Books: Lothair

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The result of all this was that Mr. Phoebus, without absolutely
committing himself, favorably entertained the general proposition of the
Russian court; while, with respect to their particular object in art, he
agreed to visit Palestine and execute at least one work for his imperial
friend and patron. He counted on reaching Jerusalem before the Easter
pilgrims returned to their homes.

"If they would make me a prince at once, and give me the Alexander
Newsky in brilliants, it might be worth thinking of," he said to
Lothair.

The ladies, though they loved their isle, were quite delighted with the
thought of going to Jerusalem. Madame Phoebus knew a Russian
grand-duchess who had boasted to her that she had been both to Jerusalem
and Torquay, and Madame Phoebus had felt quite ashamed that she had been
to neither.

"I suppose you will feel quite at home there," said Euphrosyne to
Lothair.

"No; I never was there."

"No; but you know all about those places and people -- holy places and
holy persons. The Blessed Virgin did not, I believe, appear to you. It
was to a young lady, was it not? We were asking each other last night
who the young lady could be."

CHAPTER 76

Time, which changes every thing, is changing even the traditionary
appearance of forlorn Jerusalem. Not that its mien, after all, was ever
very sad. Its airy site, its splendid mosque, its vast monasteries, the
bright material of which the whole city is built, its cupolaed houses of
freestone, and above all the towers and gates and battlements of its
lofty and complete walls, always rendered it a handsome city. Jerusalem
has not been sacked so often or so recently as the other two great
ancient cities, Rome and Athens. Its vicinage was never more desolate
than the Campagna, or the state of Attica and the Morea in 1830.

The battle-field of western Asia from the days of the Assyrian kings to
those of Mehemet Ali, Palestine endured the same devastation as in modern
times has been the doom of Flanders and the Milanese; but the years of
havoc in the Low Countries and Lombardy must be counted in Palestine by
centuries. Yet the wide plains of the Holy Land, Sharon, and Shechem,
and Esdraelon, have recovered; they are as fertile and as fair as in old
days; it is the hill-culture that has been destroyed, and that is the
culture on which Jerusalem mainly depended. Its hills were terraced
gardens, vineyards, and groves of olive-trees. And here it is that we
find renovation. The terraces are again ascending the stony heights,
and the eye is frequently gladdened with young plantations.
Fruit-trees, the peach and the pomegranate, the almond and the fig,
offer gracious groups; and the true children of the land, the vine and
the olive, are again exulting in their native soil.

There is one spot, however, which has been neglected, and yet the one
that should have been the first remembered, as it has been the most
rudely wasted. Blessed be the hand which plants trees upon Olivet!
Blessed be the hand that builds gardens about Sion!

The most remarkable creation, however, in modern Jerusalem is the Russian
settlement which within a few years has risen on the elevated ground on
the western side of the city. The Latin, the Greek, and the Armenian
Churches had for centuries possessed enclosed establishments in the
city, which, under the name of monasteries, provided shelter and
protection for hundreds -- it might be said even thousands -- of
pilgrims belonging to their respective rites. The great scale,
therefore, on which Russia secured hospitality for her subjects was not
in reality so remarkable as the fact that it seemed to indicate a
settled determination to separate the Muscovite Church altogether from
the Greek, and throw off what little dependence is still acknowledged on
the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Whatever the motive, the design has
been accomplished on a large scale. The Russian buildings, all well
defended, are a caravanserai, a cathedral, a citadel. The consular flag
crowns the height and indicates the office of administration; priests
and monks are permanent inhabitants, and a whole caravan of Muscovite
pilgrim and the trades on which they depend can be accommodated within
the precinct.

Mr. Phoebus, his family and suite, were to be the guests of the Russian
consul, and every preparation was made to insure the celebrated painter
a becoming reception. Frequent telegrams had duly impressed the
representative of all the Russias in the Holy Land with the importance
of his impending visitor. Even the qualified and strictly provisional
acceptance of the Russian proposition by Mr. Phoebus had agitated the
wires of Europe scarcely less than a suggested conference.

