PukeOnABook

Rahan. Episode Sixty Four. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Guy Zam. The eye that sees far. The torrent of lava had spread to the shore, releasing such strong heat that the fine sand had melted, itself flowing into the sea. And, the anger of the volcano was appeased. The sea had thrown up translucent rocks into the coves, which it had shattered into fragments more numerous than the stars. Then the waves, patiently, had worn away these shards, and had polished them to make sparkling pebbles! But all this had happened many centuries before the son of Crao discovered this shore. Page Two. If the son of Crao had recently fled a clan that meant him no harm, it was quite different this morning! The long, pointed spears struck closer and closer behind him. Oh! Rahan should have stayed in the forest! “Hair of Fire” Will not go any further! He is at our mercy! The fugitive, in fact, should have stopped at the edge of the cliff, which dominated the ocean. But why do you want to steal Rahan's life? What did he do to you? A few spears still whistled. The son of Crao, surrounded by these men of whom he knew nothing, had only one chance left to escape them. The jump into the void! Page Three. As the semi-circle of hunters closed, he did not hesitate any longer. It was a fantastic dive but Rahan had achieved even more dangerous ones! A clamor of stupefaction arose. “Hair of Fire” preferred to kill himself! He steals our fish, it is good that he is devoured by the fish! Fortunately, the water was deep. The son of Crao sank into it with the force of a rock spat out by the thundering mountain! And the amazement was at its height when he reappeared on the surface. The fact that he could “Crawl on water” was amazing to these men. Did they dream again? Death to the thief! The chief's savage order brought these hunters back to reality. Page Four. Rahan saw the spears coming at a crazy speed. They were falling straight towards him! He only had time. To let himself sink, narrowly escaping this deadly rain. They brushed against Rahan so closely that the hunters might have thought that they had hit him! And indeed. Arakan's prediction has finally come true brothers! We have killed the thief, "Hair-of-Fire"! Swimming near the cliff that had been hollowed out by the waves, the son of Crao could no longer be seen by the hunters. Oh! What a strange shore! At an arrow's distance, the cliff fell abruptly onto a large cove. A cove, whose sand sparkled, shimmered like a lake in the sunlight! Page Five. Oh! A few sharks were floating here and there but Rahan noticed that the fish were very rare. The bottom was lined with curious translucent pebbles, which in less clear water would have been invisible. The one that Rahan brought to the surface looked like a tear. The petrified tear of a gigantic monster! A “water stone”! Rahan has never seen such a beautiful stone! The huge drop of glass sparkled wonderfully. The “Stone-of-water” is more wonderful, more brilliant than the knife of Rahan. But the sharks were getting dangerously close and the son of Crao had to think about his own fate. With you "water stone", Rahan would not escape the "blue skins"! Page Six. Abandoning the "Thing" at the depths, he swam vigorously towards the cove that had so intrigued him. A moment later he approached the sparkling shore. It was covered with shards of glass of all sizes and shapes. Some were sharp like flint, but others were more like "water stone." Some were round like an eye, others round like an almond. And they all sparkled with a thousand lights. Are you once "Water Stones" that were broken on these rocks? Only the “blue-skins” could say that! The sharks retreated towards the open sea and suddenly the son of Crao screamed in astonishment. Oh! Page Seven. Looking through the transparent stone, a huge finger was revealed! When he moved his hand away, this finger became blurred and disappeared. While he meditated on this new mystery. Your prediction was right, Arakan! We chased a man with “Fire Hair” who was roaming in the forest and we killed him! Arakan the soothsayer turned towards the totem. Dahar is too sure of himself! The grand fish tells Arakan that this man is still alive! He will come back to steal our fish again! We do not know how to crawl on water. But if the “blue-skins” have not devoured “Fire-hair”. The great river will throw his corpse back on the shore. We will bring it back to you, Arakan! The son of Crao, however, went from discovery to discovery. Under the glass eye, everything became fantastic. The heart of flowers became like a crater. Page Eight. And the tiny ants turned into monsters! The flat tear shows Rahan what he would never have seen! The flat tear has wonderful power! Rahan must protect it! Bamboo had already allowed him countless discoveries. The first sheath of his cutlass. Javelins and three-headed arrows. Soft poles and light travois. And the oil torch. And some that he had forgotten! This time the bamboo became a case, into which he slipped the precious glass lens. And the bamboos will allow Rahan to leave this shore! He will flee the cliff clan, which kills for no reason! The great river will carry him to the other land. The other land was this distant island that could barely be seen on the horizon. Page Nine. Oh! What? What? Although he shook the case hard, the “Tear of Water” did not come out! And he noticed that it was stuck in the bamboo, just behind the narrow hole in the groove. Rahan will dislodge you rom there! More impatient, and irritated, the son of Crao turned the case over and hit the ground with it several times. Oh! Not only had the "Tear of Water" not moved, but a second shard of glass had become stuck in the end of the tube. Everything so far had been astonishing. But when Rahan brought the bamboo to his eye, the effect was prodigious! The landscape had suddenly closed in on him, encircling him as if to bury him! Page Ten. The distant island now seemed very close, although slightly blurry. The image suggested the creeks, the coconut trees, the huts of a village! “The eye that sees far”! Rahan has discovered “the eye that sees far”! In his enthusiasm, the son of Crao wanted to see everything. The birds on the crest of the hills, And that's how he saw the cliff clan. Leaving their village, the hunters went down the only track that led to the shore, to the cove where he was! The hunters have new spears! Without “the eye that sees far,” Rahan would have seen them too late! But they are still very far away and Rahan has time to set a trap for them! Page Eleven. However. If the great river has rejected "Firehair", we will find his corpse in the cove of the sun! The son of Crao was finishing his "Trap" when he heard those from the cliff. The great stump rose higher and higher. He was ready! Rahan will probably die! But he will not leave for the territory of shadows without fighting! Ra-ha-ha! When Dahar and his hunters appeared, rushing towards the creek, Rahan released the heavy stump! Brutally cut down, ten men collapsed. They were only momentarily out of combat, but the effect of surprise was decisive! Page Twelve. Are you a demon “Fire Hair”? You jump off the cliff without your body bursting! You avoid our spears and you escape the “Blue skins.” Only a demon can do that! So why were you lying in wait for us? Without knowing what we were looking for!? Rahan is not a demon! He is the son of Crao! Rahan has been watching for you for a long time, thanks to “The Eye That Sees Far”! But why are you tracking him? Because you have stolen our fish too often! Arakan-the-soothsayer has always told us that a man with fiery hair slips into the village at night to steal fish. Dahar and his brothers often kept watch to capture him. But in vain! We were beginning to think that Arakan was wrong when, this morning, we saw you! But why do you come and steal the fish that we have so much difficulty perching, you who know how to crawl on the water!? The son of Crao was devastated. Arakan is crazy! Rahan had never seen your village before seeing it in the far-seeing eye! Like this! Look for yourself. Page thirteen. Incredulous, Dahar brought the bamboo to his eye. At first he had an expression of wonder, but then his face suddenly tightened. Arakan! Dahar understands why he said that "hair-of-Fire" was not dead! Although the scene was imprecise, it was not misleading. All the way up in the deserted village, Arakan the soothsayer took the last fish drying in the sun! If "The Eye That Sees Far" tells the truth, Arakan will be punished! And you, “Fire Hair”, you will become our brother! Follow us! Arakan-the-soothsayer was in ecstasy in front of the totem when his own appeared. We are bringing back "Fire-hair" Arakan! Hum! Hum! Let this demon be slain immediately! He will be if Dahar does not find what he thinks he finds! The clan chief rushed towards the “Soothsayer’s” hut. Page Fourteen. He came out almost immediately. Look, brothers! And there are just as many under his mattress! For many moons, Arakan has been deceiving us! Let him be delivered to the “Blue Skins”! Do not do that! Arakan may have wanted to. Wanted what? To live for himself alone! This cheat does not deserve your pity! They were already dragging Arakan towards the cliff. The rare fish that wash up barely feed our clan! Arkan knew it! To deceive us, he imagined an elusive "Theif with hair of fire." He probably believed that this hair color did not exist, and that he could abuse our trust for a long time! But he, the soothsayer, did not know that a fiery-haired hunter would one day venture into our territory! Page Fifteen. Without "The Eye That Sees Far" his crime would never have been discovered! They barely heard the howl of terror of Arakan as he was thrown into the great river. This “Eye” is magnificent! “Hair-of-fire” should make more for our hunters! Rahan will try! In the days that followed, the son of Crao often returned to the "creek of the sun". He built a bamboo skiff there. And sought to make another “Eye that sees far.” But everything was an obstacle. The length of the cases. The shape of the shards of glass. Chance, which had revealed a marvelous secret to Rahan, was not repeated! And millennia would pass before man invented his telescope. Page Sixteen. And one morning, while the great river roared, the son of Crao admitted his failure Rahan does not know how to remake "The Eye That Sees Far"! Rahan did everything to understand. But there is too much mystery in this “Eye”! You have to believe Rahan, brothers! Believe me! But understand that Rahan is just a hunter like you! From the hostile hubbub that he raised, the son of Crao understood that his good faith was doubted. Rahan does not want to dominate his brothers with a magic item! Rahan only wants to be their friend! He can prove it by giving your chief the eye that sees far! Dahar took the bamboo with a trembling hand. Rahan is loyal! But how will he see now? With his simple eyes, like all hunters! Page Seventeen. And his eyes are still good enough to show him that the great river is carrying away his skiff! The bamboo raft sailed away on the waves. Stay with us, brother! We will share “The Eye That Sees Far”! No, Dahar! Rahan never takes root in a territory! He saw, on the distant island, the huts of another tribe! That is where he will go! This is where he will discover other mysteries! Goodbye Brothers! God or demon? The hunters of Dahar would not have been able to tell. The being who stood on the cliff looked so much like them! Ra-ha-ha! Everyone rushed forward when, repeating his incredible feat, he plunged into the great river. Page Eighteen. And they saw him, beating the "Blue-skins" in speed, climb onto the tiny bamboo skiff. Faster, “Blue-skins”! Faster! Rahan wants you to escort him to the other land, ha-ha-ha! Laughing in the spray, the son of Crao saluted Dahar and his clan who were watching him from the top of the great cliff. Was this a good or bad spirit Dahar? Neither brother! He was only a man! In “The Eye That sees Far” the image was dulled and distorted. But Dahar's tears were the cause. Because even in those fierce times, where it was necessary to kill in order to survive, “Those-who-walk-upright” were capable of emotion. Rahan. Episode Sixty Four. By Roger Lecureux. The eye that sees far. A Puke (TM) Comic. Rahan. Episode Sixty Four. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Guy Zam. The eye that sees far. The torrent of lava had spread to the shore, releasing such strong heat that the fine sand had melted, itself flowing into the sea. And, the anger of the volcano was appeased. The sea had thrown up translucent rocks into the coves, which it had shattered into fragments more numerous than the stars. Then the waves, patiently, had worn away these shards, and had polished them to make sparkling pebbles! But all this had happened many centuries before the son of Crao discovered this shore. Page Two. If the son of Crao had recently fled a clan that meant him no harm, it was quite different this morning! The long, pointed spears struck closer and closer behind him. Oh! Rahan should have stayed in the forest! “Hair of Fire” Will not go any further! He is at our mercy! The fugitive, in fact, should have stopped at the edge of the cliff, which dominated the ocean. But why do you want to steal Rahan's life? What did he do to you? A few spears still whistled. The son of Crao, surrounded by these men of whom he knew nothing, had only one chance left to escape them. The jump into the void! Page Three. As the semi-circle of hunters closed, he did not hesitate any longer. It was a fantastic dive but Rahan had achieved even more dangerous ones! A clamor of stupefaction arose. “Hair of Fire” preferred to kill himself! He steals our fish, it is good that he is devoured by the fish! Fortunately, the water was deep. The son of Crao sank into it with the force of a rock spat out by the thundering mountain! And the amazement was at its height when he reappeared on the surface. The fact that he could “Crawl on water” was amazing to these men. Did they dream again? Death to the thief! The chief's savage order brought these hunters back to reality. Page Four. Rahan saw the spears coming at a crazy speed. They were falling straight towards him! He only had time. To let himself sink, narrowly escaping this deadly rain. They brushed against Rahan so closely that the hunters might have thought that they had hit him! And indeed. Arakan's prediction has finally come true brothers! We have killed the thief, "Hair-of-Fire"! Swimming near the cliff that had been hollowed out by the waves, the son of Crao could no longer be seen by the hunters. Oh! What a strange shore! At an arrow's distance, the cliff fell abruptly onto a large cove. A cove, whose sand sparkled, shimmered like a lake in the sunlight! Page Five. Oh! A few sharks were floating here and there but Rahan noticed that the fish were very rare. The bottom was lined with curious translucent pebbles, which in less clear water would have been invisible. The one that Rahan brought to the surface looked like a tear. The petrified tear of a gigantic monster! A “water stone”! Rahan has never seen such a beautiful stone! The huge drop of glass sparkled wonderfully. The “Stone-of-water” is more wonderful, more brilliant than the knife of Rahan. But the sharks were getting dangerously close and the son of Crao had to think about his own fate. With you "water stone", Rahan would not escape the "blue skins"! Page Six. Abandoning the "Thing" at the depths, he swam vigorously towards the cove that had so intrigued him. A moment later he approached the sparkling shore. It was covered with shards of glass of all sizes and shapes. Some were sharp like flint, but others were more like "water stone." Some were round like an eye, others round like an almond. And they all sparkled with a thousand lights. Are you once "Water Stones" that were broken on these rocks? Only the “blue-skins” could say that! The sharks retreated towards the open sea and suddenly the son of Crao screamed in astonishment. Oh! Page Seven. Looking through the transparent stone, a huge finger was revealed! When he moved his hand away, this finger became blurred and disappeared. While he meditated on this new mystery. Your prediction was right, Arakan! We chased a man with “Fire Hair” who was roaming in the forest and we killed him! Arakan the soothsayer turned towards the totem. Dahar is too sure of himself! The grand fish tells Arakan that this man is still alive! He will come back to steal our fish again! We do not know how to crawl on water. But if the “blue-skins” have not devoured “Fire-hair”. The great river will throw his corpse back on the shore. We will bring it back to you, Arakan! The son of Crao, however, went from discovery to discovery. Under the glass eye, everything became fantastic. The heart of flowers became like a crater. Page Eight. And the tiny ants turned into monsters! The flat tear shows Rahan what he would never have seen! The flat tear has wonderful power! Rahan must protect it! Bamboo had already allowed him countless discoveries. The first sheath of his cutlass. Javelins and three-headed arrows. Soft poles and light travois. And the oil torch. And some that he had forgotten! This time the bamboo became a case, into which he slipped the precious glass lens. And the bamboos will allow Rahan to leave this shore! He will flee the cliff clan, which kills for no reason! The great river will carry him to the other land. The other land was this distant island that could barely be seen on the horizon. Page Nine. Oh! What? What? Although he shook the case hard, the “Tear of Water” did not come out! And he noticed that it was stuck in the bamboo, just behind the narrow hole in the groove. Rahan will dislodge you rom there! More impatient, and irritated, the son of Crao turned the case over and hit the ground with it several times. Oh! Not only had the "Tear of Water" not moved, but a second shard of glass had become stuck in the end of the tube. Everything so far had been astonishing. But when Rahan brought the bamboo to his eye, the effect was prodigious! The landscape had suddenly closed in on him, encircling him as if to bury him! Page Ten. The distant island now seemed very close, although slightly blurry. The image suggested the creeks, the coconut trees, the huts of a village! “The eye that sees far”! Rahan has discovered “the eye that sees far”! In his enthusiasm, the son of Crao wanted to see everything. The birds on the crest of the hills, And that's how he saw the cliff clan. Leaving their village, the hunters went down the only track that led to the shore, to the cove where he was! The hunters have new spears! Without “the eye that sees far,” Rahan would have seen them too late! But they are still very far away and Rahan has time to set a trap for them! Page Eleven. However. If the great river has rejected "Firehair", we will find his corpse in the cove of the sun! The son of Crao was finishing his "Trap" when he heard those from the cliff. The great stump rose higher and higher. He was ready! Rahan will probably die! But he will not leave for the territory of shadows without fighting! Ra-ha-ha! When Dahar and his hunters appeared, rushing towards the creek, Rahan released the heavy stump! Brutally cut down, ten men collapsed. They were only momentarily out of combat, but the effect of surprise was decisive! Page Twelve. Are you a demon “Fire Hair”? You jump off the cliff without your body bursting! You avoid our spears and you escape the “Blue skins.” Only a demon can do that! So why were you lying in wait for us? Without knowing what we were looking for!? Rahan is not a demon! He is the son of Crao! Rahan has been watching for you for a long time, thanks to “The Eye That Sees Far”! But why are you tracking him? Because you have stolen our fish too often! Arakan-the-soothsayer has always told us that a man with fiery hair slips into the village at night to steal fish. Dahar and his brothers often kept watch to capture him. But in vain! We were beginning to think that Arakan was wrong when, this morning, we saw you! But why do you come and steal the fish that we have so much difficulty perching, you who know how to crawl on the water!? The son of Crao was devastated. Arakan is crazy! Rahan had never seen your village before seeing it in the far-seeing eye! Like this! Look for yourself. Page thirteen. Incredulous, Dahar brought the bamboo to his eye. At first he had an expression of wonder, but then his face suddenly tightened. Arakan! Dahar understands why he said that "hair-of-Fire" was not dead! Although the scene was imprecise, it was not misleading. All the way up in the deserted village, Arakan the soothsayer took the last fish drying in the sun! If "The Eye That Sees Far" tells the truth, Arakan will be punished! And you, “Fire Hair”, you will become our brother! Follow us! Arakan-the-soothsayer was in ecstasy in front of the totem when his own appeared. We are bringing back "Fire-hair" Arakan! Hum! Hum! Let this demon be slain immediately! He will be if Dahar does not find what he thinks he finds! The