"
The two lovers exercised a kind of divine trickery to deceive
each other as to their wretched state.
The two lovers exercised a kind of divine trickery to deceive
each other as to their wretched state.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v10 - Emp to Fro
This done, Charlotte Corday went back to
her hotel.
The next day Du Perret called as he had promised, and after
chatting with her for about a quarter of an hour, took her to
the minister. But Charlotte Corday found that she could not
draw her friend's papers from the hands of the administration.
Then she took leave of Du Perret, thanking him, and forbidding
him to call again. "You know what I told you yesterday," she
added. "Fly as quickly as you can. Fly this very night, for
to-morrow it will be too late. "
The claims of friendship satisfied, she turned all her strength
and resolution toward the true object of her journey. That
morning she had addressed the following letter to Marat by post:
"Citizen: I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for the
country makes me think that you will be interested to know
the unhappy events in that part of the Republic. I will call
upon you about one o'clock. Be so good as to receive me and
grant me a moment's interview. I will show you how to render
CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
France a great service.
A perfidious intention like a knife-blade was hidden under the
last sentence. Receiving no answer, Mademoiselle Corday wrote
again, about four o'clock that afternoon:
-
## p. 5560 (#126) ###########################################
5560
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"I wrote you this morning, Marat. Did you receive my letter?
I cannot believe so, since I am refused admittance at your door.
I hope you will grant me an interview to-morrow. I repeat that
I have just come from Caen. I wish to tell you secrets most
important to the safety of the Republic. Moreover, I am being
persecuted for the cause of liberty. I am unhappy. That alone
gives me a right to your protection. CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
The note written, she folded it and placed it in her breast.
This second message must be given to Marat's housekeeper, if he
still refused to see her. At a quarter of seven Charlotte Corday
took a cab on the Place des Victoires. "Where to? " asked the
driver. "Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30," answered a voice clear
and gentle as a child's.
The cab jogged along for a quarter of an hour, and then
stopped before a grim, dull-looking house, where, to follow the
language of the Girondists, the monster of the Mountain had
established his den. Marat's house at No. 30 Rue des Cordeliers
(now Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine) is still standing, and has
retained its former character. The monolithic mass, pierced with
rather high windows, draws the attention by its rigid, gloomy,
and solitary aspect. Dwellings as well as men have a physi-
ognomy. Providence doubtless chose this house from among all
others, for its air of fitness as witness and sombre setting of
one of the most tragic scenes of the great Revolutionary drama.
Since then it has been repaired to some extent, but no amount
of freshening can remove its sadness. Before the 13th of July
this sadness was a presentiment; since then it has been a mem-
ory. Still on the wall in pale letters are the words "ou la m»
the remnant of that stern inscription "La fraternité, l'indivisi-
bilité, ou la mort. "
-
2
Alas! This great word, in which all the others are lost, is
itself becoming effaced under the file of time. As one of the
ancients said, "death dies" (mors moritur). The front door, in
its frame of black paint, gives the whole house a funereal air.
A kind of square vestibule, with a wretched porter's lodge to
the right, leads to a damp little court where the dank mossy
pavement sends to the surface a cold sweat, as it were, in time of
rain. This court is bounded by a wing of the building, streaked
with cracks and mold. There is a well in one of the angles.
On the right, a staircase of greasy stone steps, surmounted by
## p. 5561 (#127) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5561
an iron railing, leads up to a large landing lighted by a double
casement. Under the stairs the eyes plunge into a sordid hollow,
where there is a confusion of old household utensils, and where
cellar doors open confusingly like shadowy mouths. This house
Iwas made for some sinister event.
Charlotte, trim and alert, stepped out of the cab before
the porte-cochère. Afterwards, the neighbors remembered their
surprise at seeing a young woman with a green ribbon in her
hair getting out of a carriage. First of all she had to brave the
cross-grained portress in her lodge, a veritable female Cerberus,
who, knowing that her tenant was ill and much beset, pitilessly
refused to let her enter. Charlotte Corday insisted. Subdued
by her urgent and resolute tone, the portress finally allowed her
to go up-stairs.
Marat was living upon the first floor. The staircase conducted
to a long landing, at the end of which was an obscure kitchen
window, covered with iron bars, beside a door painted yellow.
This grim grating must have vividly touched Charlotte Corday's
imagination, and she fancied Marat in his lodging like a wild
beast in its cage.
She stopped near the barred window with its menacing air,
before the door to the left. A strange coldness seized her heart.
Her enemy was behind this light partition; and behind it too was
her own future, the scaffold all ready and threatening! There
was still time to retreat. She could return to Caen or sail to
England. Easy, admissible joys held out loving arms to the
young and beautiful woman, either under the trees of Normandy
or on the white shores of Great Britain. The struggle before
her was one of those irrevocable struggles where, like the bee,
the victor leaves his life in the wound he inflicts.
The sill of this door once crossed, she could never retrace her
steps. This door upon which she was about to knock was the
door to her tomb. She hesitated. The most fearless hand must
needs tremble before this perilous entrance, over which, in let-
ters visible to her excited imagination, she read the terrible sen-
tence of the damned- "Leave all hope at the door. " True, she
had dreamed, the blow once struck, of escaping and gaining a
seaport; but this was so doubtful a chance, so light and fragile
a thread to support the weight of her crime, that she could
scarcely trust it. To shake the wood of this door was to awaken
the dull and terrible sound which comes from a coffin-lid when
## p. 5562 (#128) ###########################################
5562
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
touched. And there was something horrible, too, in this calm.
moment preceding so furious and violent an action as the mur
der of a man. She felt the need of gathering all her strength
to hold the knife in her delicate white hands. She stood erect
and motionless like the statue of Judith. Her hand seemed to
weigh a hundred pounds. However, some one was coming up
the stairs behind her, and the fixed resolution at the bottom of
her heart conquered. The hesitations of the avenging arm before
this fatal door ceased, and Charlotte Corday knocked.
Marat was lying in his bath. The bath-room was dimly lighted
by a window on the court. The only furniture was a block of
wood, upon which papers, pens, and a lead inkstand were thrown
pell-mell. Marat was writing. He was signing a petition to the
administration in behalf of a poor widow with four children who
had asked the aid of the People's Friend.
For several days, as we have said, Marat had not been able
to stay out of the bath without being consumed by sharpest
sufferings. There the agitated and volcanic little man tried to
take the attitude and repose of the tomb where he was soon to
rest. In these moments of solitude, preyed upon by horror of
the death which was slowly and surely taking possession of his
perishing body, Marat was pierced to the heart by an invisible
sword, and bled within of an incurable wound. All his life this
man had kept his sufferings to himself.
As he neared the tomb his griefs surged up out of his breast
and suffocated him. He glanced drearily over his life of cruci-
fixion. When he remembered the ills he had endured for the
cause of the Revolution, he asked himself if it would not have
been better to have given himself to the calm and serious work
of science. In mind he entered again his little room at Ver-
sailles, where the birds came to pick up the crumbs on his
window-sill and where the trees cast their green shadows. Then
he thought sadly how little joy, and that frothy and shadowed,
was brought to the heart by the puissance of success in civil
storms. Marat the persecuted, who in time had made himself a
persecutor, offered in this moment a striking and terrible exam-
ple of what he himself had once written: -
"One would be tempted to accuse Heaven and to deny its
justice, if there were not some consolation at sight of frightful
tyrants themselves suffering the ills which they inflict upon
others. "
## p. 5563 (#129) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5563
The great executioner of Divine justice had fallen into the
cold and painful hands of the final torture. The blood of the
2d of September was dripping back upon his heart. Disease
showed itself subtle and merciless to him, and played with his
expiring body as with an elected victim, who in his one death
must expiate all the violent deaths in which the popular influence
of his newspaper had given him a sort of moral complicity.
