Evidences of her imaginative faculty, and of
her capacity for poetry, are not wanting in them; but she keeps her
latent romanticism strictly in check.
her capacity for poetry, are not wanting in them; but she keeps her
latent romanticism strictly in check.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v19 - Oli to Phi
The steps drew nearer; we could even
distinguish the murmur of voices, apparently as of several people
## p. 11014 (#226) ##########################################
11014
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
talking together in an undertone, though not the words them-
selves. When just before the entrance of the tent, the footfall
ceased; silence followed. The curtains which formed the door
were drawn together, one a little overlapping the other, so as to
preclude all view from the outside; but they were in no way
fastened within; and to have attempted thus to close them at that
moment would have been worse than useless.
Zahra and I threw our arms, she round me, I round her; and
our lips met in the mute assurance that whatever was to be the
fate of one should also be the fate of the other. But she blushed
more deeply than ever, crimson-red. I could see that by the light
of the lamp which we longed to, but at that moment dared not,
extinguish. Its ray fell on the door-hangings, outside which stood
those whom their entire silence, more eloquent then than words,
proclaimed to be listeners and spies. Who they were, and what
precisely had brought them there, and with what intent they
waited, we could not tell.
Half a minute - it could not have been more passed thus in
breathless stillness; it was a long half-minute to Zahra and me.
At last we heard a sort of movement taking place in the group
without it seemed as though they first made a step or two for-
wards; then returned again, talking all the while among them-
selves in the same undertone; then slowly moved away towards
the line of tents in front. No further sound was heard: all
was hushed. Zahra and I loosed our hold, and stood looking at
each other. How much had been guessed, how much actually
detected, I could not tell; she however knew.
"Fly, Ahmed," she whispered; "fly! That was the Emeer
himself. They are on the alert: you are almost discovered; in a
few minutes more the alarm will be given throughout the camp.
For your life, fly! "
I stood there like one entranced; the horror of that moment
had numbed me, brain and limb. And how could I go? Her
voice, her face, her presence were, God knows, all on earth to
me. How then could I leave them to save a life valueless to me
without them?
"In God's name," she urged, "haste. Your only hope, brother,
lies in getting away from here quickly and unperceived; in the
darkness you can yet manage it: tell me, how is it outside ? »
"Thick mist," I answered: "it was coming on before I
reached the tent. "
## p. 11015 (#227) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11015
"Thank God! " she said with a half-sob of relief, and a tone
the like of which I never heard before or after: "that it is
has saved you; that has prevented your companions from being
discovered. Dearest Ahmed," she continued, kissing me in her
earnestness, as you love me, for my sake, for your own sake,
for both of us, fly, it is the only chance left. "
"Fly, Zahra! Zahra, my life! " I answered, almost with a
laugh; "fly, and leave you here behind? Never! "
"As you have any love for me, Ahmed," she replied in a
low, hurried, choking voice; "as you would not expose me to
certain dishonor and death; as you hope ever to meet me again;
-O Ahmed! my brother, my only love! it is their reluctance
alone to shame me by their haste while yet a doubt remains,
that has screened you thus far; but they will return. Alone,
I shall be able to extricate myself; I shall have time and means:
but you-oh, save yourself, my love-save me! "
"Dearest Zahra," replied I, pressing her to my breast, "and
what will you do? "
you
―
-
"Fear not for me," she answered, her eye sparkling as she
spoke. "I am Sheykh Asa'ad's daughter; and all the Emeers in
Arabia, with all Sheyban to aid, cannot detain me a prisoner, or
put force on my will. God lives, and we shall meet again; till
then take and keep this token. " She drew a ring from her fin-
ger, and gave it to me. "By this ring, and God to witness, I am
yours, Ahmed, yours only, yours forever. Now ask no more: fly. "
"One kiss, Zahra. " One-many; she was in tears; then, for-
cing a smile to give me courage,-"Under the protection of
the best Protector," she said, "to Him I commit you in pledge:
Ahmed, brother, love, go in safety. "
What could I do but obey? As I slipped out between the
curtains, I gave one backward look: I saw her face turned to-
wards me, her eye fixed on me with an expression that not even
in death can I forget; it was love stronger than any death. An
instant more, and I was without the tent. That moment the
light within it disappeared.
Hermann dropped his voice, and put his hand up to his face.
As he did so, the moonlight glittered on an emerald, set in a
gold ring, on the little finger. Tantawee looked at it.
"That is the ring, I suppose, Ahmed Beg," he said. "I have
often noticed it before; and she, I hope, will see it yet again one
## p. 11016 (#228) ##########################################
11016
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
day, and know it for your sake; so take heart, brother,—perhaps
the day is nearer than you think. "
"She will recognize it on me," answered Hermann in a low
sad voice, "either alive or dead; it will remain with me to the
last, though if there be hope in it, I know not. " Then he added,
"She has no like token from me: I did not then think of offer-
ing any; nor did she ask; there was no need. "
Issuing from the tent, I came at once into the dense mist;
through its pitchy darkness no shape could be discerned at ten
yards of distance. Instinctively, for I was scarcely aware of
my own movements, I crept to where Moharib lay crouched on
the ground, and touched him; he looked up, half rose, and fol-
lowed. Passing Aman and Harith, we roused them too in their
turn; there was no time for question or explanation then; all
knew that something had gone wrong, but no one said a word.
Nor was there yet any sign around us that our attempt had
been perceived; no one seemed to be on the alert or moving.
began almost to hope that the sounds heard while in the tent
might have been imaginary, or at least that suspicion, if awak-
ened, had by this time been quieted again.
But only a few paces before we reached the brink of the
hollow, something dark started up between it and us, and I felt
myself touched by a hand. I leaped to my feet; and while I
did so a blow was aimed at me, I think with a knife. It missed
its intent, but ripped my sleeve open from shoulder to elbow,
and slightly scratched my arm. At the same moment Harith's
sword came down on the head of the figure now close beside me;
it uttered a cry and fell.
Instantly that cry was repeated and echoed on every side, as
if the whole night had burst out at once into voice and fury.
We ran towards the hollow. When on its verge, I turned to
look back a moment; and even through the thick mist could
see the hurry and confusion of dark shapes; while the shout,
"Sheyban! " "Help, Sheyban! " "Help, Rabee'ah! " rose behind,
around, coming nearer and nearer, mixed with the tramp of feet.
"Quick! quick! " exclaimed Harith: we rolled down rather than
descended into the hollow; there stood Ja'ad and Doheym, ready
by the horses, who, conscious of danger, neighed and stamped
violently; but before we could mount and ride, the enemy was
upon us.
## p. 11017 (#229) ##########################################
11017
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
(1809-1876)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
MONG the Danish poets who made their appearance in liter-
ature during the closing period of Oehlenschläger's life, and
who carried on the poetical tradition that his half-century
of unremitting activity had so firmly established, Frederik Paludan-
Müller is the most important. A son of the Bishop of Aarhus, he
was born at Kjerteminde, February 7th, 1809 (that annus mirabilis of
literary chronology), and was educated at
Odense and Copenhagen. His life was sin-
gularly uneventful; being, after the flush of
youth was over, almost that of a recluse.
journey of two years abroad, undertaken in
1838-40, upon the occasion of his marriage,
offers the one conspicuous interruption to
the monotonous story of his external career.
The greater part of his life was spent in
Copenhagen, and in his quiet country home
at Fredensborg; and it was at the latter
place that he died, on the 28th of Decem-
ber, 1876.
A
PALUDAN-MÜLLER
What this life, so externally uneventful,
must have been, viewed from within, may
be faintly surmised when we examine the long list of Paludan-
Müller's writings in verse and prose. They include poems of many
sorts, plays and tales; and are astonishing in their variety, their
imaginative exuberance, their free rich fantasy, and the technical
virtuosity of their execution. They move, for the most part, in an
ideal world of the poet's own creation; or rather of his own assimi-
lation from the storehouse of mythology and literary tradition, since
creative power in the highest sense may hardly be accorded him.
The one noteworthy exception to the prevalent and persistent ideal-
ism of his work as a whole is to be found in 'Adam Homo,' the
poem which is usually reckoned his masterpiece. In this work, which
stands about midway in his career, he came down from the clouds in
which his youthful fancy had disported itself, and took a firm grasp
## p. 11018 (#230) ##########################################
11018
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
of the realities of modern society and the every-day world. The
composition of this remarkable poem was, however, little more than
an episode in his activity; and having done with it, his imagination
once more took refuge upon the early higher plane. It is to be noted
however that, Antæus-like, he had gained strength from his contact
with earth; and that the works of the later period are distinguished
from those of the earlier by an even finer idealism, a deeper sense
of spiritual beauty, and a more marked degree of formal excellence.
The works of Paludan-Müller's first period include 'Fire Roman-
zer' (Four Romances); Kjærlighed ved Hoffet' (Love at Court), a
five-act comedy in verse and prose, inspired by Shakespeare and
Gozzi; Dandserinden' (The Dancing Girl), a long poem in eight-line
stanzas; 'Luft og Jord; eller Eventyr i Skoven' (Air and Earth; or
A Forest Tale), a second romantic comedy; and the poems 'Amor
og Psyche, Zuleimas Flugt' (Zuleima's Flight), 'Alf og Rose,' and
(Venus. ' These works were published between 1832 and 1841, and
are characterized by delicate fancy, tender melancholy, a sweetness
that is almost cloying, and an almost Swinburnian mastery of metri-
cal form. They won for the poet a high place in the esteem of his
fellow-countrymen; but their readers were hardly prepared for the
abrupt change in both the manner and the matter of the poet that
was displayed in 'Adam Homo,' the work that next followed.
No European poet of the thirties could hope entirely to escape
from the Byronic influence, and traces of that influence are percepti-
ble in some of the earlier works above mentioned. In reading 'Adam
Homo' (begun in 1841 and completed in 1848), it is impossible not to
think of Byron, and particularly of Don Juan,' nearly all the time.
The work is in ottava rima, and is by far the longest of Paludan-
Müller's poems.