clan chief rushed towards the “Soothsayer’s” hut. Page Fourteen. He came out almost immediately. Look, brothers! And there are just as many under his mattress! For many moons, Arakan has been deceiving us! Let him be delivered to the “Blue Skins”! Do not do that! Arakan may have wanted to. Wanted what? To live for himself alone! This cheat does not deserve your pity! They were already dragging Arakan towards the cliff. The rare fish that wash up barely feed our clan! Arkan knew it! To deceive us, he imagined an elusive "Theif with hair of fire." He probably believed that this hair color did not exist, and that he could abuse our trust for a long time! But he, the soothsayer, did not know that a fiery-haired hunter would one day venture into our territory! Page Fifteen. Without "The Eye That Sees Far" his crime would never have been discovered! They barely heard the howl of terror of Arakan as he was thrown into the great river. This “Eye” is magnificent! “Hair-of-fire” should make more for our hunters! Rahan will try! In the days that followed, the son of Crao often returned to the "creek of the sun". He built a bamboo skiff there. And sought to make another “Eye that sees far.” But everything was an obstacle. The length of the cases. The shape of the shards of glass. Chance, which had revealed a marvelous secret to Rahan, was not repeated! And millennia would pass before man invented his telescope. Page Sixteen. And one morning, while the great river roared, the son of Crao admitted his failure Rahan does not know how to remake "The Eye That Sees Far"! Rahan did everything to understand. But there is too much mystery in this “Eye”! You have to believe Rahan, brothers! Believe me! But understand that Rahan is just a hunter like you! From the hostile hubbub that he raised, the son of Crao understood that his good faith was doubted. Rahan does not want to dominate his brothers with a magic item! Rahan only wants to be their friend! He can prove it by giving your chief the eye that sees far! Dahar took the bamboo with a trembling hand. Rahan is loyal! But how will he see now? With his simple eyes, like all hunters! Page Seventeen. And his eyes are still good enough to show him that the great river is carrying away his skiff! The bamboo raft sailed away on the waves. Stay with us, brother! We will share “The Eye That Sees Far”! No, Dahar! Rahan never takes root in a territory! He saw, on the distant island, the huts of another tribe! That is where he will go! This is where he will discover other mysteries! Goodbye Brothers! God or demon? The hunters of Dahar would not have been able to tell. The being who stood on the cliff looked so much like them! Ra-ha-ha! Everyone rushed forward when, repeating his incredible feat, he plunged into the great river. Page Eighteen. And they saw him, beating the "Blue-skins" in speed, climb onto the tiny bamboo skiff. Faster, “Blue-skins”! Faster! Rahan wants you to escort him to the other land, ha-ha-ha! Laughing in the spray, the son of Crao saluted Dahar and his clan who were watching him from the top of the great cliff. Was this a good or bad spirit Dahar? Neither brother! He was only a man! In “The Eye That sees Far” the image was dulled and distorted. But Dahar's tears were the cause. Because even in those fierce times, where it was necessary to kill in order to survive, “Those-who-walk-upright” were capable of emotion. Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

Written by Christopher Riley and Phil Dolling, 2009. If this isn't science, nothing is. Dedicated to the generations past,and those of the future. With love and respect to all my subscribers and followers. https://rumble.com/v3t4yzj-index-of-science.-music-by-dan-vasc.html

Rahan. Episode Sixty three. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Andre Cheret. The Beast that speaks. The carpet of branches and palm fronds, in the middle of the track, would certainly cover a trap. What a crude camouflage! Only a blind beast could fall for this trap! Amused, the Son of Crao used his momentum to jump the obstacle. He took ten steps and. Oh! A perfectly concealed pit opened beneath him! Although he was a victim, Rahan appreciated this ruse. A false trap, deliberately visible to force the game to jump into the real trap! Rahan would like to know the hunters who had this idea! Page Two. The son of Crao did not have long to wait. “A hairless “four hands”! A “Four hands" with white skin! We captured a “Four Hands”! Aya-the mother never told us that there were “Four Hands” without hair! The “Four Hands” Do not speak. And Rahan speaks! Like you! Four adolescents waved their spears. The oldest had not yet experienced twenty springs. Go and get Aya-the-mother! She must see the “Four-hands-with-white-skin!” Rahan is not a “Four Hands”! Look at his face! Rahan is a hunter like you! A man like you! The young hunters observed Rahan with obvious astonishment. As the son of Crao hoisted himself out of the trap, he saw the old woman that two youths were carrying, sitting on a bamboo. See the strange beast we have captured, Mother! This beast speaks! This beast is cursed, my sons! Kill it! Kill it! Page Three. Why kill a beast that speaks, Mother? A beast that looks so much like Bhra, Ghao, Chram, Vahou!? Aya-the-mother watched Rahan with hatred. Since you decide to spare the beast, let it leave immediately! Let it disappear! No mother! Let us keep it with us! Although he stood on his guard, the son of Crao did not have time to dodge the attack. You will have to choose another way to defeat Rahan, Brothers! His attackers had on their side the vivacity and passion of youth, but Rahan possessed vigor and experience in combat. So the confrontation was quick! Did you want Rahan to stay with you? He will stay, but of his own free will! Page Four. His adversaries stood up, both worried and admiring. The “Speaking Beast” is stronger than the terrible “Gorilla”! But the old woman could not contain her fury. This beast is more formidable than a "Gorilla"! Let it go! Later, mother! Since it speaks, we want to know where she comes from! Rahan will tell you. He knows a lot about “Those-Who-Walk-Upright.” He will teach them to you! No! No! Do not listen to him my sons! Two adolescents were already carrying Aya-the-mother towards a cave. The other two watched every muscle of Rahan. And compared them to theirs. It is true that you look like us! But who are the “Those-Who-Walk-Upright” that you are talking about? But the hunters, that you see! Hunters who live in the mountains, in the forests, along the “waterways.” You lie! Page Five. Vahou, Ghao, Bhra and Chram are the only hunters! If other hunters existed, mother would have told us about them! The son of fierce ages, distraught, allowed himself to be led to the cave. Rahan knows many solitary hunters, but they all knew they belonged to the great horde of “Those-who-walked-upright”! How is it possible that these are unaware of the existence of other men!? Vahou! Chram! Do not listen to the "Talking Beast"! His tongue is made for lying! Do not listen to him! It is you who lies to your sons, Aya! You know very well that, in other territories, men like them are alive! Why let them believe that they are the only hunters!? Shut up! Shut up! If my legs supported me, I would kill you with my own hands! Since when did your legs die, Aya!? Since the day a "Gorilla" attacked our mother! We were too young, too small to defend her. Page Six. Vahou recounted how, one morning, a giant gorilla had thrown Aya-the-mother into a ravine. Aya had survived, but both of her legs had been broken. My little ones. My dear little ones. You will now have to hunt without me. “Ghorya” is our most formidable enemy! He is so strong he could throw that rock ten steps away! We have always escaped him, But one day “Chorya” will surprise us! He will tear off our legs and arms! Do not say these horrible things, Bhra! For the first time Aya-the-mother seemed moved, and Rahan guessed the immense affection she had for her family. If your heart is generous, why do you hate Rahan? So what is your secret, Aya? Page Seven. Shut up! Shut up! The son of Crao did not have time to dodge the heavy pebble. Why treat him as an enemy, mother! The “Talking Beast” did nothing against us! But it seems like his words scare you! As Rahan recovered his senses Aya discreetly poured a pinch of powder into a drink. Oh Vahou, they scare me. They are very scary! But since you want him to stay, go back to hunting! Bring him some food! Enchanted by this change of heart, the adolescents rushed into the foliage. Yes, Rahan. Like you said, I have a secret. A secret that I cannot tell to my own. But maybe you want to drink some of this fruit blood? With joy, Aya! Rahan is happy that you finally consider him a friend! Page Eight. The son of Crao drank in one gulp, and he suddenly felt all his nerves tense, all his muscles tense. He collapsed at the feet of Aya-the-mother. You will remain at my mercy for as long as I decide! But why not kill you immediately!? Rahan had lost none of his lucidity. He heard and saw, but his tongue and his limbs were paralyzed! Unable to move, he felt the ivory tip of his knife seeking his heart! But Aya suddenly dropped the ivory weapon. No! I cannot! A man's life is too precious a thing! But why are you taking away my happiness, Rahan? Aya-the-mother became thoughtful and her voice became soft. Vahou, Chram, Chao and Bhra are not my children but I love them as if they were my own sons. Page Nine. The leaves have greened fifteen times since that cursed day when the clan entrusted these babies to me to go fight those of the red mountains. Everyone left, women and men alike. But none came back! All had perished in the useless and cruel fight! That day. There I swore that children would grow up in ignorance of men and women. As the seasons passed I made them skilled hunters. I taught them everything I knew myself, but I never mentioned their origin and they never suspected the existence of other men! That is my secret, Rahan. If mine knew they would no doubt be tempted by another life, perhaps they would abandon me! But you will not tell them anything! The drug of “False Death” will prevent you from speaking! Ghao and Bhra came running in terror. Mother! Mother! Vahou and Chram are going to die! The "Gorya" will crush them with stones! Page Ten. Panting, they told how their brothers, surprised by the gorilla, had taken refuge in a ravine with no exit. They would not long escape the rocks that "Ghorya" was throwing at them! Aya-the-mother was livid. Her anguished gaze went from her young sons to Rahan. Only you can save mine! But would you accept, after what I did? Yes? Rahan blinked in agreement. Aya poured another brew between his lips. This destroys the effects of the "False Death" drug! A few seconds later, in fact, the son of Crao regained his speech and movement! Lead Rahan to the Ravine! Quickly! Quickly! The old woman watched him disappear with emotion. You were wrong, Aya! This one is not a man like the others! The love you have for yours blinded you, Aya! It made you selfish and unfair! Page Eleven. The gorilla was about to throw a heavy rock when Rahan's challenge fell behind him. Prepare to die, “Ghorya”! The son of fierce ages leaped, narrowly avoiding the rock. And Ghao and Bhra, with tight throats, thought they were dreaming. With astonishing courage, the “Talking Beast” faced this monster that had so often terrified them! It was a fierce and wild melee. Of which Vahou and Chram, who were climbing out of the Ravine, only saw the last phase. Ra-ha-ha! Rahan's clamor of victory arose so loudly that the heart of Aya the mother must have rejoiced. Page Twelve. A little later. I will never live long enough to show my gratitude to you, Rahan! What fate would you have reserved for Rahan if. We would put you on a raft and send you running. When the drug would have stopped acting, you would have found yourself far, far from here! And Chram and Vhaou would have died because of me! Without doubt you think many bad things of me! No, Aya! Rahan thinks your way of loving your people is wrong! “Those-who-walk-upright” cannot live isolated from each other! They must teach each other, share their knowledge! You are probably right, Rahan. But is it not too late now? Will they forgive me? We always forgive a mother! And it is never too late to fix a mistake! What will become of those you love when you have joined the territory of shadows? What will they know about the sight of their fellow men? It was, for the young hunters, the night of revelations. Rahan spoke of clans and their customs, evoked a thousand unknown and wonderful things. The sun found him on the trail guiding Aya and her sons. They were happily going to discover these beings about whom, until the day before, they knew nothing. Beings who bore the name “Man.” Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

The Gothic Tales of the Marquis de Sade. Some Quotes: May they be convinced that good upbringing, riches, talents and the gifts bestowed by nature are only likely to lead people astray when restraint, good conduct, wisdom and modesty are not there to support them or turn them to good account. In a century when the most dangerous books are in the hands of children, as in those of their fathers and teachers, when the temerity of obstinacy passes for philosophy, unbelief for strength and licentiousness for imagination, it often happens that a woman who shares our faults pleases us a great deal less in our pleasures than one who is full of naught but virtues: the first resembles us, we scandalize her not; the other is terrified, and there is one very certain charm the more. =================================== Eugenie de Franval. A Tragic Story. Our only motive in writing this story is the instruction of mankind and the betterment of their way of life. May all readers become fully aware of the great peril that always dogs those who do as they wish in order to satisfy their desires. May they be convinced that good upbringing, riches, talents and the gifts bestowed by nature are only likely to lead people astray when restraint, good conduct, wisdom and modesty are not there to support them or turn them to good account: these are the truths that we are going to put into action. May we be forgiven the unnatural details of the horrible crime of which we are forced to speak, is it possible to make such deviations detestable if one has not the courage to present them openly? Rarely does everything harmonies in the same being to lead him to prosperity; if he is favored by nature then fortune refuses him her gifts; if fortune is liberal with her favors then nature treats him badly; it appears that the hand of Heaven wishes to show us that in each individual, as in its most sublime operations, the laws of equilibrium are the first laws of the Universe, the ones which simultaneously regulate everything that happens, everything that vegetates and everything that breathes. Franval, who lived in Paris, where he was born, possessed, along with an income of 400,000 livres, the finest figure, the most pleasant face and the most varied talents; but beneath this attractive exterior lay hidden every vice, and unfortunately those of which the adoption and habitual indulgence lead so rapidly to crime. An imagination more unbridled than anything one can depict was Franval's prime defect; men of this type do not mend their ways, the decline of power makes them worse; the less they can do, the more they undertake; the less they achieve, the more they invent; each age brings new ideas, and satiety, far from cooling their ardor, only prepares the way for more fatal refinements. As we said, Franval possessed in profusion all the amenities of youth, all the talents which enhance it; but since he was full of disdain for moral and religious duties it had become impossible for his tutors to make him adopt any of them. In a century when the most dangerous books are in the hands of children, as in those of their fathers and teachers, when the temerity of obstinacy passes for philosophy, unbelief for strength and licentiousness for imagination, the young Franval's wit was greeted with laughter, a moment later perhaps he was scolded for it, then he was praised. Franval's father, a great supporter of the fashionable sophistries, was the first to encourage his son to think seriously about all these matters; he himself lent him all the works which could corrupt him more rapidly; what teacher would have dared, after that, to inculcate principles different from those of the household where he was obliged to please? In any case, Franval lost his parents when he was still very young, and at the age of nineteen, an old uncle, who himself died shortly afterwards, assigned him, while arranging his marriage, all the possessions that were to belong to him one day. Monsieur de Franval, with such a fortune, should easily have found a wife; an infinite number of candidates presented themselves, but since he had begged his uncle to give him only a girl younger than himself, and with as few people around her as possible, the old relative, in order to satisfy his nephew, let his choice fall upon a certain Mademoiselle de Farneille, the daughter of a financier, possessing now only a mother, still young in fact, but with 60,000 livres of very real income; the girl was fifteen, and had the most delightful physiognomy to be found in Paris at that time, one of those virginal faces, in which innocence and charm are depicted together, in the delicate features of love and the graces, fine blonde hair floating below her waist, large blue eyes expressing tenderness and modesty, a slender, supple and slight figure, with a lilywhite skin and the freshness of roses, full of talents, a very lively imagination, but with a touch of sadness, a little of that gentle melancholy which leads to a love of books and solitude; attributes which nature seems to grant only to the individuals whom her hand destines to misfortunes, as though to make them less bitter, through that sober and touching voluptuousness that they enjoy in feeling them, and which makes them prefer tears to the frivolous joy of happiness, much less effective and much less penetrating. Madame de Farneille, who was thirty-two when her daughter was married, was also witty and attractive, but perhaps slightly too reserved and severe; since she desired the happiness of her only child, she had consulted the whole of Paris about this match; and since she no longer had any relatives and her only advisers were some of those cold friends to whom everything is indifferent, people convinced her that the young man who was being offered to her daughter was without any doubt the best she could find in Paris, and that she would commit an unforgivable folly if she failed to agree to this match, it therefore took place: and the young people, who were rich enough to take their own house, settled in it at once. In young Franval's heart were none of those vices of frivolity, restlessness or foolishness which prevent a man from being fully developed before thirty; understanding himself very well, liking order, perfectly capable of running a house, Franval possessed all the necessary qualities for this aspect of the enjoyment of life. His vices, of a totally different kind, were indeed rather the faults of maturity than the inconsistencies of youth, artfulness, intrigue, malice, baseness, selfishness, much diplomacy and trickery, while all this was concealed not only by the graces and talents already mentioned but even by eloquence and infinite wit and by the most seductive external appearance. Such was the man whom we have to depict. Mademoiselle de Farneille, who, in accordance with custom, had known her husband for a month at the most before allying herself to him, deceived by this false brilliance, had been taken in by him; the days were not long enough for the pleasure of contemplating him, she idolized him, and things had even reached the point when people would have feared for this young person if any obstacle had upset the delights of a marriage in which she found, she said, the only happiness of her life. As for Franval, who was philosophical about women as about all other things in life, he had considered this delightful person with utter coolness. The wife who belongs to us, he would say, is a kind of individual whom custom has made subservient to us; she must be gentle, submissive, very demure, not that I am concerned with the prejudices of dishonor which a wife can bring upon us when she imitates our licentiousness, but one does not like the idea that someone else is contemplating the removal of our rights; all the rest is immaterial and adds nothing to happiness. When a husband feels this way it is easy to prophesy that there are no roses in store for the unfortunate girl who is allied to him. Madame de Franval, who was honorable, sensitive, well brought up and anticipated through love the wishes of the only man in the world who occupied her, wore her chains for the first few years without suspecting her enslavement; it was easy for her to see that she was only