God purifies by fiery coals and by the bed of thorns, before
he withdraws from the world those whose hateful mission has
been to purify by the sword.
Suddenly Marat heard in the ante-chamber the harsh voice of
his housekeeper, contesting a very young voice whose clear and
tempting tones reached him in his bath:
"Citizen Marat? "
"This is the place, but he is not at home. "
"I must see him. I have just come from Caen. I wrote him
this morning. "
"I tell you he cannot receive any one.
He is ill. Call again
in a few days. "
"I implore you to give him my name. He must have had
my letter.
I am sure he will not refuse me a short interview. "
The housekeeper, a rather nervous and neutral nature, gently
but decidedly continued to refuse; and Charlotte, murmuring, was
already turning back toward the door, which the woman seemed
anxious to close behind her.
Now a gentle emotion entered Marat's heart with this fresh
voice, which he thought he must have heard before. This young
voice took him back to the better springtime years of his youth.
Impressed by its purity, which made it seem the natural music
of a beautiful spirit, he called to his friend, "Let her come in. "
"But, citizen, you are worn out with business. You are suf-
fering. The doctor has forbidden you to see any one. "
"The doctors are ignorant fellows, who can do nothing to
cure me. I won't be a slave to them. "
"But you should not admit every chance comer like that.
There are rumors of assassination. You know yourself that the
Royalists and the Girondists are plotting. Marat, you once told
me that you were to die by the hand of a woman. "
An old servant of Marat's named Catherine, who claimed to
be a sorceress and to divine the future, had predicted his violent
death. "Take heed," she had added, "against girls in red fichus. "
## p. 5564 (#130) ###########################################
5564
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"True," " answered Marat after a silence and a bitter sigh;
"but I have no faith in such follies. Women don't like me well
enough to kill me. ”
«< Well, I shall send away this intruder. "
"No, I tell you; let her come in. This girl comes from
Caen, where the rebel deputies are. She wrote me this morning.
She is unhappy. " Marat emphasized the last words. Then the
woman grumblingly obeyed, and showed the unknown into the
bath-room. When Charlotte Corday entered, Marat had his head
inclined upon his naked breast.
The gloomy little room is at the back of the house; heavy
silence reigns there night and day; a window, then of heavy
divisions with dull glass, received light from the court.
The woman stood motionless near the bath. The Gironde and
the Mountain, as represented by Charlotte Corday and Marat, had
a terrible struggle before them. Charlotte already bore signs of
victory in her brilliant eyes, her robust health, her bright color,
her magnificent arm and firm and resolute hand. Marat lay in
his bath with outstretched arms; a white sheet draped the tub in
careless folds. It looked like a bier. The woman stood looking
fixedly. Her face had the fatal and extraordinary beauty called
forth by an heroic deed. The old servant closed the door of the
dark and narrow room, and left Charlotte almost touching Marat.
All at once Marat uttered a great cry- Help! Help! " and
having uttered it, turned his head aside and died. The house-
keeper and some servants of the house rushed to the bath-room.
They found Marat with great drops of blood welling from his
side, his eyes open, his tongue moving but speechless. The
murderous knife had fallen on the floor. Charlotte Corday was
standing near the window. At first she had put her hand to her
head; then, calm, severe, and haughty, she seemed to be spell-
bound beside the corpse. The pride of success, the realization of
the immense thing she had accomplished, plunged her into a
moral transport. In killing Marat she had killed the plebeian
king of the Revolution.
―――――
«<
## p. 5565 (#131) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5565
THE POET'S LITTLE HOME
From The Enchanted Castle>
THE
HERE is a narrow two-story house in one of the suburbs of
Berlin, where about fifty years ago Theodore Wilhelm and
his wife Vertua were living. They were a young couple,
very poor but happy, for Wilhelm and Vertua loved each other.
One evening the young wife was sewing at her window, when
the needle paused between her fingers, the work fell on her
apron, and a tear rolled down her cheek. At the same moment
the bell rang over her head. Vertua rose, wiped her red eyes,
and opened the door with a smile on her lips. It was Wilhelm
returning.
"I was sewing and forgot all about the time," she said, throw-
ing her arm around her husband and receiving his kiss.
« We
won't have much of a supper to-day; but then we don't care. "
While saying this, she placed on the table a dish of boiled pota-
toes and some dry nuts.
"You must be out of money," remarked Wilhelm gloomily.
"No, I have some," she said, shaking some copper coins in
her apron pocket.
"I think I have found a place," went on Wilhelm, in a tone
not very hopeful. "If I accept it, I will begin work to-morrow. "
"What place? " asked Vertua.
"I am promised the position of head of the orchestra in a
small theatre. The salary is not very much, but as I know a
little about painting I can act as decorator at the same time.
Then, as I still have great faith in my literary talent, I will
induce them to play some of my compositions there. "
Vertua smiled indulgently at her husband's golden dreams.
Their meal was tranquil and gay. Love, great worker of mira-
cles, found a way to change the water in their pitcher to a wine
better than that of the wedding at Cana.
After supper Theodore Wilhelm spoke of writing. Vertua
dared not tell him that there was no oil for the lamp.
"Bah! " said she. "It's too fine an evening to light that hor-
rid wick. Let us stay at the window and watch the stars, the
lights of the good God. "
Theodore Wilhelm understood that he was reduced to the state
of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, who went without working at
night, non avendo candele per scriver i versi suoi.
## p. 5566 (#132) ###########################################
5566
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
«< Perhaps I would have been wiser," he said, "to have stuck
to my first studies. By this time I would have been a coun-
selor. "
"Why these regrets, dear? "
"At least you would have a servant and new clothes," con-
tinued Wilhelm, who was cut to the heart by his wife's depriva-
tions.
"I don't need anything," interrupted Vertua, with a smile
which she tried to make natural. "If I don't wear my fine
clothes, it is because I don't think I need them in order to please
you. "
The next morning Vertua awoke before dawn, and crept
softly out of bed to get things ready for her husband. Her eyes
reviewed sadly the shabby black coat, white on the seams and on
the back of the cuffs; the shapeless shoes, and the worn cravat.
In vain she brushed them, caught up broken threads with her
needle, touched the garment here and there with ink,—she could
never restore the irreparable injury of years. Just before Wil-
helm started out, he looked at himself in the mirror.
"You are all right," said Vertua in a confident voice. "That
coat looks quite new, and the hat seems fresh enough to have
been bought yesterday.
"
The two lovers exercised a kind of divine trickery to deceive
each other as to their wretched state.
Theodore Wilhelm obtained a position in the orchestra of a
little theatre where he was the only musician, but he lost it
again in a few days. Then he tried various callings, which cost
much to his self-love and which barely satisfied the first needs of
life.
Ten years later, the same man was the most popular author
of all Germany.
In the early days of his success, Wilhelm plunged his lips
eagerly in this cup of gold; but it soon transformed him, and he
fell into a bored and dreary frenzy. Satiety brought disgust.
His celebrity dazed him. Long before this, he had moved from
the little house in the suburb to a rich and commodious mansion
in the city. One evening Vertua took his hand in hers and said
to him:
-:
"We are not happy any more. Happiness was to love each
other, and now that we are rich we no longer do so. This
miserable gold has destroyed all the charm of our home. When
## p. 5567 (#133) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5567
we were poor I used to see you all day. Now other people have
you. You are called here and there, you are invited by the
whole town, you are sought after by women, and I am unhappy.
Are you yourself content? No, Wilhelm, acknowledge the truth.
This life wearies you; you regret the time when we suffered the
bitter privations of life together. "
"You are right, Vertua. For a long time I have thought all
that you have just said, but I have never dared to tell you.
