. Nothing will ever induce me to use what they call paper money.

It is the worst thing that what they call civilization has produced; neither hue nor shape, and yet a subst.i.tute for the richest color, and, where the arts flourish, the finest forms."

The telegraph which brought an order to the bankers at Malta to give an unlimited credit to Lothair, rendered it unnecessary for our friend to share what Mr. Phoebus called his purse, and yet he was glad to have the opportunity of seeing it, as Mr. Phoebus one morning opened a chest in his cabin and produced several velvet bags, one full of pearls, another of rubies, others of Venetian sequins, Napoleons, and golden piastres.

"I like to look at them," said Mr. Phoebus, "and find life more intense when they are about my person. But bank-notes, so cold and thin--they give me an ague."

Madame Phoebus and her sister Euphrosyne welcomed Lothair in maritime costumes which were absolutely bewitching; wondrous jackets with loops of pearls, girdles defended by dirks with handles of turquoises, and tilted hats that; while they screened their long eyelashes from the sun, crowned the longer braids of their never-ending hair. Mr. Phoebus gave banquets every day on board his yacht, attended by the chief personages of the island, and the most agreeable officers of the garrison. They dined upon deck, and it delighted him, with a surface of sang-froid, to produce a repast which both in its material and its treatment was equal to the refined festivals of Paris. Sometimes they had a dance; sometimes in his barge, rowed by a crew in Venetian dresses, his guests glided on the tranquil waters, under a starry sky, and listened to the exquisite melodies of their hostess and her sister.

At length the day of departure arrived. It was bright, with a breeze favorable to the sail and opportune for the occasion. For all the officers of the garrison, and all beautiful Valetta itself, seemed present in their yachts and barges to pay their last tribute of admiration to the enchanting sisters and the all-accomplished owner of the Pan. Placed on the galley of his yacht, Mr. Phoebus surveyed the brilliant and animated scene with delight. "This is the way to conduct life," he said. "If, fortunately for them, I could have pa.s.sed another month among these people, I could have developed a feeling equal to the old regattas of the Venetians."

The gean isle occupied by Mr. Phoebus was of no inconsiderable dimensions. A chain of mountains of white marble intersected it, covered with forests of oak, though in parts precipitous and bare. The lowlands, while they produced some good crops of grain, and even cotton and silk, were chiefly clothed with fruit-trees--orange and lemon, and the fig, the olive, and the vine. Sometimes the land was uncultivated, and was princ.i.p.ally covered with myrtles, of large size, and oleanders, and arbutus, and th.o.r.n.y brooms. Here game abounded, while from the mountain-forests the wolf sometimes descended, and spoiled and scared the islanders.

On the sea-sh.o.r.e, yet not too near the wave, and on a sylvan declivity, was along, pavilion-looking building, painted in white and arabesque.

It was backed by the forest, which had a park-like character from its partial clearance, and which, after a convenient slip of even land, ascended the steeper country and took the form of wooded hills, backed in due time by still sylvan yet loftier elevations, and sometimes a glittering peak.

"Welcome, my friend!" said Mr. Phoebus to Lothair. "Welcome to an Aryan clime, an Aryan landscape, and an Aryan race! It will do you good after your Semitic hallucinations."

CHAPTER 73

Mr. Phoebus pursued a life in his island partly feudal, partly Oriental, partly Venetian, and partly idiosyncratic. He had a grand studio, where he could always find interesting occupation in drawing every fine face and form in his dominions. Then he hunted, and that was a remarkable scene. The ladies, looking like Diana or her nymphs, were mounted on cream-colored Anatolian chargers, with golden bells; while Mr. Phoebus himself, in green velvet and seven-leagued boots, sounded a wondrous twisted horn, rife with all the inspiring or directing notes of musical and learned venerie. His neighbors of condition came mounted, but the field was by no means confined to cavaliers. A vast crowd of men, in small caps and jackets and huge white breeches, and armed with all the weapons of Palikari, handjars and ataghans and silver-sheathed muskets of uncommon length and almost as old as the battle of Lepanto, always rallied round his standard. The equestrians caracoled about the park, and the horns sounded, and the hounds bayed, and the men shouted, till the deer had all scudded away. Then, by degrees, the hunters entered the forest, and the notes of venerie became more faint and the shouts more distant. Then, for two or three hours, all was silent, save the sound of an occasional shot or the note of a stray hound, until the human stragglers began to reappear emerging from the forest, and in due time the great body of the hunt, and a gilded cart drawn by mules and carrying the prostrate forms of fallow-deer and roebuck. None of the ceremonies of the chase were omitted, and the crowd dispersed, refreshed by Samian wine, which Mr. Phoebus was teaching them to make without resin, and which they quaffed with shrugging shoulders.