gleaning the fields of marriage, but she was still too happy with what was left to her and her only care, her closest attention was directed to the fact that during those brief moments granted to her affection, Franval could at least encounter all that she believed to be necessary to the happiness of this beloved husband. The best proof of all, however, which Franval still did not exclude from his duties, was that during the first year of his marriage his wife, then aged sixteen and a half, gave birth to a daughter even more beautiful than her mother, and whom the father at once named Eugenie. Eugenie, both the horror and the miracle of nature. Monsieur de Franval, who, as soon as this child was born, no doubt formed the most detestable designs on her, immediately separated her from her mother. Until the age of seven, Eugenie was entrusted to women of whom Franval was sure and who, limiting their endeavors to forming a good constitution and teaching her to read, took care not to give her any knowledge of religious or moral principles, about which a girl of her age should normally be instructed. Madame de Farneille and her daughter, who were very shocked by this conduct, reproached Monsieur de Franval about it; he replied phlegmatically that since his plan was to make his daughter happy, he did not want to force upon her fantasies which were only likely to frighten people without ever becoming useful to them; that a girl whose only need was to learn how to please could at best be unaware of this nonsense, of which the imaginary existence, in disturbing the calm of her life, would give her no additional moral truth and no additional physical grace. Such remarks caused immediate displeasure to Madame de Farneille who, as she moved away from the pleasures of this world, was going closer to thoughts of heaven. Piety is a weakness dependent on age or health. When the passions are at their height a future which one believes to be very distant usually causes little uneasiness, but when their language is less lively, as we near the end, when finally everything leaves us, we cast ourselves again into the bosom of the God whom we heave heard mentioned in childhood, and if according to the philosophers these later illusions are as fantastic as the others, they are at least not so dangerous. Since Franval's mother-in-law had no longer any relatives, little credit on her own, and at the most, as we have said a few of those casual friends, who avoid responsibility if we put them to the test, having to struggle against a likeable, young and well placed son-in-law, imagined very sensibly that it war simpler to keep to representations rather than to undertake stringent measures, with a man who would ruin the mother and have the daughter locked up, if they dared to stand up to him; in the meantime Madame de Farneille merely hazarded a few remonstrances and became silent as soon as she saw that this was achieving nothing. Franval, sure of his superiority, seeing clearly that he was feared, soon renounced all scruples concerning anything whatsoever, and contenting himself with some slight concealment, simply because of the public, went straight to his horrible goal. As soon as Eugenie reached the age of seven, Franval took her to his wife; and this loving mother, who had not seen her child since she had brought her into the world, unable to have her fill of caresses, held her for two hours pressed against her bosom, covering her with kisses, bathing her with tears. She wanted to know what talents she possessed, but Eugenie had none beyond reading fluently, enjoying the most robust health and of being angelically beautiful. Madame de Franval was again in despair when she realized that it was only too true that her daughter was unaware of even the first principles of religion. “What is this, sir,” she said to her husband, “are you therefore bringing her up only for this world? Will you not deign to reflect that she will only inhabit it for a moment like us, and afterwards will plunge into eternity, which will certainly be fatal if you deprive her of what can make her enjoy there a happy fate at the feet of the Being from whom she received life.” “If Eugenie knows nothing, Madame,” replied Franval, “if these maxims are carefully concealed from her, she could not be unhappy; for if they are true, the Supreme Being is too fair to punish her for her ignorance, and if they are false, why mention them to her? As regards the other needs of her education, have confidence in me, I beg you; from today I am to be her teacher, and I assure you that in a few years' time your daughter will surpass all children of her age.” Madame de Franval tried to insist, invoking the eloquence of the heart to assist that of reason, shedding some tears; but Franval, who was unmoved by them, did not even seem to notice them; he had Eugenie taken away, saying to his wife that if she considered opposing in any way the education which he hoped to give his daughter, or if she suggested to him principles different from those which he proposed to instill in her, she would deprive herself of the pleasure of seeing her, and that he would send his daughter to one of his chateaux from which she would never emerge again. Madame de Franval, who had become used to submission, was silent; she begged her husband not to separate her from such a treasured possession and promised, weeping, not to disturb in any way the education that was being prepared for her. From this moment Mademoiselle de Franval was placed in a very fine apartment next to that of her father, with a highly intelligent governess, an under-governess, a chambermaid and two little girls of her own age, who were there for the sole purpose of relaxation. She was given teachers for writing, drawing, poetry, natural history, declamation, geography, astronomy, anatomy, Greek, English, German, Italian, together with instructors for handling weapons, dancing, riding and music. Eugenie rose every day at seven o'clock, whatever the season she ran about the garden eating a large piece of rye bread, which formed her breakfast; she came in at eight o'clock, spent a few moments in her father's apartment, while he played with her or taught her little society games; until nine o'clock she prepared her work; then the first teacher arrived and she received five of them until two o'clock. She took her meal separately with her two friends and her chief governess. The dinner consisted of vegetables, fish, pastries and fruit, never any meat, soup, wine, liqueurs or coffee. From three o'clock to four, Eugenie went back into the garden to play for an hour with her little companions; they played together at tennis, ball-games, skittles, battledore and shuttlecock, or at running races; they wore comfortable clothing according to the season; nothing constricted their waists; they were never fastened into those ridiculous whalebones, which are equally dangerous for the stomach and the chest and which, hindering a young person's breathing, must necessarily harm the lungs. From four to six o'clock Mademoiselle de Franval received more teachers; and since they could not all appear in twenty-four hours, the remainder came during the next day. Three times a week Eugenie went to the theatre with her father, sitting in a little box with gratings, hired for her by the year. At nine o'clock she returned home and took supper, being served only with vegetables and fruit. From ten to eleven o'clock, four times a week, Eugenie played with her women, read a few novels and then went to bed. She spent the three other days, when Franval did not take supper away from home, alone in her father's apartment, and this time was employed in what Franval called his “lectures”. During these he instilled into his daughter his maxims on morals and religion; on one side he showed her what some people thought about these matters and on the other he set out what he accepted himself. Since she had much wit, wide knowledge, a lively intelligence and passions which were already aroused, it is easy to judge of the progress made by such ideas in Eugenie's mind; but since the object of the unworthy Franval was not only to strengthen the mind, his lectures rarely ended without stirring up the emotions; and this horrible man had found so skillfully the means of pleasing his daughter, he seduced her with such art, he made himself so useful in her instruction and her relaxation, he anticipated with such ardor everything which could please her, that Eugenie, in the midst of the most brilliant circles, found no one as attractive as her father; and even before the latter explained himself, the innocent and weak creature had accumulated in her young heart all the feelings of love, gratitude and affection which must necessarily lead to the most ardent desire; Franval was the only man in the world to her; she could distinguish only him, she was revolted by the idea of everything that could separate him from her; she would have given him not her honor, not her charms-for all these sacrifices would have seemed too slight for the moving object of her idolatry-but her blood, her very life, if this tender companion of her soul had demanded it. This was not the case as far as Mademoiselle de Franval's feelings for her worthy and unfortunate mother were concerned. Her father skillfully told Eugenie that Madame de Franval, being his wife, demanded from him attention which often made him unable to do everything for his dear Eugenie that his feelings dictated; he had followed the secret of instilling into this young person's heart much more hate and jealousy than the kind of respectable and affectionate feelings which should have arisen for such a mother. “My friend, my brother,” Eugenie would sometimes say to Franval, who did not want his daughter to use any other expressions with him, “this woman whom you call your wife, this creature who, according to you, brought me into the world, must therefore be very demanding, since in wanting you always with her, she deprives me of the happiness of spending my life with you. I see it clearly, you prefer her to your Eugenie. As far as I am concerned, I will never love anything which takes your heart away from me.” “My dear friend,” replied Franval, “no, nobody whatsoever in the entire world will acquire such powerful rights as yours; the ties which exist between this woman and your best friend are the result of custom and social conventions; I regard them in a philosophical light, and they will never affect those which bind us together, you will always be the one preferred, Eugenie; you will be the angel and the light of my days, the focus of my soul and the purpose of my existence.” “Oh, how sweet are these words!” replied Eugenie, “repeat them often, my friend. If you knew how pleasing to me are the expressions of your tenderness.” She took Franval's hand and pressed it to her heart. “Yes, yes, I feel them all here,” she went on. “How your tender caresses assure me of that,” replied Franval, clasping her in his arms. And in this way, without any remorse, the traitor completed the seduction of the unfortunate girl. However, Eugenie was reaching her fourteenth year, the moment when Franval wanted to consummate his crime. He did so. Let us shudder! The very day when she reached this age, or rather that on which her fourteenth year was completed, they both found themselves in the country, with no relatives present and no one to disturb them. On that day the Count, having caused his daughter to be dressed like the virgins who in the past were consecrated in the temple of Venus, led her, at eleven o'clock in the morning, into a voluptuously decorated drawing-room where the daylight was softened by gauze curtains and the furniture strewn with flowers. In the center stood a throne of roses, Franval led his daughter towards it. “Eugenie,” he told her, seating her upon it, “be today the queen of my heart, and let me adore you on my knees.” “Let you adore me, my brother, when it is I who owe you everything, when you created me and brought me up! Ah, let me rather fall at your feet; this is the only place for me, and with you it is the only one to which I aspire.” “Oh, my tender Eugenie,” said the Count, taking his place near her on the flower-strewn cushions which were to serve his triumph, “if it is true that you owe me something, if in fact the feelings you have for me are as sincere as you say, do you know how to convince me of it?” “How, my brother? Tell me quickly so that I can understand at once.” “All these charms, Eugenie, that nature has so liberally bestowed upon you, all these attentions with which she has beautified you, must be sacrificed to me immediately.” “But what are you asking me? Are you not master of everything? Does not your creation belong to you, can anyone else enjoy your handiwork?” “But you realize the prejudices of men.” “You have in no way concealed them from me.” “I do not therefore want to go against them without your agreement.” “Do you not despise them as I do?” “That is so, but I do not want to tyrannize you, much less seduce you; I want to receive the favors I seek from love alone. You know what the world is like, I have hidden none of its attractions from you. To hide men from your sight, to let you see nobody except myself, would have been a deception unworthy of me; if there exists in the universe a being whom you prefer to me, name him at once, I will go to the ends of the earth to find him and will lead him to your arms at once. In fact it is your happiness that I want, my angel, your happiness much more than mine, the sweet pleasures that you can give me would be nothing to me if they were not the price of your love. Decide, therefore, Eugenie. The moment has come when you are to be sacrificed, you must be. But you yourself must name the man who will carry out the sacrifice, I renounce the pleasures that this title ensures for me if I do not receive them from your heart; and if it is not I whom you prefer, I shall always be worthy of your feelings in bringing you the one whom you can love. If I have not been able to captivate your heart, I will at least have deserved your affection; and I shall be Eugenie's friend, having failed to become her lover.” “You shall be everything, brother, you shall be everything,” said Eugenie, burning with love and desire. “To whom do you want me to sacrifice myself, if it is not to the only man whom I adore? What being in the universe can be more worthy than you of these poor charms that you desire, and which your burning hands are already caressing with ardor! Do you not see from the fire that consumes me that I am as anxious as you to experience the pleasure of which you tell me? Ah, take me, take me, my loving brother, my best friend, make Eugenie your victim; sacrificed by your beloved hands she will always be triumphant.” The ardent Franval, who, in accordance with his character, had only armed himself with so much delicacy in order to seduce with more finesse, soon took advantage of this daughter’s credulity and, with all obstacles removed, as much through the principles with which he had nourished this soul that was open to all kinds of impressions, as through the art with which he captivated her at the last moment, he completed his perfidious conquest, and with impunity destroyed the virginity which by nature and by right it was his responsibility to defend. Several days passed in mutual intoxication. Eugenie, who was old enough to know the pleasures of love, was encouraged by his methods and abandoned herself to it with enthusiasm. Franval taught her all love's mysteries and mapped out all its routes; the more he increased his adoration the better he enslaved his conquest. She would have like to receive him in a thousand temples at once, accusing him of not allowing his imagination to stray far enough; she thought he was concealing something from her. She complained of her age and of an ingenuousness which perhaps did not make her seductive enough: and if she wanted more instruction it was so that no means of arousing her lover could remain unknown to her. They returned to Paris, but the criminal pleasures which had intoxicated this perverse man had given too much delectable enjoyment to his physical and moral faculties for the inconstancy which usually destroyed all his other intrigues to sever the ties of this one. He fell desperately in love, and this dangerous passion led inevitably to the most cruel abandonment of his wife. Alas, what a victim she was! Madame de Franval, then thirty-one years old, was at the height of her beauty; an air of sadness which was inevitable in view of the sorrows that consumed her, made her more intriguing still; bathed in tears, crushed by melancholy, her beautiful hair carelessly flowing loose over her alabaster bosom, her lips pressed amorously to the beloved portrait of her faithless tyrant, she resembled those beautiful virgins whom Michelangelo painted in the midst of sorrow: but she was still unaware of what was to complete her torment. The way in which Eugenie was being educated, the essential things of which she was left in ignorance, or which were only mentioned to her in order to make her hate them; her certainty that these duties, despised by Franval, would never be permitted to her daughter; the brief time she was allowed to see the girl, the fear that the unusual education she was receiving would sooner or later lead her to crime, the eccentricities of Franval in fact, his daily harshness towards her, she who was occupied only in anticipating his wishes, who knew no other charms except those which would interest or please him; until now these had been the only causes of her affliction. "What sorrow was to pierce this loving and sensitive soul as soon as she learned everything! However, Eugenie's education continued; she herself had wished to continue with her teachers until the age of sixteen, and her talents, her extensive knowledge, the graces which were developing in her each day, everything enslaved Franval more strongly; it was easy to see that he had never loved anyone as he loved Eugenie. In Mademoiselle de Franval's external life nothing had been changed except the times of the lectures; these intimate discussions with her father became much more frequent and lasted long into the night. Only Eugenie's governess was informed of this intrigue and they trusted her enough not to fear any indiscretion on her part. There were also some changes in the arrangements for Eugenie's meals, she now took them with her parents. In a house such as Franval's this soon caused Eugenie to meet other people, and to be desired as a wife. Several people asked for her hand Franval, who was certain of his daughter's heart, had not thought it at all necessary to fear these approaches, but he had not realized sufficiently that this rush of proposals might perhaps succeed in revealing everything. During a conversation with her daughter, a favor so desired by Madame de Franval, and one she obtained so rarely, this affectionate mother informed Eugenie that Monsieur de Colunce wished to marry her. “You know this man, my daughter,” said Madame de Franval; “he loves you, he is young and likeable; he will be rich, he merely awaits your consent, your consent only, my daughter, how shall I reply?” Eugenie, taken by surprise, blushed and replied that she felt no taste for marriage as yet, but that her father could be consulted; she would have no wishes other than his. Madame de Franval saw this reply only as straightforward, waited patiently for some days and, finding at last an opportunity to mention it to her husband, she communicated to him the intentions of the young Colunce’s family and those that he had revealed himself, to which she added her daughter's reply. It can well be imagined that Franval knew everything; but he nevertheless succeeded in disguising this without showing too much self-control. “Madame,” he said drily to his wife, “I ask you earnestly not to involve Eugenie in this; the care you have seen me take to remove her from you must have made it easy for you to recognize how much I wanted all that concerned her to have nothing to do with you. I renew my orders to you on this subject, you will not forget them, I imagine?” “But how should I reply, sir, since it is I whom they ask?” “You will say that I appreciate the honor they show me, and that my daughter has defects dating from birth which make marriage difficult.” “But sir, these defects are certainly not real; why do you want me to be upset by them and why deprive your only daughter of the happiness she can find in marriage?” “Have these ties made you very happy, Madame?” “Not all women make the mistakes which I have no doubt made, in failing to captivate you (and with a sigh), or else all husbands do not resemble you.” “Wives, false, jealous, domineering, coquettish or pious. Husbands, treacherous, unfaithful, cruel or despotic, there in a nutshell are all the individuals in the world, Madame; don't hope to find a phoenix”. “And yet everyone gets married.” “Yes, the fools or the idlers; nobody ever marries, said one philosopher, except when they don't know what they are