The author set himself the task of showing, says
Dr. Brandes, "how a man of the masses, having neither the best nor
the poorest of endowments, a man from youth up as full of ideal
hopes and resolutions as any of his betters, can so demean himself as
to squander his entire intellectual inheritance, forgetting the prayers
of childhood and the aspirations of youth, and finally wrecking his life
after the fashion of the veriest Philistine. " Adam Homo (how typ-
ical the name! ) enters upon life as a naïve and ardent youth, carry-
ing with him our best sympathies; he develops into a character so
despicable that even the author cannot treat him fairly, and he ends
in the slough of sheer stupidity. The story of his career is a brill-
iant but painful performance, in which episodes of satirical bitterness
alternate with tender and graceful scenes. It is a work of powerful
grasp, of minute ethical observation, and of so deep and subtle an
irony that its readers find it difficult to realize that it can be the
work of the poet of 'Amor og Psyche' and 'Kalanus. '
## p. 11019 (#231) ##########################################
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
11019
The purely poetic genius of the author, thus held in abeyance for
a time, soon reasserted itself in the series of noble works that mark
the closing years of his life. Even the composition of 'Adam Homo'
was interrupted long enough for the production of such ideal works
as Tithon' and 'Abels Död' (The Death of Abel). In 1854 the
splendid powers of the poet, now fully ripened, burst forth in the
drama of 'Kalanus,' which deals with the familiar story of the Indian
mystic who thought to discern in Alexander the Great the reincarna-
tion of Brahma; and who, undeceived, and learning that his deity is
but a man, immolated himself upon a funeral pyre. Other works
dating from the author's later period are the poems 'Ahasuerus,'
'Kain,' 'Pygmalion,' and 'Adonis,' the lyrical drama 'Paradiset,' the
prose play Tiderne Skifte (The Times Change), the prose tale
'Ungdomskilden' (The Fountain of Youth), and the three-volume
novel 'Ivar Lykkes Historie' (The Story of Ivar Lykke). The stand-
ard edition of his poetical writings fills eight volumes, and no other
Danish poet since Oehlenschläger has made so weighty a contribution
to the national literature.
It Payser
HYMN TO THE SUN
From Kalanus
H
AIL to thee in thy uprising bright,
Sun, of all believing souls adored;
Conqueror by thy flaming splendor poured
Over all the darkness of the night.
Welcome, heaven's great watchman, to our sight;
Brahma's servant, to thy master proffer
This our prayer, which here our lips do offer,
And our praise of his eternal might.
Wake the tired heart from slothful sleep
And dispel the shadows of the soul.
As thou dost upon thy pathway roll,
Bear us also upward from the deep.
Be our minds uplifted that they keep
Thee in view, while ever mounting higher
Toward the light to which our souls aspire
From the gloom in which on earth they creep.
Translation of William Morton Payne.
## p. 11020 (#232) ##########################################
11020
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
I
ADAM AND HIS MOTHER
From Adam Homo'>
S IT a dream?
A dream-ah no, for there
She sits, and fondles him with tender hand,
Her gaze revealing all a mother's care,
And all a mother's love, the twofold band
That, aye unbroken, every wrench can bear,
Until the invalid, at length unmanned
By shame and sorrow, yet supremely blest,
Sank, as in boyhood, on that sacred breast.
"Thou here!
and wherefore? " scarcely words are needed
To solve the secret,- for her watchful eye
Each step of his career had closely heeded,
And through his letters clearly could descry,
Veiled though they were, the dangers he should fly;
So, by affection's wings upborne she speeded
From the last rites beside a father's grave,
Her darling's life and soul alike to save.
"But" — thus she stopped his questions with a smile-
"Spend not thy strength in further words, for rest
Is what thou lackest-so sleep on a while "
She smoothed his pillow while she spoke, and pressed
Her lips on his in the old childish style, —
Then left him to fulfill her sweet behest,
And take his way through Dreamland's mazes, folden
In clouds no longer black, but rosy-golden.
O reader, if thou ever hast been near
Destruction's brink, experience must have taught thee,
When Providence from such dread peril caught thee,
How sweet a thing existence is; how dear
The life to which that friendly arm has brought thee
Back from the verge of death; -I need not fear
But thou wilt know the blessedness that lapped
Our hero's spirit, thus in slumber wrapped.
For thine own heart has then all gladly tasted
The fairest fruit of time, when from its grave-
Where earthly elements their booty crave —
The new-born soul once more has upward hasted
To heaven, where its wings so worn and wasted
Fresh in immortal life and beauty wave;
When, bird-like, soaring on replumaged pinions,
It suns itself again in God's dominions.
---
## p. 11021 (#233) ##########################################
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
11021
After earth's bondage, what emancipation!
After earth's midnight, what a glorious morn!
After the agonizing aspiration
Breathed for deliverance, lo! the spirit borne
Above its prison-house to contemplation
Of all the former life it led forlorn!
How poor each earthly pleasure in our eyes,
Contrasted with the new-found Paradise!
And from this Paradise a ray descended.
Now into Adam's heart, as by degrees
It gathered something of the ancient ease,
While from the Tree of Life that o'er him bended-
Bough fair as those the eye of boyhood sees
Ere dimmed by manhood's scales - the fruit extended
Within his grasp he plucked, and found it give
New vigor to his soul, new power to live.
Whole hours beside the window he would sit,
And follow with his gaze along the sky
The clouds that o'er its azure chanced to flit,
Or on the street would mark the passer-by.
The world lay fresh before him, and from it
He drew enjoyment, as in infancy;
If but at night a neighbor's lamp were gleaming,
With childlike interest he watched it beaming.
For all creation now appeared quite other
Than it to him had ever been before;
Men, as of old, were enemies no more,
But taught by love, he saw in each a brother;
Like music from some far celestial shore
Thrilled through his soul the accents of his mother;
Till at their tones the spectres of the past
Fell back, and melted in thin air at last.
He saw each arrow aimed against his weal
Glance harmless by when her embrace was round him,
And that sweet voice of hers would fondly steal
Into his soul, and break the spell that bound him:
So, step by step, the state in which she found him
Changed for the better; he began to feel,
To speak, to act anew, and from their tomb
Youth's blasted hopes commenced again to bloom.
## p. 11022 (#234) ##########################################
11022
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
At day's declining, often arm in arm
They paced the floor, and then the son confessed
Old sins and errors, while the mother pressed
Kind lessons home to him in accents warm.
She plied religion, not to strike alarm
Into his heart, but rather yield him rest;
And only strove to gently heal the spirit
Too long in strange and sickly torpor buried.
But when the lamp was lit at eventide,
Before the harpsichord she sat, and swept
Its keys to songs whose spirit-echoes kept
The listener fettered to the player's side;
Or else their voices would accordant glide
Into sweet childlike duets, strains that wept
And smiled by turns through all their varied plan,-
So thus one night the twofold music ran:—
World! for aye from me depart!
And thy joys to others offer;
Fairer flowers than thou canst proffer
Blossom now within my heart.
All thy roses, beauty-molded,
When I plucked them, faded fast,
And the thorn each leaf enfolded
Into me in torture passed.
Winter overwhelmed my soul;
In its icy grasp I shivered;
Aspen-like I bent and quivered
When I heard its tempests roll.
Then to dust in anguish smitten
Sank the brow I bore so high,-
On it branded, lightning-written,
That dread sentence, "Thou must die. "
Hope renews its blossoms fair,
As the spring-blooms earth are covering,
While the joyous birds are hovering
In the odor-laden air.
At the moment they were praising
All that richest life of May,
I my soul was also raising
From the dust in which it lay
## p. 11023 (#235) ##########################################
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
11023
In solitude how droops the soul!
A branch dissevered from the bole,
And tossed aside to perish;
It is the spirit's vital breath,
In sun and storm, in life and death,
All-clasping love to cherish.
The bees from flower to flower that roam,-
I saw them, when they wandered home,
Construct their cells in union;
The ants beneath the hillocks, too,
Are bound by harmony as true,
And labor in communion.
In heaven's vault I also saw
The stars fulfill eternal law
Accordant with each other;
Not for themselves alone they shine,
But every orb by rule divine
Irradiates his brother.
Be thine that starlike brother-mind!
To God and man thy spirit bind
In earthly joy and sorrow;
Then on His people here below
Will burst ere long in golden glow
His own celestial morrow!
In grove and glen, on hill and lea,
Each blade of grass, each stately tree,
Alike for dew is calling;
No freshness fills the summer air,
No blessed influence is there,
Without the dew-bath falling.
But vapors gather thick and fast,
Until the azure sky at last
In darkness is enshrouded;
Then breaks the tempest in its force,
And lightnings take their lurid course
Athwart the zenith clouded.
O morning prayer, the soul's sweet dew!
Thou canst alone its power renew,
And free it from its sadness;
## p. 11024 (#236) ##########################################
11024
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
Upwafted by our souls on high,
And homewards sent with God's reply,
That breathes celestial gladness.
Then trust no more the joys of earth!
So soon succeeded by the dearth
Of all that cheers and blesses;
Drenched with the dew that heaven bestows,
Will bloom and blossom like a rose
The spirit's wildernesses.
Oft our hopes are doomed to die in sorrow,
Oft our seed-time knows no harvest-morrow,
What the worm has spared the storms destroy;
Vainly looking earthward for assistance,
Man drags on the burden of existence,
Left-how early! by his dream of joy.
Whence, then, comfort in our time of anguish?
Skyward lift the eyes that droop and languish;
God alone gives consolation birth;
Deep in him the well of life is streaming,
Well of blessedness, forever teeming,
Vast enough for heaven and for earth.
Soon shall dawn the festal morn resplendent,
When the fullness of the Lord transcendent
Pours itself in rivers all abroad;
Then shall every fount of joy be springing,
Every soul be hallelujahs singing,
High and lowly, bathed alike in God!
Translation of J. J. , in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, 1865.
## p. 11025 (#237) ##########################################
11025
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
(1852-)
MONG European defendants and exponents of the modern real-
istic school, Emilia Pardo-Bazán is conspicuous. She is not
only a strong and subtle advocate of the methods of Zola,
Turgénieff, and other French and Russian realists, she is true to
their creed in her own novels to the point of masculinity. As a rule
the disciples of realism are booted and spurred. The quality itself
implies a total absence of feminine evasions of the actual and the
inevitable. There is no hint in it of the oblique vision of gentle
blue eyes.
It is therefore all the more sur-
prising that Señora Pardo-Bazán, a woman,
with veins full of romantic Spanish blood,
should prove a singularly perfect exponent
of her chosen creed.
She was born in 1852, in Coruña, Spain,
of a noble and ancient family. At a very
early age she was brought into friendly
relations with books, by being allowed to
browse at will in her father's library. Her
marriage in 1868 to Don José Quiroga put
an end to her systematic education under
tutors; but she was to receive later the
more liberal education of travel and inde-
pendent study. The political exile of her
father enabled her to travel through France and Italy, perfecting
her knowledge of the French and Italian language and literature.
After her return to Spain, she devoted herself to the study of Ger-
man, and of philosophy and history; thus preparing herself for the
cosmopolitan office of critic, and laying the foundations of the culture
necessary for the novelist. Her artistic creed had not been formu-
lated when she was attracted by the writings of her own country-
men,- Valera, Galdós, and Alarcón. These novelists were realists in
so far as they depicted the life and manners with which they were
most familiar. The idea came to the young Señora that she also
might write a novel which did not require romantic grandiloquence
and lofty flights of the imagination, but merely fidelity to facts.
