XXIV

 

 

 

IT was Sunday in springtime, and the singing in the Church floated out over the town. Up in the elm tree that stood behind the churchyard wall sat two old crows.

 

“Now the minister ascends the pulpit,” said the one.

 

“What is he saying?” exclaimed the other.

 

The two old crows cocked their heads on one side and listened.

 

“Brothers in Christ!” sounded the minister’s voice out from the Church. “So saith the Lord: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; he that believeth in me shall live. . . .”

 

“Who is the Lord?” asked the old mother crow.

 

“That is the great black coat in whose service all the little black coats are,” answered father crow.

 

“What are they doing in there now? It strikes me it’s very quiet.”

 

Father crow hopped a few branches lower, bent his head, and peeped in through the Church window.

 

“The minister is standing taking snuff, and the people are sitting on the benches nodding their heads. ― The Lord save us! If I don’t believe the whole crowd are asleep.”

 

Then the two old crows chuckled and were answered a hundredfold from the town, as the whole swarm flapped up from the elm wood and circled about the Church, making such an infernal row that the congregation started up out of their comfortable Sunday sleep, and the minister recollected himself. But the flock of crows flew away across the fields, and soon the people nodded again on their benches, and the minister’s voice sounded once more:

 

“Brethren in Christ, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; he that believeth on me shall live, even if he were dead. . . .”

 

“This is getting soporific!” interjected the father crow, who had flown up to his old perch.

 

“It is the spring air that takes from one’s strength,” replied the crow mother.

 

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a little forenoon nap, eh?”

 

“… So it pleased the Lord,” echoed the minister’s voice from the Church; and the two old crows put their bills under their wings and slept. Now not a single sound was to be heard save the minister’s voice, as for the third time it echoed through the Sabbath quiet:

 

“Brothers in Christ, so saith the Lord; I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. . . .”

 

But now the minister leaves quarter of mile of road between the words, so that he has lost the truth out of sight when at length he reaches the life, and is obliged to wash the dust out of his throat with a glass of water. But the sun shone high in the heavens. He just cast a sly look through the Church window, and when he perceived the blessed old peace that reigned in the Temple he could not but laugh. But then, as if by magic, the drowsy Church was decked with all the glory of the flowers of spring, and the elm top where the old crow pair were enjoying their forenoon siesta drew a green veil over its barrenness.

 

 

XXIII

 

 

 

IN a valley encircled by hills dwelt men. The sun shone, and it was summer. And as evening drew near, and I began to ascend the mountain side, some were holding hands and dancing in rings, others were drinking coffee on the green grass, and others teaching the children their ABC.

 

The next day I had accomplished the first spiral of my mountain ascent, and I stood on a projecting crag, from which I had a view over the valley below me. Nothing seemed to have changed from the yesterday: men danced, drank coffee, and taught the children their ABC, just as when I had quitted them. I called to them to follow me in my journey up towards a higher point of view, but no one answered, no one seemed to have heard my voice.

 

On the next day, towards eventide, I had again ascended the mountain in a new spiral, and stood upon a jutting crag right above the one from which I had gazed on the valley the day before. The depths below me presented exactly the same spectacle, with this sole difference, that all objects seemed smaller. But when the people caught sight of me it was evident that they grew annoyed: one laughed mockingly, the second shrieked in scoffing terms, and the third flung stones. Then I continued my journey, and my soul was filled with pity; I mentally added many commentaries to the text to understand all is to forgive all and I set the new religion of human suffering into rhyme and verse.

 

Toward the evening of the third day I had completed a new spiral of the ascent. I stood once more on a projecting ledge that jutted over the depths, just above the two ledges on which I had stood the preceding days. I took up a stone and hurled it with all my strength in front of me, but although the incline of the mountain seemed to me to be almost perpendicular, it struck the crags. I saw that people moved about in the bottom of the valley, and fancied I could detect by their attitudes that they had observed me. But whether they waved a greeting or a threat I could not be sure, they were as small as if they were seen through the wrong end of a glass. One of them crawled up the mountain’s side, up the same path as I had come, and he seemed to me no bigger than an ant. But whether it was a greeting or a threat, or whether the climber intended to follow me, or drag me down again, I heeded not. My chest grew light in the mountain air, and my head was clear. Clouds glided over the depths of the valley and all that it held, and my gaze rested upon the sun-tipped snow peak of the mountain, thither where the path led.