doing, or when they don't know what to do.” “Must one let the world come to an end, then?” “One might as well; it is never too early to exterminate a plant which yields nothing but poison.” “Eugenie will not be very grateful to you for this excessive severity towards her.” “Does this marriage appear to please her?” “Your wishes are her commands, she said so.” “Very well, Madame, my wishes are that you give up this marriage.” And Monsieur de Franval went out, again forbidding his wife in the strongest terms to speak of it again. Madame de Franval did not fail to repeat to her mother the conversation she had just had with her husband, and Madame de Farneille, who was more subtle and more accustomed to the effects of the passions than her attractive daughter, suspected at once that there was something abnormal involved. Eugenie very rarely saw her grandmother, for an hour at the most during social events, and always in Franval's presence. Madame de Farneille therefore, wishing to be enlightened, asked her son-in-law to send her granddaughter to her one day and leave her with her for a whole afternoon in order to cure her, she said, of an attack of migraine from which she was suffering; Franval replied harshly that there was nothing that Eugenie feared as much as the vapors, that he would however bring her where she was wanted but that she could not stay there long, since she was under an obligiation to go from there to a physics lesson, a course that she was following assiduously. They went to Madame de Farneille's, who in no way concealed from her son-in-law her astonishment that the proposed marriage had been refused. “I think,” She went on, “you need have no fear in allowing your daughter to convince me herself of the defect which, according to you, must deprive her of marriage.” “Whether this defect is real or not, Madame,” said Franval somewhat surprised by his mother-in-law's determination, “the fact is that it would cost me a great deal to marry my daughter and I am still too young to agree to such sacrifices; when she is twenty-five, she will do as she wishes; she must not count on me in any way until then.” “And are your feelings still the same, Eugenie?” asked Madame de Farneille. “They differ in one respect, Madame,” said Mademoiselle de Franval very firmly; my father allows me to marry when I am twenty-five, and I, Madame, assure both you and him that I will not take advantage at any point in my lifetime of a permission, which, to my way of thinking, would only contribute to my unhappiness.” “One has no way of thinking at your age, miss,” said Madame de Farneille, “and there is something unusual in all this which I must certainly sort out.” “I urge you to do so, Madame,” said Franval, as he took his daughter away; “it will even be a very good thing if you employ your clergy to penetrate to the heart of the problem, and when all your powers have exerted themselves cleverly, and when you finally know the answer, kindly tell me if I am right or wrong in opposing Eugenie's marriage.” The sarcasm levelled by Franval at his mother-in-law's ecclesiastical advisers was aimed at a praiseworthy person whom it is relevant to introduce, since the progress of events will soon show him in action. This was the spiritual director to Madame de Farneille and her daughter, one of the most virtuous men in France, honest, benevolent, straightforward and wise, Monsieur de Clervil, far from having all the vices of his cloth, possessed only gentle and useful qualities. A reliable support for the poor, a sincere friend of the opulent, consoler of the unfortunate, this worthy man had all the gifts which make someone likeable and all the virtues which make up a sensitive person. When he was consulted Clervil replied like a man of good sense that before taking sides in this matter it was necessary to work out Monsieur de Franval's reasons for opposing his daughter's marriage; and although Madame de Farneille made some remarks likely to arouse suspicion about the intrigue which existed only too truly in fact, the prudent director rejected these ideas, and finding them much too insulting towards Madame de Franval and her husband, he disagreed with them indignantly. “Crime is such a distressing thing, Madame,” this honest man would sometimes say; “it seems so unlikely that a well-conducted person will voluntarily exceed the bounds of modesty and all the restraints of virtue, that it is only with the most extreme repugnance that I decide to attribute such faults; let us only rarely suspect vice; such feelings are often the result of our amour-propre, almost always the outcome of a hidden comparison made in the depths of our mind; we hasten to admit evil so that we can be entitled to find ourselves better. If you think about it seriously, would it not be better, Madame, if a secret fault were never laid bare, rather than for us to invent illusory ones through unforgivable haste and thus to blight without cause as I see it, people who have committed no other errors except those which our pride has attributed to them? Moreover, does not everything gain from this principle? Is it not infinitely less essential to punish a crime than to prevent it from spreading? By leaving it in the obscurity it seeks, is it not as good as abolished? Scandal is certain to spread it abroad. descriptions of it arouse the passions of those inclined to the same type of errors; the inevitable blindness of crime arouses the hope of the guilty man to be happier than him who has just been recognized as such; he has not been given a lesson but a piece of advice, and he abandons himself to excesses that he would perhaps never have dared to commit without the imprudent scandal mistakenly regarded as justice, and which is no more than ill-conceived severity or vanity in disguise. The only decision taken therefore at this first meeting was that of verifying precisely why Franval had put off his daughter's marriage and why Eugenie shared the same way of thinking: it was decided that nothing should be undertaken before these motives were laid bare. “Well, Eugenie,” said Franval that evening to his daughter, “You see, they want to separate us, will they succeed, my child? Will they manage to sever the most cherished bonds of my life?” “Never, never, do not fear it, my dearest friend! The ties in which you revel are as precious to me as to you; you have in no way deceived me, you showed me, while forming them, to what extent they clashed with custom. I am not afraid to contravene practices which, varying from one part of the world to another, cannot be sacred in any way; I desired these bonds, I wove them without remorse, do not fear therefore that I shall break them.” “Alas, who knows? Colunce is younger than I am. He has everything necessary to attract you, do not heed, Eugenie, the residue of error which no doubt blinds you; maturity and the light of reason will dispel prestige and will soon lead to regrets, you will blame me for them, and I shall not forgive myself for having been the cause of them!” “No,” Eugenie went on firmly, “no, I am determined to love you alone; I should believe myself the most unfortunate of women if I had to take a husband, I,” she went on, with warmth, “link myself to a stranger who, not having like you twin reasons for loving me, would limit his feelings, at the most his desires. If I were to be abandoned and despised by him, what would become of me afterwards? Would I be a sanctimonious prude or a harlot? Oh, no, no, I would rather be your mistress, my friend. Yes, I love you a thousand times too much to be reduced to playing in society either of those infamous roles. But what is the cause of all this disturbance?” Eugenie went on bitterly. “do you know what it is, my friend? Who it is? Your wife! She alone. Her insatiable jealousy. Have no doubt about it, those are the sole causes of the misfortunes which threaten us, Ah! I do not blame her for it: everything is simple, everything is understandable, everything is possible when it is a question of keeping you. What would I not undertake if I were in her place, and someone wanted to take your heart away from me?” Franval, strangely moved, embraced his daughter time and time again; and the latter, further encouraged by these criminal caresses, developing her atrocious thoughts in a more energetic fashion, dared to tell her father, with unpardonable shamelessness, that the only way in which they could both be less closely observed was to provide her mother with a lover. This plan entertained Franval; but since he was much more wicked than his daughter and wanted imperceptibly to prepare her youthful heart for all the feelings of hatred against his wife that he intended to sow there, he replied that he thought this revenge too mild, and that there were many other ways of upsetting a woman when she annoyed her husband. A few weeks passed in this manner, during which Franval and his daughter finally decided on the first plan conceived to bring despair to this monster's virtuous wife, believing, rightly, that before adopting more unworthy procedures, they must at least try to produce a lover; this would not only provide material for all other methods, but, if it succeeded, would of necessity oblige Madame de Franval not to concern herself with the faults of others, since her own would also have been revealed. In order to carry out this project Franval examined all the young men of his acquaintance and, after thinking things over carefully, he found that only Valmont seemed likely to prove useful to him. Valmont was thirty years old, handsome, witty, imaginative, with no principles whatever, and as a result highly suitable for the role that was to be offered to him. Franval invited him to dinner one evening, and as they left the table he took him aside. “My friend,” he said, “I have always deemed you to be worthy of me; now is the moment to prove that I have not been mistaken: I demand a proof of your feelings, but a very unusual proof.” “What is all this? Explain yourself, dear man, and never doubt my anxiety to serve you!' “What do you think of my wife?” “She is delightful; and if you were not her husband, I'd have been her lover for a long time.” “That is a most considerate remark, Valmont, but it does not move me.” “Why not?” “I'm going to surprise you, it is precisely because you like me, precisely because I am Madame de Franval's husband that I demand you to become her lover.” “Are you mad?” “No, but I'm whimsical, capricious, you've known me to be like this for a long time, I want virtue to come to grief and I would like it to be you who takes her in the snare.” “What an outrageous idea!” “Don’t say a word, this is a masterpiece of reasoning.” “What! You want me to? “Yes, I want it, I demand it, and I cease to regard you as my friend if you refuse me this favor, I will look after you. I will satisfy all your needs, it will be to your advantage; and, as soon as I am quite certain of my fate, I shall, if necessary, throw myself at your feet to thank you for obliging me.” “Franval, you cannot deceive me; there is something very unusual in all this. I will undertake nothing unless I know everything.” “Yes, but I think you have some scruples, I suspect that you aren't yet intelligent enough to be capable of understanding all that is involved. You still have prejudices, you're still chivalrous, I wager? You will shudder like a child when I've told you everything, and you won't want to do anything anymore.” “I, shudder? I am really amazed at your way of judging me: learn, my dear friend, that there is not an aberration in the world, not a single one, however irregular it might be, that is capable of upsetting me for a moment.” “Valmont, have you cast eyes on Eugenie?” “Your daughter?” “Or my mistress, if you prefer?” “Ah, you scoundrel, I understand you.” “That's the first time in my life I've found you to be intelligent.” “What is this? Tell me honestly, are you in love with your daughter?” “Yes, my friend, like Lott I have always had such a great respect for the holy scriptures, I was always so convinced that one could gain heaven by emulating their heroes! Ah, my friend, the madness of Pygmalion no longer surprises me is the universe not full of these weaknesses? Was it not necessary to start in this way in order to populate the world? And if it was not evil then, can it have become so since? How preposterous! May not a pretty woman attract me because I made the mistake of bringing her into the world? Should the thing which ought to link me to her more closely become the reason for separating me from her? Should I look at her coldly because she resembles me because she is my own flesh and blood, because in her are united every foundation for the most ardent love? Ah, what sophistries, how ridiculous! Let us leave to fools these absurd restraints, they are not made for souls like ours; the dominion of beauty and the sacred rights of love know nothing of futile human conventions; their ascendancy annihilates these just as the rays of the sun purify the earth from the fogs that enshroud her at night. Let us trample underfoot these atrocious prejudices which have always been hostile to happiness; if they sometimes prevailed over reason, it was only at the expense of the most seductive pleasures, let us despise them forever.” “You convince me,” replied Valmont, “and I completely agree that your Eugenie must be a delightful mistress, she is a more lively beauty than her mother, and if she does not possess, like your wife, quite that languor which takes hold of the heart in such a voluptuous way, she has that piquancy which overwhelms us, which seems in fact to subdue every possibility of resistance; if the mother appears to yield, the daughter demands; what the former permits, the latter offers, and I find this much more attractive.” “Yet I am giving you not Eugenie, but her mother.” “Now what reason leads you to do this?” “My wife is jealous, she gets in my way, she criticises me! she wants to arrange a marriage for Eugenie, I must make her have faults in order to conceal my own; therefore you must have her, amuse yourself with her for some time, and betray her afterwards. I must surprise you in her arms, punish her or through this discovery I must purchase peace on both sides in our mutual errors, but no love, Valmont, keep cool, enslave her, and don't let yourself be dominated; if feelings come into it, my plans will be wrecked.” “Have no fear, this would be the first time a woman has moved me.” Our two scoundrels therefore concluded their arrangements, and it was resolved that within a few days Valmont would take Madame de Franval in hand, with full permission to do everything he wanted to achieve success, even the avowal of Franval's love, as the most powerful means of making this honest woman decide on revenge. Eugenie, to whom the plan was confided, found it vastly entertaining; the infamous creature dared to say that if Valmont succeeded it was necessary, if her own happiness were to be as complete as possible, for her to be assured, through her own eyes, of her mother's downfall, for her to see this virtuous heroine yield incontestably to the pleasurable delights which she condemned with such severity. Finally came the day when the most demure and unfortunate of women was not only to receive the most painful blow that could be dealt her, but was to be sufficiently outraged by her frightful husband to be abandoned, delivered by him to the man by whom he consented to be dishonoured. What madness! What scorn of all principles! For what purpose can nature create hearts as depraved as these? A few preliminary conversations had set this scene; Valmont, moreover, was friendly enough with Franval for the latter's wife, to whom this had already happened without risk, to be incapable of imagining that any danger would be incurred by remaining alone with him. They were all three in the drawing-room, when Franval rose. “I must leave,” he said, an important business matter calls me, It's like putting you with your governess, madame,” he added with a laugh, 'leaving you with Valmont, he's so well behaved, but if he forgets himself, you must tell me, I don't like him enough yet to hand over my rights to him! And the shameless man went out. After a few commonplace remarks, arising from Franval's Joke, Valmont said that he had found his friend changed during the last six months. “I have not dared to ask him why,” he went on, “but he seems unhappy.” “What is very certain,” replied Madame de Franval, “is the terrible unhappiness he is causing to others.” “Oh heavens, what are you telling me? Has my friend been treating you badly?” “If only that were the extent of our troubles!' “Do please tell me, you know my ardor, my undying attachment.” “A series of horrible disturbances, moral corruption, in fact errors of all kinds, would you believe it? The most advantageous marriage is suggested to us on behalf of our daughter, he does not want it.” And at this point the skillful Valmont looked away, with the air of a man who understands, groans, and dare not explain himself. “How is this, sir?” went on Madame de Franval, “are you not astonished by what I am saying? Your silence is very strange.” “Ah, madame, is it not better to be silent than to say something that would bring despair to the person one loves?” “What is this enigma, explain yourself, I entreat you.” “How can I not shudder at opening your eyes,” said Valmont, impetuously seizing this charming woman's hand. “Oh sir,” went on Madame de Franval with much animation, 'either say not another word, or explain yourself, I insist, you are putting me in a terrible position.” “Much less so perhaps than the state to which you reduce me yourself, ' said Valmont, looking at the woman he was trying to seduce, his eyes ablaze with love. “But what does all this mean, sir? You begin by alarming me, you make me want an explanation, next you dare to let me hear things which I should not and cannot tolerate, you remove from me the means of learning from you what torments me so cruelly. Speak, sir, speak, or you will reduce me to despair.” “I shall be less obscure then, since you demand it, Madame, and although it costs me something to break your heart, learn the harsh reason for your husband's refusal to Monsieur de Colunce. Eugenie.” “Well?” “Well, Madame, Franval adores her; he is now not so much her father as her lover, and he would prefer to stop living rather than give up Eugenie.” Madame de Franval did not hear this fatal explanation without a shock which made her lose her senses; Valmont hastened to go to her aid. “You see, madam e, ' he went on, 'the cost of the avowal that you demanded. Not for anything in the world would I.” “Leave me, sir, leave me,” said Madame de Franval, in a state difficult to describe; “after such violent shocks I need to be alone for a moment.” “And would you want me to leave you in this state? I feel your sorrows too vividly in my heart not to ask your permission to share them. I inflicted this wound, let me heal it.” “Franval in love with his daughter, gracious heaven! This creature whom I bore within me, it is she who rends his heart in such atrocious style! Such a fearful crime, ah, sir, is it possible? Are your really sure?” “If I still had doubts about it, Madame, I would have kept silence, I would have preferred a hundred times to tell you nothing rather than upset you to no purpose; it was from your husband himself that I received proof of this infamy, he confided it to me; however that may be, be calm, I beg you; let us concern ourselves now with the means of breaking this intrigue rather than with those for explaining it; now, these means rest only with you.” “Ah, tell me about them quickly, this crime horrifies me.” “a husband with Franval's character, Madame, is not won back in any way by virtue; your hus band has little faith in the sage demeanor of women; he maintains that it is due to their pride or their temperament, the things they do to preserve themselves for us are done much more to satisfy themselves than to please or enslave us. Forgive me, Madame, but I will not disguise from you that I believe more or less as he does on this subject; I never saw that virtues made a wife succeed in destroying her husband's vices; conduct more or less similar to Franval's would rouse him much more and would bring him back to you much more satisfactorily; jealousy would certainly result, and how many hearts have been restored to love through this constantly infallible method; your husband, then, seeing that this virtue, to which he is accustomed, and which he has the effrontery to despise, is due much more to reflection than to carelessness, will really learn to appreciate it in you, at the moment when he believes you capable of failing in it; he imagines, he dares to say that if you have never had any lovers it is because you have never been attacked; prove to him that it only depends on you to be so, to have your revenge for his wrongs and his scorn; perhaps you will do a little harm, in view of your stern principles, but how many evils you will have prevented, what a husband you will have converted ! And for a slight