"An artist should always remember what he owes to posterity and his
profession," said Mr. Phoebus to Lothair, as they were walking the deck,
"even if you can distinguish between them, which I doubt, for it is only
by a sense of the beautiful that the human family can be sustained in
Its proper place in the scale of creation, and the sense of the
beautiful is a result of the study of the fine arts. It would be
something to sow the seeds of organic change in the Mongolian type, but
I am nor sanguine of success. There is no original fund of aptitude to
act upon. The most ancient of existing communities is Turanian, and
yet, though they could invent gunpowder and the mariner's compass, they
never could understand perspective. -- Man ahead there! tell Madame
Phoebus to come on deck for the first sight of Mount Lebanon."

When the Pan entered the port of Joppa they observed another English
yacht in those waters; but, before they could speculate on its owner,
they were involved in all the complications of landing. On the quay,
the Russian vice-consul was in attendance with horses and mules, and
donkeys handsomer than either. The ladies were delighted with the vast
orange-gardens of Joppa, which Madame Phoebus said realized quite her
idea of the Holy Land.

"I was prepared for milk and honey," said Euphrosyne, "but this is too
delightful," as she travelled through lanes of date-bearing palm-trees,
and sniffed with her almond-shaped nostrils the all-pervading fragrance.

They passed the night at Arimathea, a pretty village surrounded with
gardens enclosed with hedges of prickly pear. Here they found
hospitality, in an old convent, but all the comforts of Europe and many
of the refinements of Asia had been forwarded for their accommodations.

"It is a great homage to art," said Mr. Phoebus, as he scattered his gold
like a great seigneur of Gascony.

The next day, two miles from Jerusalem, the consul met them with a
cavalcade, and the ladies assured their host that they were not at all
wearied with their journey, but were quite prepared, in due time, to
join his dinner-party, which he was most anxious they should attend, as
he had "two English lords" who had arrived, and whom he had invited to
meet them. They were all curious to know their names, though that,
unfortunately, the consul could not tell them, but he had sent to the
English consulate to have them written down. All he could assure them
was, that they were real English lords, not travelling English lords,
but in sober earnestness great personages.

Mr. Phoebus was highly gratified. He was pleased with his reception.
There was nothing he liked much more than a procession. He was also a
sincere admirer of the aristocracy of his country. "On the whole," he
would say, "they most resemble the old Hellenic race; excelling in
athletic sports, speaking no other language than their own, and never
reading."

"Your fault," he would sometimes say to Lothair, "and the cause of many
of your sorrows, is the habit of mental introspection. Man is born to
observe, but if he falls into psychology he observes nothing, and then
he is astonished that life has no charms for him, or that, never seizing
the occasion, his career is a failure. No, sir, it is the eye that must
be occupied and cultivated; no one knows the capacity of the eye who has
not developed it, or the visions of beauty and delight and inexhaustible
interest which it commands. To a man who observes, life is as different
as the existence of a dreaming psychologist is to that of the animals of
the field."

"I fear," said Lothair, "that I have at length found out the truth, and
that I am a dreaming psychologist."

"You are young and not irremediably lost," said Mr. Phoebus.
"Fortunately, you have received the admirable though partial education
of your class. You are a good shot, you can ride, you can row, you can
swim. That imperfect secretion of the brain which is called thought has
not yet bowed your frame. You have not had time to read much. Give it
up altogether. The conversation of a woman like Theodora is worth all
the libraries in the world. If it were only for her sake, I should wish
to save you, but I wish to do it for your own. Yes, profit by the vast
though calamitous experience which you have gained in a short time. We
may know a great deal about our bodies, we can know very little about
our minds."

The "real English lords" turned out to be Bertram and St. Aldegonde,
returning from Nubia. They had left England about the same time as
Lothair, and had paired together on the Irish Church till Easter, with a
sort of secret hope on the part of St. Aldegonde that they might neither
of them reappear in the House of Commons again until the Irish Church
were either saved or subverted. Holy Week had long passed, and they
were at Jerusalem, not quite so near the House of Commons as the Reform
Club or the Carlton, but still St. Aldegonde had mentioned that be was
beginning to be bored with Jerusalem, and Bertram counted on their
immediate departure when they accepted the invitation to dine with the
Russian consul.

Lothair was unaffectedly delighted to meet Bertram, and glad to see St.
Aldegonde, but he was a little nervous and embarrassed as to the
probable tone of his reception by them. But their manner relieved him
in an instant, for he saw they knew nothing of his adventures.

"Well," said St. Aldegonde, "what have you been doing with yourself
since we last met? I wish you had come with us, and had a shot at a
crocodile."

