International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1

It was wrong for Alete to leave just then, for the conversation, which hitherto had been gaily sustained, immediately began to languish, and assumed a direction which compelled her to silence.

Ireneus complained of the inroad of democratic ideas, of the trembling and fall of aristocratic institutions, of the authority of right divine, which in his chivalric enthusiasm he looked on as the basis of society.

"Ah," replied Eric, with a tone of voice which seemed aroused by a feeling of affection, "this holy authority will lift itself up from the level of the popular waves which threaten to overwhelm it. It will appear clear and brilliant as our polar star, above the clouds which now surround it. It would subsist in all its power, if it were exercised by men who comprehended the holy duties it imposed on them. Everything connected with this primitive law, with this noble image of patriarchal government, would yet exist, if each member of the great social family would contemplate from a just point of view his own condition, and carry out the consequences in a Christian-like manner.

"Charity, that is to say love and compassion, the two expressions in which are summed up all the joys and miseries of human life, are two virtues, ennobling and consoling man. Let the rich man be charitable to the servant he has subjected to his will, toward the poor man who begs of him. Let him say every day, as he awakes, every night as he prepares himself for repose, that the more powerful he has been made by Providence, the greater is the obligation he is under to aid and protect those around him. In his turn, let the poor man be charitable to the rich; let him know that no rock of marble, no gilded platform can rescue the prince from mortal anxiety, and that human grief is found beneath the imperial purple as well as wrapped in rags, and that often the noble, surrounded by riches and at the festal board, is forced to envy the humble hut and obscure repose of the coal-burner.

"If ever," pursued Eric, with an accent of enthusiasm, "I shall be called to expound the word of God, this especially shall be the text of my sermons: Charity! Charity! By charity I do not mean the habit of extending the hand, which by a kind of instinctive motion, lets alms fall in the blind man's basket, nor the graceful action of a lady who at certain hours leaves the saloon to visit the garret. True charity consists not so much in material aid as in the gifts of the heart; and every individual, humble as he may be, may perform a precious act of charity. To pay correct esteem to a poor man who has been calumniated; to revive hope in a mind overpowered by misfortune and tortured by doubt; to console by kind words a soul mistaken and suffering from errors; each of these is a charity. To be mild and kind to all who approach you, to be indulgent to those blinded by the glitter of prosperity, to be kind and affectionate even when an effort is required to be so, to open a sympathizing heart to all complainings, to all diseases, to all human errors, is the way to gain daily the choicest opportunities of charity. To be charitable is to be good. One of your illustrious writers, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, said, 'Were every one to regulate his own house, order would be the law of nature.' We may also say, were each one to do good, universal happiness would be certain."

"Dear, dear Eric," said Alete, clasping his hand. Then as if she reproached herself for this emotion, she suddenly withdrew it and said, "You need not get into the pulpit to preach a very edifying sermon. You treat us already as your future parishioners, and honor my cousin in the same manner. Since you have begun, will you not complete his education? That beautiful France, the wit and learning of which is so much extolled, exhibits a haughty disdain of the science of other lands. I am sure my cousin knows very little of the history of Sweden,—that magnificent chronicle which in its royal genealogies dates from the deluge. You can teach him. My learned sister Ebba will also teach him Swedish, the most beautiful and harmonious tongue in the world, and certainly the oldest, since savans have proven that Adam and Eve spoke it in Paradise. I also wish to do my duty, and will guide my cousin in the study of natural history of grouse and briar-cock, and the aromatic plants which grow on our hillsides."

"You jest," said Ireneus, "but I seriously adopt your proposition."

"Bah! bah!" cried M. de Vermondans. "He would be a pretty Captain of Lancers if he were to subject himself to pedagogues, like a school-boy, and study themes and versions like a college lad."

"Excuse me, my dear uncle, the most unpleasant thing in the world to me is to be idle. Since circumstances condemn me to inactivity, I would, if possible, employ my time usefully. I shall be very grateful to Eric and my cousins, if they will give me the instruction I need so much. I shall be delighted to study the history of Sweden, a language spoken by persons I love better than any in the world, and the products of the soil of Which Alete is the amiable Buffon."