Shortly after the publication of her first novel, her new-born recogni-
tion of the requirements of realism was enlarged by acquaintance with
XIX-690
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
## p. 11026 (#238) ##########################################
11026
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
In
the works of Balzac, Flaubert, Goncourt, and Daudet. Henceforth her
conceptions of her art were well defined; and she became unwavering
in her obedience to them. Of her novels, The Swan of Vilamorta
is perhaps the most perfect expression of her artistic tenets. It is
difficult to believe that it could have been written by a woman.
its merciless adherence to facts, in its pitiless logic, in its conscien-
tious portrayal of unlovely types of character, it might have come
from the brain of a clever man of the world, turned novelist for
truth's sake. The hero of the book, the Swan, is a young would-be
poet of the sentimental type, who is inclined in the cause of romance
to make love to other men's wives. The tragedy of the book, if the
arid reproduction of ugly happenings can be called tragedy, centres
itself less about the callow hero than about a woman who loves him
with an abandonment of passion,- a schoolmistress of thirty-six, pit-
ted with small-pox, hampered with a deformed child. Until the boy-
poet comes into her life, she is content to teach, that she may provide
this child with comforts. Afterwards all is changed. Her little hoard
of money dwindles away to give dainty suppers to the man she
loves; to keep him in the proper clothes, of which his unappreciative
father deprives him; to enable him to visit a Spanish grandee, to-
wards whose wife he cherishes a Werther-like devotion. Finally she
mortgages her fresh little cottage, and puts her crippled child out
to work, that she may provide him with the funds necessary for the
publication of his poems. These are not only a drug in the market,
but they fail to win for him the love of the grandee's lady, now
a marriageable widow. He sails to America, leaving behind him the
schoolmistress, destitute both of love and money. Neither her ome-
lets, her anisette cordials, nor her little loans, can compel his grati-
tude. She takes poison, and dies.
Pardo-Bazán's other novels-The Angular Stone,' 'A Christian
Woman,' 'Morrina,' 'A Wedding Journey'—are written in the same
uncompromising spirit of faithfulness to the actualities of life. Their
scenes are laid in Spain: their characters are those with which their
author is familiar.
Evidences of her imaginative faculty, and of
her capacity for poetry, are not wanting in them; but she keeps her
latent romanticism strictly in check. She continually sacrifices her
sex to her art. The result is worth the sacrifice.
The same qualities which give to her distinction as a novelist,
make of her a luminous and sympathetic critic. Moreover, the reader
finds in her criticisms the charm which is sometimes lacking in her
novels, where the strength has driven out the sweetness. Her work
on 'Russia: Its People and Its Literature' is written with a certain
easy brilliancy, which almost disguises its solid merits. Pardo-Bazán
brings to her critical tasks a rare equipment, philosophical breadth of
## p. 11027 (#239) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11027
thought, the ability to understand the interdependence of national life
and national literature, the power of feeling the pulse of the times
in the stray novel or poem. In her life of St. Francis of Assisi she
studies the age which produced him, after the manner of the mod-
ern biographer. Whatever the nature of her work, whether history,
biography, or pure criticism, she is always conscious of that ethereal
atmosphere about persons and things, those emanations from a mill-
ion lives, which collectively are called the time-spirit. Her defense
of realism, in her essay The Burning Question,' springs as much
from her intuition concerning the nature of the zeitgeist as from her
intellectual appreciation of the reasonableness of the realistic school.
Aside from the worth of her contribution to the literature of mod-
ern Europe, Emilia Pardo-Bazán merits distinction as being a Spanish
woman who has demonstrated to her countrymen, in the face of na-
tional tradition, the most significant fact uncovered in this century,-
the power of women to learn, to understand, and to create.
THE REIGN OF TERROR
From Russia: Its People and Its Literature.
McClurg & Co.
-
Copyright 1890, by A. C.
THE
HE reign of terror was short but tragic. We have seen
that the active Nihilists were a few hundred inexperienced
youths without position or social influence, armed only with
leaflets and tracts. This handful of boys furiously threw down
the gauntlet of defiance at the government, when they saw them-
selves pursued. Resolved to risk their heads (and with such sin-
cerity that almost all the associates who bound themselves to
execute what they called "the people's will" have died in prison
or on the scaffold), they adopted as their watchword "man for
man. " When the sanguinary reprisals fell upon Russia from one
end to the other, the frightened people imagined an immense
army of terrorists-rich, strong, and in command of untold re-
sources covering the empire. In reality, the twenty offenses
committed from 1878 to 1882, the mines discovered under the two
capitals, the explosions in the station at Moscow and in the pal-
ace at St. Petersburg, the many assassinations, and the marvelous
organization which could get them performed with circumstances
so dramatic, and create a mysterious terror against which the
power of the government was broken in pieces, all this was
the work of a few dozens of men and women seemingly endowed
_______
## p. 11028 (#240) ##########################################
11028
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
with ubiquitousness, so rapid and unceasing their journeys, and
so varied the disguises, names, and stratagems they made use of
to bewilder and confound the police. It was whispered that mill-
ions of money were sent in from abroad; that there were mem-
bers of the Czar's family implicated in the conspiracy; that there
was an unknown chief, living in a distant country, who managed
the threads of a terrible executive committee, which passed judg-
ment in the dark, and whose decrees were carried out instantly.
Yet there were only a few enthusiastic students,- a few young
girls ready to perform any service, like the heroine of Turgé-
nieff's 'Shadows'; a few thousand rubles, each contributing his
share; and after all, a handful of determined people, who, to use
the words of Leroy-Beaulieu, had made a covenant with death.
For a strong will, like intelligence or inspiration, is the patrimony
of a few; and so, just as ten or twelve artist heads can modify
the æsthetic tendency of an age, six or eight intrepid conspira-
tors are enough to stir up an immense empire.
After Karakozof's attempt upon the life of the Czar (the
first spark of discontent), the government augmented the police
and endowed Muravief, who was nicknamed "the Hangman," with
dictatorial powers. In 1871 the first notable political trial was
held upon persons affiliated with a secret society. Persecutions
for political offenses are a great mistake. Maltreatment only
inspires sympathy. After a few such trials the doors had to be
closed; the public had become deeply interested in the accused,
who declared their doctrines in a style only comparable to the
acts of the early Christian martyrs. Who could fail to be moved
at the sight of a young woman like Sophia Bardina, rising mod-
estly and explaining, before an audience tremulous with com-
passion, her revolutionary ideas concerning society, the family,
anarchy, property, and law? Power is almost always blind and
stupid in the first moments of revolutionary disturbances. In
Russia, men risked life and security as often by acts of charity
toward conspirators as by conspiracy itself. In Odessa, which
was commanded by General Todleben, the little blond heads of
two children appeared between the prison bars; they were the
children of a poor wretch who had dropped five rubles into a
collection for political exiles, and these two little ones were sen-
tenced to the deserts of Siberia with their father. And the poet
Mikailof chides the revolutionaries with the words: "Why not
let your indignation speak, my brothers? Why is love silent? Is
## p. 11029 (#241) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11029
our horrible misfortune worthy of nothing more than a vain
tribute of tears? Has your hatred no power to threaten and to
wound? "
The party then armed itself, ready to vindicate its political
rights by means of terror. The executive committee of the rev-
olutionary Socialists—if in truth such a committee existed or was
anything more than a triumvirate-favored this idea. Spies and
fugitives were quickly executed. The era of sanguinary Nihilism
was opened by a woman, the Charlotte Corday of Nihilism,—
Vera Zasulitch. She read in a newspaper that a political pris-
oner had been whipped, contrary to law,- for corporal punish-
ment had been already abolished, and for no worse cause than
a refusal to salute General Trepof; she immediately went and
fired a revolver at his accuser. The jury acquitted her, and her
friends seized her as she was coming out of court, and spirited
her away lest she should fall into the hands of the police; the
Emperor thereupon decreed that henceforth political prisoners
should not be tried by jury. Shortly after this the substitute of
the imperial deputy at Kief was fired upon in the street; suspi-
cion fell upon a student; all the others mutinied; sixteen of them.
were sent into exile. As they were passing through Moscow,
their fellow-students there broke from the lecture halls and came
to blows with the police. Some days later the rector of the Uni-
versity of Kief, who had endeavored to keep clear of the affair,
was found dead upon the stairs; and again later, Heyking, an
officer of the gendarmerie, was mortally stabbed in a crowded
street. The clandestine press declared this to have been done by
order of the executive committee; and it was not long before
the chief of secret police of St. Petersburg received a very polite
notice of his death sentence, which was accomplished by another
dagger; and the clandestine paper, Land and Liberty, said by
way of comment, "The measure is filled, and we gave warning
of it. "
Months passed without any new assassinations; but in Feb-
ruary 1879, Prince Krapotkine, governor of Karkof, fell by the
hand of a masked man, who fired two shots and fled; and no
trace of him was to be found, though sentence of death against
him was announced upon the walls of all the large towns of
Russia. The brother of Prince Krapotkine was a furious revolu-
tionary, and conducted a Socialist paper in Geneva at that time.
In March it fell to the turn of Colonel Knoup of the gendarmerie,
## p. 11030 (#242) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11030
who was assassinated in his own house; and beside him was
found a paper with these words: "By order of the Executive
Committee. So will we do to all tyrants and their accomplices. "
A pretty Nihilist girl killed a man at a ball: it was at first
thought to be a love affair, but it was afterward found out that
the murderess did the deed by order of the executive committee,
or whatever the hidden power was which inspired such acts.
On the 25th of this same March a plot against the life of the
new chief of police, General Drenteln, was frustrated; and the
walls of the town then flamed with a notice that revolutionary
justice was about to fall upon one hundred and eighty persons.
It rained crimes,- against the governor of Kief; against Cap-
tain Hubbenet; against Pietrowsky, chief of police, who was
riddled with wounds in his own room; and lastly, on the 14th
of April, Solovief attempted the life of the Czar, firing five
shots, none of which took effect. On being caught, the would-be
assassin swallowed a dose of poison; but his suicide was also
unsuccessful.
Solovief, however, had reached the heights of Nihilism: he
had dared to touch the sacred person of the Czar. He was the
ideal Nihilist: he had renounced his profession, determined to
"go with the people," and became a locksmith, wearing the arti-
san's dress; he was married "mystically," and by "free grace" or
"free will," and it was said that he was a member of the terrible
executive committee. He suffered death on the gallows with
serenity and composure, and without naming his accomplices.
