A Draught of the Blue – An Essence of the Dusk

A Draught of the Blue – An Essence of the Dusk
Francis Bain

F. W. Bain

A Draught of the Blue – An Essence of the Dusk

A Draught of the Blue

Ah! lotus i nfinite! ah! wild sweet Blue!
Sense, in thy azure ocean dipped, must die.

Desiderio

Introduction

The sun goes down, for those alone, who stand on a revolving sphere: and so, in Nature's universal life, Death is but a dissolving view, a word without a meaning: real only to the accidental unit, to whose local and momentary combination it sets a term. Death is a thing of nought, phenomenal, kaleidoscopic: a juggle of the Mother of Illusion, Prakriti or Máyá, whose magic scene not only never dies, but like her own wild animals, sleeps even with an open eye. You never catch her napping. And often, when you think that you have done it, she winks at you, just as it were to show you your mistake. As sometimes, on a hot midsummer day, when the delicate blue smoke from cottage chimneys rises straight into the air, and Nature holds her breath: you think, she is asleep: and all at once, there comes a little whisper, and a ripple passes over all the golden ears of corn, and in another moment, all is still. Or on a cliff that overhangs a glassy sea, you lie and dream, and think, the very water sleeps: and then, a sudden change of colour flushes the ocean opal for only a single instant, and is gone. Or in a wood at noon, you listen to the silence, and a rustle suddenly quivers in the trees, and dies away. Murmurs and echoes: moments and emotions of the pulses of the world: hints and indications, still, small voices more significant than storms, of the never-sleeping thrill and throb of universal action.

"Every tremor gravitation excites in any planet is immediately transmitted to the farthest limits of the system, in oscillations corresponding in their periods with the causes that produce them, like sympathetic notes in music, or vibrations from the deep tones of an organ… The human frame may be regarded as an elastic system, the different parts of which are capable of receiving the tremors of elastic media, and of vibrating in unison with their innumerable undulations."

So far sober modern science, never dreaming that it is exactly reproducing (translate the thing only from physics into ethics) the old Hindoo idea, that moral conservation of energy, whose fundamental axiom it is, that no ACTION, good or bad, however small, is or ever can be lost, but like a stone thrown into the water, generates innumerable consequences, running in all directions to infinity, producing permanent impressions and effects, that follow and fatally determine, eternal and indelible, the fortunes of their DOER, through the series of interminable births and deaths: births that are no beginning, and deaths that are not an end. Thus do we go on making for ourselves our weal or woe: and as we go, the hounds of deeds long buried in oblivion are on our track.

Doubtless a little story might have a more delicious name than the one before us: but doubtless it never had. We may understand it either of a young woman or the moon: and in either case, it means more things than one. I. The new moon, seen for a single instant, in the sky, or on the lotus, or on the forehead of Maheshwara. II. A beauty with eyes like a great blue lotus, or the colour of heaven. For all these things have a quality in common, the mystic blue.

Strange, how deep an impression the colour blue seems to have made upon the Indian mind. Gods and peacocks, creepers and lotuses, clouds and pools and skies and seas, elephants and maidens' glances are all mixed up together in their language by their "participation" in this "Platonic idea," this transcendental blue. Something of this, indeed, is readily intelligible in every land: but in India, it is more so. The blue is bluer, there. Wouldst the poet understand, Travel in the poet's land. I will not say, with Goethe, Kenst thou that land: but simply tell the reader something that I saw at Mahabaleshwar in 1903.

The month of May, and with it, the hot weather, was drawing to a close. The woods were green, but very, very dry, and all their ferny fringes by the red road-sides were parched and powdered thick with ruddy dust. Each morning, when I stood in my verandah, looking down the valley, I could see a floor of cloud, now rolled out like a table-cloth, now tossing like a troubled sea, now floating, wreath on wreath, like a ballet dancer's gauzy flounces, half opaque and half transparent, over the distant Konkan, three thousand feet and more below, waiting for the rising sun to touch it with a rosy blush and kiss it, into invisibility. And every evening, just as he went away, the hot haze hanging like a filmy veil about the hills thickened back into solidity, and beautiful cold mists, reborn, rolled swiftly up the valley, blotting out the picture, and hiding all with their ghostly shifting curtain. And so, from morn to night, and night to morning, it went on, till lines of bullock carts began to gather and wander down the hill, and people were preparing to pack and flit and vanish: for the monsoon was approaching, when no one not a native of those parts can remain upon the hill, unless he wishes to go mad.