"So be it," said M. de Vermondans, who, in spite of his eclecticism in politics, had, with a strange mental contradiction, preserved in relation to certain things very deeply rooted ideas, "So be it. In my time people took up no such fancies—more than one emigre passed ten years of his life in a foreign country, and never learned to speak its language. The young men of our times are not like those of to-day. The world, which when I knew it was so gay and careless, which from its very recklessness and its choleric daring was so interesting, now looks to me like a vast school. Its atmosphere, formerly impregnated with perfumes, is now saturated with the atmosphere of dusty tomes and damp newspapers. We meet with no one but persons anxious either to teach or learn. What will become of us if we give way to this pedantic pride? If we surrender to this anxiety to analyze everything? If we go on so, to suit us, God will be compelled to make a new world, to give occupation to the lofty fancies of naturalists and physical philosophers, who seem to me to have weighed and examined this thoroughly.

"Bah! bah! Mademoiselle the philosopher," said M. de Vermondans, as he saw Ebba smile, "I am not ignorant that just now I talk very much like a heretic. You have delighted in reading a multitude of books. I excuse you, however, because you never boast of your acquisitions.

"You do not belong to those blue-stockings, and I have met many such, who, as soon as you approach them, throw at your head the name of a poet like a bomb-shell, and exhibit the wealth of their arsenal by firing a philosophical cannon, or algebraic chain shot.

"May God almighty keep me from those women who forget in this manner the natural graces of their sex. Let him protect me from those Laureates who can see no natural phenomenon without crying out with stupid satisfaction, 'I know the reason.'

"Imagine how delighted I should be, if when enjoying the delicious luxury of sunset, some bachelor of arts should say—

"'Monsieur, will you suffer me to explain how various clouds assume the colors which so vividly impress you, and with what rapidity light comes to the eye?'

"For heaven's sake let me enjoy in peace all the gifts of Providence, admire its works in the innocence of my heart, and discover by what geometrical process God has regulated the form of the globe, and to what pallet, to use the painter's phrase, he has ground his colors."

"There you express a pious and respectable sentiment, which, however, permit me to say, cannot be admitted without some qualification. We must not forget that the greatest gift with which God has endowed man is intelligence, and that one of our first duties is to attempt to develop that intelligence by means of every faculty and all the means of application with which he has endowed us."

"Good. If you were sure that you would not lose yourself amid temptation, or, if like Tobias, you had an angel to guide you in the stormy voyage you undertake. Into what derangement of pride has not man fallen, from the fabulous Prometheus, who sought to snatch fire from heaven, to the Philosophers of the eighteenth century, who extinguished fire in the lights of their reason. Prove to me that what you call human reason has in any manner purified or ennobled the moral sentiment, and I will bow myself before your logicians and rhetoricians. To what direction soever I turn I see only vain puerilities, useless labor, doubtful hypotheses, presumption and falsehood. I admit that you may count amid the multitude of books lumbering the shelves of your libraries many innocent and instructive works. Those books, however, prove your impotence.

"Act as you please, and you will never be able to develop equally the various mental powers. To expand one it is necessary to repress the others. By giving your reason the rude aliment of scholastic argument, you neglect your imagination. By illuminating your mind you overshadow your heart. You congratulate yourself at the discovery of a problem, the solution of which you have long sought for. Scientific journals become filled with numerous dissertations about it, academies decree crowns and medals to the author of the precious discovery. No one remembers, that each of these solutions breaks one of the wonderful chains of charming symbols, of naive ideas which once animated and vivified the people. That it strips it of poetry, of the emotions of the heart, and the delightful and fairy-like creations of the imagination.

"The ancients were not so learned as we, yet they were wiser. They did not explain the phenomena of nature, but described with a graceful and imposing imagery. The rainbow, reduced in our colleges to a mere conformation of matter, was the scarf of Iris; the light-footed hours preceded the car of night, and the rosy-fingered Aurora opened the horizon to permit the car of Jove to pass. When the thunder rolled, Jupiter spoke to attentive mortals. When volcanic mountains trembled, the old Titans sought to throw off the mass of rocks which weighed on them as an eternal punishment of crime. The middle age, yet more naïve and poetical, peopled the air, fields, woods, and waters with a crowd of mysterious beings who spoke to the senses and thought, and awakened in the human mind a mild sentiment of faith or healthful fear.