 

Fourth day towards evening. . . .

 

XXII

 

 

 

ONE summer night as the full moon rose, I wandered into the forest. In an open glade between the alders I found the God of the time napping in the moonshine.

 

“What are you seeking in the wood at this late hour?” asked he; “you look so thoughtful, and your eyes are full of fear.”

 

“I seek help for humanity,” I replied; “the races are listless, deedless, and faint-hearted. If they are unconcerned, it is from apathy. If they are fearless, it is fatalism. If they are strong, it is resignation. I seek for the witch- wort, whose sap alone can give to mankind lust of existence, joy in the simple fact of living, make their feet light and their spirit bright, create great dreams and incite to deeds of derring-do. I seek the backbone of humanity that is lost to it.”

 

The God lay silent, and gazed out into the endless space that sparkled in mystery ahead of him. It seemed to me that he was laughing, but suddenly I saw him knit his brows into a frown. And from afar a growling rose through the wood, and darkness fell upon us, and the growling rolled nearer and the darkness grew thicker, and in the gloom there was a fantastic shadow-play of indistinct forms with red gleaming eyes. All at once the growling turned into the baying of hounds, and I saw many hundred couples rushing towards me. Instinctively I stood on guard and gripped the knife in my belt.

 

Then I heard someone chuckle softly, quite close to me, chuckle heartily and quietly. And the bay of the hounds hushed, and the gloom lightened, and the wood about me stood silently in the moonlit summer night, and in the open glade amongst the alders lay the Time God chuckling.

 

“When the time comes,” he said, “when mankind comes seeking for the magic wort, like you, then I will conjure forth the great terror. Then the races will draw their knives from their belts and stiffen their backs just as you did a while ago, and find again its lost backbone.”

 

 

XXI

 

 

 

THE battle was ended and the object attained. I had served my five years for Rachel, and the twelve tasks were fulfilled. I looked at everything I had done and found it good. So then I consecrated the seventh day to be a day of rest. Rachel sat at my feet, and my kingdom lay around me, basking quietly in the mid-day sun.

 

The three wise men from the East entered and laid at my feet gold, frankincense, and myrrh; the second presented me with elephants’ tusks, the third with Polar bear skins; whilst Arabian houris danced in my halls.

 

But outside my doors I perceived a long line of men clad in fair white silken garments, and their faces were hushed in silence. Arid under his left arm each man of them bore a silver casket. And each man was so like unto the next as one white hair resembleth the other, and the caskets seemed to me to be one and the same casket, reduplicated as through the facets of a crystal.

 

“Who are ye?” I inquired of the nearest of the white-clad men, he who stood in the doorway.

 

“We are the coming days, right to the end of your life, that stand waiting to be admitted one after the other into your halls,” he replied, bending himself almost to the ground, where- upon all those that stood behind him, even as far as the horizon, bent in the same manner, as if someone had pulled an invisible thread that ran through all of them.

 

“And what do you hide in your caskets?” I queried again.

 

“That is the score of the hymn that your serving spirits play every morning in your honor,” added the white-clad man, and again he bowed to the earth, and again all the other white men followed his example. With that I was seized with a fit of yawning so tremendous and so long that the white men trembled as mists before the blast, and the walls of my chamber flickered as the wings in a theatre. And I jumped up off my throne, seized my staff and my field-glass and my wallet, and― woke out of my dream.

 

XX

 

 

 

THE day had come when the great battle was to take place on the plain before the city; both hostile hosts were marshalled. On the heights in the North stood the black coats and the star-decorated, down below these the smock-frocks, in countless numbers, that vanished from the gaze as they melted into one against the horizon. The signal for the attack had already sounded in the camps of the smock-frocks as I strolled through the city gates. The road ran right through the hosts, and there was no other road for me to take save this one. I had hardly advanced a hundred paces when I heard a rumbling as if a storm was coming. It was the men in blouses who cried―

 

“There is a black coat; seize him!”

 

And again before the echo had died away I heard a rumbling, but this time it was like unto the chord of an organ in church. This time it was the black coats, the star-decked, who cried.

 

“There is a smock-frock; seize him!”