And then it began to rain. Suddenly, like the Day of Judgment, there fell from the sky in a solid lump rain, like no rain that I had ever seen before, with the roar of an avalanche and the thunder of Indra and lightning that hissed like a serpent, crashing and smashing down on the roof as if it would break it in. It was dark at midday, and deadly cold, for there went up a mist from the earth, to meet the flood from heaven, making as it were a solid wall through which it was impossible to see a yard. There was nothing to be done but to sit and wait. So for five nights and days that angry rain raged and hammered upon the earth, and tore her with savage fury, growing fiercer as it went on[1 - In but a part of the last night, there fell eight inches and a half of rain! Time for time, Mahabaleshwar can probably laugh at Cherrapunji. The valleys are scooped out as if with a trowel.]: till all at once, just as though the gates above had been suddenly shut, it stopped, as abruptly as it had begun, about five in the afternoon.

I went out, and wandered slowly up the hill. The air was soft, and quite warm, and heavy with the smell of smells, the fragrance of fresh earth. Here and there, the paths were gone, washed clean away, looking like red skeletons of their former selves, with rock for bones, all their earthy covering gone. And here and there, a little off the road, a pale orchid sheltered beneath a bough, or a dainty cobra-lily, nestling snug under an overhanging trunk, peeped with incomparable shy reserve through some dark vista in the trees. A mongoose ran across the road, stopped, just half-way, to stare for an instant at me with its startled weasel eye, and leaped into cover on the opposite side.[2 - This mongoose was, no doubt, wondering "what the devil I did there": for during the rains he and his fellows have the hillsides entirely to themselves.] In a few minutes I gained a point of view, and turned to look, – over a sea of green, and what a green!

For every leaf on every tree was washed and wet, and glistened as if coated with fresh paint. The rich glow of a yellow evening sun deepened and intensified the wonderful red colour of patches of naked rock, raw scars laid bare by little slips of land on places on the hill. Cascades of water shot spouting and splashing into the valleys from innumerable scarps and shelves along the heights; and as I listened, I could hear the streams, hidden in the dense foliage, rushing and gurgling down the steep slopes, carrying with them as they went all the loose soil and pebbles they could find. And all along the ridges of the hills, to right and left, on Elphinstone and Lodwick points, hung brooding enormous masses of white cloud, the purest, the strangest, the most indescribably magnificent and beautiful clouds that I ever saw, whiter than snow, brighter than polished silver, save only where their lower edges were charged with heavy rain, fleeces of colossal milk-white rams, dipped by the master painter, Deity, in giant vats of purple ink. Down and away below them the staircase of the Ghauts, long lines of broken hill, were stepping away into the plain, with every distant detail sharp and clear, cut as it were in copper, till all merged in the far horizon, on which a blink of burnished gold flashed back from the unseen sea, lying right in the eye of the setting sun. I listened, and in the silence, broken only by the ruckle of the rushing water, somewhere away upon the hill, I heard a cock crow. And at that moment, right above me, I looked and saw: a mass of shining cloud swung slowly open, and through the gap, in the deep abyss of heaven, appeared a spot, a panel, a little lozenge, of blue: pure, unsullied, silent, elemental, Indian blue.

There, there, was the unearthly colour, the colour of the mystic lotus, and the long-eyed languishing Indian Gods. I knew in that instant what Kalidas meant, when he compared the virtue of the just to a patch of heaven fallen down to earth, the blue celestial leaven in this world of frenzied storm and weeping rain. There was the azure paradox, the blue that is all but black, dark, transparent, clear as crystal, shut out from eyes that live in plains by earth's encircling fog. But over every mountain is peace, and the kosmic blue.

MAHABALESHWAR,

April, 1905.

Prologue

A Dead Lotus

A Dead Lotus

I

To the pitchy dark of that awful wood,[3 - The hair of Shiwa, who caught the Ganges as it fell from heaven upon his head. It took the river a thousand years to find its way out.] where plunging Ganges lost her way through a night of a thousand years: when the lonely Moon turned ashy pale, mocked by a million moons that danced in the hollows of the rushing waves: we bow.