Land and Liberty approved his acts by saying, "We should be
as ready to kill as to die; the day has come when assassination
must be counted as a political motor. " From that day Alexan-
der II. was a doomed man; and his fatal moment was not far
off. The revolutionaries were determined to strike the govern-
ment with terror, and to prove to the people that the sacred
Emperor was a man like any other, and that no supernatura)
charm shielded his life. At the end of 1879 and the beginning
of 1880 two lugubrious warnings were forced upon the Emperor:
first the mine which wrecked the imperial train, and then the
explosion which threw the dining-room of the palace in ruins,-
which catastrophe he saw with his own eyes. About this time
the office of a surreptitious paper was attacked, the editors and
printers of which defended themselves desperately: alarmed by
this significant event, the Emperor intrusted to Loris Melikof,
## p. 11031 (#243) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11031
who was a Liberal, an almost omnipotent dictatorship. The con-
ciliatory measures of Melikof somewhat calmed the public mind;
but just as the Czar had convened a meeting for the considera-
tion of reforms solicited by the general opinion, his own sentence
was carried out by bombs.
It is worthy of note that both parties (the conservative and
the revolutionary) cast in each other's face the accusation of hav-
ing been the first to inflict the death penalty, which was contrary
to Russian custom and law. If Russia does not deserve quite so
appropriately as Spain to be called the country of vice versas, it
is nevertheless worth while to note how she long ago solved the
great juridical problem upon which we are still employing tongue
and pen so busily. Not only is capital punishment unknown to
the Russian penal code, but since 1872 even perpetual confine-
ment has been abolished,-twenty years being the maximum of
imprisonment; and this even to-day is only inflicted upon politi-
cal criminals, who are always treated there with greater severity
than other delinquents. Before the celebrated Italian criminalist
lawyer, Beccaria, ever wrote on the subject, the Czarina Elisa-
beth Petrowna had issued an edict suppressing capital punish-
ment. The terrible Muscovite whip probably equaled the gibbet;
but aside from the fact that it had been seldom used, it was
abolished by Nicholas I. If we judge of a country by its penal
laws, Russia stands at the head of European civilization. The
Russians were so unaccustomed to the sight of the scaffold, that
when the first one for the conspirators was to be built, there
were no workmen to be found who knew how to construct it.
Translated from the Spanish by Fanny Hale Gardiner.
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS AT HOME
From The Swan of Vilamorta. Copyright 1891, by the Cassell
Publishing Co.
WHE
>>
HILE she distributed their tasks among the children, say-
ing to one, "Take care to make this hem straight; to
another, "Make this seam even, the stitch smaller; " to
a third, "Use your handkerchief instead of your dress;" and to
still another, "Sit still, child; don't move your feet," Leocadia
cast a glance from time to time toward the plaza, in the hope of
seeing Segundo pass by. But no Segundo was to be seen. The
flies settled themselves to sleep, buzzing, on the ceiling; the heat
-
## p. 11032 (#244) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11032
abated; the afternoon came, and the children went away. Leo-
cadia felt a profound sadness take possession of her; and without
waiting to put the house in order, she went to her room and
threw herself on the bed.
The glass door was pushed gently open, and some one entered
softly.
"Mamma," said the intruder in a low voice. .
The schoolmistress did not answer.
"Mamma, mamma," repeated the hunchback in a louder
voice.
"Mamma! " he shouted at last.
"Is that you? What do you want? "
"Are you ill? »
"No, child. "
"As you went to bed-"
"I have a slight headache. There, leave me in peace. ”
Minguitos turned round and walked in silence toward the
door. As her eyes fell on the protuberance of his back, a sharp
pang pierced the heart of the schoolmistress. How many tears
that hump had cost her in other days! She raised herself on her
elbow.
"Minguitos! " she called.
"What is it, mamma? "
-
"Don't go away.
pain ? »
"I feel pretty well, mamma. Only my chest hurts me. ”
"Let me see; come here. "
How do you feel to-day? Have you any
Leocadia sat up in the bed, and taking the child's head be-
tween her hands, looked at him with a mother's hungry look.
Minguitos's face was long and of a melancholy cast; the promi
nent lower jaw was in keeping with the twisted and misshapen
body, that reminded one of a building shaken out of shape by
an earthquake or a tree twisted by a hurricane. Minguitos's
deformity was not congenital. He had always been sickly, in-
deed; and it had always been remarked that his head seemed
too heavy for his body, and that his legs seemed too frail to
support him.
Leocadia recalled one by one the incidents of his
childhood. At five years old the boy had met with an accident,
a fall down the stairs: from that day he lost all his liveliness;
he walked little, and never ran. He contracted a habit of sit-
ting Turkish fashion, playing marbles, for hours at a time. If
he rose, his legs soon warned him to sit down again. When he
stood, his movements were vacillating and awkward. When he
## p. 11033 (#245) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11033
was quiet he felt no pain; but when he turned any part of his
body, he experienced slight pains in the spinal column. The
trouble increased with time; the boy complained of a feeling as
if an iron band were compressing his chest. Then his mother,
now thoroughly alarmed, consulted a famous physician, the best
in Orense. He prescribed frictions with iodine, large doses of
phosphates of lime, and sea-bathing. Leocadia hastened with the
boy to a little seaport. After taking two or three baths, the
trouble increased: he could not bend his body; his spinal column.
was rigid, and it was only when he was in a horizontal posi-
tion that he felt any relief from his now severe pains. Sores
appeared on his skin; and one morning when Leocadia begged
him with tears to straighten himself, and tried to lift him up by
the arms, he uttered a horrible cry.
"I am broken in two, mamma I am broken in two," he
repeated with anguish; while his mother with trembling fingers
sought to find what had caused his cry.
It was true! The backbone had bent outward, forming an
angle on a level with his shoulder-blades; the softened vertebræ
had sunk; and cifosis, the hump,-the indelible mark of irreme-
diable calamity,-was to deform henceforth this child who was
dearer to her than her life. The schoolmistress had had a mo-
ment of animal and supreme anguish, the anguish of the wild
beast that sees its young mutilated. She had uttered shriek after
shriek, cursing the doctor, cursing herself, tearing her hair and
digging her nails into her flesh. Afterward tears had come, and
she had showered kisses, delirious but soothing and sweet, on the
boy; and her grief took a resigned form. During nine years
Leocadia had had no other thought than to watch over her little
cripple by night and by day; sheltering him in her love, amusing
with ingenious inventions the idle hours of his sedentary child-
hood.
ory.
A thousand incidents of this time recurred to Leocadia's mem-
The boy suffered from obstinate dyspnoea, due to the pres-
sure of the sunken vertebræ on the respiratory organs; and his
mother would get up in the middle of the night, and go in her
bare feet to listen to his breathing and to raise his pillows. As
these recollections came to her mind, Leocadia felt her heart
melt, and something stir within her like the remains of a great
love, the warm ashes of an immense fire, and she experienced.
P
## p. 11034 (#246) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11034
the unconscious reaction of maternity; the irresistible impulse
which makes a mother see in her grown-up son only the infant
she has nursed and protected, to whom she would have given
her blood, if it had been necessary, instead of milk. And uttering
a cry of love, pressing her feverish lips passionately to the pallid
temples of the hunchback, she said, falling back naturally into
the caressing expressions of the dialect:-
"Malpocadiño, who loves you? Say, who loves you dearly?
Who? "
"You don't love me, mamma. You don't love me," the boy
returned, half smiling, leaning his head with delight on the bosom
that had sheltered his sad childhood. The mother, meantime,
wildly kissed his hair, his neck, his eyes, as if to make up for
lost time; lavishing upon him the honeyed words with which
infants are beguiled,-words profaned in hours of passion,-
which overflowed in the pure channel of maternal love.
"My treasure-my king-my glory. "
At last the hunchback felt a tear fall on his cheek. Delicious
assuagement! At first the tears were large and round, scorching
almost; but soon they came in a gentle shower, and then ceased
altogether; and there remained where they had fallen only a
grateful sense of coolness. Passionate phrases rushed simulta-
neously from the lips of mother and son.
"Do you love me dearly, dearly, dearly? As much as your
whole life? "
"As much, my life, my treasure. "
"Will you always love me? "
"Always, always, my joy. "
"Will you do something to please me, mamma? I want to
ask you—”
"What? >>
"A favor.
>>
Don't turn your face away!
The hunchback observed that his mother's form suddenly grew
stiff and rigid as a bar of iron. He no longer felt the sweet
warmth of her moist eyelids, and the gentle contact of her wet
lashes on his cheek. In a voice that had a metallic sound Leo-
cadia asked her son,
"And what is the favor you want? Let me hear it. "
Minguitos murmured without bitterness, with resignation: -
"Nothing, mamma, nothing. I was only in jest. "
-
## p. 11035 (#247) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11035
"But what was the favor you were going to ask me? "
"Nothing, nothing, indeed. "
"No, you wanted to ask something," persisted the schoolmis.
tress, seizing the pretext to give vent to her anger. "Otherwise
you are very deceitful and very sly. You keep everything hidden
in your breast. Those are the lessons Flores teaches you: do
you think I don't notice it? "
Saying this, she pushed the boy away from her, and sprang
from the bed. In the hall outside, almost at the same moment,
was heard a firm and youthful step. Leocadia trembled, and
turning to Minguitos, stammered:-
"Go, go to Flores. Leave me alone. I do not feel well, and
you make me worse. "
Segundo's brow was clouded; and as soon as the joy of seeing
him had subsided, Leocadia was seized with the desire to restore
him to good-humor. She waited patiently for a fitting opportu-
nity, however, and when this came, throwing her arms around his
neck, she began with the complaint: Where had he kept him-
self? Why had he stayed away so long? The poet unburdened
himself of his grievances. It was intolerable to follow in the
train of a great man. And allowing himself to be carried away
by the pleasure of speaking of what occupied his mind, he de-
scribed Don Victoriano and the radicals; satirized Agonde's recep-
tion of his guests, and his manner of entertaining them; spoke
of the hopes he founded in the protection of the ex-minister,
giving them as a reason for the necessity of paying court to Don
Victoriano. Leocadia fixed her dog-like look on Segundo's counte-
nance.
—
"And the Señora and the girl - what are they like? "
Segundo half closed his eyes, the better to contemplate an
attractive and charming image that presented itself to his mental
vision, and to reflect that in the existence of Nieves he played
no part whatsoever,-it being manifest folly for him to think
of Señora de Comba, who did not think of him. This reflec-
tion, natural and simple enough, aroused his anger. There was
awakened within him a keen longing for the unattainable, — that
insensate and unbridled desire with which the likeness of a beau-
tiful woman dead for centuries may inspire some dreamer in a
museum.
"But answer me are those ladies handsome? " the schoolmis-
tress asked again.
