Translations from the German · Thomas Carlyle
MELECHSALA.
These words, spoken with warmth and visible conviction, found free entrance into the open heart of the Princess: especially, the glory, it appeared to her, must be a sort of head-dress that would sit not ill upon the face. Her quick fancy fastened on this idea, which she asked to have explained; and the Count with all eagerness embraced this opportunity of painting the Christian Heaven to her as charming as he possibly could; he chose the loveliest images his mind would suggest; and spoke with as much confidence as if he had descended directly from the place on a mission to the Princess. Now, as it has pleased the Prophet to endow the fair sex with very scanty expectations in the other world, our apostolic preacher failed the less in his intentions; though it cannot be asserted that he was preeminently qualified for the missionary duty. But whether it were that Heaven itself favoured the work of conversion, or that the foreign tastes of the Princess extended to the spiritual conceptions of the Western nations, or that the person of this Preacher to the Heathen mixed in the effect, certain it is she was all ear, and would have listened to her pedagogue with pleasure for many hours longer, had not the approach of night cut short their lesson. For the present, she hastily dropped her veil, and retired to the Seraglio.
It is a well-known fact, that the children of princes are always very docile, and make giant steps in every branch of profitable knowledge, as our Journals often plainly enough testify; while the other citizens of this world must content themselves with dwarf steps. It was not surprising, therefore, that the Sultan of Egypt's daughter had in a short space mastered the whole synopsis of Church doctrine as completely as her teacher could impart it, bating a few heresies, which, in his inacquaintance with the delicate shades of faith, he had undesignedly mingled with it. Nor did this acquisition remain a dead letter with her; it awakened the most zealous wish for proselytising. Accordingly, the plan of the Princess had now in so far altered, that she no longer insisted on converting the Count, but rather felt inclined to let herself be converted by him; and this not only in regard to unity in faith, but also to the purposed unity in love. The whole question now was, by what means this intention could be realised. She took counsel with Bostangi, he with the mettled Kurt, in their nocturnal deliberations on this weighty matter; and the latter voted distinctly to strike the iron while it was hot; to inform the fair proselyte of the Count's rank and birth; propose to her to run away with him; instantly to cross the water for the European shore; and live together in Thuringia as Christian man and wife.
The Count clapped loud applause to this well-grounded scheme of his wise Squire; it was as if the mettled Kurt had read it in his master's eyes. Whether the fulfilment of it might be clogged with difficulties or not, was a point not taken into view in the first fire of the romantic project: Love removes all mountains, overleaps walls and trenches, bounds across abyss and chasm, and steps the barrier of a city as lightly as it does a straw. At the next lecture, the Count disclosed the plan to his beloved catechumena. "Thou reflection of the Holy Virgin," said he, "chosen of Heaven from an outcast people, to gain the victory over prejudice and error, and acquire a lot and inheritance in the Abodes of Felicity, hast thou the courage to forsake thy native country, then prepare for speedy flight. I will guide thee to Rome, where dwells the Porter of Heaven, St. Peter's deputy, to whom are committed the keys of Heaven's gate; that he may receive thee into the bosom of the Church, and bless the covenant of our love. Fear not that thy father's potent arm may reach us; every cloud above our heads will be a ship manned with angelic hosts, with diamond shields and flaming swords; invisible indeed to mortal eye, but armed with heavenly might, and appointed to watch and guard thee. Nor will I conceal any longer, that I am, by birth and fortune, all that the Sultan's favour could make me; a Count, that is a Bey born, who rules over land and people. The limits of my lordship include towns and villages, palaces also and strongholds. Knights and squires obey me; horses and carriages stand ready for my service. In my native land, thou thyself, enclosed by no walls of a seraglio, shalt live and rule in freedom as a queen."