On the edge of the great southern forest, there lived, a thousand years ago, an aged King and Queen, who counted all the world as grass, for want of a son and heir. And finding all other methods fruitless, in the end they gave themselves wholly up to meditating, night and day, on the sole of the Great God's foot: until at last Maheshwara felt pity for that childless couple, and revealed himself to them both at once, in a double dream. So when he asked them what they wanted, the King asked simply for a son. But the Queen, being smitten with deep devotion at the sight of the Great God's moonlit hair, exclaimed: O Boon Giver, let my son resemble thee, were it only in a single fraction of an atom of his being. Touch me now with the very end of one of thy tangled locks of hair, and so shall I become instinct with a tiny portion of thy divinity. Then said Shiwa to himself: Even a single jot of me will be much too powerful for the rest of this human being's substance, and disturb the balance of the whole. But be it as this mother wills. For she has made her choice, and I granted the boon beforehand.[4 - [Greek: Theus anaitíos, aitía d' heloménou.]] And I can see that he has to dree the weird[5 - I must ask the reader to excuse me for using a Scottish expression, for there is no English equivalent. It means to work out the fate that is laid upon him by what has been done in a previous existence.] of his former births.

Then he took from his head a single hair, and broke it off, and placed it in her hand. And then he disappeared, and that royal pair awoke, and eagerly compared their dreams, which corresponded in every particular. And when they looked, lo! shut fast in the hand of the Queen was a single hair, that glowed like a wire of flame.[6 - The English reader should know, not only that the Great God's hair is red or tawny, but that he has in his nature a strain of wildness, something on the border-land of insanity.]

Then full of joy, they worshipped the God: and they placed that hair in a golden shrine, and built around it a temple. And when in course of time the Queen gave birth to a son, they called him by a suitable name, Rudrálaka.[7 - The hair, or the abode, of Shiwa.] And as the baby became a child, he did not belie his name. For his thick dark hair was shot with a tinge of gleaming red, and in the sun it shone like fire, and it resembled the mane of a horse. And as the boy became a man, his strength became prodigious; and his passions were wild and furious and proportioned to his strength. And he was as unruly and unmanageable as a young colt of high spirit, and so full of wayward obstinacy and headstrong self-will, that his father said in private to his mother: Now, but that the hair in thy hand was red, this son of thine would seem to take after, not the Great God himself, but his bull.[8 - Nandi, whose hair is white.]

And when his manhood was complete, like a river in flood in the rainy season, it overflowed all common bounds. And he ran wild among men and women, overcoming all the men in every feat of strength and agility, and like a great black bee in a flower garden, rifling all the women of their honey and their hearts and their good behaviour, and playing havoc among them, till the mischief created by his own red hair began, as it were, to turn that of his father and mother white. Then they said: Come, we will marry him, and then no doubt he will settle down and become clear, like strong wine after fermentation, and turn into a pillar of his family and the state. But as soon as they proposed it, Rudrálaka laughed in their faces. And he exclaimed: Who carries a flower, when it is faded, and what are women but flowers, fit only to be gathered, in the moment of their bloom, and worn for an hour and thrown away? And he is wise, who knows how to get from the bee its honey, and yet elude its sting. Now a maiden is all honey, but a wife is a buzzing sting. Moreover, women are like mountains, and like snakes, and fire, and the mirage, beautiful in the distance, and the further off, the better: and like them, rugged, and biting, and burning, and luring to destruction all who come too near. But of all things this is worst, that every woman wishes, like a king, to reign alone, and is utterly unable to endure the very name of rival, even in her dreams: so that every husband has in his wife, either a despotic tyrant, or an exasperated foe, whom nothing can appease or soothe but absolute submission. And thus his life is sapped and sucked and drawn into the being of his wife, till it wholly disappears, like that of a noble tree, embraced and treacherously kissed into a premature decay by a beautiful and clinging creeper. And no matter how glorious the flower, I will not be the tree: nor would I buy a wife, were she ten thousand times more beautiful than Rádhá, by the slavery even of a single day. And what is the need to pay so dear for things that are always ready to give themselves away for nothing, and would rather give themselves away than be bought at any price? For women are always longing to give themselves away, and care only for men that they do not know: being forgetful of all kindness, and unbound by obligation, and seeing in their husband nothing but his faults; while every passing stranger has their heart, as soon as he appears, just as long as he is strange. For Love is himself a stranger, and cannot become familiar without ceasing to be Love: and women live for Love alone, being, like flowers, nothing but his instruments: and he is like the amber, and they are like the grass.