outrage to the goddess you revere, what a worshipper you will have brought back to her temple! Ah, Madame, I appeal only to your reason. Through the conduct that I dare recommend to you, you will bring Franval back forever, you will captivate him for good; he flees through contrariness, he is escaping for good; yes, Madame, I dare to say it, either you do not love your husband, or you must not hesitate.” Madame de Franval, who was very surprised by these words, did not reply for some time; then she spoke, recalling Valmont's looks and his first remarks. “Sir,” she said skillfully, “supposing that I take the advice you give me, on whom do you think I should cast my eyes in order to upset my husband more?” “ah!” cried Valmont, not seeing the trap that was being set for him, “dear, divine friend, on the man who loves you best in all the world, on him who has adored you ever since he has known you, and who swears on his knees that he will die in your service.” “Go, sir, go!' said Madame de Franval then in imperious fashion, “and never appear before me again; your trick is exposed; you only credit my husband with faults, that he is incapable of possessing in order to arrange your treacherous seduction more successfully; understand that even if he were guilty, the methods you suggest to me would be too repugnant for me to use them for one moment; a husband's errors can never justify those of a wife; for her they should become additional reasons for good conduct, so that the just and eternal God may find them in the afflicted cities that are about to suffer the effects of his anger, and may, if he can, turn aside from them the flames that are about to devour them.” With these words Madame de Franval went out, and, asking for Valmont's servants, she obliged him to leave, very much ashamed of the first steps that he had taken. Although this attractive woman had seen through the tricks of Franval's friend, the things he had said corresponded so well with her own fears and with those of her mother, that she decided to put everything into operation in order to convince herself of these hurtful truths. She went to see Madame de Farneille, told her what had happened and came back, determined to proceed as follows. It has long been said, and very rightly so, that we have no greater enemies than our own servants; they are always jealous and envious and apparently try to lighten their burdens by attributing faults to us which place us beneath them and allow their vanity, for a short time at least, to dominate us in the way that fate has denied to them. Madame de Franval had one of Eugenie's women bribed; a guaranteed payment, a pleasant future, the semblance of a good action, everything influenced this minion and she undertook, from the following night, to put Madame de Franval in a position where she would be unable to doubt her misfortune any longer. The moment came. The unfortunate mother was introduced into a small room adjoining the apartment where every night her faithless husband violated both his own marriage ties and Heaven too. Eugenie was with her father; several candles still burned in a corner to illuminate the crime, the altar was prepared, the victim took her place, the high priest followed her. Madame de Franval no longer had any support except her despair, her angry love, her courage. She broke through the doors that held her back and rushed into the apartment; there she fell on her knees before the incestuous man. “Oh,” she cried, addressing Franval, “You are breaking my heart, I did not deserve such treatment from you, you whom I still adore, whatever insults I receive from you, see my tears, and do not reject me; I ask you to spare this unfortunate girl, who, deceived by her weakness and seduced by you, believes she is finding happiness in the midst of shame and crime. Eugenie, Eugenie, do you want to thrust a sword into the bosom that gave you life? No longer be the accomplice in a crime whose horror is concealed from you! Come, hasten, my arms are ready to receive you. See your unfortunate mother, on her knees before you, begging you not to outrage both honor and nature at once. But if you refuse me both,” went on the heartbroken woman, raising a dagger to her heart, “this is the means by which I shall remove myself from the hurt you are trying to inflict upon me; I will spatter you with my blood and it is only over my wretched body that you will be able to consummate your crimes.” That Franval's hardened soul could resist this sight, those who are beginning to know this scoundrel will easily believe; but that Eugenie did not yield in any way is inconceivable. “Madame,” said this corrupt girl, with the most harsh indifference, “I do not regard it as reasonable on your part, I confess, that you should make an absurd scene in front of your husband; can he not do as he pleases? And if he approves of what I do, have you any right to criticize? Do we criticize your indiscretions with Monsieur de Valmont? Do we disturb your pleasures? Kindly respect ours, therefore, or do not be surprised that I am the first to press your husband to take the line which could force you to do so.” At this moment Madame de Franval lost patience, all her anger turned against this unworthy creature who could forget herself so far as to speak to her like this, and, rising in a fury, she hurled herself upon her. But the hateful, cruel Franval, seizing his wife by the hair, dragged her in fury far away from his daughter and from the bedroom, and threw her forcefully down the stairs of the house, until she fell faint and bleeding at the door of one of her women who, awakened by the horrible noise, hastily removed her mistress from the furies of the tyrannical Franval, who had already come down in order to dispatch his unfortunate victim. She was taken to her rooms, locked in and cared for, while the monster, who had just treated her with such rage, rushed back to his detestable companion to spend the night as quietly as though he had not sunk lower than the fiercest beasts, through crimes so execrable, so likely to humiliate him, so horrible in fact that we blush at the necessity to reveal them. No more illusions for the unfortunate Madame de Franval; she could no longer allow herself a single one; it was only too obvious that her husband's heart, that is to say the dearest possession of her life, had been taken away from her, and by whom? By her who owed her the greatest respect, and who had just spoken to her with the greatest insolence; she had also suspected that the whole of the Valmont intrigue was merely a horrible trap for the purpose of putting her in the wrong if possible, and, if not, to attribute faults to her, to inundate her with them, in order to balance and justify thereby the infinitely more serious ones which others dared to incur against her. Nothing was more certain. Franval, informed of Valmont's failure, had pledged him to replace truth by imposture and indiscretion, to spread the story that he was Madame de Franval's lover; and it had been concluded that disgusting letters would be faked which would prove, in the least equivocal manner, the existence of the relation-ship to which this unfortunate wife had refused to lend herself. Madame de Franval however, who was in despair, and even suffering from several injuries, fell seriously ill; her barbarous husband, who refused to see her, not even deigning to enquire about her health, left with Eugenie for the country, on the pretext that there was fever in the house and he did not wish to expose his daughter to it. Valmont presented himself several times at Madame de Franval's door during her illness, but without being admitted once; closeted with her loving mother and Monsieur de Clervil, she saw nobody whatsoever, consoled by such dear friends, who were accustomed to have authority over her, she was restored to life by their care and after six weeks was in a state to see people. Franval then brought his daughter back to Paris and made arrangements with Valmont to provide themselves with weapons equal to those which Madame de Franval and her friends seemed about to level against them. The villainous Franval went to see his wife as soon as he believed her to be in a fit state to receive him. “Madame,” he said to her coldly, “You should have no doubts about the consideration I have shown over your health; I cannot disguise from you the fact that this alone is responsible for Eugenie's reticence; she had decided to bring the strongest charges against you concerning the way in which you treated her; however convinced she may be of the respect which a daughter owes to her mother, she cannot all the same be unaware that the mother puts herself in the worst possible position by hurling herself upon her daughter with a dagger in her hand; hastiness of this kind, Madame, could open the eyes of the government to your conduct and one day could not fail to cause injury to your liberty and your honor.” “I did not expect this recrimination, sir,” replied Madame de Franval, “and when my daughter, seduced by you, renders herself simultaneously guilty of incest, adultery, licentiousness and the most hateful ingratitude towards her who brought her into the world, yes, I admit, I did not imagine that after this complex of horrors it would be for me to fear complaints: all your artifice and evil are required, sir, to excuse the crime with such audacity and accuse an innocent person.” “I am not unaware, Madame, that the pretexts for your scene were the odious suspicions that your dare to form about me, but fantasies do not justify crimes; what you thought is false, but what you have done is unfortunately only too real. You are surprised at the reproaches that my daughter addressed to you concerning your irregular conduct only after the whole of Paris has done so; this state of affairs is so well known, the proofs are unfortunately so consistent, that those who speak about it are guilty at the most of imprudence but not of calumny.” “I, sir,” said this honorable wife, rising indignantly, “I, an intrigue with Valmont? Gracious heavens, and you say that!' She burst into tears. “Ungrateful man! This is the price of my affection, this is the reward for having loved you so much: you are not content with outraging me so cruelly, it is not enough for you to seduce my own daughter, you must still dare to justify your crimes by attributing to me others which I regard as more terrible than death. She collected herself again: “You have proofs of this intrigue sir, you say, bring them out, I demand that they be made public, I will force you to show them to everyone, if you refuse to show them to me.” “No, Madame, I shall certainly not show them to everyone, a husband does not usually announce things of this kind; he bewails them and hides them as carefully as he can; but if you demand them, madame, I will certainly not refuse them to you. He then took a wallet out of his pocket. “Be seated,” he said, “this must be verified with calm, excitement and anger would do harm without convincing me; compose yourself then, I beg you, and let us discuss this coolly.” Madame de Franval, who was perfectly convinced of her innocence, did not know what to think of these preparations and her surprise, mingled with fear, kept her in a state of frenzy. “First of all, Madame,” said Franval, emptying one side of the wallet, “here is your entire correspondence with Valmont during the last six months or so. Do not accuse this young man of imprudence or indiscretion, he is no doubt too honorable to dare fail you on this point. But one of his servants, whose skill exceeds his master's attentiveness, found the secret of procuring for me these precious monuments to your exemplary conduct and your eminent virtue.” He fingered the letters which he scattered on the table. “allow me,” he went on, 'to select from much of the usual chatter of a woman who is excited, by a very attractive man one letter which seemed to me more abandoned and even more decisive than the others. Here it is, Madame: “My tedious husband is taking supper this evening at his petite maison in the outer part of the town with that horrible creature, whom it is impossible I brought into the world; come, my dear, and console me for all the sorrows that those two monsters cause me. What am I saying? Are they not rendering me the greatest possible service at present, and will not this intrigue prevent my husband from noticing ours? Let him then tighten the knots as far as he wishes, but may he not attempt at least to sever those which link me to the only man I have really adored in all the world.” “Well, Madame?” “Well, sir, I admire you,” replied Madame de Franval, “every day adds to the incredible esteem that you deserve; and whatever great qualities I had recognized in you so far, I admit I did not yet know you possessed those of forger and calumniator.” “Are you denying it, then?” “Not at all; I only ask to be convinced; we will have judges appointed, experts, and if you agree, shall we ask for the most severe penalty to be inflicted on whichever one of us shall be found guilty?” “That is what is called effrontery: well, I prefer that to sorrow. Let us proceed. That you have

Rahan. Son of the fierce ages. Episode Sixty Two. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Guy Zam. The share of the Chiefs. The starving child barely had the strength to chew the root. He had no reaction when, remembering the distant days when he, too, had suffered from hunger. The son of Crao approached him. Did you get lost in the forest? Rahan will bring you back to yours, little man! No, O-Naa and Ka-haa ate all the meat. Following the child's footsteps, Rahan came upon arid ground. Men and women were prostrate at the entrance to a cave. Page Two. This little man belongs to your clan, does he not? What unworthy hunters are you to abandon him without food! And where are O-Naa and Ka-Haa who ate all the meat!? I am O-Naa-the-chief. And here is Ka-Haa, the sorcerer, and Trank and Kawi, our best hunters! But who are you, to dare to discuss our custom! Four men came out of the cave. These were sturdy. I am Rahan, the son of Crao! If your custom is to let hunger consume the youngest of the men, then Rahan is against your custom! If the hunting is good, everyone eats their fill. But game is rare! The custom is that the best in the clan eat first! And the “Best” are you! Rahan despises chiefs and sorcerers who do not know how to lead their clan into territories rich in game! Page Three. Trank and Kawi will make you pay for this insolence "Hair-of-Fire"! On an order from the sorcerer, the two sturdy hunters rushed towards the son of Crao. Rahan does not like to fight with "those-who-walk-upright"! But when you force him to. He does not run away from the fight! A rapid blow disarmed Trank. Another thunderbolt threw him to the ground. Argh! Kawi's powerful arms were already surrounding him. Kawi is more loyal! He does not use a knife! But Rahan still has to get rid of him. An admiring clamor arose. Uprooted from the ground, the hunter fluttered over the shoulder of the son of Crao. Page Four. Only O-Naa-the-chief, Ka-Haa the sorcerer and Trank were furious. Your knife, Kawi! Kill! Kill! No! "Fire-hair" did not draw his weapon! He fought fair. And he flattened Kawi! Rahan Is Brave! Kawi will share his meat with him! Rahan had just made an ally, but also three enemies! Before arriving in your territory, Rahan crossed a game-filled forest. He does not want your meat, Kawi! Better yet, he will bring some back for these little men! Which of you will dare to accompany him? The men of the clan remained prostrate. Our clan does not often hear wise words, Rahan! Kawi will go with you! Shortly after, the son of Crao and his new companion plunged deep into the forest. Why do your people not abandon their land without trees? Without game? Ka-Haa says we were born there and we must die there! Page Five. And Kawi spoke of the unjust custom of his clan. From the few animals captured, the chief and the sorcerer first took their share. Trank and himself took theirs! And the others share what’s left. It is often not much. Sometimes it is nothing! Watch out Kawai! Wild boars went this way! Rahan had barely pointed out the tracks when the thickets began to crack. A herd was chasing them! A Herd from which they could only flee! The son of Crao was already in a tree when Kawi, stumbling against a root, fell, fifty steps in front of the "Boars"! He was going to be trampled, crushed, disemboweled! Your hand Kai! Your hand! The hunter who was getting up saw his companion rushing towards him, agile as a "Four-hands" Page Six. He suddenly felt himself being pulled into the void. And the herd broke under him! They stopped and returned under the tree in which the two men had taken refuge. We will escape them by the “Path of Branches”! But we will not return to the cave alone! Oh! Repeating his feat, Rahan plunged into the void. Suspended on the vine, he dangerously brushed against the spines of the large wild boars and seized, in flight, a young boar by the scruff of the neck! A little later. What a misfortune to give up so much meat! We cannot face these "Boars", Kawi! But we will make some come to us! Page Seven. O Naa, Ka-haa, Trank and the others were waiting for their return. A “Marcassin”! for moons O Naa has forgotten the flavor of this flesh! This “Marcassin” comes back to him! O Naa only thinks about filling his belly with good flesh! But Rahan only thinks about these! Tomorrow, the little ones will eat! Kawi had now taken Rahan's side. It was he, who until the end of the day, "Protected" the Marcassin. While the son of Crao made a flexible bow and long arrows. We should have killed them both! Before they give the clan a miracle! As night fell, Rahan and Kawi set out on the lookout. Tied to a tree, the boar growled. Do you think they will come? "They” will come! They always come! Page Eight. It was a long wait but, at daybreak, a pair of great boars emerged out of the forest. The animals cautiously approached the boar, scenting it with their snouts. When they sensed the danger, it was too late. Ra-ha-ha! Rahan's arrow and Kawi's spear had flown away at the same time! Both attained their goal! The animals were heavy. The two companions were only able to bring one back to the cave. That is enough to feed the whole clan! And you will find another Boar at the entrance to the forest! The son of Crao expected an ovation. But everyone remained worried. He suddenly understood They fear being wronged by O Naa and Ka-haa! Page Nine. The chief and the sorcerer, in fact, were already preparing to cut up the boar. Stop! It was Rahan who killed the Boar! He is the one who will do the sharing! A moment later, the ivory knife cut into the flesh. Sharing will be fair! Everyone will receive the same share! Ha-ha-ha! You want to deceive the clan, “Fire-hair”! A large piece sometimes contains less flesh than a small one! What Proof will we have that your shares will be equal!? The son of Crao thought. How to make the sharing indisputably equitable? And suddenly. Rahan knows how to convince you! Two scenes came back to his mind. A game that the children of the Blue Mountain sometimes played on a tree trunk. And the scene where he was held above the void by a rock that made Exactly his weight. Page Ten. Combining the two ideas, he conceived of a rudimentary balance. He placed two pieces of meat there, which he estimated to be of the same weight. Ha-ha-ha! But this first attempt was disappointing. The scale, mis-centered, leaned towards the smallest piece! And this object proves nothing! If you had not brought back a Boar, you would deserve to have your skull broken, like this. The heavy ax fell on one end of the scale, throwing the piece of meat placed at the other end very high! But the son of Crao did not despair. He realized the cause of his failure. The arm of the scale was not perfectly centered! Page Eleven. This time you will no longer betray Rahan! It was easy for him, despite some trial and error, to discover the exact point of balance At this point, he notched the bamboo. The notch which would serve as a reference and would facilitate the pendulum movement. O Naa can now cut himself the piece of meat he wants! The chef feverishly cut a large wedge of flesh. It is yours, O Naa! But everyone will have the same, just as your share! A moment later the son of Crao preceded with the sharing. He added or subtracted carefully to balance each part with that of the chef who served as tare. And the cave clan, that day, could satisfy its hunger. Thanks to the wonderful "Bamboo-of-justice", Rahan has gained the trust of my brothers! Page Twelve. But he has attracted the hatred of O Naa, Ka-haa and Trank! The three men indeed stayed away and considered with bad things. The “Bamboo-of-justice” is evil for all three of us! We must send "Fire-hair" to the territory of shadows and return to our custom! Killing Rahan will be difficult! Look, the clan almost considers him a leader! Patience! An opportunity will present itself! That day, a joyful group brought back the second Boar from the forest. And it is possible to