When we were living in our little house the necessity of fighting
outside evils calmed the agitation of my spirit. The struggle
was good for me, and helpful. Now I am afraid of going mad.
No, I have never suffered so much as since I have been delivered
from the hard necessities of life and delivered to myself. My
cruel imagination is an enemy ten times more insupportable than
poverty. Fame is killing me. I am no longer free, now that I
am celebrated. I am stifling under this cape of gold, which
Divine justice has thrown on my shoulders to punish my foolish
ambitions. "
me.
"I too hate this glory, as a rival who has made you desert
Since you have given yourself up to it, you hardly care for
me. But I do not ask you to relinquish it; I know what such
ties mean.
However much one curses, he has never the strength
to relinquish them. But let us do one thing. That little house
in the suburb, of which you were just speaking, I have been
renting for the last ten years without telling you so; our old
furniture, which I pretended to sell, is all there just as we left
it. Let us go back and spend the day to-morrow in this old
nest of our early love. "
Wilhelm threw his arms around Vertua, in gratitude for this
happy thought.
The next morning they rose before the sun and fled to the
little house in the suburb. A gentle emotion touched them even
to tears, as they entered the two rooms where they had passed
the bitter, beautiful days of delightful youth. The straw chairs
were neatly ranged as when Vertua's hand took care to keep
them so. Vertua opened the oaken wardrobe, which was nearly
all the furniture in the place, and drew out Wilhelm's old coat,
so often inked over on the seams, and handed it to her husband
to put on.
"I never saw you look so handsome," she said, gazing at him
with delight.
## p. 5568 (#134) ###########################################
5568
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
She herself laid on the bed her veil, her velvet bonnet, her
cashmere shawl, her dress trimmed with lace, and put on again
the simple cap, the fichu, and the linen blouse, in which Wilhelm
had loved her.
After this, Vertua prepared the breakfast with her own hands,
as in the days when she had no other servant than her activity
of twenty years. She set the table with two pewter spoons, two
flowered delft cups, and two coarse linen napkins. The milk was
boiling on the chafing-dish, with its white foam gathering on top.
For the first time in ten years, Theodore Wilhelm felt hun-
gry. A rustic perfume of youth and sentiment entered his heart.
The little birds came in at the window as in the old days, and
picked the dry bread which Vertua crumbled for them under the
table.
Wilhelm and Vertua sat opposite each other as in their happy
time; their knees touched under the little pine table. Their
breakfast was delicious. They felt themselves back in the old
love, when their hearts were young and black care evaporated in
a ray of sunshine.
Breakfast was short, and after it Wilhelm drew his violin from
its case and practiced his lesson for the evening, as he had done
when employed in the orchestra of the theatre. Vertua, who
had not sung for ten years, accompanied him with her voice. It
was a simple and touching piece which suited their mood. The
little room was all stirred with it, and the birds responded from
the roof.
But Wilhelm had scarcely finished the selection when the
sound of applause was heard under the windows. Some friends
or some inquisitive people (how know which? ) had followed
Vertua and her husband.
"We are discovered," the poet murmured sadly.
"Alas! " said Vertua; "I was afraid of it. "
"Not to be able to go where one wants or to do what one
chooses without being spied upon; to suffer everybody's follies
because one is said to have talent; to be forced to abjure calm
of spirit; charm in one's home; love in one's heart: what is it
all? »
"This," answered Vertua timidly, "is what men seek after.
It is glory. "
This man, so long pursued by misfortune, and later pursued
by glory, this Theodore Wilhelm, was Hoffmann.
## p. 5568 (#135) ###########################################
## p. 5568 (#136) ###########################################
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EURIPIDES
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## p. 5568 (#137) ###########################################
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## p. 5569 (#139) ###########################################
5569
EURIPIDES
(480-406 B. C. )
BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON
URIPIDES, latest in age and perhaps least in rank among the
three surviving tragic poets of Athens, was said to have
been born on Salamis, during the decisive battle for free-
dom, when his mother, like the homeless folk of Attica generally,
was in temporary exile upon the little island. This legend was at
least an artistic invention, since Eschylus shared in the sea fight,
and Sophocles, as a beautiful stripling, led the band of boys who
danced about the trophy of victory.
The supreme rank of these three is no accident of survival. When
news of Euripides's death reached Athens, Sophocles bade his chorus
appear in mourning for him; and a few months later, when both were
in the underworld, Aristophanes, in his comedy The Frogs,' makes
the god Dionysos follow them thither, and beg Pluto to restore to
earth one dramatist worthy to grace the annual contest at his festi-
val. This testimony from the lifelong enemy and ridiculer of Euripi-
des is borne out by all the evidence we have.
He was probably of good Attic stock, the stories of his parents'
poverty being inventions of the comic poets. He was one of the first
to collect a large library. He was carefully educated, at first as an
athlete, from a misunderstanding of an oracle to the effect that he
was to "win prizes in contests. " He also developed youthful skill,
like his friend Socrates, as an artist. At twenty-five he first obtained
the honor of competing as one of the three chosen tragic poets at
the Dionysia. All these facts point to good social rank.
He did not, however, like the youthful Sophocles, win at once the
popular heart. At his first venture he was placed last. He secured
highest honors not once until fourteen years later, and only five times
altogether. Yet toward the end of his life, and after his death, his
influence, not merely in Athens but throughout Greek lands, was un-
rivaled. It is no accident that seven dramas of Eschylus, seven of
Sophocles, nineteen of Euripides, have been preserved for us. Euripi-
des is said to have composed twenty-three tetralogies, ninety-two
dramas! Each play was doubtless an independent and complete work
of art, so that the number is indeed surprising.
X-349
## p. 5570 (#140) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5570
No worthy successors to this brief line ever arose. The three and
their forgotten rivals filled the fifth century B. C. with their splendor.
The likeness of them all should strike a modern student, before their
differences. All their plays graced the greatest State festival and
were a part of the popular religious ceremonial. All save Eschylus's
'Persians'- no real exception in its spirit-aim to represent a re-
mote heroic age. The characters are chiefly gods or the immediate
offspring of gods. The vain struggle of man against Fate is always
a motive, usually the chief thread of the tale. As to outward form,
also, the chorus remains to the end the central feature, though its
importance is somewhat lessened. The small number of actors, the
stiffness of mask and buskin, the simple stage setting, the avoidance
of violent or confused action, continued apparently little modified.
Still, there has been a very general conviction in ancient and
modern times, first uttered effectively by Aristophanes, that Euripides
was a radical innovator, both in art and in religion. Of course this
is necessarily true in some degree of any original creative artist.
But the question goes much deeper.
That wonderful fifth century falls inevitably into three periods.
The generation that saw the terrific invading host of Xerxes melt
away like a dream, and Athens arise from her ashes to become queen
of the Egean and the foremost State in the Greek world, could
hardly escape a fervent belief in divine guidance of all earthly affairs.
Eschylus, himself a Marathonian warrior, probably stamped upon
tragedy much of his own intensely religious nature. His human char-
acters seem almost helpless in the grip of stern but just Fate.
In Sophocles the gods are rarely seen on the stage. Man is sub-
ject indeed to their rule, but he usually works out his own doom of
ill or happiness by ways not inscrutable. In the prosperous period of
Kimon and Pericles which formed his early maturity, Athens doubt-
less felt herself quite capable of accomplishing her own destiny.
Pericles and the enlightened circle about him probably troubled them-
selves very little beyond judicious outward conformity with the
traditional mythology. To many admiring readers, Sophocles seems
cold. His 'Electra' best illustrates what we cannot here discuss.