## p. 11036 (#248) ##########################################
11036
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
"The mother, yes," answered Segundo, speaking with the
careless frankness of one who is secure of his auditor. "Her
hair is fair, and her eyes are blue-a light blue that makes one
think of the verses of Becquer. "
And he began to recite:-
―
«Tu pupila es azul, y cuando ries
Su claridad suave me recuerda -> »
Leocadia listened to him at first with eyes cast down; after-
ward with her face turned away from him.
distinguish the murmur of voices, apparently as of several people
## p. 11014 (#226) ##########################################
11014
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
talking together in an undertone, though not the words them-
selves. When just before the entrance of the tent, the footfall
ceased; silence followed. The curtains which formed the door
were drawn together, one a little overlapping the other, so as to
preclude all view from the outside; but they were in no way
fastened within; and to have attempted thus to close them at that
moment would have been worse than useless.
Zahra and I threw our arms, she round me, I round her; and
our lips met in the mute assurance that whatever was to be the
fate of one should also be the fate of the other. But she blushed
more deeply than ever, crimson-red. I could see that by the light
of the lamp which we longed to, but at that moment dared not,
extinguish. Its ray fell on the door-hangings, outside which stood
those whom their entire silence, more eloquent then than words,
proclaimed to be listeners and spies. Who they were, and what
precisely had brought them there, and with what intent they
waited, we could not tell.
Half a minute - it could not have been more passed thus in
breathless stillness; it was a long half-minute to Zahra and me.
At last we heard a sort of movement taking place in the group
without it seemed as though they first made a step or two for-
wards; then returned again, talking all the while among them-
selves in the same undertone; then slowly moved away towards
the line of tents in front. No further sound was heard: all
was hushed. Zahra and I loosed our hold, and stood looking at
each other. How much had been guessed, how much actually
detected, I could not tell; she however knew.
"Fly, Ahmed," she whispered; "fly! That was the Emeer
himself. They are on the alert: you are almost discovered; in a
few minutes more the alarm will be given throughout the camp.
For your life, fly! "
I stood there like one entranced; the horror of that moment
had numbed me, brain and limb. And how could I go? Her
voice, her face, her presence were, God knows, all on earth to
me. How then could I leave them to save a life valueless to me
without them?
"In God's name," she urged, "haste. Your only hope, brother,
lies in getting away from here quickly and unperceived; in the
darkness you can yet manage it: tell me, how is it outside ? »
"Thick mist," I answered: "it was coming on before I
reached the tent. "
## p. 11015 (#227) ##########################################
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
11015
"Thank God! " she said with a half-sob of relief, and a tone
the like of which I never heard before or after: "that it is
has saved you; that has prevented your companions from being
discovered. Dearest Ahmed," she continued, kissing me in her
earnestness, as you love me, for my sake, for your own sake,
for both of us, fly, it is the only chance left. "
"Fly, Zahra! Zahra, my life! " I answered, almost with a
laugh; "fly, and leave you here behind? Never! "
"As you have any love for me, Ahmed," she replied in a
low, hurried, choking voice; "as you would not expose me to
certain dishonor and death; as you hope ever to meet me again;
-O Ahmed! my brother, my only love! it is their reluctance
alone to shame me by their haste while yet a doubt remains,
that has screened you thus far; but they will return. Alone,
I shall be able to extricate myself; I shall have time and means:
but you-oh, save yourself, my love-save me! "
"Dearest Zahra," replied I, pressing her to my breast, "and
what will you do? "
you
―
-
"Fear not for me," she answered, her eye sparkling as she
spoke. "I am Sheykh Asa'ad's daughter; and all the Emeers in
Arabia, with all Sheyban to aid, cannot detain me a prisoner, or
put force on my will. God lives, and we shall meet again; till
then take and keep this token. " She drew a ring from her fin-
ger, and gave it to me. "By this ring, and God to witness, I am
yours, Ahmed, yours only, yours forever. Now ask no more: fly. "
"One kiss, Zahra. " One-many; she was in tears; then, for-
cing a smile to give me courage,-"Under the protection of
the best Protector," she said, "to Him I commit you in pledge:
Ahmed, brother, love, go in safety. "
What could I do but obey? As I slipped out between the
curtains, I gave one backward look: I saw her face turned to-
wards me, her eye fixed on me with an expression that not even
in death can I forget; it was love stronger than any death. An
instant more, and I was without the tent. That moment the
light within it disappeared.
Hermann dropped his voice, and put his hand up to his face.
As he did so, the moonlight glittered on an emerald, set in a
gold ring, on the little finger. Tantawee looked at it.
"That is the ring, I suppose, Ahmed Beg," he said. "I have
often noticed it before; and she, I hope, will see it yet again one
## p. 11016 (#228) ##########################################
11016
WILLIAM GIFFORD PALGRAVE
day, and know it for your sake; so take heart, brother,—perhaps
the day is nearer than you think. "
"She will recognize it on me," answered Hermann in a low
sad voice, "either alive or dead; it will remain with me to the
last, though if there be hope in it, I know not. " Then he added,
"She has no like token from me: I did not then think of offer-
ing any; nor did she ask; there was no need. "
Issuing from the tent, I came at once into the dense mist;
through its pitchy darkness no shape could be discerned at ten
yards of distance. Instinctively, for I was scarcely aware of
my own movements, I crept to where Moharib lay crouched on
the ground, and touched him; he looked up, half rose, and fol-
lowed. Passing Aman and Harith, we roused them too in their
turn; there was no time for question or explanation then; all
knew that something had gone wrong, but no one said a word.
Nor was there yet any sign around us that our attempt had
been perceived; no one seemed to be on the alert or moving.
began almost to hope that the sounds heard while in the tent
might have been imaginary, or at least that suspicion, if awak-
ened, had by this time been quieted again.
But only a few paces before we reached the brink of the
hollow, something dark started up between it and us, and I felt
myself touched by a hand. I leaped to my feet; and while I
did so a blow was aimed at me, I think with a knife. It missed
its intent, but ripped my sleeve open from shoulder to elbow,
and slightly scratched my arm. At the same moment Harith's
sword came down on the head of the figure now close beside me;
it uttered a cry and fell.
Instantly that cry was repeated and echoed on every side, as
if the whole night had burst out at once into voice and fury.
We ran towards the hollow. When on its verge, I turned to
look back a moment; and even through the thick mist could
see the hurry and confusion of dark shapes; while the shout,
"Sheyban! " "Help, Sheyban! " "Help, Rabee'ah! " rose behind,
around, coming nearer and nearer, mixed with the tramp of feet.
"Quick! quick! " exclaimed Harith: we rolled down rather than
descended into the hollow; there stood Ja'ad and Doheym, ready
by the horses, who, conscious of danger, neighed and stamped
violently; but before we could mount and ride, the enemy was
upon us.
## p. 11017 (#229) ##########################################
11017
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
(1809-1876)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
MONG the Danish poets who made their appearance in liter-
ature during the closing period of Oehlenschläger's life, and
who carried on the poetical tradition that his half-century
of unremitting activity had so firmly established, Frederik Paludan-
Müller is the most important. A son of the Bishop of Aarhus, he
was born at Kjerteminde, February 7th, 1809 (that annus mirabilis of
literary chronology), and was educated at
Odense and Copenhagen. His life was sin-
gularly uneventful; being, after the flush of
youth was over, almost that of a recluse.
journey of two years abroad, undertaken in
1838-40, upon the occasion of his marriage,
offers the one conspicuous interruption to
the monotonous story of his external career.
The greater part of his life was spent in
Copenhagen, and in his quiet country home
at Fredensborg; and it was at the latter
place that he died, on the 28th of Decem-
ber, 1876.
A
PALUDAN-MÜLLER
What this life, so externally uneventful,
must have been, viewed from within, may
be faintly surmised when we examine the long list of Paludan-
Müller's writings in verse and prose. They include poems of many
sorts, plays and tales; and are astonishing in their variety, their
imaginative exuberance, their free rich fantasy, and the technical
virtuosity of their execution. They move, for the most part, in an
ideal world of the poet's own creation; or rather of his own assimi-
lation from the storehouse of mythology and literary tradition, since
creative power in the highest sense may hardly be accorded him.
The one noteworthy exception to the prevalent and persistent ideal-
ism of his work as a whole is to be found in 'Adam Homo,' the
poem which is usually reckoned his masterpiece. In this work, which
stands about midway in his career, he came down from the clouds in
which his youthful fancy had disported itself, and took a firm grasp
## p. 11018 (#230) ##########################################
11018
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
of the realities of modern society and the every-day world. The
composition of this remarkable poem was, however, little more than
an episode in his activity; and having done with it, his imagination
once more took refuge upon the early higher plane. It is to be noted
however that, Antæus-like, he had gained strength from his contact
with earth; and that the works of the later period are distinguished
from those of the earlier by an even finer idealism, a deeper sense
of spiritual beauty, and a more marked degree of formal excellence.
The works of Paludan-Müller's first period include 'Fire Roman-
zer' (Four Romances); Kjærlighed ved Hoffet' (Love at Court), a
five-act comedy in verse and prose, inspired by Shakespeare and
Gozzi; Dandserinden' (The Dancing Girl), a long poem in eight-line
stanzas; 'Luft og Jord; eller Eventyr i Skoven' (Air and Earth; or
A Forest Tale), a second romantic comedy; and the poems 'Amor
og Psyche, Zuleimas Flugt' (Zuleima's Flight), 'Alf og Rose,' and
(Venus. ' These works were published between 1832 and 1841, and
are characterized by delicate fancy, tender melancholy, a sweetness
that is almost cloying, and an almost Swinburnian mastery of metri-
cal form. They won for the poet a high place in the esteem of his
fellow-countrymen; but their readers were hardly prepared for the
abrupt change in both the manner and the matter of the poet that
was displayed in 'Adam Homo,' the work that next followed.
No European poet of the thirties could hope entirely to escape
from the Byronic influence, and traces of that influence are percepti-
ble in some of the earlier works above mentioned. In reading 'Adam
Homo' (begun in 1841 and completed in 1848), it is impossible not to
think of Byron, and particularly of Don Juan,' nearly all the time.
The work is in ottava rima, and is by far the longest of Paludan-
Müller's poems.