do even better brothers! Rahan saw, five arrow flights from here, a deep pit. It can become a trap for large beasts! Page thirteen. Impatient to put this idea into practice, the son of Crao went to this pit at dawn. It will take large bamboos and lots of palm fronds to hide it! The pit was deep. Its wall, worn by time, was as smooth as his ivory knife. He immediately got to work, going to the nearby forest and cutting very long bamboos. He did not know that O-Naa, Ka-Haa and Trank had followed Him He is alone and we are far from the cave! This is the opportunity we've been waiting for! Rahan had just placed his load of bamboo when the trio appeared. He did not even have time to face them! Ha-ra! Page Fourteen. Ha-Ha-HA! Everyone in the clan will believe it was an “Accident”! Poor “Fire-hair” who “slipped” into the trap he was preparing! Although the shock was severe, he was only stunned. And O-Naa's laughter reached him. Then he caught a glimpse of Trank's silhouette. Oh! He is still alive! We must finish him! If We do not kill him, the clan will save him from the trap and he will tell everything! We have to kill him with these rocks! No vines, or any projections allowed the son of Crao to escape from the granite trap. And big stones started to fall. Which he tried to avoid by pressing himself against the wall. O-Naa, Ka-Haa and Trank are cowards! Page Fifteen. Only laughter answered him while rocks continued to fall, bigger and bigger. To avoid one of them, Rahan jumped and stumbled against one of the trunks that lay at the bottom of the pit. Oh! The bamboo of justice! This trunk had just reminded him of the scales. The ax blow of O Naa. The quarter of meat thrown into the air! If the Trunk holds, Rahan could also be thrown out of the trap! He placed the trunk on the support which would allow the rocking effect. And when the trio was silhouetted against the sky, pushing a huge rock, he moved the trunk so that it would be exactly where the projectile would fall. Page Sixteen. When the rock fell, he was already at the end of the trunk, Legs extended to help propulsion. And it was extraordinary, fantastic. The son of Crao was thrown skyward like a volcanic bomb! Ra-ha-ha! You will pay for your perfidiousness! The three dumb-founded men saw him spring out of the pit and fall right in front of them. The Trio, panicked by the incredible feat, wanted to flee. But Rahan was faster! Argh! No! Argh! O-Naa was the first to be thrown into the hole. Page Seventeen. He had barely reached the bottom before Ka-Haa joined him there! Argh! The Clan will decide your fate! By momentarily forgetting Tank, the son of Crao made a mistake! Because he was turning, his back to the scoundrel who, thirty paces away, was about to throw his long spear! “Fire-hair” will die! A scream made Rahan suddenly turn around. And he saw Trank falling down, with an arrow in his side! Argh! He saw Kawi emerging from behind a rock. Kawi has arrived just in time! This is the first time he has used this weapon! Rahan could not have done better than Kawi! Page Eighteen. A little later, Kawi informed the Clan. Rahan hunted for us, and these three scoundrels wanted to kill him cowardly! May they be forever banished from the clan! O-Naa and the Sorcerer, at the bottom of the pit, called out for help. Their clamors reached as far as the cave. Hear them, Kawi. Maybe we could. Kawi hears nothing! And you, my friends, do you hear anything? The clan hears nothing! And the clan, from now on, will obey Kawi! The son of Crao knew that O-Naa and Ka-Haa were condemned! In those wild times, the justice of “Those Who Walk Upright” could be implacable! When Rahan left these men, the new leader accompanied him to the hills. Goodbye, Brother! Mine will never forget you! And Kawi will follow your wise advice! He will lead the clan to the lands of game. And never again will meat be shared other than with the “Bamboo-of-justice”! Farewell! Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

THE THIRD PARTITION, LOVE-MELANCHOLY. https://rumble.com/v4d2ddr-anatomy-of-melancholy-part-1-of-4-introduction.-a-puke-tm-audiobook.html https://rumble.com/v4dgu6o-the-anatomy-of-melancholy-2-of-4-the-first-partition-by-robert-burton-1621..html https://rumble.com/v4dh2lr-anatomy-of-melancholy-part-3-of-4-partition-2.-a-puke-tm-audiobook.html THE FIRST SECTION, MEMBER, SUBSECTION. The Preface. There will not be wanting, I presume, one or other that will much discommend some part of this treatise of love-melancholy, and object, which Erasmus in his preface to Sir Thomas More suspects of him) "that it is too light for a divine, too comical a subject to speak of love symptoms, too fantastical, and fit alone for a wanton poet, a feeling young lovesick gallant, an effeminate courtier, or some such idle person.” And tis true they say: for by the naughtiness of men it is so come to pass, as Caussinus observes, that the voice of love is suspicious to the chaste ears, and despised, the very name of love is odious to chaste ears; and therefore some again, out of an affected gravity, will dislike all for the name's sake before they read a word; dissembling with him in Petronius, and seem to be angry that their ears are violated with such obscene speeches, that so they may be admired for grave philosophers and staid carriage. They cannot abide to hear talk of love toys, or amorous discourses, averse in their outward actions with face, gesture, and eyes, and yet in their thoughts they are all out as bad, if not worse than others. “In Brutus' presence Lucretia blushed and laid my book aside; when he retired, she took it up again and read.” But let these cavillers and counterfeit Catos know, that as the Lord John answered the Queen in that Italian Guazzo, an old, a grave discreet man is fittest to discourse of love matters, because he hath likely more experience, observed more, hath a more staid judgment, can better discern, resolve, discuss, advise, give better cautions, and more solid precepts, better inform his hearers in such a subject, and by reason of his riper years sooner diverge. Besides, there is nothing to be feared in this voice of love, there is nothing here to be excepted at; love is a species of melancholy, and a necessary part of this my treatise, which I may not omit; the work undertaken was to be served: so Jacobus Mysillius pleads for himself in his translation of Lucian's dialogues, and so do I; I must and will perform my task. And that short excuse of Mercerus, for his edition of Aristaenetus shall be mine, "If I have spent my time ill to write, let not them be so idle as to read." But I am persuaded it is not so ill spent, I ought not to excuse or repent myself of this subject; on which many grave and worthy men have written whole volumes, Plato, Plutarch, Plotinus, Maximus, Tyrius, Alcinous, Avicenna, Leo the Hebrew in three large dialogues, Xenophon symposium. Theophrastus, if we may believe Athenaeus, Picus Mirandula, Marius, Aequicola, both in Italian, Kornmannus de linea Amoris, book three, Petrus Godefridus hath handled in three books, P. Haedus, and which almost every physician, as Arnoldus, Villanovanus, Valleriola, Aelian Montaltus and Laurentius in their treatises of melancholy, Jason Pratensis, Valescus of Taranta, Gordonius, Hercules of Saxony, Savanarola, Langius, and more, have treated separately, and in their works. I excuse myself, therefore, with Peter Godefridus, Valleriola, Ficinus, and in Langius' words. Cadmus Milesius writes fourteen books of love, "and why should I be ashamed to write an epistle in favor of young men, of this subject?" A company of stern readers dislike the second of the Aeneids, and Virgil's gravity, for inserting such amorous passions in an heroic subject; but Servius, his commentator, justly vindicates the poet's worth, wisdom, and discretion in doing as he did. Castalius would not have young men read the Canticles, because to his thinking it was too light and amorous a tract, a ballad of ballads, as our old English translation hath it. He might as well forbid the reading of Genesis, because of the loves of Jacob and Rachael, the stories of Shechem and Dinah, Judah and Tamar; reject the Book of Numbers, for the fornications of the people of Israel with the Moabites; that of Judges for Samson and Dalilah's embracings; that of the Kings, for David and Beersheba's adulteries, the incest of Ammon and Tamar, Solomon's concubines, and more. The stories of Esther, Judith, Susanna, and many such. Dicearchus, and some others, carp at Plato's majesty, that he would vouchsafe to indite such love toys: amongst the rest, for that dalliance with Agatho, While I was giving Agathon sweet things, I held my soul in my lips; For the patient was hurrying as if he were going away. For my part, says Maximus Tyrius, a great Platonist himself, not only admires me, but stuns him, I do not only admire, but stand amazed to read, that Plato and Socrates both should expel Homer from their city, because he writes of such light and wanton subjects, Which brings Juno with Jove in Ida reclining, Covered by an immortal cloud, Vulcan's net. Mars and Venus' fopperies before all the gods, because Apollo fled, when he was persecuted by Achilles, the gods were wounded and ran whining away, as Mars that roared louder than Stentor, and covered nine acres of ground with his fall ; Vulcan was a summer's day falling down from heaven, and in Lemnos Isle brake his leg, and more, with such ridiculous passages; when, as both Socrates and Plato, by his testimony, write lighter themselves: for what is so distant, as he follows it, than a lover from a temperate man, an admirer of forms from a madman, what can be more absurd than for grave philosophers to treat of such fooleries, to admire Autiloquus, Alcibiades, for their beauties as they did, to run after, to gaze, to dote on fair Phaedrus, delicate Agatho, young Lysis, fine Charmides, what befits a Philosopher? Doth this become grave philosophers? To this peradventure Callias, Thrasimachus, Polus, Aristophanes, or some of his adversaries and emulators might object; but neither they nor Anytus and Melitus his bitter enemies, that condemned him for teaching Critias to tyrannise, his impiety for swearing by dogs and plain trees, for his juggling sophistry, and more, never so much as upbraided him with impure love, writing or speaking of that subject; and therefore without question, as he concludes, both Socrates and Plato in this are justly to be excused. But suppose they had been a little overlooked, should divine Plato be defamed? no, rather as he said of Cato's drunkenness, if Cato were drunk, it should be no vice at all to be drunk. They reprove Plato then, but without cause, as and more Ficinus pleads, "for all love is honest and good, and they are worthy to be loved that speak well of love." Being to speak of this admirable affection of love, saith Valleriola, “there lies open a vast and philosophical field to my discourse, by which many lovers become mad; let me leave my more serious meditations, wander in these philosophical fields, and look into those pleasant groves of the Muses, where with unspeakable variety of flowers, we may make garlands to ourselves, not to adorn us only, but with their pleasant smell and juice to nourish our souls, and fill our minds desirous of knowledge," and more. After a harsh and unpleasing discourse of melancholy, which hath hitherto molested your patience, and tired the author, give him leave with Godefridus the lawyer, and Laurentius, chapter 5, to recreate himself in this kind after his laborious studies, "since so many grave divines and worthy men have without offense to manners, to help themselves and others, voluntarily written of it." Heliodorus, a bishop, penned a love story of Theagines and Chariclea, and when some Catos of his time reproached him for it, chose rather, says Nicephorus, to leave his bishopric than his book. Aeneas Sylvius, an ancient divine, and past forty years of age, as he confesseth himself, after Pope Pius Secundus, indited that wanton history of Euryalus and Lucretia. And how many superintendents of learning could I reckon up that have written of light fantastical subjects? Beroaldus, Erasmus, Alpheratius, twenty-four times printed in Spanish, and more. Give me leave then to refresh my muse a little, and my weary readers, to expatiate in this delightful field, this field of delights, as Fonseca terms it, to season a surly discourse with a more pleasing aspersion of love matters: Edulcare it suits life, as the poet invites us, cares for toys, and more, tis good to sweeten our life with some pleasing toys to relish it, and as Pliny tells us, a large part of the students seek amenities, most of our students love such pleasant subjects. Although Macrobius teaches us otherwise, "that those old sages banished all such light tracts from their studies, to nurse's cradles, to please only the ear;" yet out of Apuleius I will oppose as honorable patrons, Solon, Plato, Xenophon, Adrian, and more. that as highly approve of these treatises. On the other side I think they are not to be disliked, they are not so unfit. I will not peremptorily say as one did I will tell you such pretty stories, that foul befall him that is not pleased with them; Nor will I say that I have heard those things which are of use to you, and remember them for pleasure, with that confidence, as Beroaldus doth his narrations on Propertius. I will not expert or hope for that approbation, which Lipsius gives to his Epictetus; I do more when I read; always as new, and when I have repeated, to be repeated, the more I read, the more shall I covet to read. I will not press you with my pamphlets, or beg attention, but if you like them you may. Pliny holds it expedient, and most fit, to season severity with delight even in writings, to season our works with some pleasant discourse; Synesius approves of it, though he may play in games; and there be those, without question, that are more willing to read such toys, than I am to write: “Let me not live,” says Aretine's Antonia, “If I had not rather hear thy discourse, than see a play?” No doubt but there be more of her mind, ever have been, ever will be, as Jerome bears me witness. A far greater part had rather read Apuleius than Plato: Tully himself confesseth he could not understand Plato's Timaeus, and therefore cared less for it: but every schoolboy hath that famous testament of Grunnius Corocotta Porcellus at his fingers' ends. The comic poet. “This he took to be his only business, that the plays which he wrote should please the people.” made this his only care and sole study to please the people, tickle the ear, and to delight; but my earnest intent is as much to profit as to please; not so much to please the people, as to help the people, and these my writings, I hope, shall take like gilded pills, which are so composed as well to tempt the appetite, and deceive the palate, as to help and medicinally work upon the whole body my lines shall not only recreate, but rectify the mind. I think I have said enough; if not, let him that is otherwise minded, remember that of Maudarensis, "he was in his life a philosopher", as Ausonius apologizeth for him, "in his epigrams a lover, in his precepts most severe; in his letter to Caerelia, a wanton." Annianus, Sulpicius, Evemus, Menander, and many old poets besides, did itch in writing, wrote Fescennines, Atellans, and lascivious songs; happy matter; yet they had in their manners censure and severity, they were chaste, severe, and upright livers. “The poet himself should be chaste and pious, but his verses need not imitate him in these respects; they may therefore contain wit and humour.” I am of Catullus' opinion, and make the same apology on my own behalf; This, too, that I write, generally depends on the opinion and authority of others; nor perhaps I myself am mad, but I follow those who are mad. And it is granted that this drives me mad; We have all gone mad at one time, and I certainly think I am going mad at one time, and he, and he, and I, of course. I am a man, I think nothing alien to the human being from me: And which he urges for himself, accused of the like fault, I as justly plead, The page is lewd to us, life is a trial. However my lines err, my life is honest, life is shameful, my muse is jocular. But I presume I need no such apologies, I need not, as Socrates in Plato, cover his face when he spoke of love, or blush and hide mine eyes, as Pallas did in her hood, when she was consulted by Jupiter about Mercury's marriage, that, when a virgin is consulted upon marriage, it is no such lascivious, obscene, or wanton discourse; I have not offended your chaster ears with anything that is here written, as many French and Italian authors in their modern language of late have done, nay some of our Latin pontifical writers, Zanches, Asorius, Abulensis, Burchardus, and more, whom Rivet accuseth to be more lascivious than Virgil in Priapeiis, Petronius in Catalectis, Aristophanes in Lycistratae, Martialis, or any other pagan profane writer, who so atrociously, one notes, sinned in this manner that many ingenious writings were staged obscenities for the sake of chastity their minds are abhorred. Tis not scurrile this, but chaste, honest, most part serious, and even of religion itself. "Incensed"m as he said, "with the love of finding love, we have sought it, and found it." More yet, I have augmented and added something to this light treatise if light, which was not in the former editions, I am not ashamed to confess it, with a good author, that most people demanded that this subject be extended and enriched and being defeated by their importunity, I brought my mind, however resisting, to such an extent that I took up the pen in my hand for the sixth time, and girded myself with writing far from my studies and profession, having spared some hours in the meantime from my serious occupations, and dedicating them as a sort of game and recreation; “I am compelled to reverse my sails, and retrace my former course.” Although I was not unaware that perhaps new detractors would not be lacking in these new interpolations of mine. And thus much I have thought good to say by way of preface, lest any man, which Godefridus feared in his book, should blame in me lightness, wantonness, rashness, in speaking of love's causes, enticements, symptoms, remedies, lawful and unlawful loves, and lust itself, I speak it only to tax and deter others from it, not to teach, but to show the vanities and fopperies of this heroic or Herculean love, and to apply remedies unto it. I will treat of this with like liberty as of the rest. “What I tell you, do you tell to the multitude, and make this treatise gossip like an old woman.” Condemn me not a good reader then, or censure me hardly, if some part of this treatise to thy thinking as yet be too light; but consider better of it; Everything is clean, a naked man to a modest woman is no otherwise than a picture, as Augusta Livia truly said, and a bad mind, a bad mind, tis as tis taken. If in thy censure it be too light, I advise thee, as Lipsius did his reader for some places of Plautus, to pass over these rocks as the Sirens, if they like thee not, let them pass; or oppose that which is good to that which is bad, and therefore reject not all. For to invert that verse of Martial, and with Hierom Wolfius to apply it to my present purpose, there are evils, there are some mediocre ones, there are more good things; some are good, some bad, some are indifferent. I say further with him yet, I have inserted, I am not burdened to write down some light and funny things, some from the theaters, from the streets, even from restaurants, some things more homely, light, or comical, litans graces, and more, which I would request every man to interpret to the best, and as Julius Caesar Scaliger besought Cardan. I beseech thee, good reader, not to mistake me, or misconstrue what is here written; By the Muses and the Charites, and all the deities of the poets, I beseech thee, kindly reader, take me not wrong. Tis a comical subject; in sober sadness I crave pardon of what is lost, and desire thee to suspend thy judgment, wink at small faults, or to be silent at least; but if thou likest, speak well of it, and wish me good success. Arethusa grant me this last labour. I am resolved however, whether you like it or not, to boldly enter the stadium, in the Olympics, with those Aeliensian wrestlers in Philostratus, boldly to show myself in this common stage, and in this tragicomedy of love, to act several parts, some satirically, some comically, some in a mixed tone, as the subject I have in hand gives occasion, and the present scene shall require, or offer itself. Subsection two. Love's Beginning, Object, Definition, Division. "Love's limits are ample and great, and a spacious walk it hath, beset with thorns," and for that cause, which Scaliger reprehends in Cardan, "not lightly to be passed over." Lest I incur the same censure, I will examine all the kinds of love, its nature, beginning, difference, objects, how it is honest or dishonest, a virtue or vice, a natural passion, or a disease, its power and effects, how