 

Thereupon I lifted my hand to order silence, and I said, “I am not a black coat, for I hate the gloom and love the noonday sun. I am not a smock-frock, for my pride is gladsome, and my defiance sportive; and I would rather be a butterfly than an ant.

 

“Never will I fight on your side, you smock- frocks, for were you to gain the victory everything I hold dear would be laid in pasture under the kine’s feet.”

 

“Neither will I follow your lead, black coats, for you are all tarred with the same brush. Why do you quarrel? Go rather into the church that is tolling for matins in the town, and open the place in your psalm-books and sing in harmony the old verses. How vast be their advantages, how great their pleasures prove, who live like brethren and consent in offices

of love.”

 

With that I continued my journey and went out into the wilderness. When I had gone some way I heard the first shot. Then I was elated in soul, for I told myself that now the great Beelzebub whimpers.

 

XIX

 

 

 

ONE forenoon, when out upon the ocean which stretches its boundless surface between the old and the new world, I saw from the deck of my yacht a black speck away on the otherwise bare and void horizon. At first I thought that the object was a ship, but in measure as it approached it proved to be an animal of unknown appearance, but resembling an ox, that was bobbing like an eider duck on the water. It bellowed at me when still at a great distance.

 

“Who are you, vermin?”

 

“Vermin yourself,” I replied. “I am Young Ofeg, but who are you?” I added, as the monster came abreast of my craft.

 

“I am the great Bos Humanitatis, round whom the peoples dance. On your knees!”

 

“But it is by no means a way of mine to adore strange gods. Bare the marrow of your being and the reins of your soul, so that I may see of what stuff you are made.”

 

With that a parchment scroll, such as one sees in the paintings of the middle Ages, curled out of the beast’s mouth, and the following words were inscribed on it:

 

“The good of All is the Highest Weal,” and the colossus bellowed― “This is the great truth, the only truth that was for ever found in the world or ever will be found. On your knees! This truth is adored by all people, and all tongues chant its praises. Everything must fall on its face in the dust before it. On your knees! All things shall be reduced to the same level, the level of mediocrity. What is under shall be lifted up, what is over shall be dragged down. On your knees! I say.”

 

“I don’t believe you. I believe in the one. I believe in myself. The God to whom 1 could bring myself to kneel dwells in my own soul, where I have prepared him a chamber. I treat him with my best wine. I deck his dwelling with the rarest plants, and it is the joy of my life to see him hourly wax in strength. Someday, when he is full-fledged, he will soar out into the azure spheres high above the swamps in which your reptiles wallow.

 

It is he whom you would slay. For in the same moment that I would bend my knee to adore you, you monster, my proud God would give up the ghost.”

 

The monster snorted at that, so that the water rose in waves and frothed with stinking spume.

 

“On your knees! Or I will trample you and your offspring into pulp under my claws, make you each and all into the most wretched stuff in existence.”

 

“But suppose I were the stronger,” laughed I.

 

“You vermin!”

 

“Don’t you know how the tiny parasite manages with the butterfly larvae? I will stick in your skin like a gadfly, and you shall plunge across the ocean in helpless fury under my stings, like your brother in the great feeding grounds. Will you try it on?”

 

The monster got under way, and the water waltzed about him, rising like a cloud of foam; and my bark glided softly ahead over the ocean that basked quietly in the noonday sun, and the new shore loomed ahead of her bow.

 

XVIII

 

 

 

WHEN on the day after my first mountain climb I stepped out of my house and went down the street, I became aware of a man standing at the street corner staring at me with two gleaming cat’s eyes. I went on my way, but I felt he was sneaking after me. When I turned round he looked aside, when I halted he stood and gazed at the wares in a shop window. I entered a house: when I came out I was met by two gleaming cat’s eyes from the street corner.

 

Since that time he has followed me, persecuted me, day out day in, year after year.

 

When I enter an hotel he slinks after me and sits down with his friends at the nearest table. I can hear him cackle with his peculiar laugh that resembles a night-jar’s note, and I have a presentiment that he is talking about me. If it should happen that I hurt my foot and strike the sore place on one of the cobble stones in the street, so that I wince and my face works with the pain, he comes to meet me with an elated self-satisfied air, and doffs his hat to his knees as he greets me, accentuating his politeness so that I may notice the insult concealed under it; but if I should happen to have a handful of aces and trumps he slinks down a bye-lane as soon as he sees me, even from a great distance, for in that case he has no desire to meet me. I only get a glimpse of his crooked back, which reminds me of a whipped cur’s, and a furtive spiteful look out of his gleaming cat’s eyes.

