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第37章

lay morals-第37章

小说: lay morals 字数: 每页4000字

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was empty; knowing that; when once among the  crowd; you would run a good chance yourself of baptism with  his biting liquor。  Now my companion's vitriol was  inexhaustible。

It was perhaps the consciousness of this; the knowledge that  I was being anointed already out of the vials of his wrath;  that made me fall to criticising the critic; whenever we had  parted。

After all; I thought; our satirist has just gone far enough  into his neighbours to find that the outside is false;  without caring to go farther and discover what is really  true。  He is content to find that things are not what they  seem; and broadly generalises from it that they do not exist  at all。  He sees our virtues are not what they pretend they  are; and; on the strength of that; he denies us the  possession of virtue altogether。  He has learnt the first  lesson; that no man is wholly good; but he has not even  suspected that there is another equally true; to wit; that no  man is wholly bad。  Like the inmate of a coloured star; he  has eyes for one colour alone。  He has a keen scent after  evil; but his nostrils are plugged against all good; as  people plugged their nostrils before going about the streets  of the plague…struck city。

Why does he do this?  It is most unreasonable to flee the  knowledge of good like the infection of a horrible disease;  and batten and grow fat in the real atmosphere of a lazar… house。  This was my first thought; but my second was not like  unto it; and I saw that our satirist was wise; wise in his  generation; like the unjust steward。  He does not want light;  because the darkness is more pleasant。  He does not wish to  see the good; because he is happier without it。  I recollect  that when I walked with him; I was in a state of divine  exaltation; such as Adam and Eve must have enjoyed when the  savour of the fruit was still unfaded between their lips; and  I recognise that this must be the man's habitual state。  He  has the forbidden fruit in his waist…coat pocket; and can  make himself a god as often and as long as he likes。  He has  raised himself upon a glorious pedestal above his fellows; he  has touched the summit of ambition; and he envies neither  King nor Kaiser; Prophet nor Priest; content in an elevation  as high as theirs; and much more easily attained。  Yes;  certes; much more easily attained。  He has not risen by  climbing himself; but by pushing others down。  He has grown  great in his own estimation; not by blowing himself out; and  risking the fate of AEsop's frog; but simply by the habitual  use of a diminishing glass on everybody else。  And I think  altogether that his is a better; a safer; and a surer recipe  than most others。

After all; however; looking back on what I have written; I  detect a spirit suspiciously like his own。  All through; I  have been comparing myself with our satirist; and all  through; I have had the best of the comparison。  Well; well;  contagion is as often mental as physical; and I do not think  my readers; who have all been under his lash; will blame me  very much for giving the headsman a mouthful of his own  sawdust。



SKETCHES CHAPTER II … NUITS BLANCHES



IF any one should know the pleasure and pain of a sleepless  night; it should be I。  I remember; so long ago; the sickly  child that woke from his few hours' slumber with the sweat of  a nightmare on his brow; to lie awake and listen and long for  the first signs of life among the silent streets。  These  nights of pain and weariness are graven on my mind; and so  when the same thing happened to me again; everything that I  heard or saw was rather a recollection than a discovery。

Weighed upon by the opaque and almost sensible darkness; I  listened eagerly for anything to break the sepulchral quiet。   But nothing came; save; perhaps; an emphatic crack from the  old cabinet that was made by Deacon Brodie; or the dry rustle  of the coals on the extinguished fire。  It was a calm; or I  know that I should have heard in the roar and clatter of the  storm; as I have not heard it for so many years; the wild  career of a horseman; always scouring up from the distance  and passing swiftly below the window; yet always returning  again from the place whence first he came; as though; baffled  by some higher power; he had retraced his steps to gain  impetus for another and another attempt。

As I lay there; there arose out of the utter stillness the  rumbling of a carriage a very great way off; that drew near;  and passed within a few streets of the house; and died away  as gradually as it had arisen。  This; too; was as a  reminiscence。

I rose and lifted a corner of the blind。  Over the black belt  of the garden I saw the long line of Queen Street; with here  and there a lighted window。  How often before had my nurse  lifted me out of bed and pointed them out to me; while we  wondered together if; there also; there were children that  could not sleep; and if these lighted oblongs were signs of  those that waited like us for the morning。

I went out into the lobby; and looked down into the great  deep well of the staircase。  For what cause I know not; just  as it used to be in the old days that the feverish child  might be the better served; a peep of gas illuminated a  narrow circle far below me。  But where I was; all was  darkness and silence; save the dry monotonous ticking of the  clock that came ceaselessly up to my ear。

The final crown of it all; however; the last touch of  reproduction on the pictures of my memory; was the arrival of  that time for which; all night through; I waited and longed  of old。  It was my custom; as the hours dragged on; to repeat  the question; 'When will the carts come in?' and repeat it  again and again until at last those sounds arose in the  street that I have heard once more this morning。  The road  before our house is a great thoroughfare for early carts。  I  know not; and I never have known; what they carry; whence  they come; or whither they go。  But I know that; long ere  dawn; and for hours together; they stream continuously past;  with the same rolling and jerking of wheels and the same  clink of horses' feet。  It was not for nothing that they made  the burthen of my wishes all night through。  They are really  the first throbbings of life; the harbingers of day; and it  pleases you as much to hear them as it must please a  shipwrecked seaman once again to grasp a hand of flesh and  blood after years of miserable solitude。  They have the  freshness of the daylight life about them。  You can hear the  carters cracking their whips and crying hoarsely to their  horses or to one another; and sometimes even a peal of  healthy; harsh horse…laughter comes up to you through the  darkness。  There is now an end of mystery and fear。  Like the  knocking at the door in MACBETH; (1) or the cry of the  watchman in the TOUR DE NESLE; they show that the horrible  caesura is over and the nightmares have fled away; because  the day is breaking and the ordinary life of men is beginning  to bestir itself among the streets。

In the middle of it all I fell asleep; to be wakened by the  officious knocking at my door; and I find myself twelve years  older than I had dreamed myself all night。

(1) See a short essay of De Quincey's。



SKETCHES CHAPTER III … THE WREATH OF IMMORTELLES



IT is all very well to talk of death as 'a pleasant potion of  immortality'; but the most of us; I suspect; are of 'queasy  stomachs;' and find it none of the sweetest。 (1)  The  graveyard may be cloak…room to Heaven; but we must admit that  it is a very ugly and offensive vestibule in itself; however  fair may be the life to which it leads。  And though Enoch and  Elias went into the temple through a gate which certainly may  be called Beautiful; the rest of us have to find our way to  it through Ezekiel's low…bowed door and the vault full of  creeping things and all manner of abominable beasts。   Nevertheless; there is a certain frame of mind to which a  cemetery is; if not an antidote; at least an alleviation。  If  you are in a fit of the blues; go nowhere else。  It was in  obedience to this wise regulation that the other morning  found me lighting my pipe at the entrance to Old Greyfriars';  thoroughly s

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