far it extends: of which, although something has been said in the first partition, in those sections of disturbances, "for love and hatred are the first and most common passions, from which all the rest arise, and are attendant ," as Picolomineus holds, or as Nicholas Caussinus, the first mobile of all other affections, which carry them all about them, I will now more copiously dilate, through all his parts and several branches, that so it may better appear what love is, and how it varies with the objects, how in defect, or, which is most ordinary and common, immoderate, and in excess, causes melancholy. Love universally taken, is defined to be a desire, as a word of more ample signification: and though Leo the Hebrew, the most copious writer of this subject, in his third dialogue make no difference, yet in his first he distinguishes them again, and you define love by giving up. “Love is a voluntary affection, and desire to enjoy that which is good. Desire wishes, love enjoys; the end of the one is the beginning of the other; that which we love is present; that which we leave is absent.” "It is worth the labor," says Plotinus, "to consider the well of love, whether it be a god or a devil, or passion of the mind, or partly god, partly devil, partly passion." He concludes love to participate of all three, to arise from desire of that which is beautiful and fair, and defines it to be "an action of the mind desiring that which is good." Plato calls it the great devil, for its vehemency, and sovereignty over all other passions, and defines it an appetite, "by which we desire some good to be present." Ficinus in his commentary adds the word fair to this definition. Love is a desire of enjoying that which is good and fair. Austin expands this common definition, and will have love to be a delight of the heart, "for something which we seek to win, or joy to have, coveting by desire, resting in joy." Scaliger taxeth these former definitions, and will not have love to be defined by desire or appetite; "for when we enjoy the things we desire, there remains no more appetite:" as he defines it, "Love is an affection by which we are either united to the thing we love, or perpetuate our union;" which agrees in part with Leo Hebreus. Now this love varies as its object varies, which is always good, amiable, fair, gracious, and pleasant. "Desire all things that which is good," as we are taught in the Ethics, or at least that which to them seems to be good; for what do you mean by evil, as Austin well brings, tell me? I think nothing in all actions; thou wilt wish no harm, I suppose, no ill in all thine actions, thoughts or desires; thou wilt not have bad corn, bad soil, a naughty tree, but all good; a good servant, a good horse, a good son, a good friend, a good neighbor, a good wife. From this goodness comes beauty; from beauty, grace, and comeliness, which result as so many rays from their good parts, make us to love, and so to covet it: for were it not pleasing and gracious in our eyes, we should not seek. "No man loves", saith Aristotle, "but he that was first delighted with comeliness and beauty." As this fair object varies, so doth our love; for as Proclus holds, Every fair thing is amiable, and what we love is fair and gracious in our eyes, or at least we do so apprehend and still esteem it. "Amiableness is the object of love, the scope and end is to obtain it, for whose sake we love, and which our mind covets to enjoy." And it seems to us especially fair and good; for good, fair, and unity, cannot be separated. Beauty shines, says Plato, and by reason of its splendor and shining causes admiration; and the fairer the object is, the more eagerly it is sought. For as the same Plato defines it, “Beauty is a lively, shining or glittering brightness, resulting from effused good, by ideas, seeds, reasons, shadows, stirring up our minds, that by this good they may be united and make one." Others will have beauty to be the perfection of the whole composition, "caused out of the congruous symmetry, measure, order and manner of parts, and that comeliness which proceeds from this beauty is called grace, and from then all fair things are gracious.” For grace and beauty are so wonderfully annexed, “so sweetly and gently win our souls, and strongly allure, that they confound our judgment and cannot be distinguished. Beauty and grace are like those beams and shinings that come from the glorious and divine sun," which are diverse, as they proceed from the diverse objects, to please and affect our several senses. "As the species of beauty are taken at our eyes, ears, or conceived in our inner soul," as Plato disputes at large in his Dialogue de pulchro, Phaedro, Hyppias, and after many sophistical errors refuted, concludes that beauty it is a grace in all things, delighting the eyes, ears, and soul itself; so that, as Valesius infers hence, whatever pleases our ears, eyes, and soul, must needs be beautiful, fair, and delightful to us." And nothing can more please our ears than music, or pacify our minds." Fair houses, pictures, orchards, gardens, fields, a fair hawk, a fair horse is most acceptable to us; whatever pleases our eyes and ears, we call beautiful and fair; "Pleasure belongs to the rest of the senses, but grace and beauty to these two alone." As the objects vary and are diverse, so they differently affect our eyes, ears, and soul itself. Which gives occasion to some to make so many several kinds of love as there be objects. One beauty arises from God, of which and divine love S Dionysius, with many fathers and neoterics, have written just volumes, De amore Dei, as they term it, many paraenetical discourses; another from these creatures; there is a beauty of the body, a beauty of the soul, a beauty from virtue, the form of martyrs, Austin calls it, which we see with the eyes of our mind; which beauty, as Tully says, if we could discern with these corporeal eyes, would cause admirable affections, and ravish our souls. This other beauty which arises from those extreme parts, and graces which proceed from gestures, speeches, several motions, and proportions of creatures, men and women, especially from women, which made those old poets put the three graces still in Venus' company, as attending on her, and holding up her train, are infinite almost, and vary their names with their objects, as love of money, covetousness, love of beauty, lust, immoderate desire of any pleasure, concupiscence, friendship, love, goodwill, and more, and is either virtue or vice, honest, dishonest, in excess, defect, as shall be shown in his place. Heroic love, religious love, and more, which may be reduced to a twofold division, according to the principal parts which are affected, the brain and liver. Love and friendship, which Scalinger, Valesius and Melancthon warrant out of Plato They kiss and they are from that speech of Pausanias belike, that makes two Venuses and two loves. “One Venus is ancient without a mother, and descended from heaven, whom we call celestial; the younger, begotten of Jupiter and Dione, whom we commonly call Venus.” Ficinus, in his commentary upon this place. Following Plato, he calls these two loves, two devils, or good and bad angels according to us, which are still hovering about our souls. “The one rears to heaven, the other depresses us to hell; the one good, which stirs us up to the contemplation of that divine beauty for whose sake we perform justice and all godly offices, study philosophy, and else; the other base, and though bad yet to be respected; for indeed both are good in their own natures: procreation of children is as necessary as that finding out of truth, but therefore called bad, because it is abused, and withdraws our souls from the speculation of that other to baser objects," so far Ficinus. Saint Austin, book fifteen of the city God and Psalm sixty four, hath delivered as much in effect. “Every creature is good, and may be loved well or ill,” and “Two cities make two loves, Jerusalem and Babylon, the love of God the one, the love of the world the other; of these two cities we all are citizens, as by examination of ourselves we may soon find, and of which." The one love is the root of all mischief, the other of all good. So, in his de moribus ecclesiae, he will have those four cardinal virtues to be naught else but love rightly composed; in his book the city of god, he calls virtue the order of love, whom Thomas follows. He confirms as much, and amplifies in many words. Lucian, to the same purpose, hath a division of his own, "One love was born in the sea, which is as various and raging in young men's breasts as the sea itself, and causes burning lust: the other is that golden chain which was let down from heaven, and with a divine fury ravisheth our souls, made to the image of God, and stirs us up to comprehend the innate and incorruptible beauty to which we were once created." Beroaldus has expressed all this in an epigram of his: If divine Plato's tenets they be true, Two Veneres, two loves there be, The one from heaven, unbegotten still, Which knits our souls in unity. The other famous over all the world, Binding the hearts of gods and men; Dishonest, wanton, and seducing she, Rules whom she will, both where and when. This twofold division of love, Origen likewise follows, in his Commentary on the Canticles, one from God, the other from the devil, as he holds, understanding it in the worse sense, which many others repeat and imitate. Both which, to omit all subdivisions, in excess or defect, as they are abused, or degenerate, cause melancholy in a particular kind, as shall be shown in his place. Austin, in another Tract, makes a threefold division of this love, which we may use well or ill: “God, our neighbor, and the world: God above us, our neighbor next us, the world beneath us. In the course of our desires, God hath three things, the world one, our neighbor two. Our desire for God, is either from God, with God, or to God, and ordinarily so runs. From God, when it receives from him, whence, and for which it should love him: with God, when it contradicts his will in nothing: to God, when it seeks to him, and rests itself in him. Our love to our neighbor may proceed from him, and run with him, not to him: from him, as when we rejoice of his good safety, and well doing: with him, when we desire to have him a fellow and companion of our journey in the way of the Lord: not in him, because there is no aid, hope, or confidence in man. From the world our love comes, when we begin to admire the Creator in his works, and glorify God in his creatures: with the world it should run, if, according to the mutability of all temporalities, it should be dejected in adversity, or over elevated in prosperity: to the world, if it would settle itself in its vain delights and studies.” Many such partitions of love I could repeat, and subdivisions, but at least, which Scaliger objects to Cardan. "I confound filthy burning lust with pure and divine love," I will follow that accurate division of Leon Hebreus, betwixt Sophia and Philo, where he speaks of natural, sensible, and rational love, and handles each apart. Natural love or hatred, is that sympathy or antipathy which is to be seen in animate and inanimate creatures, in the four elements, metals, stones, heavy tend downwards, as a stone to his center, fire upward, and rivers to the sea. The sun, moon, and stars go still around, Lovers of nature, exercise dues, for love of perfection. This love is manifest, I say, in inanimate creatures. How do you eat a loadstone to draw iron to it? Jet chaff? The ground to covet showers, but for love? No creature, concludes Saint Jerome, is to be found that does not love anything, no stock, no stone, that hath not some feeling of love, Tis more eminent in plants, herbs, and is especially observed in vegetables; as between the vine and elm a great sympathy, between the vine and the cabbage, between the vine and the olive, Virgo flees Bromium, between the vine and bays a great antipathy, the vine loves not the bay, "nor his smell, and will kill him, if he grow near him;" the bur and the lentil cannot endure one another, the olive and the myrtle embrace each other, in roots and branches if they grow near. Read more of this in Picolominius, Crescentius, Baptista Porta, Fracastorius of the love and hatred of planets, consult with every astrologer. Leo Hebreus gives many fabulous reasons, and moralises them withal. Sensible love is that of brute beasts, of which the same Hebreus assigns these causes. First for the pleasure they take in the act of generation, male and female love one another. Secondly, for the preservation of the species, and desire of young brood. Thirdly, for the mutual agreement, as being of the same kind, in one another's company, Ants are welcome, cicadas cicadas, and birds of a feather will gather together. Fourthly, for custom, use, and familiarity, as if a dog be trained up with a lion and a bear, contrary to their natures, they will love each other. Hawks, dogs, horses, love their masters and keepers: many stories I could relate in this kind, but see Gillius, those two Epistles of Lipsius, of dogs and horses, Agellius, and more. Fifthly, for bringing up, as if a bitch brings up a kid, a hen ducklings, a hedge-sparrow a cuckoo, and more. The third kind is love of knowledge, as Leon calls it, rational love, intellectual love, and is proper to men, on which I must insist. This appears in God, angels, men. God is love itself, the fountain of love, the disciple of love, as Plato styles him; the servant of peace, the God of love and peace; have peace with all men and God is with you. Whoever worships Olympus, He submits to himself the world and God. "By this love", saith Gerson, "we purchase heaven," and buy the kingdom of God. This love is either in the Trinity itself, for the Holy Ghost is the love of the Father and the Son, and more. John three, 35, and verse 20, and fourteen, 31, or towards us his creatures, as in making the world. Love made the world, love built cities, soul of the world, invented arts, sciences, and all good things, incites us to virtue and humanity, combines and quickens; keeps peace on earth, quietness by sea, mirth in the winds and elements, expels all fear, anger, and rusticity; A round circle still from good to good; for love is the beginning and end of all our actions, the efficient and instrumental cause, as our poets in their symbols, impressions, emblems of rings, squares, and more, shadow unto us, If first and last of anything you wit, Cease; love's the sole and only cause of it. Love, says Leo, made the world, and afterwards in redeeming it, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son for it," John three, 16. "Behold what love the Father hath shown on us, that we should be called the sons of God," first John three, 1. Or by His sweet Providence, in protecting of it; either all in general, or His saints elect and church in particular, whom He keeps as the apple of His eye, whom He loves freely, as Hosea fourteen, 5. speaks, and dearly respects, A man is dearer to them than to himself. Not that we are fair, nor for any merit or grace of ours, for we are most vile and base; but out of His incomparable love and goodness, out of His Divine Nature. And this is that Homer's golden chain, which reaches down from heaven to earth, by which every creature is annexed, and depends on his Creator. He made all, says Moses, "and it was good;" He loves it as well. The love of angels and living souls is mutual amongst themselves, towards us militant in the church, and all such as love God; as the sunbeams irradiate the earth from those celestial thrones, they by their well wishes reflect on us, in promoting the salvation of men zealous and constant servants, there is joy in heaven for every sinner that repenteth; they pray for us, are solicitous for our good, Chaste geniuses. “Where charity prevails, sweet desire, joy, and love towards God are also present.” Love proper to mortal men is the third member of this subdivision, and the subject of my following discourse. Member two. Subsection one. Love of Men, which varies as his Objects, Profitable, Pleasant, Honest. Valesius defines this love which is in men, "to be an affection of both powers, appetite and reason." The rational resides in the brain, the other in the liver, as before hath been said out of Plato and others; the heart is variously affected by both, and carried a thousand ways by consent. The sensitive faculty most part overrules reason, the soul is carried hoodwinked, and the understanding captive like a beast. "The heart is variously inclined, sometimes they are merry, sometimes sad, and from love arise hope and fear, jealousy, fury, despair." Now this love of men is diverse, and varies, as the object varies, by which they are enticed, as virtue, wisdom, eloquence, profit, wealth, money, fame, honor, or comeliness of person, and more. Leo Hubreus, in his first dialogue, reduces them all to these three, profitable, pleasant, honest; out of Aristotle, of which he discourseth at large, and whatever is beautiful and fair, is referred to them, or any way to be desired. "To profitable is ascribed health, wealth, honor, and else, which is rather ambition, desire, covetousness, than love:" friends, children, love of women, all delightful and pleasant objects, are referred to the second. The love of honest things consists in virtue and wisdom, and is preferred before that which is profitable and pleasant: intellectual, about that which is honest. Saint Austin calls it “profitable, worldly; pleasant, carnal; honest, spiritual Of and from all three, result charity, friendship, and true love, which respects God and our neighbor." Of each of these I will briefly dilate, and show in what sort they cause melancholy. Amongst all these fair enticing objects, which procure love, and bewitch the soul of man, there is none so moving, so forcible as profit; and that which carries with it a show of commodity. Health indeed is a precious thing, to recover and preserve which we will undergo any misery, drink bitter potions, freely give our goods: restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee, bountiful he is, thankful and beholding to thee ; but give him wealth and honor, give him gold, or what shall be for his advantage and preference, and thou shalt command his affections, oblige him eternally to thee, heart, hand, life, and all is at thy service, thou art his dear and loving friend, good and gracious lord and master, these Meccans; he is thy slave, thy vassal, most devoted, affectioned, and bound in all duty: tell him good tidings in this kind, there spoke an angel, a blessed hour that brings in gain, he is thy creature, and thou his creator, he hugs and admires you; he is thine for ever. No loadstone so attractive as that of profit, none so fair an object as this of gold; nothing wins a man sooner than a good turn, bounty and liberality command body and soul: Good turns doth pacify both God and men, And Jupiter himself is won by them. Gold of all others is a most delicious object; a sweet light, a goodly luster it hath; Austin says, and we had rather see it than the sun. Sweet and pleasant in getting, in keeping; it seasons all our labors, intolerable pains we take for it, base employments, endure bitter flouts and taunts, long journeys, heavy burdens, all are made light and easy by this hope of gain. in the box The sight of gold refresheth our spirits, and ravisheth our hearts, as that Babylonian garment and golden wedge did Achan in the camp, the very sight and hearing sets on fire his soul with desire of it. It will make a man run to the antipodes, or tarry at home and turn parasite, lie, flatter, prostitute himself, swear and bear false witness; he will venture his body, kill a king, murder his father, and damn his soul to come at it. A more beautiful mass of gold, as he well observed, the mass of gold is fairer than all your Grecian pictures, that Apelles, Phidias, or any doting painter could ever make: we are enamored with it, Almost the first vows, and best known to all the temples, Wealth to grow. All our labours, studies, endeavours, vows, prayers and wishes, are to get, how to compass it. This is the one to whom the greatest world serves, The powerful diva of things, and the mistress of fate's money. “This is the great goddess we adore and worship; this is the sole object of our desire.” If we have it, as we think, we are made for ever, thrice happy, princes, lords, and else. If we lose it, we are dull, heavy, dejected, discontented, miserable, desperate, and mad. Our estate and well-being ebbs and flows with our commodity; and as we are endowed or enriched, so are we beloved and esteemed: it lasts no longer than our wealth; when that is gone, and the object removed, farewell friendship: as long as bounty, good cheer, and rewards were to be hoped for, friends enough; they were tied to thee by the teeth, and would follow thee as crows do a carcass: but when thy goods are gone and spent, the lamp of their love is out, and thou shalt be contemned, scorned, hated, injured. Lucian's Timon, when he lived in prosperity, was