This oration of the Count the Princess thought a message from above; she entertained no doubts of his truth; and it seemed to please her that the Ringdove was to nestle, not beside a Linnet, but beside a bird of the family of the Eagle. Her warm fancy was filled with such sweet anticipations, that she consented, with all the alacrity of the Children of Israel, to forsake the land of Egypt, as if a new Canaan, in another quarter of the world, had been waiting her beyond the sea. Confident in the protection of the unseen life-guard promised to her, she would have followed her conductor from the precincts of the Palace forthwith, had he not instructed her that many preparations were required, before the great enterprise could be engaged in with any hope of a happy issue.
Among all privateering transactions by sea or land, there is none more ticklish, or combined with greater difficulties, than that of kidnapping the Grand Signior's favourite from his arms. Such a masterstroke could only be imagined by the teeming fancy of a W*z*l,[25] nor could any but a Kakerlak achieve it. Yet the undertaking of Count Ernst of Gleichen to carry off the Sultan of Egypt's daughter, was environed with no fewer difficulties; and as these two heroes come, to a certain extent, into competition in this matter, we must say, that the adventure of the Count was infinitely bolder, seeing everything proceeded merely by the course of Nature, and no serviceable Fairy put a finger in the pie: nevertheless, the result of both these corresponding enterprises, in the one as well as in the other, came about entirely to the wish of parties. The Princess filled her jewel-box sufficiently with precious stones; changed her royal garment with a Kaftan; and one evening, under the safe-conduct of her beloved, his trusty Squire and the phlegmatic Water-drawer, glided forth from the Palace into the Garden, unobserved, to enter on her far journey to the West.
Her absence could not long remain concealed; her women sought her, as the proverb runs, like a lost pin; and as she did not come to light, the alarm in the Seraglio became boundless. Hints here and there had already been dropped, and surmises made, about the private audiences of the Bostangi; supposition and fact were strung together; and the whole produced, in sooth, no row of pearls, but the horrible discovery of the real nature of the case. The Divan of Dames had nothing for it but to send advice of the occurrence to the higher powers. Father Sultan, whom the virtuous Melechsala, everything considered, might have spared this pang, and avoided flying her country to make purchase of a glory, demeaned himself at this intelligence like an infuriated lion, who shakes his brown mane with dreadful bellowing, when by the uproar of the hunt, and the baying of the hounds, he is frightened from his den. He swore by the Prophet's beard that he would utterly destroy every living soul in the Seraglio, if at sunrise the Princess were not again in her father's power. The Mameluke guard had to mount, and gallop towards the four winds, in chase of the fugitives, by every road from Cairo; and a thousand oars were lashing the broad back of the Nile, in case she might have taken a passage by water.
This worthy Israelite, who for money and money's worth, stood ready, without investigating moral tendencies, for any sort of deed, the trusty Squire had prevailed on, by a jewel from the casket of the Princess, to undertake the transport of the Count, whose rank and intention were not concealed from him, with three servants, to a Venetian ship that was loading at Alexandria; but it had prudently been hidden from him, that in the course of this contraband transaction, he must smuggle out his master's daughter. On first inspecting his cargo, the figure of the fair youth struck him somewhat; but he thought no ill of it, and took him for a page of the Count's. Ere long the report of the Princess Melechsala's disappearance sounded over all the city: then Adullam's eyes were opened; deadly terror took possession of his heart, so that his gray beard began to stir, and he wished with all his soul that his hands had been free of this perilous concern. But now it was too late; his own safety required him to summon all his cunning, and conduct this breakneck business to a happy end. In the first place, he laid his subterranean lodgers under rigorous quarantine; and then, after the sharpest of the search was over, the hope of finding the Princess considerably faded, and the zeal in seeking for her cooled, he packed the whole caravan neatly up in four bales of herbs, put them on board a Nile-boat, and sent them with a proper invoice, under God's guidance, safe and sound to Alexandria; where so soon as the Venetian had gained the open sea, they were liberated, all and sundry, from their strait confinement in the herb-sacks.[26]
The mettled Kurt rejoiced to meet a countryman, and hear the sound of his mother-tongue; but saw no profit in submitting his concerns to the questioning of a stranger, and answered briefly: "From sea." "Who is the gentleman thou followest?" "My master." "From what country come you?" "From the East." "Whither are you going?" "To the West." "To what province?" "To our home." "Where is it?" "Miles of road from this." "What is thy name?" "Start-the-game, that is my name. Strike-for-a-word, people call my sword. Sorrow-of-life, so hight my wife. Rise, Lig-a-bed, she cries to her maid. Still-at-a-stand, that is my man. Hobbletehoy, I christened my boy. Lank-i'-the-bag, I scold my nag. Shamble-and-stalk, we call his walk. Trot-i'-the-bog, I whistle my dog. Saw-ye-that, so jumps my cat. Snug-in-the-rug, he is my bug. Now thou knowest me, with wife and child, and all my household." "Thou seemest to me to be a queer fellow." "I am no fellow at all, for I follow no handicraft." "Answer me one question." "Let us hear it." "Hast thou any news of Count Ernst of Gleichen, from the East?" "Wherefore dost thou ask?" "Therefore." "Twiddle, twaddle! Wherefore, therefore!" "Because I am sent into all the world by the Countess Ottilia his wife, to get her word whether her husband is still living, and in what corner of the Earth he may be found."