His conformity to Eschylean theology seems usually a mere artistic
utterance of his own rather vague optimism.
Euripides lived through the same period also. But he was not so
harmonious and happy a nature. The pathos of human life, the
capriciousness of destiny, the seemingly unjust distribution of lots,
distressed and perplexed him. This may not have been so largely
true of his earlier work. We have only one play (the 'Alcestis')
previous to his fiftieth year. At that very time began the great na-
tional tragedy of the Thirty Years' War, destined to end in the utter
## p. 5571 (#141) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5571
humiliation and downfall of imperial Athens. The plague, and the
death of Pericles, made even the beginnings of the great strife seem
tragic. The appalling disaster in Sicily foreshadowed the end, and
indeed made it inevitable, long years before it came.
It is not strange
if the favorite, the popular Athenian poet of that darkening day, often
doubted the Divine wisdom, - felt a strife, which his art could not
reconcile, between man and Providence.
Whatever the reason, the gods do take again a prominent share
in Euripidean as in Eschylean drama; but they often, perhaps usu-
ally, act from less noble motives than the human characters. It has
been maintained, even,- especially by a living English scholar, Pro-
fessor Verrall, that Euripides made it his lifelong purpose to under-
mine and destroy any belief in the real existence of Zeus and Apollo,
Pallas Athene, and all their kin; that he was an aggressive agnostic,
using the forms of the traditional gods only to show their helpless-
ness, their imbecility, their impossibility.
But surely the generation that slew Socrates for "introducing
strange gods and not honoring those of the State," would have
detected and resented any such flagrant misuse of the holy place and
day. Moreover, any such lifelong cynicism would have corroded the
artistic powers themselves. Lucian, Voltaire, Swift, illustrate this
truth. Many of the pessimistic outbursts often cited as Euripides's
own are uttered in character by his sufferers and sinners, and are
mere half-conscious cries of distress or protest. His dramatic power
was not always sufficient to recast the old myths in an ethical form
which satisfied him. He knew men and women thoroughly, loved
them, found them heroic, generous, noble,—and he so painted them.
The gods, whom he did not know, fared worse at his hands. Often
one is introduced in spectacular fashion at the close, to cut the knot
which the poet had failed to untie in the natural course of his plot.
(Even Sophocles, once at least,-in the Philoctetes,' - does very
much the same thing. ) In general, Euripides seems distinctly inferior
to his two masters, at their best, in construction, in plot. The world
of scholarship is still laughing, with Aristophanes, at Euripides's long
narrative prologues. (See Mr. Shorey's translation of the scene in the
'Frogs, Vol. ii. of this work, pages 786-7. ) His long messengers'
speeches, fine as they are, seem almost epic in their broad descrip-
tions of what we have not seen. (Again, as Professor Mahaffy him-
self remarks, Sophocles's 'Electra' is the most unfortunate perversion
of this indulgence. )
On the other hand, in romantic lyric, in connected picturesque
description, in pathos, in sympathy with elemental human feeling,
Euripides has no Attic rival whatever. His women, his slaves, his
humbler characters generally, are evidently drawn with especial ten-
derness. He is perhaps so far a "realist" in his art, that he should
-
## p. 5572 (#142) ###########################################
5572
EURIPIDES
not have been restricted to the stately figures and famous names of
the national myths. Much of his work seems more fitted to frankly
contemporaneous drama. He is drawing men and women whom he
has known, and should be allowed to say so. His fussy old nurse in
the 'Hippolytus,' his homely rustic husband of 'Electra,' certainly
cannot be set upon a pedestal.
But should a work of art, above all of dramatic art, be set upon
any pedestal at all? Should not the dramatist, rather, hold the mir-
ror up to nature, bid living men and women walk and talk before
us? It is in part the old antagonism, actual or supposed, of Idealism,
or Classicism, against Realism, that has raged so long about the
name of Euripides. There is much to be said, and truly said, on
both sides; but certainly Euripides is, for us, by far the most import-
ant of the Attic dramatists. He influenced far more than any other
the later course of his art; hastened the fusion of tragedy and com-
edy in the society melodrama of Menander and Philemon; dominated
the Roman stage, and through it, modern dramatic art.
His claim to be a great ethical teacher cannot be successfully dis-
puted. Whatever we may think of his divinities, the world is not the
worse but better (as Mr. Browning puts it) –
"Because Euripides shrank not to teach,
If gods be strong and wicked, man, though weak,
May prove their match by willing to be good. "
Primarily and chiefly, however, he is a poet. His pictures are
vivid, his characters are alive; they speak usually in their own voice,
and are a part of the mimic scene. There are indeed instants when
we hear, beyond or through them, a sigh from the poet's own soul;
the cry of a perplexed truth-seeker in an age of doubt and discour-
agement. Thus, when Menelaus promises to punish Helen for her
long guilt, there is no adequate dramatic reason for Hecuba's far-
thought apostrophe:-
"O Thou
That bearest earth, thyself by earth upborne,
Whoe'er thou art, hard for our powers to guess,
Or Zeus, or Nature's law, or mind of man,-
To thee I pray, for all the things of earth
In right thou guidest on thy noiseless way. "
Such passages are not rare, especially in choral odes, where the
poet oftener seeks to utter the general belief or feeling of mankind
as it appears to himself. It is never perfectly safe to ascribe them
to Euripides the man, least of all when quoting from a lost play,
where the very sentiment preserved may have been signally refuted.
## p. 5573 (#143) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5573
As we associate Eschylus first of all with the suffering Titan
Prometheus, and Sophocles with the stately figure of an Edipus or
an Antigone, proudly facing the blows of fate with human courage,
so the pathetic, even elegiac tale of Hippolytus' is the most char-
acteristic Euripidean study. Here, for the first time, the passion of
love is made the central motive of a great poem. Here, too, every
human character is fearless in life and in death, while the gods are
quarrelsome, vindictive, and ignoble. It is the very play on which
Aristophanes lavished his biting wit and ridicule. It was performed
in 428 B. C. , and appealed to the audience as an Attic myth, centred
about their great legendary king Theseus, who is a central though
not a leading character.
A madder system of superhuman government, surely, was never
outlined, even in Aristophanes's own realm of Cloud-cuckooville. But
these divinities, after all, supply merely a spectacular tableau at the
beginning and end, and the pathetic elegiac motive.
Their appear-
ance clears Phædra, Hippolytus, even Theseus, of all fault.
The nobler tone is supplied in the splendid courage displayed by
men and women; even by the old attendants; even by the messen-
ger who tells the prince's mishaps, and faces fearlessly the unforgiv-
ing sire:-
"I am a slave within thy house, O King,
But this at least I never will believe,
That he, thy son, was guilty: not although
The whole of womankind go hang themselves,
And with their letters fill the pines that grow
On Ida! »
Throughout the play there are fresh glimpses of outdoor life, fra-
grant breezes blown from glen and sea; strange far-off visions of en-
chantment arise at the magician's call. Again, the Birds form the
only rival of scenes worthy to be mentioned with 'Midsummer Night's
Dream' itself. And yet again, Phædra's plea for death to destroy the
mad desire that horrifies her wifely heart, the youthful athlete's pit-
eous plea to his frenzied steeds as they trample upon their beloved
master, these are realism of the noblest kind. And all these varied
pictures are included in a play not fifteen hundred lines in length!
Racine's 'Phèdre' is much longer, and far less effective.
Better known, and simpler in its plot, is Euripides's earliest extant
play, the 'Alcestis. ' The dying Alcestis is one of the most noble and
pathetic figures in literature. It was popular at once, for her words
are parodied by Aristophanes. Milton felt its power, as a famous son-
net reveals. Mr. Browning has made it the centre of his great imagi-
native poem, 'Balaustion's Adventure. ' This character should alone
## p.
her hotel.