The author set himself the task of showing, says
Dr. Brandes, "how a man of the masses, having neither the best nor
the poorest of endowments, a man from youth up as full of ideal
hopes and resolutions as any of his betters, can so demean himself as
to squander his entire intellectual inheritance, forgetting the prayers
of childhood and the aspirations of youth, and finally wrecking his life
after the fashion of the veriest Philistine. " Adam Homo (how typ-
ical the name! ) enters upon life as a naïve and ardent youth, carry-
ing with him our best sympathies; he develops into a character so
despicable that even the author cannot treat him fairly, and he ends
in the slough of sheer stupidity. The story of his career is a brill-
iant but painful performance, in which episodes of satirical bitterness
alternate with tender and graceful scenes. It is a work of powerful
grasp, of minute ethical observation, and of so deep and subtle an
irony that its readers find it difficult to realize that it can be the
work of the poet of 'Amor og Psyche' and 'Kalanus. '
## p. 11019 (#231) ##########################################
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
11019
The purely poetic genius of the author, thus held in abeyance for
a time, soon reasserted itself in the series of noble works that mark
the closing years of his life. Even the composition of 'Adam Homo'
was interrupted long enough for the production of such ideal works
as Tithon' and 'Abels Död' (The Death of Abel). In 1854 the
splendid powers of the poet, now fully ripened, burst forth in the
drama of 'Kalanus,' which deals with the familiar story of the Indian
mystic who thought to discern in Alexander the Great the reincarna-
tion of Brahma; and who, undeceived, and learning that his deity is
but a man, immolated himself upon a funeral pyre. Other works
dating from the author's later period are the poems 'Ahasuerus,'
'Kain,' 'Pygmalion,' and 'Adonis,' the lyrical drama 'Paradiset,' the
prose play Tiderne Skifte (The Times Change), the prose tale
'Ungdomskilden' (The Fountain of Youth), and the three-volume
novel 'Ivar Lykkes Historie' (The Story of Ivar Lykke). The stand-
ard edition of his poetical writings fills eight volumes, and no other
Danish poet since Oehlenschläger has made so weighty a contribution
to the national literature.
It Payser
HYMN TO THE SUN
From Kalanus
H
AIL to thee in thy uprising bright,
Sun, of all believing souls adored;
Conqueror by thy flaming splendor poured
Over all the darkness of the night.
Welcome, heaven's great watchman, to our sight;
Brahma's servant, to thy master proffer
This our prayer, which here our lips do offer,
And our praise of his eternal might.
Wake the tired heart from slothful sleep
And dispel the shadows of the soul.
As thou dost upon thy pathway roll,
Bear us also upward from the deep.
Be our minds uplifted that they keep
Thee in view, while ever mounting higher
Toward the light to which our souls aspire
From the gloom in which on earth they creep.
Translation of William Morton Payne.
## p. 11020 (#232) ##########################################
11020
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
I
ADAM AND HIS MOTHER
From Adam Homo'>
S IT a dream?
A dream-ah no, for there
She sits, and fondles him with tender hand,
Her gaze revealing all a mother's care,
And all a mother's love, the twofold band
That, aye unbroken, every wrench can bear,
Until the invalid, at length unmanned
By shame and sorrow, yet supremely blest,
Sank, as in boyhood, on that sacred breast.
"Thou here!
and wherefore? " scarcely words are needed
To solve the secret,- for her watchful eye
Each step of his career had closely heeded,
And through his letters clearly could descry,
Veiled though they were, the dangers he should fly;
So, by affection's wings upborne she speeded
From the last rites beside a father's grave,
Her darling's life and soul alike to save.
"But" — thus she stopped his questions with a smile-
"Spend not thy strength in further words, for rest
Is what thou lackest-so sleep on a while "
She smoothed his pillow while she spoke, and pressed
Her lips on his in the old childish style, —
Then left him to fulfill her sweet behest,
And take his way through Dreamland's mazes, folden
In clouds no longer black, but rosy-golden.
O reader, if thou ever hast been near
Destruction's brink, experience must have taught thee,
When Providence from such dread peril caught thee,
How sweet a thing existence is; how dear
The life to which that friendly arm has brought thee
Back from the verge of death; -I need not fear
But thou wilt know the blessedness that lapped
Our hero's spirit, thus in slumber wrapped.
For thine own heart has then all gladly tasted
The fairest fruit of time, when from its grave-
Where earthly elements their booty crave —
The new-born soul once more has upward hasted
To heaven, where its wings so worn and wasted
Fresh in immortal life and beauty wave;
When, bird-like, soaring on replumaged pinions,
It suns itself again in God's dominions.
---
## p. 11021 (#233) ##########################################
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
11021
After earth's bondage, what emancipation!
After earth's midnight, what a glorious morn!
After the agonizing aspiration
Breathed for deliverance, lo! the spirit borne
Above its prison-house to contemplation
Of all the former life it led forlorn!
How poor each earthly pleasure in our eyes,
Contrasted with the new-found Paradise!
And from this Paradise a ray descended.
Now into Adam's heart, as by degrees
It gathered something of the ancient ease,
While from the Tree of Life that o'er him bended-
Bough fair as those the eye of boyhood sees
Ere dimmed by manhood's scales - the fruit extended
Within his grasp he plucked, and found it give
New vigor to his soul, new power to live.
Whole hours beside the window he would sit,
And follow with his gaze along the sky
The clouds that o'er its azure chanced to flit,
Or on the street would mark the passer-by.
The world lay fresh before him, and from it
He drew enjoyment, as in infancy;
If but at night a neighbor's lamp were gleaming,
With childlike interest he watched it beaming.
For all creation now appeared quite other
Than it to him had ever been before;
Men, as of old, were enemies no more,
But taught by love, he saw in each a brother;
Like music from some far celestial shore
Thrilled through his soul the accents of his mother;
Till at their tones the spectres of the past
Fell back, and melted in thin air at last.
He saw each arrow aimed against his weal
Glance harmless by when her embrace was round him,
And that sweet voice of hers would fondly steal
Into his soul, and break the spell that bound him:
So, step by step, the state in which she found him
Changed for the better; he began to feel,
To speak, to act anew, and from their tomb
Youth's blasted hopes commenced again to bloom.
## p. 11022 (#234) ##########################################
11022
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
At day's declining, often arm in arm
They paced the floor, and then the son confessed
Old sins and errors, while the mother pressed
Kind lessons home to him in accents warm.
She plied religion, not to strike alarm
Into his heart, but rather yield him rest;
And only strove to gently heal the spirit
Too long in strange and sickly torpor buried.
But when the lamp was lit at eventide,
Before the harpsichord she sat, and swept
Its keys to songs whose spirit-echoes kept
The listener fettered to the player's side;
Or else their voices would accordant glide
Into sweet childlike duets, strains that wept
And smiled by turns through all their varied plan,-
So thus one night the twofold music ran:—
World! for aye from me depart!
And thy joys to others offer;
Fairer flowers than thou canst proffer
Blossom now within my heart.
All thy roses, beauty-molded,
When I plucked them, faded fast,
And the thorn each leaf enfolded
Into me in torture passed.
Winter overwhelmed my soul;
In its icy grasp I shivered;
Aspen-like I bent and quivered
When I heard its tempests roll.
Then to dust in anguish smitten
Sank the brow I bore so high,-
On it branded, lightning-written,
That dread sentence, "Thou must die. "
Hope renews its blossoms fair,
As the spring-blooms earth are covering,
While the joyous birds are hovering
In the odor-laden air.
At the moment they were praising
All that richest life of May,
I my soul was also raising
From the dust in which it lay
## p. 11023 (#235) ##########################################
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
11023
In solitude how droops the soul!
A branch dissevered from the bole,
And tossed aside to perish;
It is the spirit's vital breath,
In sun and storm, in life and death,
All-clasping love to cherish.
The bees from flower to flower that roam,-
I saw them, when they wandered home,
Construct their cells in union;
The ants beneath the hillocks, too,
Are bound by harmony as true,
And labor in communion.
In heaven's vault I also saw
The stars fulfill eternal law
Accordant with each other;
Not for themselves alone they shine,
But every orb by rule divine
Irradiates his brother.
Be thine that starlike brother-mind!
To God and man thy spirit bind
In earthly joy and sorrow;
Then on His people here below
Will burst ere long in golden glow
His own celestial morrow!
In grove and glen, on hill and lea,
Each blade of grass, each stately tree,
Alike for dew is calling;
No freshness fills the summer air,
No blessed influence is there,
Without the dew-bath falling.
But vapors gather thick and fast,
Until the azure sky at last
In darkness is enshrouded;
Then breaks the tempest in its force,
And lightnings take their lurid course
Athwart the zenith clouded.
O morning prayer, the soul's sweet dew!
Thou canst alone its power renew,
And free it from its sadness;
## p. 11024 (#236) ##########################################
11024
FREDERIK PALUDAN-MÜLLER
Upwafted by our souls on high,
And homewards sent with God's reply,
That breathes celestial gladness.
Then trust no more the joys of earth!
So soon succeeded by the dearth
Of all that cheers and blesses;
Drenched with the dew that heaven bestows,
Will bloom and blossom like a rose
The spirit's wildernesses.
Oft our hopes are doomed to die in sorrow,
Oft our seed-time knows no harvest-morrow,
What the worm has spared the storms destroy;
Vainly looking earthward for assistance,
Man drags on the burden of existence,
Left-how early! by his dream of joy.
Whence, then, comfort in our time of anguish?
Skyward lift the eyes that droop and languish;
God alone gives consolation birth;
Deep in him the well of life is streaming,
Well of blessedness, forever teeming,
Vast enough for heaven and for earth.
Soon shall dawn the festal morn resplendent,
When the fullness of the Lord transcendent
Pours itself in rivers all abroad;
Then shall every fount of joy be springing,
Every soul be hallelujahs singing,
High and lowly, bathed alike in God!
Translation of J. J. , in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine, 1865.
## p. 11025 (#237) ##########################################
11025
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
(1852-)
MONG European defendants and exponents of the modern real-
istic school, Emilia Pardo-Bazán is conspicuous. She is not
only a strong and subtle advocate of the methods of Zola,
Turgénieff, and other French and Russian realists, she is true to
their creed in her own novels to the point of masculinity. As a rule
the disciples of realism are booted and spurred. The quality itself
implies a total absence of feminine evasions of the actual and the
inevitable. There is no hint in it of the oblique vision of gentle
blue eyes.
It is therefore all the more sur-
prising that Señora Pardo-Bazán, a woman,
with veins full of romantic Spanish blood,
should prove a singularly perfect exponent
of her chosen creed.
She was born in 1852, in Coruña, Spain,
of a noble and ancient family. At a very
early age she was brought into friendly
relations with books, by being allowed to
browse at will in her father's library. Her
marriage in 1868 to Don José Quiroga put
an end to her systematic education under
tutors; but she was to receive later the
more liberal education of travel and inde-
pendent study. The political exile of her
father enabled her to travel through France and Italy, perfecting
her knowledge of the French and Italian language and literature.
After her return to Spain, she devoted herself to the study of Ger-
man, and of philosophy and history; thus preparing herself for the
cosmopolitan office of critic, and laying the foundations of the culture
necessary for the novelist. Her artistic creed had not been formu-
lated when she was attracted by the writings of her own country-
men,- Valera, Galdós, and Alarcón. These novelists were realists in
so far as they depicted the life and manners with which they were
most familiar. The idea came to the young Señora that she also
might write a novel which did not require romantic grandiloquence
and lofty flights of the imagination, but merely fidelity to facts.