This answer put the mettled Kurt into some perplexity; and tuned him to another key. "Wait a little, neighbour," said he; "perhaps my master knows about the thing." Thereupon he ran to the Count, and whispered the tidings in his ear. The feeling they awoke was complex; made up in equal proportions of joy and consternation. Count Ernst perceived that his dream, or the interpretation of it, had misled him; and that the conceit of marrying his fair travelling companion might easily be baulked. On the spur of the moment he knew not how he should get out of this embroiled affair: meanwhile, the desire to learn how matters stood at home outweighed all scruples. He beckoned to the emissary, whom he soon recognised for his old valet; and who wetted with joyful tears the hand of his recovered master, and told in many words what jubilee the Countess would make, when she received the happy message of her husband's return. The Count took him with the rest to the inn; and there engaged in earnest meditation on the singular state of his heart, and considered deeply what was to be done with his engagements to the fair Saracen. Without loss of time the watchful spy was dispatched to the Countess with a letter, containing a true statement of the Count's fortunes in slavery at Cairo, and of his deliverance by means of the Sultan's daughter; how she had abandoned throne and country for his sake, under the condition that he was to marry her, which he himself, deceived by a dream, had promised. By this narrative he meant not only to prepare his wife for a participatress in her marriage rights; but also endeavoured, in the course of it, by many sound arguments, to gain her own consent to the arrangement.
Countess Ottilia was standing at the window in her mourning weeds, as the news-bringer for the last time gave his breathless horse the spur, to hasten it up the steep Castle-path. Her sharp eye recognised him in the distance; and he too being nothing of a blinkard,--a class of persons very rare in the days of the Crusades,--recognised the Countess also, raised the letter-bag aloft over his head, and waved it like a standard in token of good news; and the lady understood his signal, as well as if the Hanau _Synthematograph_ had been on duty there. "Hast thou found him, the husband of my heart?" cried she, as he approached. "Where lingers he, that I may rise and wipe the sweat from his brow, and let him rest in my faithful arms from his toilsome journeying?"--"Joy to you, my lady," said the post; "his lordship is well. I found him in the Port of Venice, from which he sends you this under his hand and seal, to announce his arrival himself." The Countess could not hastily enough undo the seal; and at sight of her husband's hand, she felt as if the breath of life were coming back to her. Three times she pressed the letter to her beating heart, and three times touched it with her languishing lips. A shower of joyful tears streamed over the parchment, as she began reading: but the farther she read, the drops fell the slower; and before the reading was completed, the fountain of tears had dried up altogether.