"Now, thanks to your haughty reason, we have banished, like idle fancies, all these creations of our forefathers. Now we know that the air has no other voice than that of the wind and tempest; that the wood has no animals other than those the structure of whom has been minutely described; that there are no fairies in the green fields, and no invisible spirits watching over the hearth and fireside. Man, relying on his reason, would be ashamed to suffer himself to be excited by tales of ghosts. He has cast aside all supernatural apprehensions; and I see the coming of the time when even Saint Nicholas will not impose on children. What have we gained by thus shaking off the network of smiling and serious fancies, which both enlivened and restrained our fancy? Are we happier, stronger, or better? Alas! for my own part, even were I to pass for a mind behind the times, I would confess that I regret those days of candid credulity in which each dark forest had its legend, every chapel its history. One of the reasons why I love the Swedes, amid whom I found a peaceful home, is, that they have not yet sacrificed to the teachings of modern times their old poetry; and that in the majority of their woodland homes are a multitude of popular songs, of traditional faiths, of domestic customs, which recall the poetic days of the middle age. Is not this true, Ebba? You know something of this matter, for you participate in my predilections in relation to them; and more than once I have seen you listen anxiously to the stories of the old women of Aland."

"Yes, father," said Ebba; who had listened with eager sympathy to the long dissertation of the old man, while Eric and Ireneus listened modestly to all he had said.

"When you give me a lesson in Swedish," said Ireneus, "will you be kind enough to add to it some of those histories, which, I assure you, interest me in no small degree?"

"If you wish it," said Ebba, "I will." Whenever she spoke she seemed with difficulty to surmount her timidity.

"Well, my dear nephew," said M. de Vermondans, with Eric on one side, Ebba on the other, and the practical knowledge of Alete, "it seems to me you can employ your time very profitably; for my own part I can only induct you into the mysteries of bear-hunting, and the chase of the stag and reindeer. It is so rude that I shall not be able to keep up with you. Among my people, however, I shall be able to find a guide, who finds game like a blood-hound, and follows it like a lion."

"That will do wonderfully well, uncle; with so attractive an offer, I fear only that amid my amusements I shall forget my country and my regiment, and become faithless to my king."

PART II

Even if Ireneus had not willingly accepted the plan worked out for the Employment of his leisure in study, the rigorous climate of Sweden would, in some manner, have made it compulsory for him to do so. To the cold and dry days, which, during the winter, enlightened and animated the people of the north, succeeded storms and hurricanes. Tempests of snow floated in the air, covered the paths, and blocked up the doors of the houses. A cloudy horizon and black sky seemed to close around every house, like a girdle of iron. At a little distance not even a hill could be distinguished from a forest; all was, as it were, drowned and overwhelmed in a misty ocean, in movable columns of snow, which were impetuous, and irresistible as the sand-whirlpools of the desert. About midday a light purple tint, like a dying twilight, glittered in somber space: a ray thrown by the sun across the clouds, gave an uncertain light. All, however, soon became dark again. One might have fancied that the god of day had retired over-wearied from regions he had in vain attempted to subdue. Nowhere does the symbolical dogma of the contests of darkness and light manifest itself in more characteristic traits than in the Scandinavian mythology; and nowhere does it appear physically under a more positive image than in the regions which have been for centuries devoted to this mythology. During the summer at the north, the sun reigns like an absolute sovereign over nature, and ceaselessly lights it with his crown of fire; he ever watches it, like a jealous lover. If he inclines toward the horizon, if his burning disk disappears behind the purple mountain brows, he leaves for only a moment those polar regions, and leaves even then a clearness behind like the dawn. He soon reappears in his spotless splendor.

In the winter, however, he yields to night, which, with her dark cortege, occupies the northern world. She envelops space with her black wings, and casts the ice and snow from her bosom. Sometimes, for weeks, the storms are so violent, that one cannot, without danger, venture into the fields; and cruel necessity alone induces the peasant to take the road, either to offer something for sale in the nearest market, or to gain a few shillings as a guide to some adventurous traveler. Sometimes, even the peasants of this country are afraid to cast their nets in the river, and gulf, which in the greatest degree contribute to their subsistence. During the greater portion of the time, the poor people of the north, secluded in their homes by masses of snow, isolated from their neighbors, pass whole winters by the fireside. The men occupy themselves in repairing the harness of their horses, in mending the iron work of their carriages—for in that country the homes of people are so far from each other, that each family is forced to provide for its daily wants, and every peasant is at once saddler, wagon-maker, and carpenter. Women are busy in weaving and spinning. In many provinces, especially in that in which the uncle of Ireneus had established himself, there was in existence an industry, which, during the last twenty years, has been much developed. Every peasant's house is a perfect workshop, for the manufacture of linen. Woofs, white and fine as those of Holland, and quite as good, are there produced. This variety of work commences after harvest. In the autumn evenings, women, young girls, &c., assemble at different houses, with their distaff or bundle of flax, which they place before the hearth. It is pleasant, indeed, to see this collection of industrious women, busied in the performance of the task prescribed to them, laughing, talking, without sometimes taking time even to listen to the young lovers who hover around them.