Bertram told Lothair in the course of the evening that he found letters
at Cairo from Corisande, on his return, in which there was a good deal
about Lothair, and which had made him rather uneasy. "That there was a
rumor you had been badly wounded, and some other things," and Bertram
looked him full in the face; "but I dare say not a word of truth."

"I was never better in my life," said Lothair, "and I have been in
Sicily and in Greece. However, we will talk over all this another
time."

The dinner at the consulate was, one of the most successful banquets
that was ever given, if to please your guests be the test of good
fortune in such enterprises. St. Aldegonde was perfectly charmed with
the Phoebus family; he did not know which to admire most -- the great
artist, who was in remarkable spirits to-day, considering he was in a
Semitic country, or his radiant wife, or his brilliant sister-in-law.
St. Aldegonde took an early opportunity of informing Bertram that if he
liked to go over and vote for the Irish Church he would release him from
his pair with the greatest pleasure, but for his part he had not the
slightest intention of leaving Jerusalem at present. Strange to say,
Bertram received this intimation without a murmur. He was not so loud
in his admiration of the Phoebus family as St. Aldegonde, but there is a
silent sentiment sometimes more expressive than the noisiest applause,
and more dangerous. Bertram had sat next to Euphrosyne, and was
entirely spell-bound.

The consul's wife, a hostess not unworthy of such guests, had
entertained her friends in the European style. The dinner-hour was not
late, and the gentlemen who attended the ladies from the dinner-table
were allowed to remain some time in the saloon. Lothair talked much to
the consul's wife, by whose side sat Madame Phoebus. St. Aldegonde was
always on his legs, distracted by the rival attractions of that lady and
her husband. More remote, Bertram whispered to Euphrosyne, who answered
him with laughing eyes.

At a certain hour, the consul, attended by his male guests, crossing a
court, proceeded to his divan, a lofty and capacious chamber painted in
fresco, and with no furniture except the low but broad raised seat that
surrounded the room. Here, when they were seated, an equal number of
attendants -- Arabs in Arab dress, blue gowns, and red slippers, and red
caps -- entered, each proffering a long pipe of cherry or jasmine wood.
Then, in a short time, guests dropped in, and pipes and coffee were
immediately brought to them. Any person who had been formally presented
to the consul had this privilege, without any further invitation. The
society often found in these consular divans in the more remote places
of the East -- Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem -- is often extremely
entertaining and instructive. Celebrated travellers, distinguished men
of science, artists, adventurers who ultimately turn out to be heroes,
eccentric characters of all kinds, are here encountered, and give the
fruits of their original or experienced observation without reserve.

"It is the smoking-room over again," whispered St. Aldegonde to Lothair,
"only in England one is so glad to get away from the women, but here I
must say I should have liked to remain behind."

An individual in a Syrian dress, fawn-colored robes girdled with a rich
shawl, and a white turban, entered. He made his salute with grace and
dignity to the consul, touching his forehead, his lip, and his heart,
and took his seat with the air of one not unaccustomed to be received,
playing, until he received his chibouque, with a chaplet of beads.

"That is a good-looking fellow, Lothair," said St. Aldegonde; "or is it
the dress that turns them out such swells? I feel quite a lout by some
of these fellows."

"I think he would be good-looking in any dress," said Lothair. "A
remarkable countenance."

It was an oval visage, with features in harmony with that form; large
dark-brown eyes and lashes, and brows delicately but completely defined;
no hair upon the face except a beard, full but not long. He seemed
about the same age as Mr. Phoebus, and his complexion, though pale, was
clear and fair.

The conversation, after some rambling, had got upon the Suez Canal. Mr.
Phoebus did not care for the political or the commercial consequences of
that great enterprise, but he was glad that a natural division should be
established between the greater races and the Ethiopian. It might not
lead to any considerable result, but it asserted a principle. He looked
upon that trench as a protest.

"But would you place the Nilotic family in the Ethiopian race?" inquired
the Syrian in a voice commanding from its deep sweetness.

"I would certainly. The were Cushim, and that means negroes."