The contents of the letter could not all interest the good lady equally; her husband's proposed partition treaty of his heart had not the happiness to meet with her approval. Greatly as the spirit of partition has acquired the upper hand nowadays, so that parted love and parted provinces have become the device of our century; these things were little to the taste of old times, when every heart had its own key, and a master-key that would open several was regarded as a scandalous thief-picklock. The intolerance of the Countess in this point was at least a proof of her unvarnished love: "Ah! that doleful Crusade," cried she, "is the cause of it all. I lent the Holy Church a Loaf, of which the Heathen have eaten; and nothing but a Crust of it returns to me." A vision of the night, however, soothed her troubled mind, and gave her whole view of the affair another aspect. She dreamed that there came two pilgrims from the Holy Sepulchre up the winding Castle-road, and begged a lodging, which she kindly granted them. One of them threw off his cloak, and behold it was the Count her lord! She joyfully embraced him, and was in raptures at his return.
The children too came in, and he clasped them in his paternal arms, pressed them to his heart, and praised their looks and growth. Meanwhile his companion laid aside his travelling pouch; drew from it golden chains and precious strings of jewelry, and hung them round the necks of the little ones, who showed delighted with these glittering presents. The Countess was herself surprised at this munificence, and asked the stranger who he was. He answered: "I am the Angel Raphael, the guide of the loving, and have brought thy husband to thee out of foreign lands." His pilgrim garments melted away; and a shining angel stood before her, in an azure robe, with two golden wings on his shoulders. Thereupon she awoke, and, in the absence of an Egyptian Sibyl, herself interpreted the dream according to her best skill; and found so many points of similarity between the Angel Raphael and the Princess Melechsala, that she doubted not the latter had been shadowed forth to her in vision under the figure of the former. At the same time she took into consideration the fact that, without her help, the Count could scarcely ever have escaped from slavery. And as it behoves the owner of a lost piece of property to deal generously with the finder, who might have kept it all to himself, she no longer hesitated to resolve on the surrender. The water-bailiff, well rewarded for his watchfulness, was therefore dispatched forthwith back into Italy, with the formal consent of the Countess for her husband to complete the trefoil of his marriage without loss of time.
The only question now was, whether Father Gregory at Rome would give his benediction to this matrimonial anomaly; and be persuaded, for the Count's sake, to refound, by the word of his mouth, the substance, form and essence of the Sacrament of Marriage. The pilgrimage accordingly set forth from Venice to Rome, where the Princess Melechsala solemnly abjured the Koran, and entered into the bosom of the Church. At this spiritual conquest the Holy Father testified as much delight as if the kingdom of Antichrist had been entirely destroyed, or reduced under subjection to the Romish chair; and after the baptism, on which occasion she had changed her Saracenic name for the more orthodox _Angelica_, he caused a pompous _Te-deum_ to be celebrated in St. Peter's. These happy aspects Count Ernst endeavoured to improve for his purpose, before the Pope's good-humour should evaporate. He brought his matrimonial concern to light without delay: but, alas! no sooner asked than rejected. The conscience of St. Peter's Vicar was so tender in this case, that he reckoned it a greater heresy to advocate triplicity in marriage than Tritheism itself.
Many plausible arguments as the Count brought forward to accomplish an exception from the common rule in his own favour, they availed no jot in moving the exemplary Pope to wink with one eye of his conscience, and vouchsafe the petitioned dispensation: a result which cut Count Ernst to the heart. His sly counsel, the mettled Kurt, had in the mean time struck out a bright expedient for accomplishing the marriage of his master with the fair convert, to the satisfaction of the Pope and Christendom in general; only he had not risked disclosing it, lest it might cost him his master's favour. Yet at last he found his opportunity, and put the matter into words. "Dear master," said he, "do not vex yourself so much about the Pope's perverseness. If you cannot get round him on the one side, you must try him on the other: there are more roads to the wood than one. If the Holy Father has too tender a conscience to permit your taking two wives, then it is fair for you also to have a tender conscience, though you are no priest but a layman. Conscience is a cloak that covers every hole, and has withal the quality that it can be turned according to the wind: at present, when the wind is cross, you must put the cloak on the other shoulder. Examine whether you are not related to the Countess Ottilia within the prohibited degrees: if so, as will surely be the case, if you have a tender conscience, then the game is your own. Get a divorce; and who the deuce can hinder you from wedding the Princess then?"