Often a respectable grandmother, the fingers of whom were wrinkled by age, and which neither weave nor spin, would bid the wild troop be silent, as she told one of the mad histories of old times. Then, one of the work-women would merrily ring out the peasant songs, the chorus of which her companions would re-echo. After a few hours of toil, a young man would arise, and give a pleasant signal. All chairs and benches would at once be removed; the work-shop would be changed into a ball-room. To supply the deficiency of an orchestra, one of the spectators defined the modulations of a dance by some old traditionary song. Young men and women took each other by the hand, and formed together one of those country groups which are the elements of the chorographic art. They then parted, making a rendezvous for the next day, for another hearth-side, but for similar amusements. All the work-women, returned to their own houses, where they gaily retailed all the episodes of the evening's events, some recording merely a silent glance, which met their own, or a furtive clasp of the hand which had aroused a blush. More than one happy acquaintance originates in one of those northern evenings—and more than one girl, who, in the autumn, has a heart free as air, in the spring wears on her finger the ring of a promised bride.

When the weather was good, Ebba went out sometimes alone, to be present at these re-unions. All rose to welcome her with a sentiment of respect and attention, for she was kind to the poor.

The young people silently withdrew, and the matron of the house gave her the most pleasant seat by the hearth-side. The children, however, to whom she brought every day fruits and presents, leaped and danced around her. The old village story-tellers were also glad when she came, for no one Questioned them with more kindness, or listened with more attention to their popular tales. Her delicate tournure, her graceful form, her pale and melancholy look, were in striking contrast with those around her. To see her motionless and mute amid the merry girls and the robust young persons, would have induced a belief that she was one of those supernatural beings, one of those fairy inhabitants of woods and waters—strange legends about whom she so much delighted in. She entered and retired silently, and her light feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground. She flitted away like an aerial being, leaving with all those whom she visited an indefinable impression, and arousing in some the vague remembrance of a superstitious being.

One evening, when she was about to leave, a woman, who had looked Attentively at her, said, "Dear young lady; how feeble and ill she seems!"

"Yes," said a timid voice, "one might almost think she had joined in the elfin dance."

"What is the elfin dance?" asked a young man; "I have seen many, but never that."

"God grant you never may," said the one to whom he spoke; "the elves are wonderful beings, who come we know not whence; and live, we know not how, in the mountain gorges and woods. Probably they are the descendants of some race accursed of God, and sentenced to live on earth, deprived of every joy and hope. They never enter towns; do not associate with us; but when they see a solitary wanderer, they seek to win him to them, and exercise a most unhappy influence over him.

"You sometimes have seen large circles of grass in the meadows trampled down. They are traced by the elves, as they dance in the summer night when the moon is shining. Wo to the wanderer, wo to the young girl, who at that time passes near them. The elves invite them to join in the dance, and sometimes drag them by force away. Into the veins of any one who comes within their circle, a secret poison is infused, which makes him languish and die. I tell you, I fear that Ebba, good and charitable as she is, has been surprised by those accursed beings; for she has the pale face and languid air of those who suffer from philtre of the elves."

Sitting one morning in the room of her father, Ebba was discharging the task she had proposed to herself in jest. She was teaching Ireneus the elements of the beautiful Swedish language, of the Islandic from which it is derived, and which has its ulterior origin in the old tongues of India, the cradle of the great Gothic races. "It is pleasant," says Byron, "to learn a foreign tongue from the eyes and lips of a woman." Ireneus enjoyed all the luxury of such a system of instruction.

Without having what is called a poetical nature, he was not a little under the influence of the poetry of his situation, of the beautiful girl who taught him, of her sweet smile, and the affectionate voice which stimulated his zeal or reproved his mistakes. Any accidental question, any quotation, a single word often would hurry the young girl's mind to her favorite theme, the mythology of the north.

In her early youth, she had studied the curious dogmas of the old Scandinavians, a singular assemblage of terrible symbols and smiling images borrowed from the flowery regions of the east, and of dark conceptions produced in the cloudy north.