So when they found that, in spite of all that they could say, he would not be persuaded, but that the more they tried, the harder grew his obstinacy, his parents gave it up. And soon afterwards, their hearts broke with grief, and they died, leaving him unmarried, and fearing for him, and the kingdom, and their ancestors, and themselves, lest all should go to ruin by reason of the incorrigible perversity of this cutter of their race's stalk.[9 - Because, as Lucian said, without an heir to perform the due ceremonies, the unfortunate shades would have to go hungry and thirsty.]

And then, just as though he had only waited for their death, no sooner had his two parents gone away on the great road, than this marriage-hating son of theirs went hunting in the forest. And he rode a horse of spirit like his own, which after a while broke from control and fled at full speed, carrying him in an instant out of sight of all his attendants. And it brought him, deep in the heart of the wood, to his destiny, in the form of a woman, the daughter of an old ascetic, whose beauty, like a deadly snake, bit and slew, in a single moment, his antipathy to the state of marriage, by the poison of its childlike charm. And utterly beside himself, he wooed her then and there, and brought her home on his own horse, and made her his wife and Queen. And she changed him so completely, that he to whom a wife was slavery, became a woman's willing slave: so much so, that he could not bear to let her out of his sight even for a single instant. And he became, like an image of Arddhanári,[10 - Shiwa and Párwatí combined.] inseparable from his wife, holding her in his arms night and day, and chafing, like a wild animal kept without food in a cage, if she left him only to drink water. And the God of the flowery bow laughed, to see his infatuation; and he said softly to himself: A converted scoffer is, after all, the best adorer: for even a very clever swan would fail to separate this milk-and-water.[11 - Kshira nira, milk-and-water, is a technical term in Hindoo erotics for a very close embrace. The swan is credited by Hindoo poets with the power of separating the two: a curious idea, of which it is not easy to see the origin.] But the King's subjects were overjoyed; and they said: Now, then, his parents will be happy. And if his passion is so violent, that at present he utterly neglects his kingly duties, no matter. For when it has become cool, he will be the very crest-jewel of his race.

And then, while he was entirely bewitched and enthralled by his passion for his new young moon of a bride, some neighbouring kings, his hereditary enemies, hearing of his condition, and seizing their opportunity, combined together, and attacked him. And after a while, his subjects on the frontier, being ruined, paid no taxes. So driven by necessity, he said to his wife, with a sigh: There is no help for it, and now I must absolutely leave thee for a little while, to pull these thorns up by the roots: for if not, the kingdom will be destroyed. Yet only for a very little while: for I will return almost before I have started. And collecting his army, he put himself at its head, and threw himself upon those kings, and scattered them like leaves in a storm of wind, and reduced them to beg for mercy: for he was beside himself with rage, seeing in them not so much enemies of his kingdom as causes of his unwilling separation from his wife. And having speedily gained his object, he sent relays of horses, and posted them at intervals all the way from his camp to his capital. And then at last, one morning, he mounted a horse, and started with but one attendant, and a heart on fire, to return to his wife.

So they rode, all day long, at full speed: stopping only as long as was necessary to let them leap from one horse to another, as if wishing to rival the sun in his course; till that unhappy companion of the King was almost dead from fatigue, for he was not supported like his master by the burning desire to arrive. But the King rode on as it were in a dream, seeing nothing before him but the edge of the far horizon, and the image of his wife beyond. And so the day went by, and as the sun was going down, they drew near to the capital, and saw its walls before them, away on the distant plain. And the King uttered a shout, and he drove his spurs deep into the flanks of his flying horse, and left his follower far behind. And he rode into the city like a whirlwind, and dashed through its streets, scattering the people, and spurning them as it were from his horse's hoofs. And he reached his palace, and rode through the gates into the court, and threw himself to the ground. And he stood on the palace steps, and called aloud with a joyous voice: Ho! go quickly, and tell the Queen that the King has come, and waits only for her permission, to kneel at her lotus-feet.

Then the guards, who stood around, gazed at the King and at each other, in silence and dismay. And as they waited, there came to the King an old chamberlain, who stood before him with joined hands, and stooping; and his face was grey with fear. And he said, with a shaking voice: Let the King show mercy. Has he not met the couriers? The Queen died of a burning fever, only three days ago.

And the King fell to the earth, as though one had struck him on the head with an iron club.