The next day Du Perret called as he had promised, and after
chatting with her for about a quarter of an hour, took her to
the minister. But Charlotte Corday found that she could not
draw her friend's papers from the hands of the administration.
Then she took leave of Du Perret, thanking him, and forbidding
him to call again. "You know what I told you yesterday," she
added. "Fly as quickly as you can. Fly this very night, for
to-morrow it will be too late. "
The claims of friendship satisfied, she turned all her strength
and resolution toward the true object of her journey. That
morning she had addressed the following letter to Marat by post:
"Citizen: I have just arrived from Caen. Your love for the
country makes me think that you will be interested to know
the unhappy events in that part of the Republic. I will call
upon you about one o'clock. Be so good as to receive me and
grant me a moment's interview. I will show you how to render
CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
France a great service.
A perfidious intention like a knife-blade was hidden under the
last sentence. Receiving no answer, Mademoiselle Corday wrote
again, about four o'clock that afternoon:
-
## p. 5560 (#126) ###########################################
5560
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"I wrote you this morning, Marat. Did you receive my letter?
I cannot believe so, since I am refused admittance at your door.
I hope you will grant me an interview to-morrow. I repeat that
I have just come from Caen. I wish to tell you secrets most
important to the safety of the Republic. Moreover, I am being
persecuted for the cause of liberty. I am unhappy. That alone
gives me a right to your protection. CHARLOTTE CORDAY. "
The note written, she folded it and placed it in her breast.
This second message must be given to Marat's housekeeper, if he
still refused to see her. At a quarter of seven Charlotte Corday
took a cab on the Place des Victoires. "Where to? " asked the
driver. "Rue des Cordeliers, No. 30," answered a voice clear
and gentle as a child's.
The cab jogged along for a quarter of an hour, and then
stopped before a grim, dull-looking house, where, to follow the
language of the Girondists, the monster of the Mountain had
established his den. Marat's house at No. 30 Rue des Cordeliers
(now Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine) is still standing, and has
retained its former character. The monolithic mass, pierced with
rather high windows, draws the attention by its rigid, gloomy,
and solitary aspect. Dwellings as well as men have a physi-
ognomy. Providence doubtless chose this house from among all
others, for its air of fitness as witness and sombre setting of
one of the most tragic scenes of the great Revolutionary drama.
Since then it has been repaired to some extent, but no amount
of freshening can remove its sadness. Before the 13th of July
this sadness was a presentiment; since then it has been a mem-
ory. Still on the wall in pale letters are the words "ou la m»
the remnant of that stern inscription "La fraternité, l'indivisi-
bilité, ou la mort. "
-
2
Alas! This great word, in which all the others are lost, is
itself becoming effaced under the file of time. As one of the
ancients said, "death dies" (mors moritur). The front door, in
its frame of black paint, gives the whole house a funereal air.
A kind of square vestibule, with a wretched porter's lodge to
the right, leads to a damp little court where the dank mossy
pavement sends to the surface a cold sweat, as it were, in time of
rain. This court is bounded by a wing of the building, streaked
with cracks and mold. There is a well in one of the angles.
On the right, a staircase of greasy stone steps, surmounted by
## p. 5561 (#127) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5561
an iron railing, leads up to a large landing lighted by a double
casement. Under the stairs the eyes plunge into a sordid hollow,
where there is a confusion of old household utensils, and where
cellar doors open confusingly like shadowy mouths. This house
Iwas made for some sinister event.
Charlotte, trim and alert, stepped out of the cab before
the porte-cochère. Afterwards, the neighbors remembered their
surprise at seeing a young woman with a green ribbon in her
hair getting out of a carriage. First of all she had to brave the
cross-grained portress in her lodge, a veritable female Cerberus,
who, knowing that her tenant was ill and much beset, pitilessly
refused to let her enter. Charlotte Corday insisted. Subdued
by her urgent and resolute tone, the portress finally allowed her
to go up-stairs.
Marat was living upon the first floor. The staircase conducted
to a long landing, at the end of which was an obscure kitchen
window, covered with iron bars, beside a door painted yellow.
This grim grating must have vividly touched Charlotte Corday's
imagination, and she fancied Marat in his lodging like a wild
beast in its cage.
She stopped near the barred window with its menacing air,
before the door to the left. A strange coldness seized her heart.
Her enemy was behind this light partition; and behind it too was
her own future, the scaffold all ready and threatening! There
was still time to retreat. She could return to Caen or sail to
England. Easy, admissible joys held out loving arms to the
young and beautiful woman, either under the trees of Normandy
or on the white shores of Great Britain. The struggle before
her was one of those irrevocable struggles where, like the bee,
the victor leaves his life in the wound he inflicts.
The sill of this door once crossed, she could never retrace her
steps. This door upon which she was about to knock was the
door to her tomb. She hesitated. The most fearless hand must
needs tremble before this perilous entrance, over which, in let-
ters visible to her excited imagination, she read the terrible sen-
tence of the damned- "Leave all hope at the door. " True, she
had dreamed, the blow once struck, of escaping and gaining a
seaport; but this was so doubtful a chance, so light and fragile
a thread to support the weight of her crime, that she could
scarcely trust it. To shake the wood of this door was to awaken
the dull and terrible sound which comes from a coffin-lid when
## p. 5562 (#128) ###########################################
5562
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
touched. And there was something horrible, too, in this calm.
moment preceding so furious and violent an action as the mur
der of a man. She felt the need of gathering all her strength
to hold the knife in her delicate white hands. She stood erect
and motionless like the statue of Judith. Her hand seemed to
weigh a hundred pounds. However, some one was coming up
the stairs behind her, and the fixed resolution at the bottom of
her heart conquered. The hesitations of the avenging arm before
this fatal door ceased, and Charlotte Corday knocked.
Marat was lying in his bath. The bath-room was dimly lighted
by a window on the court. The only furniture was a block of
wood, upon which papers, pens, and a lead inkstand were thrown
pell-mell. Marat was writing. He was signing a petition to the
administration in behalf of a poor widow with four children who
had asked the aid of the People's Friend.
For several days, as we have said, Marat had not been able
to stay out of the bath without being consumed by sharpest
sufferings. There the agitated and volcanic little man tried to
take the attitude and repose of the tomb where he was soon to
rest. In these moments of solitude, preyed upon by horror of
the death which was slowly and surely taking possession of his
perishing body, Marat was pierced to the heart by an invisible
sword, and bled within of an incurable wound. All his life this
man had kept his sufferings to himself.
As he neared the tomb his griefs surged up out of his breast
and suffocated him. He glanced drearily over his life of cruci-
fixion. When he remembered the ills he had endured for the
cause of the Revolution, he asked himself if it would not have
been better to have given himself to the calm and serious work
of science. In mind he entered again his little room at Ver-
sailles, where the birds came to pick up the crumbs on his
window-sill and where the trees cast their green shadows. Then
he thought sadly how little joy, and that frothy and shadowed,
was brought to the heart by the puissance of success in civil
storms. Marat the persecuted, who in time had made himself a
persecutor, offered in this moment a striking and terrible exam-
ple of what he himself had once written: -
"One would be tempted to accuse Heaven and to deny its
justice, if there were not some consolation at sight of frightful
tyrants themselves suffering the ills which they inflict upon
others. "
## p. 5563 (#129) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5563
The great executioner of Divine justice had fallen into the
cold and painful hands of the final torture. The blood of the
2d of September was dripping back upon his heart. Disease
showed itself subtle and merciless to him, and played with his
expiring body as with an elected victim, who in his one death
must expiate all the violent deaths in which the popular influence
of his newspaper had given him a sort of moral complicity.