The Syrian did not agree with Mr. Phoebus; he stated his views firmly
and, clearly, but without urging them. He thought that we must look to
the Pelasgi as the colonizing race that had peopled and produced Egypt.
The mention of the Pelasgi fired Mr. Phoebus to even unusual eloquence.
He denounced the Pelasgi as a barbarous race: men of gloomy
superstitions, who, had it not been for the Hellenes, might have fatally
arrested the human development. The triumph of the Hellenes was the
triumph of the beautiful, and all that is great and good in life was
owing to their victory.

"It is difficult to ascertain what is great in life," said the Syrian,
"because nations differ on the subject and ages. Some, for example,
consider war to be a great thing, others condemn it. I remember also
when patriotism was a boast, and now it is a controversy. But it is not
so difficult to ascertain what is good. For man has in his own being
some guide to such knowledge, and divine aid to acquire it has not been
wanting to him. For my part I could not maintain that the Hellenic
system led to virtue."

The conversation was assuming an ardent character when the consul, as a
diplomatist, turned the channel. Mr. Phoebus had vindicated the Hellenic
religion, the Syrian, with a terse protest against the religion of
Nature, however idealized, as tending to the corruption of man, had let
the question die away, and the Divan were discussing dromedaries, and
dancing-girls, and sherbet made of pomegranate, which the consul
recommended and ordered to be produced. Some of the guests retired, and
among them the Syrian with the same salute and the same graceful dignity
as had distinguished his entrance.

"Who is that man?" said Mr. Phoebus. "I met him at Rome ten years ago.
Baron Mecklenburg brought him to me to paint for my great picture of St.
John, which is in the gallery of Munich. He said in his way -- you
remember his way -- that he would bring me a face of Paradise."

"I cannot exactly tell you his name," said the consul. "Prince Galitzin
brought him here, and thought highly of him. I believe he is one of the
old Syrian families in the mountain; but whether he be a Maronite or a
Druse, or any thing else, I really cannot say. Now try the sherbet."

CHAPTER 77

There are few things finer than the morning view of Jerusalem from the
Mount of Olives. The fresh and golden light falls on a walled city with
turrets and towers and frequent gates: the houses of freestone, with
terraced or oval roofs, sparkle in the sun, while the cupolaed pile of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the vast monasteries, and the broad
steep of Sion crowned with the tower of David, vary the monotony of the
general masses of building. But the glory of the scene is the Mosque of
Omar as it rises on its broad platform of marble from the deep ravine of
Kedron, with its magnificent dome high in the air, its arches and
gardened courts, and its ornaments glittering amid the cedar, the
cypress, and the palm.

Reclining on Olivet, Lothair, alone and in charmed abstraction, gazed on
the wondrous scene. Since his arrival at Jerusalem he lived much apart,
nor had he found difficulty in effecting this isolation. Mr. Phoebus had
already established a studio on a considerable scale, and was engaged in
making sketches of pilgrims and monks, tall donkeys of Bethlehem with
starry fronts, in which he much delighted, and grave Jellaheen sheiks,
who were hanging about the convents in the hopes of obtaining a convoy
to the Dead Sea. As for St. Aldegonde and Bertram, they passed their
lives at the Russian consulate, or with its most charming inhabitants.
This morning, with the consul and his wife and the matchless sisters, as
St. Aldegonde always termed them, they had gone on an excursion to the
Convent of the Nativity. Dinner usually reassembled all the party, and
then the Divan followed.

"I say, Bertram," said St. Aldegonde, "what a lucky thing we paired and
went to Nubia! I rejoice in the Divan, and yet, somehow, I cannot bear
leaving those women. If the matchless sisters would only smoke, by Jove
they would be perfect!"

"I should not like Euphrosyne to smoke," said Bertram.

A person approached Lothair by the pathway from Bethany. It was the
Syrian gentleman whom he had met at the consulate. As he was passing
Lothair, he saluted him with the grace which had been before remarked,
and Lothair, who was by nature courteous, and even inclined a little to
ceremony in his manners, especially with those with whom he was not
intimate, immediately rose, as he would not receive such a deputation in
a reclining posture.

"Let me not disturb you," said the stranger, "or, if we must be on equal
terms, let me also be seated, for this is a view that never palls."

"It is perhaps familiar to you," said Lothair, "but with me, only a
pilgrim, its effect is fascinating, almost overwhelming."

"The view of Jerusalem never becomes familiar," said the Syrian, "for
its associations are so transcendent, so various, so inexhaustible, that
the mind can never anticipate its course of thought and feeling, when
one sits, as we do now, on this immortal mount."