II

And they took him up, and carried him in, and laid him on a bed. And there he remained, like a dead man, and for so long, that they begun to doubt whether he were not dead indeed. But at last, the physicians by their remedies brought him back to the body. But his reason had fled. For he raved and fought, struggling with the strength of a giant, and biting like a wild beast, tearing his own hair, and shouting for his wife. And he threw himself upon his attendants, and handled them so that they feared for their lives: and he ran through the palace hunting for his wife, and calling her by name. And when he could not find her, he fell on all whom he met, and beat them, and came so near to killing many, that at last his ministers took counsel, and caused him to be bound. So after raging for many days, taking neither food nor drink, he fell into a burning fever, as if he wished to follow his wife by the very road she went herself; and he lay for many weeks on the very threshold of the door of death. But his strength was such that he could not die. And so, after a long while, he came back, very slowly, and as it were against his will, to life and to himself: and little by little recovered health, and took once more to his kingly duties, and the bearing of the burden of the state. But it was, as if his better part had died, refusing to be parted from his wife, in the other world, and leaving behind in this only so much of his soul as was necessary to enable him to live at all. For he never moved from his palace, roaming about its rooms, always silent, and always alone, with his head sunk down upon his breast, and his sad eyes fixed upon the ground: and over his dark face there never passed the whiteness of a smile: for his dead wife's shadow lay across it, and her figure moved before him night and day; and her sweetness, not to be forgotten, and never to return, rankled in his heart like a thorn, and goaded it, and gnawed it, and festered in his soul: and sleep forsook his eyes, which were wild, and haggard, and such that all who saw them feared him, and were wary in his presence: for every now and then he broke out into paroxysms of grief mixed with laughter, during which he seemed, as it were, not to know what he was doing, and was as dangerous to approach as a wild mother elephant robbed by hunters of her calf. And so he lived, and months went by, and the grey hairs came before their time and settled in his head, and sowed as it were its fire with the ashes of grey grief: and age saw her opportunity, and began unheeded and unhindered to furrow wrinkles in his brow, and dig deep corners at the ends of his stern shut lips.

III

Now it happened, on a day, when the Great God was roaming through the sky with Umá in his arms, that they passed close by the moon. And suddenly, they heard in the stillness a mournful voice, like the note of a chakrawákí bewailing her lost mate, exclaiming at intervals: Alas! alas! So they stopped and alighted on the surface of the cold-rayed orb, and wandered about in his camphored air, guided by the sound, till they came all at once upon a Siddhá.[12 - The moon, according to some philosophers, is the home of those pure spirits, who have purged themselves in former births sufficiently to deserve a certain grade of beatitude or bliss.] And she was sitting under a sandal tree, leaning her head against the trunk, with large tears in her great blue eyes, and a cloud of dark dishevelled hair floating about her bare white bosom, whose two colossal pearls rose and fell, heaving and fretting as if regretting their absent ocean home. Then filled with compassion and curiosity, Umá exclaimed: What can be the meaning of this sighing Siddhá? And Maheshwara divined the truth. But he said: Ask her. Thereupon Párwatí said: O thou lotus lady, what is thy trouble? And the Siddhá said: O Daughter of the Mountain, I have attained, by superfluity of merit, to this position of a Siddhá, which notwithstanding is only a grief and no pleasure to me. For I remember my former birth, and I can see my husband, sorrowing for my absence away below. And now I would give all that remains of my unexhausted stock of accumulated merit for a single moment of the time that is past, did it last no longer than the twinkling of an eye. For what is the use of my Siddháhood, or anything else, without my lord? Or why am I cursed with reminiscence, and not rather rewarded with oblivion? For memory binds my soul, and links it like a red hot chain to the burning fire of a dead delight.

Then Párwatí said in private to the God: Canst thou not do something for this lovely Siddhá? And Maheshwara replied: This is the nature of women, that for the sake of their single lover, they would annihilate the three worlds. But what has pity to do with the constitution of the universe? Or how can time return again, and all be thrown into confusion, simply to allow two foolish lovers to meet once more? So there is nothing whatever to be done. But Párwatí coaxed him and cajoled him, knowing the power of her two white arms, until at last he said: Since I can refuse thee nothing, and thou art absolutely set upon it, I will, to please thee, cause these two unhappy persons to re-enact their little drama, and taste again the nectar of that love which they so much regret: but only in a dream. For dreams were established by the Creator for this very reason, that a remedy might be found for the irrevocable nature of reality. For that must be as it has been, and cannot be recalled or changed: but anything may happen in a dream. And yet, this pair of lovers would be wiser, were they content to let alone, and leave things as they are. For they will but make their misery more, by the very means they wish to take to lessen and remove it. But be that as it may.