God purifies by fiery coals and by the bed of thorns, before
he withdraws from the world those whose hateful mission has
been to purify by the sword.
Suddenly Marat heard in the ante-chamber the harsh voice of
his housekeeper, contesting a very young voice whose clear and
tempting tones reached him in his bath:
"Citizen Marat? "
"This is the place, but he is not at home. "
"I must see him. I have just come from Caen. I wrote him
this morning. "
"I tell you he cannot receive any one.
He is ill. Call again
in a few days. "
"I implore you to give him my name. He must have had
my letter.
I am sure he will not refuse me a short interview. "
The housekeeper, a rather nervous and neutral nature, gently
but decidedly continued to refuse; and Charlotte, murmuring, was
already turning back toward the door, which the woman seemed
anxious to close behind her.
Now a gentle emotion entered Marat's heart with this fresh
voice, which he thought he must have heard before. This young
voice took him back to the better springtime years of his youth.
Impressed by its purity, which made it seem the natural music
of a beautiful spirit, he called to his friend, "Let her come in. "
"But, citizen, you are worn out with business. You are suf-
fering. The doctor has forbidden you to see any one. "
"The doctors are ignorant fellows, who can do nothing to
cure me. I won't be a slave to them. "
"But you should not admit every chance comer like that.
There are rumors of assassination. You know yourself that the
Royalists and the Girondists are plotting. Marat, you once told
me that you were to die by the hand of a woman. "
An old servant of Marat's named Catherine, who claimed to
be a sorceress and to divine the future, had predicted his violent
death. "Take heed," she had added, "against girls in red fichus. "
## p. 5564 (#130) ###########################################
5564
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
"True," " answered Marat after a silence and a bitter sigh;
"but I have no faith in such follies. Women don't like me well
enough to kill me. ”
«< Well, I shall send away this intruder. "
"No, I tell you; let her come in. This girl comes from
Caen, where the rebel deputies are. She wrote me this morning.
She is unhappy. " Marat emphasized the last words. Then the
woman grumblingly obeyed, and showed the unknown into the
bath-room. When Charlotte Corday entered, Marat had his head
inclined upon his naked breast.
The gloomy little room is at the back of the house; heavy
silence reigns there night and day; a window, then of heavy
divisions with dull glass, received light from the court.
The woman stood motionless near the bath. The Gironde and
the Mountain, as represented by Charlotte Corday and Marat, had
a terrible struggle before them. Charlotte already bore signs of
victory in her brilliant eyes, her robust health, her bright color,
her magnificent arm and firm and resolute hand. Marat lay in
his bath with outstretched arms; a white sheet draped the tub in
careless folds. It looked like a bier. The woman stood looking
fixedly. Her face had the fatal and extraordinary beauty called
forth by an heroic deed. The old servant closed the door of the
dark and narrow room, and left Charlotte almost touching Marat.
All at once Marat uttered a great cry- Help! Help! " and
having uttered it, turned his head aside and died. The house-
keeper and some servants of the house rushed to the bath-room.
They found Marat with great drops of blood welling from his
side, his eyes open, his tongue moving but speechless. The
murderous knife had fallen on the floor. Charlotte Corday was
standing near the window. At first she had put her hand to her
head; then, calm, severe, and haughty, she seemed to be spell-
bound beside the corpse. The pride of success, the realization of
the immense thing she had accomplished, plunged her into a
moral transport. In killing Marat she had killed the plebeian
king of the Revolution.
―――――
«<
## p. 5565 (#131) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5565
THE POET'S LITTLE HOME
From The Enchanted Castle>
THE
HERE is a narrow two-story house in one of the suburbs of
Berlin, where about fifty years ago Theodore Wilhelm and
his wife Vertua were living. They were a young couple,
very poor but happy, for Wilhelm and Vertua loved each other.
One evening the young wife was sewing at her window, when
the needle paused between her fingers, the work fell on her
apron, and a tear rolled down her cheek. At the same moment
the bell rang over her head. Vertua rose, wiped her red eyes,
and opened the door with a smile on her lips. It was Wilhelm
returning.
"I was sewing and forgot all about the time," she said, throw-
ing her arm around her husband and receiving his kiss.
« We
won't have much of a supper to-day; but then we don't care. "
While saying this, she placed on the table a dish of boiled pota-
toes and some dry nuts.
"You must be out of money," remarked Wilhelm gloomily.
"No, I have some," she said, shaking some copper coins in
her apron pocket.
"I think I have found a place," went on Wilhelm, in a tone
not very hopeful. "If I accept it, I will begin work to-morrow. "
"What place? " asked Vertua.
"I am promised the position of head of the orchestra in a
small theatre. The salary is not very much, but as I know a
little about painting I can act as decorator at the same time.
Then, as I still have great faith in my literary talent, I will
induce them to play some of my compositions there. "
Vertua smiled indulgently at her husband's golden dreams.
Their meal was tranquil and gay. Love, great worker of mira-
cles, found a way to change the water in their pitcher to a wine
better than that of the wedding at Cana.
After supper Theodore Wilhelm spoke of writing. Vertua
dared not tell him that there was no oil for the lamp.
"Bah! " said she. "It's too fine an evening to light that hor-
rid wick. Let us stay at the window and watch the stars, the
lights of the good God. "
Theodore Wilhelm understood that he was reduced to the state
of the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, who went without working at
night, non avendo candele per scriver i versi suoi.
## p. 5566 (#132) ###########################################
5566
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
«< Perhaps I would have been wiser," he said, "to have stuck
to my first studies. By this time I would have been a coun-
selor. "
"Why these regrets, dear? "
"At least you would have a servant and new clothes," con-
tinued Wilhelm, who was cut to the heart by his wife's depriva-
tions.
"I don't need anything," interrupted Vertua, with a smile
which she tried to make natural. "If I don't wear my fine
clothes, it is because I don't think I need them in order to please
you. "
The next morning Vertua awoke before dawn, and crept
softly out of bed to get things ready for her husband. Her eyes
reviewed sadly the shabby black coat, white on the seams and on
the back of the cuffs; the shapeless shoes, and the worn cravat.
In vain she brushed them, caught up broken threads with her
needle, touched the garment here and there with ink,—she could
never restore the irreparable injury of years. Just before Wil-
helm started out, he looked at himself in the mirror.
"You are all right," said Vertua in a confident voice. "That
coat looks quite new, and the hat seems fresh enough to have
been bought yesterday.
"
The two lovers exercised a kind of divine trickery to deceive
each other as to their wretched state.
Theodore Wilhelm obtained a position in the orchestra of a
little theatre where he was the only musician, but he lost it
again in a few days. Then he tried various callings, which cost
much to his self-love and which barely satisfied the first needs of
life.
Ten years later, the same man was the most popular author
of all Germany.
In the early days of his success, Wilhelm plunged his lips
eagerly in this cup of gold; but it soon transformed him, and he
fell into a bored and dreary frenzy. Satiety brought disgust.
His celebrity dazed him. Long before this, he had moved from
the little house in the suburb to a rich and commodious mansion
in the city. One evening Vertua took his hand in hers and said
to him:
-:
"We are not happy any more. Happiness was to love each
other, and now that we are rich we no longer do so. This
miserable gold has destroyed all the charm of our home. When
## p. 5567 (#133) ###########################################
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
5567
we were poor I used to see you all day. Now other people have
you. You are called here and there, you are invited by the
whole town, you are sought after by women, and I am unhappy.
Are you yourself content? No, Wilhelm, acknowledge the truth.
This life wearies you; you regret the time when we suffered the
bitter privations of life together. "
"You are right, Vertua. For a long time I have thought all
that you have just said, but I have never dared to tell you.