Not only did she know all the tales, but in some sort she lived in the memory of the heroic and religious traditions sung in the solemn dithyrambics of the Edda, and met with in every page of the Islandic sagas. Though her heart was always Christian, she was amazed, from time to time, at hearing herself speak, like a pagan, of the beneficent Baldus, of Loki, the spirit of evil, and of Freya, the golden tears of whom formed the Baltic amber. To her, the world was yet peopled by the mythological beings, created by the naïve faith of the north, and to them she had learned to adapt the phenomena of nature. When she heard the thunder, she thought of Thor, and his mighty hammer, driving across the heavens in his iron car. If the sky was clear, she thought the luminous Alfis lighted up the horizon.

In the pantheism of Scandinavian mythology, which, though less seductive, is less comprehensive than that of the Greeks, all that she heard assumed a mysterious existence. Plants were watered by the foam the horse of night shakes on the earth, as he tosses his mane and champs his bit.

Crows had a prophetic power. The eagle sailing through the air, recalled to her that deathless bird which sits on the boughs of Ygdrasil, the tree of the world. A secret spring, hidden amid the woods, seemed to her the emblem of that deep spring in which the Nornas spin and cut the thread of life. To these traditions, far older than Christianity, she united the popular legends of the middle age. If night, the whistling of the wind, the rattling of the rain, the murmur of the trees, made a confused murmur in her ears, she fancied that she heard the barking of dogs, the sound of horns, and the cry of the wild huntsman sentenced to wander forever from vale to vale, from mountain to mountain, because he had violated a Sabbath or saints' day. If, on some calm day, she looked at the golden and purple surface of the lake, she fancied that she saw, in the depth of the water, the spires and roofs of the houses of some city which God had punished for impiety, by burying it beneath the waves.

If she stood on the banks of a rapid stream, at the foot of a cascade, she said that the sounds she heard came from Stromkarl. The Stromkarl has a silver harp, on which he plays wild melodies. If his favor be gained, by any present, he teaches the listener his songs. Wo, however, to the man who hears him for the ninth time. He cannot shake off the supernatural charm, and becomes a victim to his imprudent temerity.

One evening all the family was collected around the earthen stove. Eric was there. Suddenly the sky, which in the morning had been dark and cloudy, was lit up as if by the blaze of a immense conflagration. The aurora-borealis, that wonderful phenomenon of the north, glittered in the horizon, and gradually extended its evolutions from the east to the west. Sometimes all the colors of the rainbow were visible, and again it glittered like a mass of fusees, or transformed itself into a vast white cloud, sparkling like the milky-way. Again it would assume the most splendid blaze, and appear like a mantle of purple and gold. For one moment the rays would be alligned, and gradually disappear in the distance; then they would cross each other like network. Again they would arrange themselves in bows, dart out with arrowing points, shoot into towers and form crowns. It might have been fancied the creation of a kaleidescope, into which the hand of a magician had cast jets of life, oscillating and floating under every form. At the same time, there was heard in the air a sound like that accompanying the discharge of fireworks.

Eric, who had been asked to give an explanation of this phenomenon, analyzed the various theories of philosophers on the subject. He especially referred to those of the Society of Copenhagen. He said this was one of the phenomena which no philosopher had as yet explained; that of all the hypotheses on the matter, the most specious was that which ascribes the aurora-borealis to the reflection of the northern ices.

"My wise daughter, what do you think of it?" said M. Vermondans, speaking to Ebba, who, with her hands crossed over her chest with religious silence, sat looking at a phenomenon she had witnessed every winter, and which on every occasion awakened a new emotion.

Ebba said, "I do not know the dissertations of academies, like Eric. Since, however, they do not explain the cause and motion of the aurora borealis, I had rather rely on the simple and religious traditions of an ignorant people, to that of the Greenlanders, who say that the rays of the aurora come from the glare of souls which wander over the skies."

"On my soul," said M. Vermondans, "that idea pleases me. Like the problems of the natural philosophers, it does not explain the problem of the aurora-borealis, but it is much more poetical. This tradition contributes to the assistance of an idea I advanced the other day, on the vanity of scientific speculations, especially when we compare them with the delicious conceptions of the ignorant."

"True," replied Eric, "in the infancy of nations, as in the childhood of the individual, there is a graceful poetry, an ideal and intellectual understanding of nature, which does not resist grave impressions or the reason of mature age. Thus, amid the wild nations of North America, the poor mother who has lost a child, fancies that she scents the perfume of its breath in the flowers, and hears its sigh in the voices of the birds. Thus is it that our Lapland neighbors attach a touching faith to many physical incidents.