 

But, yesterday, as I saw him from afar turn suddenly into a side alley, I hastily took a cross-cut and met him; planted myself right in front of him, and looked him in the face. He laughed in the way men laugh in desperate confusion, and his cat’s eyes dropped as a weapon dashed out of an opponent’s hand.

 

“Why do enclose your dirty guts in glass?” asked I.

 

At that he jumped as if I had stuck a knife through him, and shot a furtive look at me so no full of spite, so stark with gall that I felt as if the uncleanness of it spurted over my face; and he blushed suddenly with an unspeakable shame, as if I had taken him in adultery.

 

Then I cried gleefully: “Now I have you! You are one of those who trade upon the coward’s shame over himself, and his spite against sins that really exist in his own evil conscience.”

XVII

 

 

 

I HAD left the shallow firths and narrow straits behind me, for I had wearied of pastorals with smoke curling from rustic cabins. I had gazed my fill at the sun that shone in stolid stupidity over the just and unjust alike.

 

After I had spent all my youth in sailing over many seas in my dainty pleasure-boat, I was met one morning as I came on deck by the glorious spectacle upon which my fancy had dwelt for many years through murky days and bright nights. From horizon to horizon and right across the arch of the sky a portal stretched in the form of a crescent moon, and on this giant bow sparkled in golden letters these words :

 

This is the entrance to the Kingdom of Truth.

 

And as the twilight dropped over the sea, my boat glided in through the portal to the strains of a music that is never heard in the world of the everyday. ―

 

I had tarried in the new land for fifteen months. One day I lay on the deck of my boat gazing into space, and my soul was filled with restful joy. The sky was red, red as roses and wine, red as love and blood, and the ocean was red as the sky. And the swart sun hung in the red sky, sable as coal or the memory of sorrow, and it was mirrored in the sorghum depths of the ocean like a colossal column the color of a pomegranate when it inclines to black. Far away on the horizon a tawny streak glistened like a golden fringe on the crimson canopy. They were my newly discovered islets, over which I roamed a new Adam in paradise, a new being in a new world. For that which was crooked in the old world was straight here, and those things which I had been used to see running in zigzags ran here in circles. Here former virtues hobbled on crutches, as senile oldings at the point of death, whilst sins stood in full flower; and the fruits that grew on these unknown trees provided me with a fare of rare sweetness, for they were of the same species as those into which Mother Eve bit; whereas in those which I had brought with me from the old world, as its most splendid ingathering, I invariably found― worms in the kernel.

 

I lay stretched on the deck of my pleasure- boat, and my eyes rested upon the tawny fringe on the red canopy, and I was restfully glad in spirit, and beautiful fancies detached themselves softly from the loose white network of my thoughts, letting it slide from them; and rising, bent and mirrored themselves in my soul. And their faces were full of peace, and their eyes were laughter-lit, and their lips moved ― suddenly I heard my own voice say: ―

 

“Happy, happy, happy is he who has found the one great truth, and can rest in its meadows. Then to him what are foes? ― What is death? Thistledown and gossamer. Life is his own soul, and his soul is a guest-chamber in which he holds quiet festivals. Threefold happy he who can rest in its meadows and listen to the purling of the streams of eternal truth.”

 

Suddenly it whistled through the air, and the screams of birds sounded; and as I lifted my eyes I saw the ruby space filled with birds swart as the sun, with the long pointed wings of sea birds, the wings that carry them on distant journeys. And when they were poised right above my boat, the one that flew first swooped down and perched upon the masthead, and speaking with a human voice, said:

 

“He who casts anchor is soon out of the running. Yesterday the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, today the desert in which no flower blows. Tomorrow your Eldorado is a fossil-land. Now we rustle away over your head whilst you lie and dream in your arrogant well-being, forgetting that you too swept by forgotten countries whilst men slept. Behind your islets new worlds lie and new auroras blaze.”