When we were living in our little house the necessity of fighting
outside evils calmed the agitation of my spirit. The struggle
was good for me, and helpful. Now I am afraid of going mad.
No, I have never suffered so much as since I have been delivered
from the hard necessities of life and delivered to myself. My
cruel imagination is an enemy ten times more insupportable than
poverty. Fame is killing me. I am no longer free, now that I
am celebrated. I am stifling under this cape of gold, which
Divine justice has thrown on my shoulders to punish my foolish
ambitions. "
me.
"I too hate this glory, as a rival who has made you desert
Since you have given yourself up to it, you hardly care for
me. But I do not ask you to relinquish it; I know what such
ties mean.
However much one curses, he has never the strength
to relinquish them. But let us do one thing. That little house
in the suburb, of which you were just speaking, I have been
renting for the last ten years without telling you so; our old
furniture, which I pretended to sell, is all there just as we left
it. Let us go back and spend the day to-morrow in this old
nest of our early love. "
Wilhelm threw his arms around Vertua, in gratitude for this
happy thought.
The next morning they rose before the sun and fled to the
little house in the suburb. A gentle emotion touched them even
to tears, as they entered the two rooms where they had passed
the bitter, beautiful days of delightful youth. The straw chairs
were neatly ranged as when Vertua's hand took care to keep
them so. Vertua opened the oaken wardrobe, which was nearly
all the furniture in the place, and drew out Wilhelm's old coat,
so often inked over on the seams, and handed it to her husband
to put on.
"I never saw you look so handsome," she said, gazing at him
with delight.
## p. 5568 (#134) ###########################################
5568
HENRI ALPHONSE ESQUIROS
She herself laid on the bed her veil, her velvet bonnet, her
cashmere shawl, her dress trimmed with lace, and put on again
the simple cap, the fichu, and the linen blouse, in which Wilhelm
had loved her.
After this, Vertua prepared the breakfast with her own hands,
as in the days when she had no other servant than her activity
of twenty years. She set the table with two pewter spoons, two
flowered delft cups, and two coarse linen napkins. The milk was
boiling on the chafing-dish, with its white foam gathering on top.
For the first time in ten years, Theodore Wilhelm felt hun-
gry. A rustic perfume of youth and sentiment entered his heart.
The little birds came in at the window as in the old days, and
picked the dry bread which Vertua crumbled for them under the
table.
Wilhelm and Vertua sat opposite each other as in their happy
time; their knees touched under the little pine table. Their
breakfast was delicious. They felt themselves back in the old
love, when their hearts were young and black care evaporated in
a ray of sunshine.
Breakfast was short, and after it Wilhelm drew his violin from
its case and practiced his lesson for the evening, as he had done
when employed in the orchestra of the theatre. Vertua, who
had not sung for ten years, accompanied him with her voice. It
was a simple and touching piece which suited their mood. The
little room was all stirred with it, and the birds responded from
the roof.
But Wilhelm had scarcely finished the selection when the
sound of applause was heard under the windows. Some friends
or some inquisitive people (how know which? ) had followed
Vertua and her husband.
"We are discovered," the poet murmured sadly.
"Alas! " said Vertua; "I was afraid of it. "
"Not to be able to go where one wants or to do what one
chooses without being spied upon; to suffer everybody's follies
because one is said to have talent; to be forced to abjure calm
of spirit; charm in one's home; love in one's heart: what is it
all? »
"This," answered Vertua timidly, "is what men seek after.
It is glory. "
This man, so long pursued by misfortune, and later pursued
by glory, this Theodore Wilhelm, was Hoffmann.
## p. 5568 (#135) ###########################################
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EURIPIDES
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## p. 5569 (#139) ###########################################
5569
EURIPIDES
(480-406 B. C. )
BY WILLIAM CRANSTON LAWTON
URIPIDES, latest in age and perhaps least in rank among the
three surviving tragic poets of Athens, was said to have
been born on Salamis, during the decisive battle for free-
dom, when his mother, like the homeless folk of Attica generally,
was in temporary exile upon the little island. This legend was at
least an artistic invention, since Eschylus shared in the sea fight,
and Sophocles, as a beautiful stripling, led the band of boys who
danced about the trophy of victory.
The supreme rank of these three is no accident of survival. When
news of Euripides's death reached Athens, Sophocles bade his chorus
appear in mourning for him; and a few months later, when both were
in the underworld, Aristophanes, in his comedy The Frogs,' makes
the god Dionysos follow them thither, and beg Pluto to restore to
earth one dramatist worthy to grace the annual contest at his festi-
val. This testimony from the lifelong enemy and ridiculer of Euripi-
des is borne out by all the evidence we have.
He was probably of good Attic stock, the stories of his parents'
poverty being inventions of the comic poets. He was one of the first
to collect a large library. He was carefully educated, at first as an
athlete, from a misunderstanding of an oracle to the effect that he
was to "win prizes in contests. " He also developed youthful skill,
like his friend Socrates, as an artist. At twenty-five he first obtained
the honor of competing as one of the three chosen tragic poets at
the Dionysia. All these facts point to good social rank.
He did not, however, like the youthful Sophocles, win at once the
popular heart. At his first venture he was placed last. He secured
highest honors not once until fourteen years later, and only five times
altogether. Yet toward the end of his life, and after his death, his
influence, not merely in Athens but throughout Greek lands, was un-
rivaled. It is no accident that seven dramas of Eschylus, seven of
Sophocles, nineteen of Euripides, have been preserved for us. Euripi-
des is said to have composed twenty-three tetralogies, ninety-two
dramas! Each play was doubtless an independent and complete work
of art, so that the number is indeed surprising.
X-349
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EURIPIDES
5570
No worthy successors to this brief line ever arose. The three and
their forgotten rivals filled the fifth century B. C. with their splendor.
The likeness of them all should strike a modern student, before their
differences. All their plays graced the greatest State festival and
were a part of the popular religious ceremonial. All save Eschylus's
'Persians'- no real exception in its spirit-aim to represent a re-
mote heroic age. The characters are chiefly gods or the immediate
offspring of gods. The vain struggle of man against Fate is always
a motive, usually the chief thread of the tale. As to outward form,
also, the chorus remains to the end the central feature, though its
importance is somewhat lessened. The small number of actors, the
stiffness of mask and buskin, the simple stage setting, the avoidance
of violent or confused action, continued apparently little modified.
Still, there has been a very general conviction in ancient and
modern times, first uttered effectively by Aristophanes, that Euripides
was a radical innovator, both in art and in religion. Of course this
is necessarily true in some degree of any original creative artist.
But the question goes much deeper.
That wonderful fifth century falls inevitably into three periods.
The generation that saw the terrific invading host of Xerxes melt
away like a dream, and Athens arise from her ashes to become queen
of the Egean and the foremost State in the Greek world, could
hardly escape a fervent belief in divine guidance of all earthly affairs.
Eschylus, himself a Marathonian warrior, probably stamped upon
tragedy much of his own intensely religious nature. His human char-
acters seem almost helpless in the grip of stern but just Fate.
In Sophocles the gods are rarely seen on the stage. Man is sub-
ject indeed to their rule, but he usually works out his own doom of
ill or happiness by ways not inscrutable. In the prosperous period of
Kimon and Pericles which formed his early maturity, Athens doubt-
less felt herself quite capable of accomplishing her own destiny.
Pericles and the enlightened circle about him probably troubled them-
selves very little beyond judicious outward conformity with the
traditional mythology. To many admiring readers, Sophocles seems
cold. His 'Electra' best illustrates what we cannot here discuss.
His conformity to Eschylean theology seems usually a mere artistic
utterance of his own rather vague optimism.
