Sub conservatione formae specificae salva anima.- RAYMOND LULLY
I am come of a race noted for vigour of fancy and ardour of
passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet
settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence-whether much that is glorious--whether all that is profound--does
not spring from disease of thought--from of mind
exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream
by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream
only by night. In their grey visions they obtain glimpses of
eternity, and thrill, in awaking, to find that they have been
upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn
something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere
knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless
or compassless, into the vast ocean of the 'light ineffable' and
again, like the adventurers of the Nubian geographer, We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that
there are two distinct conditions of my mental existence--the
condition of a lucid reason, not to be disputed, and belonging to
the memory of events forming the first epoch of my life--and a
condition of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the present, and
to the recollection of what constitutes the second great era of
my being. Therefore, what I shall tell of the earlier period,
believe; and to what I may relate of the later time, give only
such credit as may seem due; or doubt it altogether; or, if doubt
it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the Oedipus.
She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and
distinctly these remembrances, was the sole daughter of the only
sister of my mother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my
cousin. We had always dwelled together, beneath a
tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass. No
unguided footstep ever came upon that vale; for it lay far away
up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling around about
it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No
path was trodden in its vicinity; and, to reach our happy home,
there was need of putting back, with force, the foliage of many
thousands of forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories
of many millions of fragrant flowers. Thus it was that we lived
all alone, knowing nothing of the world without the valley,--I,
and my cousin, and her mother.
From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end
of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river,
brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding
stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length,
through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those
whence it had issued. We called it the 'River of Silence'; for
there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur
arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the
pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its
bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each
in its own old station, shining on gloriously for ever.
The margin of the river, and of the many dazzling rivulets
that glided, through devious ways, into its channel, as well as
the spaces that extended from the margins away down into the
depths of the streams until they reached the bed of pebbles at
the bottom,--these spots, not less than the whole surface of the
valley, from the river to the mountains that girdled it in, were
carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick, short, perfectly even,
and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled throughout with the
yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and the
ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to our hearts,
in loud tones, of the love and of the glory of God.
And, here and there, in groves about this grass, like
wildernesses of dreams, sprang up fantastic trees, whose tall
slender stems stood not upright, but slanted gracefully towards
the light that peered at noon-day into the centre of the valley.
Their bark was speckled with the vivid alternate splendour of
ebony and silver, and was smoother than all save the cheeks of
Eleonora; so that but for the brilliant green of the huge leaves
that spread from their summits in long tremulous lines, dallying
with the Zephyrs, one might have fancied them giant serpents of
Syria doing homage to their Sovereign the Sun.
Hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I
wish Eleonora before Love entered within our hearts. It was one
evening at the close of the third lustrum of her life, and of the
fourth of my own, that we sat, locked in each other's embrace,
beneath the serpent-like trees, and looked down within the waters
of the River of Silence at our images therein. We spoke no words
during the rest of that sweet day; and our words even upon the
morrow were tremulous and few. We had drawn the god Eros from
that wave, and now we felt that he had enkindled within us the
fiery souls of our forefathers. The passions which had for
centuries distinguished our race, came thronging with the fancies
for which they had been equally noted, and together breathed a
delirious bliss over the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass. A
change fell upon all things. Strange brilliant flowers, starshaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers had been known
before. The tints of the green carpet deepened; and when, one by
one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up, in place of
them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our
paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen, with all gay
glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The
golden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of
which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length,
into a lulling melody more divine than that of the harp of
Aeolus--sweeter than all save the voice of Eleonora. And now,
too, a voluminous cloud, which we had long watched in the regions
of Hesper, floated out thence, all gorgeous in crimson and gold,
and settling in peace above us, sank, day by day, lower and
lower, until its edges rested upon the tops of the mountains,
turning all their dimness into magnificence, and shutting us up,
as if for ever, within a magic prison-house of grandeur and of
glory.
The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she
was a maiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led
among the flowers. No guile disguised the fervour of love which
animated her heart, and she examined with me its inmost recesses
as we walked together in the Valley of the Many-Coloured Grass,
and discoursed of the mighty changes which had lately taken place
therein.
At length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad
change which must befall Humanity, she thenceforward dwelt only
upon this one sorrowful theme, interweaving it into all our
converse, as, in the songs of the bard of Schiraz, the same
images are found occurring, again and again, in every impressive
variation of phrase.
She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom-that, like the ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness
only to die; but the terrors of the grave, to her, lay solely in
a consideration which she revealed to me, one evening at
twilight, by the banks of the River of Silence. She grieved to
think that, having entombed her in the Valley of the ManyColoured Grass, I would quit for ever its happy recesses,
transferring the love which now was so passionately her own to
some maiden of the outer and every-day world. And, then and
there, I threw myself hurriedly at the feet of Eleonora, and
offered up a vow, to herself and to Heaven, that I would never
bind myself in marriage to any daughter of Earth--that I would in
no manner prove recreant to her dear memory, or to the memory of
the devout affection with which she had blessed me. And I called
the Mighty Ruler of the Universe to witness the pious solemnity
of my vow. And the curse which I invoked of and of her,
a saint in Helusion, should I prove traitorous to that promise,
involved a penalty the exceeding great horror of which will not
permit me to make record of it here. And the bright eyes of
Eleonora grew brighter at my words; and she sighed as if a deadly
burthen had been taken from her breast; and she trembled and very
bitterly wept; but ...
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