Shortly after the publication of her first novel, her new-born recogni-
tion of the requirements of realism was enlarged by acquaintance with
XIX-690
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
## p. 11026 (#238) ##########################################
11026
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
In
the works of Balzac, Flaubert, Goncourt, and Daudet. Henceforth her
conceptions of her art were well defined; and she became unwavering
in her obedience to them. Of her novels, The Swan of Vilamorta
is perhaps the most perfect expression of her artistic tenets. It is
difficult to believe that it could have been written by a woman.
its merciless adherence to facts, in its pitiless logic, in its conscien-
tious portrayal of unlovely types of character, it might have come
from the brain of a clever man of the world, turned novelist for
truth's sake. The hero of the book, the Swan, is a young would-be
poet of the sentimental type, who is inclined in the cause of romance
to make love to other men's wives. The tragedy of the book, if the
arid reproduction of ugly happenings can be called tragedy, centres
itself less about the callow hero than about a woman who loves him
with an abandonment of passion,- a schoolmistress of thirty-six, pit-
ted with small-pox, hampered with a deformed child. Until the boy-
poet comes into her life, she is content to teach, that she may provide
this child with comforts. Afterwards all is changed. Her little hoard
of money dwindles away to give dainty suppers to the man she
loves; to keep him in the proper clothes, of which his unappreciative
father deprives him; to enable him to visit a Spanish grandee, to-
wards whose wife he cherishes a Werther-like devotion. Finally she
mortgages her fresh little cottage, and puts her crippled child out
to work, that she may provide him with the funds necessary for the
publication of his poems. These are not only a drug in the market,
but they fail to win for him the love of the grandee's lady, now
a marriageable widow. He sails to America, leaving behind him the
schoolmistress, destitute both of love and money. Neither her ome-
lets, her anisette cordials, nor her little loans, can compel his grati-
tude. She takes poison, and dies.
Pardo-Bazán's other novels-The Angular Stone,' 'A Christian
Woman,' 'Morrina,' 'A Wedding Journey'—are written in the same
uncompromising spirit of faithfulness to the actualities of life. Their
scenes are laid in Spain: their characters are those with which their
author is familiar.
Evidences of her imaginative faculty, and of
her capacity for poetry, are not wanting in them; but she keeps her
latent romanticism strictly in check. She continually sacrifices her
sex to her art. The result is worth the sacrifice.
The same qualities which give to her distinction as a novelist,
make of her a luminous and sympathetic critic. Moreover, the reader
finds in her criticisms the charm which is sometimes lacking in her
novels, where the strength has driven out the sweetness. Her work
on 'Russia: Its People and Its Literature' is written with a certain
easy brilliancy, which almost disguises its solid merits. Pardo-Bazán
brings to her critical tasks a rare equipment, philosophical breadth of
## p. 11027 (#239) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11027
thought, the ability to understand the interdependence of national life
and national literature, the power of feeling the pulse of the times
in the stray novel or poem. In her life of St. Francis of Assisi she
studies the age which produced him, after the manner of the mod-
ern biographer. Whatever the nature of her work, whether history,
biography, or pure criticism, she is always conscious of that ethereal
atmosphere about persons and things, those emanations from a mill-
ion lives, which collectively are called the time-spirit. Her defense
of realism, in her essay The Burning Question,' springs as much
from her intuition concerning the nature of the zeitgeist as from her
intellectual appreciation of the reasonableness of the realistic school.
Aside from the worth of her contribution to the literature of mod-
ern Europe, Emilia Pardo-Bazán merits distinction as being a Spanish
woman who has demonstrated to her countrymen, in the face of na-
tional tradition, the most significant fact uncovered in this century,-
the power of women to learn, to understand, and to create.
THE REIGN OF TERROR
From Russia: Its People and Its Literature.
McClurg & Co.
-
Copyright 1890, by A. C.
THE
HE reign of terror was short but tragic. We have seen
that the active Nihilists were a few hundred inexperienced
youths without position or social influence, armed only with
leaflets and tracts. This handful of boys furiously threw down
the gauntlet of defiance at the government, when they saw them-
selves pursued. Resolved to risk their heads (and with such sin-
cerity that almost all the associates who bound themselves to
execute what they called "the people's will" have died in prison
or on the scaffold), they adopted as their watchword "man for
man. " When the sanguinary reprisals fell upon Russia from one
end to the other, the frightened people imagined an immense
army of terrorists-rich, strong, and in command of untold re-
sources covering the empire. In reality, the twenty offenses
committed from 1878 to 1882, the mines discovered under the two
capitals, the explosions in the station at Moscow and in the pal-
ace at St. Petersburg, the many assassinations, and the marvelous
organization which could get them performed with circumstances
so dramatic, and create a mysterious terror against which the
power of the government was broken in pieces, all this was
the work of a few dozens of men and women seemingly endowed
_______
## p. 11028 (#240) ##########################################
11028
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
with ubiquitousness, so rapid and unceasing their journeys, and
so varied the disguises, names, and stratagems they made use of
to bewilder and confound the police. It was whispered that mill-
ions of money were sent in from abroad; that there were mem-
bers of the Czar's family implicated in the conspiracy; that there
was an unknown chief, living in a distant country, who managed
the threads of a terrible executive committee, which passed judg-
ment in the dark, and whose decrees were carried out instantly.
Yet there were only a few enthusiastic students,- a few young
girls ready to perform any service, like the heroine of Turgé-
nieff's 'Shadows'; a few thousand rubles, each contributing his
share; and after all, a handful of determined people, who, to use
the words of Leroy-Beaulieu, had made a covenant with death.
For a strong will, like intelligence or inspiration, is the patrimony
of a few; and so, just as ten or twelve artist heads can modify
the æsthetic tendency of an age, six or eight intrepid conspira-
tors are enough to stir up an immense empire.
After Karakozof's attempt upon the life of the Czar (the
first spark of discontent), the government augmented the police
and endowed Muravief, who was nicknamed "the Hangman," with
dictatorial powers. In 1871 the first notable political trial was
held upon persons affiliated with a secret society. Persecutions
for political offenses are a great mistake. Maltreatment only
inspires sympathy. After a few such trials the doors had to be
closed; the public had become deeply interested in the accused,
who declared their doctrines in a style only comparable to the
acts of the early Christian martyrs. Who could fail to be moved
at the sight of a young woman like Sophia Bardina, rising mod-
estly and explaining, before an audience tremulous with com-
passion, her revolutionary ideas concerning society, the family,
anarchy, property, and law? Power is almost always blind and
stupid in the first moments of revolutionary disturbances. In
Russia, men risked life and security as often by acts of charity
toward conspirators as by conspiracy itself. In Odessa, which
was commanded by General Todleben, the little blond heads of
two children appeared between the prison bars; they were the
children of a poor wretch who had dropped five rubles into a
collection for political exiles, and these two little ones were sen-
tenced to the deserts of Siberia with their father. And the poet
Mikailof chides the revolutionaries with the words: "Why not
let your indignation speak, my brothers? Why is love silent? Is
## p. 11029 (#241) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11029
our horrible misfortune worthy of nothing more than a vain
tribute of tears? Has your hatred no power to threaten and to
wound? "
The party then armed itself, ready to vindicate its political
rights by means of terror. The executive committee of the rev-
olutionary Socialists—if in truth such a committee existed or was
anything more than a triumvirate-favored this idea. Spies and
fugitives were quickly executed. The era of sanguinary Nihilism
was opened by a woman, the Charlotte Corday of Nihilism,—
Vera Zasulitch. She read in a newspaper that a political pris-
oner had been whipped, contrary to law,- for corporal punish-
ment had been already abolished, and for no worse cause than
a refusal to salute General Trepof; she immediately went and
fired a revolver at his accuser. The jury acquitted her, and her
friends seized her as she was coming out of court, and spirited
her away lest she should fall into the hands of the police; the
Emperor thereupon decreed that henceforth political prisoners
should not be tried by jury. Shortly after this the substitute of
the imperial deputy at Kief was fired upon in the street; suspi-
cion fell upon a student; all the others mutinied; sixteen of them.
were sent into exile. As they were passing through Moscow,
their fellow-students there broke from the lecture halls and came
to blows with the police. Some days later the rector of the Uni-
versity of Kief, who had endeavored to keep clear of the affair,
was found dead upon the stairs; and again later, Heyking, an
officer of the gendarmerie, was mortally stabbed in a crowded
street. The clandestine press declared this to have been done by
order of the executive committee; and it was not long before
the chief of secret police of St. Petersburg received a very polite
notice of his death sentence, which was accomplished by another
dagger; and the clandestine paper, Land and Liberty, said by
way of comment, "The measure is filled, and we gave warning
of it. "
Months passed without any new assassinations; but in Feb-
ruary 1879, Prince Krapotkine, governor of Karkof, fell by the
hand of a masked man, who fired two shots and fled; and no
trace of him was to be found, though sentence of death against
him was announced upon the walls of all the large towns of
Russia. The brother of Prince Krapotkine was a furious revolu-
tionary, and conducted a Socialist paper in Geneva at that time.
In March it fell to the turn of Colonel Knoup of the gendarmerie,
## p. 11030 (#242) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11030
who was assassinated in his own house; and beside him was
found a paper with these words: "By order of the Executive
Committee. So will we do to all tyrants and their accomplices. "
A pretty Nihilist girl killed a man at a ball: it was at first
thought to be a love affair, but it was afterward found out that
the murderess did the deed by order of the executive committee,
or whatever the hidden power was which inspired such acts.
On the 25th of this same March a plot against the life of the
new chief of police, General Drenteln, was frustrated; and the
walls of the town then flamed with a notice that revolutionary
justice was about to fall upon one hundred and eighty persons.
It rained crimes,- against the governor of Kief; against Cap-
tain Hubbenet; against Pietrowsky, chief of police, who was
riddled with wounds in his own room; and lastly, on the 14th
of April, Solovief attempted the life of the Czar, firing five
shots, none of which took effect. On being caught, the would-be
assassin swallowed a dose of poison; but his suicide was also
unsuccessful.
Solovief, however, had reached the heights of Nihilism: he
had dared to touch the sacred person of the Czar. He was the
ideal Nihilist: he had renounced his profession, determined to
"go with the people," and became a locksmith, wearing the arti-
san's dress; he was married "mystically," and by "free grace" or
"free will," and it was said that he was a member of the terrible
executive committee. He suffered death on the gallows with
serenity and composure, and without naming his accomplices.