"We must have a wolf-hunt for you," said Euphrosyne to Lothair. "You like excitement, I believe?"

"Well, I am rather inclined for repose at present, and I came here with the hope of obtaining it."

"Well, we are never idle here; in fact, that would be impossible with Gaston. He has established here an academy of the fine arts, and also revived the gymnasia; and my sister and myself have schools--only music and dancing; Gaston does not approve of letters. The poor people have, of course, their primary schools, with their priests, and Gaston does not interfere with them, but he regrets their existence. He looks upon reading and writing as very injurious to education."

Sometimes reposing on divans, the sisters received the chief persons of the isle, and regaled them with fruits and sweetmeats, and coffee and sherbets, while Gaston's chibouques and tobacco of Salonica were a proverb. These meetings always ended with dance and song, replete, according to Mr. Phoebus, with studies of Aryan life.

"I believe these islanders to be an unmixed race," said Mr. Phoebus.

"The same form and visage prevails throughout; and very little changed in any thing--even in their religion."

"Unchanged in their religion!" said Lothair, with some astonishment.

"Yes; you will find it so. Their existence is easy; their wants are not great, and their means of subsistence plentiful. They pa.s.s much of their life in what is called amus.e.m.e.nt--and what is it? They make parties of pleasure; they go in procession to a fountain or a grove. They dance and eat fruit, and they return home singing songs. They have, in fact, been performing unconsciously the religious ceremonies of their ancestors, and which they pursue, and will forever, though they may have forgotten the name of the dryad or the nymph who presides over their waters."

"I should think their priests would guard them from these errors," said Lothair.

"The Greek priests, particularly in these Asian islands, are good sort of people," said Mr. Phoebus. "They marry and have generally large families, often very beautiful. They have no sacerdotal feelings, for they never can have any preferment; all the high posts in the Greek Church being reserved for the monks, who study what is called theology.

The Greek parish priest is not at all Semitic; there is nothing to counteract his Aryan tendencies. I have already raised the statue of a nymph at one of their favorite springs and places of pleasant pilgrimage, and I have a statue now in the island, still in its case, which I contemplate installing in a famous grove of laurel not far off and very much resorted to."

"And what then?" inquired Lothair.

"Well, I have a conviction that among the great races the old creeds will come back," said Mr. Phoebus, "and it will be acknowledged that true religion is the worship of the beautiful. For the beautiful cannot be attained without virtue, if virtue consists, as I believe, in the control of the pa.s.sions, in the sentiment of repose, and the avoidance in all things of excess."

One night Lothair was walking home with the sisters from a village festival where they had been much amused.

"You have had a great many adventures since we first met?" said Madame Phoebus.

"Which makes it seem longer ago than it really is," said Lothair.

"You count time by emotion, then?" said Euphrosyne.

"Well, it is a wonderful thing, however it be computed," said Lothair.

"For my part, I do not think that it ought to be counted at all," said Madame Phoebus; "and there is nothing to me so detestable in Europe as the quant.i.ty of clocks and watches."

"Do you use a watch, my lord?" asked Euphrosyne, in a tone which always seemed to Lothair one of mocking artlessness.

"I believe I never wound it up when I had one," said Lothair.

"But you make such good use of your time," said Madame Phoebus, "you do not require watches."

"I am glad to hear I make good use of my time," said Lothair, "but a little surprised."

"But you are so good, so religious," said Madame Phoebus. "That is a great thing; especially for one so young."

"Hem!" said Lothair.

"That must have been a beautiful procession at Rome," said Euphrosyne.

"I was rather a spectator of it than an actor in it," said Lothair, with some seriousness. "It is too long a tale to enter into, but my part in those proceedings was entirely misrepresented."

"I believe that nothing in the newspapers is ever true," said Madame Phoebus.

"And that is why they are so popular," added Euphrosyne; "the taste of the age being so decidedly for fiction."

"Is it true that you escaped from a convent to Malta?" said Madame Phoebus.

"Not quite," said Lothair, "but true enough for conversations."

"As confidential as the present, I suppose?" said Euphrosyne.

"Yes, when we are grave, as we are inclined to be now," said Lothair.