And then, he cast upon the Siddhá a kindly glance. And he said: Silly child, that wouldst be wiser than those who framed the three great worlds, be now consoled. Thou shalt, at least, have thy way, for a little while, and meet the lord of thy heart again, halfway between heaven and earth.

And hearing this, the Siddhá fell before him, and took his foot, and kissed it, and placed it in her bosom. And she said: O saviour of the shipwrecked that are sinking in the waves of time, O send me thy succour soon, for I am like one dying of thirst in the desert for the blue water of my husband's arms.

IV

And at that very moment, the King her husband on the earth was sitting in his palace hall, musing on her memory, and dreaming of the past, and listening to the musicians, playing before him as he sat. So as they played, as luck would have it, they fell upon an air, which ran into his heart, and pierced it like a poisoned needle: for it was the favourite air of his vanished Queen. And as he listened, the tears came rushing into his eyes, blinding them with love-longing and the blackness of despair. And he started up, and called aloud, in a voice of thunder: Away! begone! Wretches, have ye conspired together to break my heart in two? And instantly, those unlucky players stopped affrighted, and fled before his wrath like hares. And as all shrank before him, the domestic chaplain came forward, and said politely: O King, without are waiting certain merchants, jewellers, who have come here by appointment, to lay their jewels at thy feet.

Then the King said, with a sigh: What are all their gems to me? And yet, no matter: let them all come in.

So in came all the merchants, and showed the King each what he had. And the King went up and down, saying sadly to himself: Now every pleasure is a pain, and every joy, a grief. For what are jewels to me, now that she is no more, on whom I would have hung them till she sank beneath their weight? And then, as if in irony, he took the jewels and began to put them on himself. And taking from the merchants all they had, he hung himself all over, loading himself with gorgeous gems, with emeralds and rubies, and pearls and amethysts and diamonds, and sapphires, and every other stone, till he flashed as it were with a thousand hues, and resembled an incarnation of the spoiling of the sea.

So as he went from one merchant to another, adding to his store, he came suddenly on an old merchant, who stood a little apart from the rest, with nothing visible to sell. And his head was of enormous size, and bare,[13 - I.e. he had no turban on. In the East, on entering a house the head remains covered; it is the shoes which are removed.] and bald on the top, and from its sides long thick white hair ran down over his shoulders, and mingled with his beard. And his face was wrinkled all over, like the skin of a withered fruit. And the King stopped and considered him, amazed at the extraordinary size of his head, which resembled a monstrous gourd. And then he said: Ha! merchant: thou art idle. Where are thy valuables, and what is thy commodity? Doubtless that must be a treasure, which thou keepest wrapped away so carefully from common eyes. But come, produce it: that I may add it to all these. Then said the merchant: All these are well enough: and yet, the thing that I have brought the King is more than all together, and yet again, less than the least. Then the King said: Of what, then, art thou a seller? And the merchant said: O King, I am a seller of dreams.

And the King looked at him awhile, and was seized with sudden laughter. And he exclaimed: What is this, and who ever heard of a seller of dreams? Art thou mad, or art thou only an old buffoon? Then that old merchant fixed his eyes upon the King. And he said:

O King, who can tell, whether he is mad or not? But as for me, know, that mine are no common dreams, but they are such as many would give all they had, and more than all they had, to dream. For I can make the past present, and I can find that which is lost, and join together whom time has parted, and turn regret to laughing joy: and I can mend the broken-hearted, and bring love's fierce emotion back, and into faded flowers of passion I can breathe again their old sweet bloom, and make to echo in living ears the music of lips that have long been dead.

And as he spoke, the King stood, and his heart rose up into his mouth. For the words of the old merchant played on it, as if it were a lute, and tugged at it like a cord; and the memory of his wife surged suddenly in his soul, and swept it like a wind. And all at once, he seized that old man by the throat, with hands that trembled with the ecstasy of rage, and shook him like a leaf. And his voice faltered with passion, as he said: Old fool, dost thou mock me? Dost thou promise, without performing? Beware! for thou art playing with a fire that will shrivel thee like a blade of grass.