 

And the sable bird rose upon his broad- pointed wings, those that carry on distant journeys, and swept away towards the horizon, and vanished behind the golden fringe, woven by islets round the sea’s red canopy. And the swart sun flamed, and I set all my sails, and my dainty craft sped away with the wind that came rushing in the wake of the fleeting birds, even as a bird, a sea bird, a storm bird.

 

XVI

 

 

 

THE air was filled with clay-colored mist, the rain fell in torrents, and the thunder came rolling and booming over the town. Darkness closed over the earth; I lit my lamp and fastened the shutters before my windows.

 

As the watchman in the cathedral tower was calling midnight, a shriek was heard as if coming from the bowels of the world, and right through the yellow lamp gloom a shining blue-white sword cleft its way. I looked up: a strange man was sitting right in front of me, at the opposite side of the table. His hair had a blue-white gleam, like lightning when the storm is nearly ended; it tumbled in serpentine and zigzag lines over his arched brow; his mouth laughed like a child’s, but his eyes looked askance like a lunatic’s.

 

“I am the wandering Jew, also called by men Ahasuerus; I am the bird Phoenix that is burnt at the pyre every hundred years, but that riseth again out of his own ashes.”

 

Time passed― a second or an hour.

 

“ I am the memory of mankind, that once in the life of every generation flasheth up in its brain as lightning in the night illumines a world that is the world of the day and yet different. I am the great wizard that conjures forth the fata morgana of the future for humanity. I stand with one foot in the greyness of the past, and with the other in the gloom of the to be. I am the tree of knowledge of good and evil that the Lord planted in Eden.”

 

Again time passed― a second or an hour.

 

“I am he who breaks through the circle into which the spirits of the time form themselves in order to stay or run their course again. I am the eld and the child, I am the conscience of primeval man, whose blood flows out of the universal heart; but I too am the seeing prophet.”

 

And again time passed― a second or an hour.

 

“Living, I am called mad; dead, I am called genius.” With that the cock crew. The stranger had flown, and the grey morning peered through the chinks in the shutter.

 

 

XV

 

 

 

I HAD been wandering from the early morning. It drew already towards eventide. The district about was deserted, and I could see no sign of human abode. Night came dark and starless. I stopped on seeing that the high road was cleft into two branches, and I stood irresolute which I should choose, when a gleam of light flashed close beside me. By its shine I could see an old man sitting on the trunk of a hewn tree; his beard was so long as if it had grown for centuries, and his hair was so white as if whitened by the snows of glacial times. ,

 

“Can you tell me, old man,” I queried, “which of these two roads I must take in order to find shelter for the night?”

 

The old fellow looked up, and his eyes seemed to me to shine out from an immeasurable depth and from as great a distance as the evening stars. He scrutinized me closely.

 

“Go to the right, young man. Do you see the light over there, the great light that looks so great because it is so near? Follow the road in the direction of that light, and before midnight you will reach an inn where you will find a warm bed waiting for you, a good supper, and a merry company.”

 

“ But tell me too,” said I, “you wonderful old man, who look so wise, whither leads the road to the left, and what is the little light that blinks quite feebly in the distance ?”

 

“It only looks so little because it is so endlessly far away,” answered the old man,” otherwise it is the greatest and the clearest light that ever shone on the world. But let it not lure you, because to it you will never reach. Once upon a time I too stood at these dividing paths, just as you, young man, irresolute whither I should go. That is a long time ago; I was going as you are, and it was an evening such as this, only the gloom was a thousand fold deeper. I lit my light and went to the left. And the hours grew to years and the years to centuries, but the night lay thickly about me, and the light gleamed ahead of me always just as tiny. Then I wearied and turned back, and now I sit here once more and know not whither I shall go. Go to the right, young man, thither where the great light shines, which seems so great because it is so near. Ye will find a warm bed, a good supper, and a merry company.”

 

“ But you yourself, old man, do not you yearn for warmth and a roof over your head, now that night is here and the coolness falls ?”

 

Then the old man lifted his lantern, and the rays fell directly upon his face, and its expression was as sphinxlike as a starry winter night. And he stood up and he waxed before me till he towered like a mountain with eternal snow on its crest; and as for me I felt myself less than the tiniest insect in the fields.

 

“For me there is no night, neither is there day, and I find no place in men’s dwellings, and even if I were to find it, men would not let me in, for they know me not.”