Land and Liberty approved his acts by saying, "We should be
as ready to kill as to die; the day has come when assassination
must be counted as a political motor. " From that day Alexan-
der II. was a doomed man; and his fatal moment was not far
off. The revolutionaries were determined to strike the govern-
ment with terror, and to prove to the people that the sacred
Emperor was a man like any other, and that no supernatura)
charm shielded his life. At the end of 1879 and the beginning
of 1880 two lugubrious warnings were forced upon the Emperor:
first the mine which wrecked the imperial train, and then the
explosion which threw the dining-room of the palace in ruins,-
which catastrophe he saw with his own eyes. About this time
the office of a surreptitious paper was attacked, the editors and
printers of which defended themselves desperately: alarmed by
this significant event, the Emperor intrusted to Loris Melikof,
## p. 11031 (#243) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11031
who was a Liberal, an almost omnipotent dictatorship. The con-
ciliatory measures of Melikof somewhat calmed the public mind;
but just as the Czar had convened a meeting for the considera-
tion of reforms solicited by the general opinion, his own sentence
was carried out by bombs.
It is worthy of note that both parties (the conservative and
the revolutionary) cast in each other's face the accusation of hav-
ing been the first to inflict the death penalty, which was contrary
to Russian custom and law. If Russia does not deserve quite so
appropriately as Spain to be called the country of vice versas, it
is nevertheless worth while to note how she long ago solved the
great juridical problem upon which we are still employing tongue
and pen so busily. Not only is capital punishment unknown to
the Russian penal code, but since 1872 even perpetual confine-
ment has been abolished,-twenty years being the maximum of
imprisonment; and this even to-day is only inflicted upon politi-
cal criminals, who are always treated there with greater severity
than other delinquents. Before the celebrated Italian criminalist
lawyer, Beccaria, ever wrote on the subject, the Czarina Elisa-
beth Petrowna had issued an edict suppressing capital punish-
ment. The terrible Muscovite whip probably equaled the gibbet;
but aside from the fact that it had been seldom used, it was
abolished by Nicholas I. If we judge of a country by its penal
laws, Russia stands at the head of European civilization. The
Russians were so unaccustomed to the sight of the scaffold, that
when the first one for the conspirators was to be built, there
were no workmen to be found who knew how to construct it.
Translated from the Spanish by Fanny Hale Gardiner.
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS AT HOME
From The Swan of Vilamorta. Copyright 1891, by the Cassell
Publishing Co.
WHE
>>
HILE she distributed their tasks among the children, say-
ing to one, "Take care to make this hem straight; to
another, "Make this seam even, the stitch smaller; " to
a third, "Use your handkerchief instead of your dress;" and to
still another, "Sit still, child; don't move your feet," Leocadia
cast a glance from time to time toward the plaza, in the hope of
seeing Segundo pass by. But no Segundo was to be seen. The
flies settled themselves to sleep, buzzing, on the ceiling; the heat
-
## p. 11032 (#244) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11032
abated; the afternoon came, and the children went away. Leo-
cadia felt a profound sadness take possession of her; and without
waiting to put the house in order, she went to her room and
threw herself on the bed.
The glass door was pushed gently open, and some one entered
softly.
"Mamma," said the intruder in a low voice. .
The schoolmistress did not answer.
"Mamma, mamma," repeated the hunchback in a louder
voice.
"Mamma! " he shouted at last.
"Is that you? What do you want? "
"Are you ill? »
"No, child. "
"As you went to bed-"
"I have a slight headache. There, leave me in peace. ”
Minguitos turned round and walked in silence toward the
door. As her eyes fell on the protuberance of his back, a sharp
pang pierced the heart of the schoolmistress. How many tears
that hump had cost her in other days! She raised herself on her
elbow.
"Minguitos! " she called.
"What is it, mamma? "
-
"Don't go away.
pain ? »
"I feel pretty well, mamma. Only my chest hurts me. ”
"Let me see; come here. "
How do you feel to-day? Have you any
Leocadia sat up in the bed, and taking the child's head be-
tween her hands, looked at him with a mother's hungry look.
Minguitos's face was long and of a melancholy cast; the promi
nent lower jaw was in keeping with the twisted and misshapen
body, that reminded one of a building shaken out of shape by
an earthquake or a tree twisted by a hurricane. Minguitos's
deformity was not congenital. He had always been sickly, in-
deed; and it had always been remarked that his head seemed
too heavy for his body, and that his legs seemed too frail to
support him.
Leocadia recalled one by one the incidents of his
childhood. At five years old the boy had met with an accident,
a fall down the stairs: from that day he lost all his liveliness;
he walked little, and never ran. He contracted a habit of sit-
ting Turkish fashion, playing marbles, for hours at a time. If
he rose, his legs soon warned him to sit down again. When he
stood, his movements were vacillating and awkward. When he
## p. 11033 (#245) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11033
was quiet he felt no pain; but when he turned any part of his
body, he experienced slight pains in the spinal column. The
trouble increased with time; the boy complained of a feeling as
if an iron band were compressing his chest. Then his mother,
now thoroughly alarmed, consulted a famous physician, the best
in Orense. He prescribed frictions with iodine, large doses of
phosphates of lime, and sea-bathing. Leocadia hastened with the
boy to a little seaport. After taking two or three baths, the
trouble increased: he could not bend his body; his spinal column.
was rigid, and it was only when he was in a horizontal posi-
tion that he felt any relief from his now severe pains. Sores
appeared on his skin; and one morning when Leocadia begged
him with tears to straighten himself, and tried to lift him up by
the arms, he uttered a horrible cry.
"I am broken in two, mamma I am broken in two," he
repeated with anguish; while his mother with trembling fingers
sought to find what had caused his cry.
It was true! The backbone had bent outward, forming an
angle on a level with his shoulder-blades; the softened vertebræ
had sunk; and cifosis, the hump,-the indelible mark of irreme-
diable calamity,-was to deform henceforth this child who was
dearer to her than her life. The schoolmistress had had a mo-
ment of animal and supreme anguish, the anguish of the wild
beast that sees its young mutilated. She had uttered shriek after
shriek, cursing the doctor, cursing herself, tearing her hair and
digging her nails into her flesh. Afterward tears had come, and
she had showered kisses, delirious but soothing and sweet, on the
boy; and her grief took a resigned form. During nine years
Leocadia had had no other thought than to watch over her little
cripple by night and by day; sheltering him in her love, amusing
with ingenious inventions the idle hours of his sedentary child-
hood.
ory.
A thousand incidents of this time recurred to Leocadia's mem-
The boy suffered from obstinate dyspnoea, due to the pres-
sure of the sunken vertebræ on the respiratory organs; and his
mother would get up in the middle of the night, and go in her
bare feet to listen to his breathing and to raise his pillows. As
these recollections came to her mind, Leocadia felt her heart
melt, and something stir within her like the remains of a great
love, the warm ashes of an immense fire, and she experienced.
P
## p. 11034 (#246) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11034
the unconscious reaction of maternity; the irresistible impulse
which makes a mother see in her grown-up son only the infant
she has nursed and protected, to whom she would have given
her blood, if it had been necessary, instead of milk. And uttering
a cry of love, pressing her feverish lips passionately to the pallid
temples of the hunchback, she said, falling back naturally into
the caressing expressions of the dialect:-
"Malpocadiño, who loves you? Say, who loves you dearly?
Who? "
"You don't love me, mamma. You don't love me," the boy
returned, half smiling, leaning his head with delight on the bosom
that had sheltered his sad childhood. The mother, meantime,
wildly kissed his hair, his neck, his eyes, as if to make up for
lost time; lavishing upon him the honeyed words with which
infants are beguiled,-words profaned in hours of passion,-
which overflowed in the pure channel of maternal love.
"My treasure-my king-my glory. "
At last the hunchback felt a tear fall on his cheek. Delicious
assuagement! At first the tears were large and round, scorching
almost; but soon they came in a gentle shower, and then ceased
altogether; and there remained where they had fallen only a
grateful sense of coolness. Passionate phrases rushed simulta-
neously from the lips of mother and son.
"Do you love me dearly, dearly, dearly? As much as your
whole life? "
"As much, my life, my treasure. "
"Will you always love me? "
"Always, always, my joy. "
"Will you do something to please me, mamma? I want to
ask you—”
"What? >>
"A favor.
>>
Don't turn your face away!
The hunchback observed that his mother's form suddenly grew
stiff and rigid as a bar of iron. He no longer felt the sweet
warmth of her moist eyelids, and the gentle contact of her wet
lashes on his cheek. In a voice that had a metallic sound Leo-
cadia asked her son,
"And what is the favor you want? Let me hear it. "
Minguitos murmured without bitterness, with resignation: -
"Nothing, mamma, nothing. I was only in jest. "
-
## p. 11035 (#247) ##########################################
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
11035
"But what was the favor you were going to ask me? "
"Nothing, nothing, indeed. "
"No, you wanted to ask something," persisted the schoolmis.
tress, seizing the pretext to give vent to her anger. "Otherwise
you are very deceitful and very sly. You keep everything hidden
in your breast. Those are the lessons Flores teaches you: do
you think I don't notice it? "
Saying this, she pushed the boy away from her, and sprang
from the bed. In the hall outside, almost at the same moment,
was heard a firm and youthful step. Leocadia trembled, and
turning to Minguitos, stammered:-
"Go, go to Flores. Leave me alone. I do not feel well, and
you make me worse. "
Segundo's brow was clouded; and as soon as the joy of seeing
him had subsided, Leocadia was seized with the desire to restore
him to good-humor. She waited patiently for a fitting opportu-
nity, however, and when this came, throwing her arms around his
neck, she began with the complaint: Where had he kept him-
self? Why had he stayed away so long? The poet unburdened
himself of his grievances. It was intolerable to follow in the
train of a great man. And allowing himself to be carried away
by the pleasure of speaking of what occupied his mind, he de-
scribed Don Victoriano and the radicals; satirized Agonde's recep-
tion of his guests, and his manner of entertaining them; spoke
of the hopes he founded in the protection of the ex-minister,
giving them as a reason for the necessity of paying court to Don
Victoriano. Leocadia fixed her dog-like look on Segundo's counte-
nance.
—
"And the Señora and the girl - what are they like? "
Segundo half closed his eyes, the better to contemplate an
attractive and charming image that presented itself to his mental
vision, and to reflect that in the existence of Nieves he played
no part whatsoever,-it being manifest folly for him to think
of Señora de Comba, who did not think of him. This reflec-
tion, natural and simple enough, aroused his anger. There was
awakened within him a keen longing for the unattainable, — that
insensate and unbridled desire with which the likeness of a beau-
tiful woman dead for centuries may inspire some dreamer in a
museum.
"But answer me are those ladies handsome? " the schoolmis-
tress asked again.
## p. 11036 (#248) ##########################################
11036
EMILIA PARDO-BAZÁN
"The mother, yes," answered Segundo, speaking with the
careless frankness of one who is secure of his auditor. "Her
hair is fair, and her eyes are blue-a light blue that makes one
think of the verses of Becquer. "
And he began to recite:-
―
«Tu pupila es azul, y cuando ries
Su claridad suave me recuerda -> »
Leocadia listened to him at first with eyes cast down; after-
ward with her face turned away from him.