The Count had listened to his Squire till the sense of his oration was completely before him; then he answered it with two words, shortly and clearly: "Peace, Dog!" In the same moment, the mettled Kurt found himself lying at full length without the door, and seeking for a tooth or two which had dropped from him in this rapid transit. "Ah! the precious tooth," cried he from without, "has been sacrificed to my faithful zeal!" This tooth monologue reminded the Count of his dream. "Ah! the cursed tooth," cried he from within, "which I dreamed of losing, has been the cause of all this mischief!" His heart, between self-reproaches for unfaithfulness to his amiable wife, and for prohibited love to the charming Angelica, kept wavering like a bell, which yields a sound on both sides, when set in motion. Still more than the flame of his passion, the fire of indignation burnt and gnawed him, now that he saw the visible impossibility of ever keeping his word to the Princess, and taking her in wedlock. All which distresses, by the way, led him to the just experimental conclusion, that a parted heart is not the most desirable of things; and that the lover, in these circumstances, but too much resembles the Ass Baldwin between his two bundles of hay.
In such a melancholy posture of affairs, he lost his jovial humour altogether, and wore the aspect of an atrabiliar, whom in bad weather the atmosphere oppresses till the spleen is like to crush the soul out of his body. Princess Angelica observed that her lover's looks were no longer as yesterday, and ere-yesterday: it grieved her soft heart, and moved her to resolve on making trial whether she should not be more successful, if she took the dispensation business in her own hand. She requested audience of the conscientious Gregory; and appeared before him closely veiled, according to the fashion of her country. No Roman eye had yet seen her face, except the priest who baptised her. His Holiness received the new-born daughter of the Church with all suitable respect, offered her the palm of his right hand to kiss, and not his perfumed slipper. The fair stranger raised her veil a little to touch the sacred hand with her lips; then opened her mouth, and clothed her petition in a touching address. Yet this insinuation through the Papal ear seemed not sufficiently to know the interior organisation of the Head of the Church; for instead of taking the road to the heart, it passed through the other ear out into the air. Father Gregory expostulated long with the lovely supplicant; and imagined he had found a method for in some degree contenting her desire of union with a bridegroom, without offence to the ordinations of the Church: he proposed to her a spiritual wedlock, if she could resolve on a slight change of the veil, the Saracenic for the Nun's. This proposal suddenly awakened in the Princess such a horror at veils, that she directly tore away her own; sank full of despair before the holy footstool, and with uplifted hands and tearful eyes, conjured the venerable Father by his sacred slipper, not to do violence to her heart, and constrain her to bestow it elsewhere.
The sight of her beauty was more eloquent than her lips; it enraptured all present; and the tear which gathered in her heavenly eye fell like a burning drop of naphtha on the Holy Father's heart, and kindled the small fraction of earthly tinder that still lay hid there, and warmed it into sympathy for the petitioner. "Rise, beloved daughter," said he, "and weep not! What has been determined in Heaven, shall be fulfilled in thee on Earth. In three days thou shalt know whether this thy first prayer to the Church can be granted by that gracious Mother, or must be denied." Thereupon he summoned an assembly of all the Casuists in Rome; had a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine distributed to each; and locked them up in the Rotunda, with the warning that no one of them should be let out again till the question had been determined unanimously. So long as the loaves and wine held out, the disputes were so violent, that all the Saints, had they been convened in the church, could not have argued with greater noise. But so soon as the Digestive Faculty began to have a voice in the meeting, he was listened to with the deepest attention, and happily he spoke in favour of the Count, who had got a sumptuous feast made ready for the entertainment of the casuistic Doctors, when the Papal seal should be removed from their door. The Bull of Dispensation was drawn out in proper form of law; in furtherance of which the fair Angelica had, not at all reluctantly, inflicted a determined cut upon the treasures of Egypt. Father Gregory bestowed his benediction on the noble pair, and sent them away betrothed. They lost no time in leaving Peter's Patrimony for the territories of the Count, to celebrate their nuptials on arriving.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.