Euripides lived through the same period also. But he was not so
harmonious and happy a nature. The pathos of human life, the
capriciousness of destiny, the seemingly unjust distribution of lots,
distressed and perplexed him. This may not have been so largely
true of his earlier work. We have only one play (the 'Alcestis')
previous to his fiftieth year. At that very time began the great na-
tional tragedy of the Thirty Years' War, destined to end in the utter
## p. 5571 (#141) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5571
humiliation and downfall of imperial Athens. The plague, and the
death of Pericles, made even the beginnings of the great strife seem
tragic. The appalling disaster in Sicily foreshadowed the end, and
indeed made it inevitable, long years before it came.
It is not strange
if the favorite, the popular Athenian poet of that darkening day, often
doubted the Divine wisdom, - felt a strife, which his art could not
reconcile, between man and Providence.
Whatever the reason, the gods do take again a prominent share
in Euripidean as in Eschylean drama; but they often, perhaps usu-
ally, act from less noble motives than the human characters. It has
been maintained, even,- especially by a living English scholar, Pro-
fessor Verrall, that Euripides made it his lifelong purpose to under-
mine and destroy any belief in the real existence of Zeus and Apollo,
Pallas Athene, and all their kin; that he was an aggressive agnostic,
using the forms of the traditional gods only to show their helpless-
ness, their imbecility, their impossibility.
But surely the generation that slew Socrates for "introducing
strange gods and not honoring those of the State," would have
detected and resented any such flagrant misuse of the holy place and
day. Moreover, any such lifelong cynicism would have corroded the
artistic powers themselves. Lucian, Voltaire, Swift, illustrate this
truth. Many of the pessimistic outbursts often cited as Euripides's
own are uttered in character by his sufferers and sinners, and are
mere half-conscious cries of distress or protest. His dramatic power
was not always sufficient to recast the old myths in an ethical form
which satisfied him. He knew men and women thoroughly, loved
them, found them heroic, generous, noble,—and he so painted them.
The gods, whom he did not know, fared worse at his hands. Often
one is introduced in spectacular fashion at the close, to cut the knot
which the poet had failed to untie in the natural course of his plot.
(Even Sophocles, once at least,-in the Philoctetes,' - does very
much the same thing. ) In general, Euripides seems distinctly inferior
to his two masters, at their best, in construction, in plot. The world
of scholarship is still laughing, with Aristophanes, at Euripides's long
narrative prologues. (See Mr. Shorey's translation of the scene in the
'Frogs, Vol. ii. of this work, pages 786-7. ) His long messengers'
speeches, fine as they are, seem almost epic in their broad descrip-
tions of what we have not seen. (Again, as Professor Mahaffy him-
self remarks, Sophocles's 'Electra' is the most unfortunate perversion
of this indulgence. )
On the other hand, in romantic lyric, in connected picturesque
description, in pathos, in sympathy with elemental human feeling,
Euripides has no Attic rival whatever. His women, his slaves, his
humbler characters generally, are evidently drawn with especial ten-
derness. He is perhaps so far a "realist" in his art, that he should
-
## p. 5572 (#142) ###########################################
5572
EURIPIDES
not have been restricted to the stately figures and famous names of
the national myths. Much of his work seems more fitted to frankly
contemporaneous drama. He is drawing men and women whom he
has known, and should be allowed to say so. His fussy old nurse in
the 'Hippolytus,' his homely rustic husband of 'Electra,' certainly
cannot be set upon a pedestal.
But should a work of art, above all of dramatic art, be set upon
any pedestal at all? Should not the dramatist, rather, hold the mir-
ror up to nature, bid living men and women walk and talk before
us? It is in part the old antagonism, actual or supposed, of Idealism,
or Classicism, against Realism, that has raged so long about the
name of Euripides. There is much to be said, and truly said, on
both sides; but certainly Euripides is, for us, by far the most import-
ant of the Attic dramatists. He influenced far more than any other
the later course of his art; hastened the fusion of tragedy and com-
edy in the society melodrama of Menander and Philemon; dominated
the Roman stage, and through it, modern dramatic art.
His claim to be a great ethical teacher cannot be successfully dis-
puted. Whatever we may think of his divinities, the world is not the
worse but better (as Mr. Browning puts it) –
"Because Euripides shrank not to teach,
If gods be strong and wicked, man, though weak,
May prove their match by willing to be good. "
Primarily and chiefly, however, he is a poet. His pictures are
vivid, his characters are alive; they speak usually in their own voice,
and are a part of the mimic scene. There are indeed instants when
we hear, beyond or through them, a sigh from the poet's own soul;
the cry of a perplexed truth-seeker in an age of doubt and discour-
agement. Thus, when Menelaus promises to punish Helen for her
long guilt, there is no adequate dramatic reason for Hecuba's far-
thought apostrophe:-
"O Thou
That bearest earth, thyself by earth upborne,
Whoe'er thou art, hard for our powers to guess,
Or Zeus, or Nature's law, or mind of man,-
To thee I pray, for all the things of earth
In right thou guidest on thy noiseless way. "
Such passages are not rare, especially in choral odes, where the
poet oftener seeks to utter the general belief or feeling of mankind
as it appears to himself. It is never perfectly safe to ascribe them
to Euripides the man, least of all when quoting from a lost play,
where the very sentiment preserved may have been signally refuted.
## p. 5573 (#143) ###########################################
EURIPIDES
5573
As we associate Eschylus first of all with the suffering Titan
Prometheus, and Sophocles with the stately figure of an Edipus or
an Antigone, proudly facing the blows of fate with human courage,
so the pathetic, even elegiac tale of Hippolytus' is the most char-
acteristic Euripidean study. Here, for the first time, the passion of
love is made the central motive of a great poem. Here, too, every
human character is fearless in life and in death, while the gods are
quarrelsome, vindictive, and ignoble. It is the very play on which
Aristophanes lavished his biting wit and ridicule. It was performed
in 428 B. C. , and appealed to the audience as an Attic myth, centred
about their great legendary king Theseus, who is a central though
not a leading character.
A madder system of superhuman government, surely, was never
outlined, even in Aristophanes's own realm of Cloud-cuckooville. But
these divinities, after all, supply merely a spectacular tableau at the
beginning and end, and the pathetic elegiac motive.
Their appear-
ance clears Phædra, Hippolytus, even Theseus, of all fault.
The nobler tone is supplied in the splendid courage displayed by
men and women; even by the old attendants; even by the messen-
ger who tells the prince's mishaps, and faces fearlessly the unforgiv-
ing sire:-
"I am a slave within thy house, O King,
But this at least I never will believe,
That he, thy son, was guilty: not although
The whole of womankind go hang themselves,
And with their letters fill the pines that grow
On Ida! »
Throughout the play there are fresh glimpses of outdoor life, fra-
grant breezes blown from glen and sea; strange far-off visions of en-
chantment arise at the magician's call. Again, the Birds form the
only rival of scenes worthy to be mentioned with 'Midsummer Night's
Dream' itself. And yet again, Phædra's plea for death to destroy the
mad desire that horrifies her wifely heart, the youthful athlete's pit-
eous plea to his frenzied steeds as they trample upon their beloved
master, these are realism of the noblest kind. And all these varied
pictures are included in a play not fifteen hundred lines in length!
Racine's 'Phèdre' is much longer, and far less effective.
Better known, and simpler in its plot, is Euripides's earliest extant
play, the 'Alcestis. ' The dying Alcestis is one of the most noble and
pathetic figures in literature. It was popular at once, for her words
are parodied by Aristophanes. Milton felt its power, as a famous son-
net reveals. Mr. Browning has made it the centre of his great imagi-
native poem, 'Balaustion's Adventure. ' This character should alone
## p.