"I presume you live here?" said Lothair.

"Not exactly," said his companion. "I have recently built a house
without the walls, and I have planted my hill with fruit-trees, and made
vineyards and olive-grounds, but I have done this as much -- perhaps
more -- to set an example, which, I am glad, to say, has been followed,
as for my own convenience or pleasure. My home is in the north of
Palestine, on the other side of, Jordan, beyond the Sea of Galilee. My
family has dwelt there from time immemorial; but they always loved this
city, and have a legend that they dwelt occasionally within its walls,
even in the days when Titus from that hill looked down upon the temple."

"I have often wished to visit the Sea of Galilee," said Lothair.

"Well, you have now an opportunity," said the Syrian; "the north of
Palestine, though it has no topical splendor, has much variety and a
peculiar natural charm. The burst and brightness of spring have not yet
quite vanished: you would find our plains radiant with wild-flowers, and
our hills green with young crops; and, though we cannot rival Lebanon,
we have forest glades among our famous hills that, when once seen, are
remembered."

"But there is something to me more interesting than the splendor of
tropical scenery," said Lothair, "even if Galilee could offer it. I
wish to visit the cradle of my faith."

"And you would do wisely," said the, Syrian, "for there is no doubt the
spiritual nature of man is developed in this land."

"And yet there are persons at the present day who doubt -- even deny --
the spiritual nature of man," said Lothair. "I do not, I could not --
there are reasons why I could not."

"There are some things I know, and some things I believe," said the
Syrian. "I know that I have a soul, and I believe that it is immortal."

"It is science that, by demonstrating the insignificance of this globe
in the vast scale of creation, has led to this infidelity," said
Lothair.

"Science may prove the insignificance of this globe in the scale of
creation," said the stranger, "but it cannot prove the insignificance of
man. What is the earth compared with the sun? a molehill by a mountain;
yet the inhabitants of this earth can discover the elements of which the
great orb consists, and will probably ere long ascertain all the
conditions of its being. Nay, the human mind can penetrate far beyond
the sun. There is no relation, therefore, between the faculties of man
and the scale in creation of the planet which he inhabits."

"I was glad to hear you assert the other night the spiritual nature of
man in opposition to Mr. Phoebus."

"Ah! Mr. Phoebus!" said the stranger, with a smile. "He is an old
acquaintance of mine. And I must say he is very consistent -- except in
paying a visit to Jerusalem. That does surprise me. He said to me the
other night the same things as he said to me at Rome many years ago. He
would revive the worship of Nature. The deities whom he so eloquently
describes and so exquisitely delineates are the ideal personifications
of the most eminent human qualities, and chiefly the physical. Physical
beauty is his standard of excellence, and he has a fanciful theory that
moral order would be the consequence of the worship of physical beauty,
for without moral order he holds physical beauty cannot be maintained.
But the answer to Mr. Phoebus is, that his system has been tried and has
failed, and under conditions more favorable than are likely to exist
again; the worship of Nature ended in the degradation of the human
race."

"But Mr. Phoebus cannot really believe in Apollo and Venus," said
Lothair. "These are phrases. He is, I suppose, what is called a
Pantheist."

"No doubt the Olympus of Mr. Phoebus is the creation of his easel,"
replied the Syrian. "I should not, however, describe him as a
Pantheist, whose creed requires more abstraction than Mr. Phoebus, the
worshipper of nature, would tolerate. His school never care to pursue
any investigation which cannot be followed by the eye -- and the worship
of the beautiful always ends in an orgy. As for Pantheism, it is
Atheism in domino. The belief in a Creator who is unconscious of
creating is more monstrous than any dogma of any of the Churches in this
city, and we have them all here."

"But there are people now who tell you that there never was any
Creation, and therefore there never could have been a Creator," said
Lothair.

"And which is now advanced with the confidences of novelty," said the
Syrian, though all of it has been urged, and vainly urged, thousands of
years ago. There must be design, or all we see would be without sense,
and I do not believe in the unmeaning. As for the natural forces to
which all creation is now attributed, we know they are unconscious,
while consciousness is as inevitable a portion of our existence as the
eye or the hand. The conscious cannot be derived from the unconscious.
Man is divine."

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