the sole spectacle of Greece, only admired; who but Timon? Everybody loved, honored, applauded him, each man offered him his service, and sought to be kin to him; but when his gold was spent, his fair possessions gone, farewell Timon: none so ugly, none so deformed, so hateful an object as Timon, no man so ridiculous on a sudden, they gave him a penny to buy a rope, no man would know him. Tis the general humor of the world, commodity steers our affections throughout, we love those that are fortunate and rich, that thrive, or by whom we may receive mutual kindness, hope for like courtesies, get any good, gain, or profit; hate those, and abhor on the other side, which are poor and miserable, or by whom we may sustain loss or inconvenience. And even those that were now familiar and dear to us, our loving and long friends, neighbors, kinsmen, allies, with whom we have conversed, and lived as so many Geryons for some years past, striving still to give one another all good content and entertainment, with mutual invitations, feastings, disports, offices, for whom we would ride, run, spend ourselves, and of whom we have so freely and honorably spoken, to whom we have given all those turgent titles, and magnificent eulogiums, most excellent and most noble, worthy, wise, grave, learned, valiant, and else, and magnified beyond measure: if any controversy arises between us, some trespass, injury, abuse, some part of our goods be detained, a piece of land come to be litigious, if they cross us in our suit, or touch the string of our commodity, we detest and depress them upon a sudden: neither affinity, consanguinity, or old acquaintance can contain us, but Caprificus will come out with a broken liver. A golden apple sets altogether by the ears, as if a marrowbone or honeycomb were flung amongst bears: father and son, brother and sister, kinsmen are at odds: and look what malice, deadly hatred can invent, that shall be done, Terrible, dire, pestilential, terrible, ferocious, mutual injuries, desire of revenge, and how to hurt them, him and his, are all our studies. If our pleasures be interrupted, we can tolerate it: our bodies hurt, we can put it up and be reconciled: but touch our commodities, we are most impatient: fair becomes foul, the graces are turned to harpies, friendly greetings to bitter imprecations , mutual feastings to plotting villainies, minings and counterminings; good words to satires and invectives, we revile on the contrary, nought but his imperfections are in our eyes, he is a base knave, a devil, a monster, a caterpillar, a viper, a hog-rubber, and more, the scene is altered on a sudden, love is turned to hate, mirth to melancholy: so furiously are we most part bent, our affections fixed upon this object of commodity, and upon money, the desire of which in excess is covetousness: ambition tyranniseth over our souls, as I have shown, and in defect crucifies as much, as if a man by negligence, ill husbandry, improvidence, prodigality, waste and consume his goods and fortunes , beggary follows, and melancholy, he becomes an abject, odious and "worse than an infidel, in not providing for his family." Subsection two. Pleasant Objects of Love. Pleasant objects are infinite, whether they be such as have life, or be without life; inanimate are countries, provinces, towers, towns, cities, as he said, We see a fair island by description, when we see it not. The sun never saw a fairer city, Thessalian Tempe, orchards, gardens, pleasant walks, groves, fountains, and more. The heaven itself is said to be fair or foul: fair buildings,fair pictures, all artificial, elaborate and curious works, clothes, give an admirable luster: we admire, and gaze upon them, like the bird of Juno's children, as children do on a peacock: a fair dog, a fair horse and hawk, and else Thessalus loves a young horse, an Egyptian cow, a Lacedaemonian cat, and else, such things we love, are most gracious in our sight, acceptable unto us, and whatever else may cause this passion, if it be superfluous or immoderately loved, as Observe the Guyanese. These things in themselves are pleasing and good, singular ornaments, necessary, comely, and fit to be had; but when we fix an immoderate eye, and dote on them too much, this pleasure may turn to pain, bring much sorrow and discontent to us, work our final overthrow, and cause melancholy in the end. Many are carried away with those bewitching sports of gaming, hawking, hunting, and such vain pleasures, as I have said: some with immoderate desire of fame, to be crowned in the Olympics, knighted in the field, and more, and by these means ruin themselves. The lascivious dotes on his fair mistress, the glutton on his dishes, which are infinitely varied to please the palate, the epicure on his several pleasures, the superstitious on his idol, and fats himself with future joys, as Turks feed themselves with an imaginary persuasion of a sensual paradise: so several pleasant objects differently affect different men. But the fairest objects and enticings proceed from men themselves, which most frequently captivate, allure, and make them dote beyond all measure upon one another, and that for many respects: first, as some suppose, by that secret force of stars, which does the star temper me for you? They do singularly dote on such a man, hate such again, and can give no reason for it. I do not love you Sabidi, and else. Alexander admired Ephestion, Adrian Antinous, Nero Sporus, and more. The physicians refer this to their temperament, astrologers to trine and sextile aspects, or the opposite of their several ascendants, lords of their births, love and hatred of planets; Cicogna, to concord and discord of spirits; but most to outward graces. A merry companion is welcome and acceptable to all men, and therefore, says Gomesius, princes and great men entertain jesters and players commonly in their courts. But Peers congregate very easily with peers, tis that similarity of manners, which ties most men in an inseparable link, as if they be addicted to the same studies or sports, they delight in one another's companies, "birds of a feather will gather together:" if they be of different inclinations, or opposite in manners, they can rarely agree. Secondly, affability, custom, and familiarity, may convert nature many times, though they be different in manners, as if they be countrymen, fellow-students, colleagues, or have been fellow-soldiers, brethren in affliction, a bitter society of calamities, even men of different talents unite, affinity, or some such accidental occasion, though they cannot agree amongst themselves, they will stick together like burrs, and bold against a third; so after some discontinuance, or death, enmity ceases; or in a foreign place: He feeds on the living bruise, rests after the fates: And hatreds fall, and sad death overwhelms anger. A third cause of love and hate, may be mutual offices, accepted benefit, commend him, use him kindly, take his part in a quarrel, relieve him in his misery, thou winnest him for ever; do the opposite, and be sure of a perpetual enemy. Praise and dispraise of each other, do as much, though unknown, as Schoppius by Scaliger and Casaubonus: a mule itches a mule; who but Scaliger with him? What encomiums, epithets, eulogiums? Ancient of wisdom, perpetual dictator, ornament of letters, miracle of Europe, noble Scaliger, incredible excellence of genius, and more, but when they began to vary, none so absurd as Scaliger, so vile and base, as his books on the Burdonum family, and other satirical invectives may witness, Ovid, in Ibin, Archilocus himself was not so bitter. Another great tie or cause of love, is consanguinity: parents are clear to their children, children to their parents, brothers and sisters, cousins of all sorts, as a hen and chickens, all of a knot: every crow thinks her own bird fairest. Many memorable examples are in this kind, and 'this portent simile, if they do not: "a mother cannot forget her child:" Solomon so found out the true owner; love of parents may not be concealed, tis natural, descends, and they that are inhuman in this kind, are unworthy of that air they breathe, and of the four elements; yet many unnatural examples we have in this rank, of hard-hearted parents, disobedient children, of disagreeing brothers, nothing so common. The love of kinsmen is grown cold, "many kinsmen", as the saying is, "few friends;" if thine estate be good, and thou ablest, to relate equally, to requite their kindness, there will be mutual correspondence, otherwise thou art a burden, most odious to them above all others. The last object that ties man and man, is comeliness of person, and beauty alone, as men love women with a wanton eye: which par excellence is termed heroic, or love-melancholy. Other loves, saith Picolomineus, are so called with some contraction, as the love of wine, gold, and more, but this of women is predominant in a higher strain, whose part affected is the liver, and this love deserves a longer explanation, and shall be dilated apart in the next section. Subsection three. Honest Objects of Love. Beauty is the common object of all love, "as a jet draws a straw, so doth beauty love:" virtue and honesty are great motives, and give as fair a lustre as the rest, especially if they be sincere and right, not fucate, but proceeding from true form, and an incorrupt judgment; those two Venus' twins, Eros and Anteros, are then most firm and fast. For many times otherwise men are deceived by their flattering gnathos, dissembling camelions, outsiders, hypocrites that make a show of great love, learning, pretend honesty, virtue, zeal, modesty, with affected looks and counterfeit gestures: feigned protests often steal away the hearts and favors of men, and deceive them, in the appearance of virtue and shadow, when as really and indeed, there is no worth or honesty at all in them, no truth, but mere hypocrisy, subtlety, knavery, and the like. As true friends they are, as he that Caelius Secundus met by the highway side; and hard it is in this temporising age to distinguish such companions, or to find them out. Such gnathos as these for the most part belong to great men, and by this glozing flattery, affability, and such like philters, so dive and insinuate into their favors, that they are taken for men of excellent worth, wisdom, learning, demigods, and so screw themselves into dignities, honors, offices; but these men cause harsh confusion often, and as many times stirs as Rehoboam's counselors in a commonwealth, overthrew themselves and others. Tandlerus and some authors make a doubt, whether love and hatred may be compelled by philters or characters; Cardan and Marbodius, by precious stones and amulets; astrologers by choice of times, and else, as I shall discuss elsewhere. The true object of this honest love is virtue, wisdom, honesty, real worth, internal form, and this love cannot deceive or be compelled, to be lovable, love itself is the most potent philtrum, virtue and wisdom, grace doing grace, the sole and only grace, not counterfeit, but open, honest, simple, naked, "descending from heaven," as our apostle hath it, an infused habit from God, which hath given several gifts, as wit, learning, tongues, for which they shall be amiable and gracious, Ephesians Four, 11, as to Saul's stature and a goodly presence, First Samuel Nine, 1, Joseph found favor in Pharaoh's court, Genesis thirty nine, for this person; and Daniel with the princes of the eunuchs, Daniel nineteen, 19. Christ was gracious with God and men, Luke two, 52. There is still some peculiar grace, as of good discourse, eloquence, wit, honesty, which is the first mobile, first mover, and a most forcible loadstone to draw the favors and good wills of men's eyes, ears, and affections unto them When "Jesus spake, they were all astonished at his answers," Luke Two, 47, "and wondered at his gracious words which proceeded from his mouth." An orator steals away the hearts of men, and as another Orpheus, where he wills, where he wills, he pulls them to him by speech alone: a sweet voice causes admiration; and he that can utter himself in good words, in our ordinary phrase, is called a proper man, a divine spirit. For which cause belike, our old poets, the Senate and the people of poets, made Mercury the gentleman-usher to the Graces, captain of eloquence, and those charities to be Jupiter's and Eurymone's daughters, descended from above. Though they be otherwise deformed, crooked, ugly to behold, those good parts of the mind denominate them fair. Plato commends the beauty of Socrates; yet who was more grim of countenance, stern and ghastly to look upon? So are and have been many great philosophers, as Gregory Nazianzen observes, "deformed most part in that which is to be seen with the eyes, but most elegant in that which is not to be seen." Wisdom often hides under worn clothing. Aesop, Democritus, Aristotle, Politianus, Melanchthon, Gesner, and more, withered old men, Sileni Alcibiades, very harsh and impolite to the eye; but who were so terse, polite, eloquent, generally learned, temperate and modest? No man then living was so fair as Alcibiades, so lovely as to the surface, to the eye, as Boethius observes, but he had a most ugly body internally, a most deformed soul; honesty, virtue, fair conditions, are great enticers to such as are well given, and much avail to get the favor and goodwill of men. Abdolominus in Curtius, a poor man, but which my author notes, "the cause of this poverty was his honesty", for his modesty and continence from a private person (for they found him digging in his garden) was saluted king, and preferred before all the magnificoes of his time, "a purple embroidered garment was put upon him, and they bade him wash himself, and, as he was worthy, take upon him the style and spirit of a king," continue his continence and the rest of his good parts. Titus Pomponius Atticus, that noble citizen of Rome, was so fair conditioned, of so sweet a carriage, that he was generally beloved of all good men, of Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Tully, of divers sects, and more, obtained many inheritances, Cornelius Nepos writes, by goodness alone. To hear the work, the price, and else. It is worthy of your attention, Livy cries, "you that scorn all but riches, and give no esteem to virtue, except they be wealthy withal, Quinctius Cincinnatus had but four acres, and by the consent of the senate was chosen dictator of Rome.” Of such account were Cato, Fabricius, Aristides, Antonius, Probus, for their eminent worth: so Caesar, Trajan, Alexander, admired for valor, Haephestion loved Alexander, but Parmenius the king: Titus the delight of the human race, and which Aurelius Victor hath of Vespasian, the darling of his time, as Edgar Etheling was in England, for his excellent virtues: their memory is yet fresh, sweet, and we love them many ages after, though they be dead: He left a pleasant memory of himself, says Lipsius of his friend, living and dead they are all one. “I have ever loved as thou knowest”, so Tully wrote to Dolabella, “Marcus Brutus for his great wit, singular honesty, constancy, sweet conditions; and believe it” “there is nothing so amiable and fair as virtue.” "I do mightily love Calvisinus," so Pliny writes to Sossius, "a most industrious, eloquent, upright man, which is all in all with me:" the affection came from his good parts. And as Saint Austin comments on the eighty fourth Psalm, "there is a peculiar beauty of justice, and inward beauty, which we see with the eyes of our hearts, love, and are enamored with, as in martyrs, though their bodies be torn in pieces with wild beasts, yet this beauty shines, and we love their virtues.” The stoics are of opinion that a wise man is only fair; and Cato in Tully’s third diaglog of de Finibus bonorum et malorum contends the same, that the features of the mind are far fairer than those of the body, incomparably beyond them: wisdom and valor according to Xenophon, especially deserve the name of beauty, and denominate one fair, and incomparably more beautiful, as Austin holds, is the truth of the Christians than the Helen of the Greeks. "Wine is strong, the king is strong, women are strong, but truth overcomes all things," Esdras one, 3, 10, 11, 12. "Blessed is the man that findeth wisdom, and getteth understanding, for the merchandise thereof is better than silver, and the gain thereof better than gold: it is more precious than pearls, and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared to her," Proverbs Two, 13, 14, 15, a wise, true, just, upright, and good man, I say it again, is only fair: it is reported of Magdalene Queen of France, and wife to Lewis the eleventh, a Scottish woman by birth, that walking forth in an evening with her ladies, she spied Alanus, one of the king's chaplains, a silly, old, hard-favoured man fast asleep in a bower, and kissed him sweetly; when the young ladies laughed at her for it, she replied, that it was not his person that she did embrace and reverence, but, with a platonic love, the divine beauty of his soul. Thus in all ages virtue hath been adored, admired, a singular glory hath proceeded from it: and the more virtuous he is, the more gracious, the more admired. No man so much followed upon earth as Christ himself: and as the Psalmist saith, forty-five, 2, "He was fairer than the sons of men." Chrysostom, Bernard de Omnia Sanctus; Austin, Cassiodorus, interpret it of the beauty of his person; there was a divine majesty in his looks, it shone like lightning and drew all men to it: but Basil, Theodoret, Arnobius, and more, of the beauty of his divinity, justice, grace, eloquence, and more. Thomas in Psalm fourteen, of both; and so doth Baradius and Peter Morales, lib de pulchritud. Jesus and Mary, adding as much of Joseph and the Virgin Mary, this other form preceded them all, according to that prediction of Sibylla Cumea. Be they present or absent, near us, or far off, this beauty shines, and will attract men of many miles to come and visit it. Plato and Pythagoras left their country, to see those wise Egyptian priests: Apollonius traveled into Ethiopia, Persia, to consult with the Magi, Brachmanni, gymnosophists. The Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon; and "many," says Hierom, "went out of Spain and remote places a thousand miles, to behold that Livy speaks:" they visited and heard one thing, and departed from the Gads. No beauty leaves such an impression, strikes so deep, or links the souls of men closer than virtue. Not through the gods or the painter could. Or imagine any sculptor, Such beauty as virtue has; "no painter, no graver, no carver can express virtue's lustre, or those admirable rays that come from it, those enchanting rays that enamour posterity, those everlasting rays that continue to the world's end." Many, saith Phavorinus, that loved and admired Alcibiades in his youth, knew not, cared not for Alcibiades a man; but the beauty of Socrates is still the same; virtue's luster never fades, it is ever fresh and green, always alive to all succeeding ages, and a most attractive loadstone, to draw and combine such as are present. For that reason alike, Homer feigns the three Graces to be linked and tied hand in hand, because the hearts of men are so firmly united with such graces. "O sweet bands, Seneca exclaims, which so happily combine, that those which are bound by them love their binders, desiring withal much more harder to be bound," and as so many Geryons to be united into one. For the nature of true friendship is to combine, to be like affected, of one mind, Willing and unwilling both are the same, And satisfied with the whole. The mind is old. As the poet says, still to continue one and the same. And where this love takes place there is peace and quietness, a true correspondence, perfect friendship, a diapason of vows and wishes, the same opinions, as between David and Jonathan, Damon and Pythias, Pylades and Orestes, Nysus and Euryalus, Theseus and Pirithous, they will live and die together, and pursue one another with good turns. For they think it most wretched to be conquered in love, not only living, but when their friends are dead, with tombs and monuments, ghosts, epitaphs, elegies, inscriptions, pyramids, obelisks, statues, images, pictures, histories, poems, annals, feasts, anniversaries, many ages after, as Plato's scholars did, they will still parent, omit no good office that may tend to the preservation of their names, honors, and eternal memory. That with colors, that with wax, that with brass, and more. "He did express his friends in colors, in wax, in brass, in ivory, marble, gold, and silver", as Pliny reports of a citizen in Rome, "and in a great audience not long since recited a just volume of his life." In another place, speaking of an epigram which Martial had composed in praise of him, “He gave me as much as he might, and would have done more if he could: though what can a man give more than honor, glory, and eternity?” But that which he wrote peradventure will not continue, yet he wrote it to continue. Tis all the reward a poor scholar can make his well-deserving patron, Mecaenas, friend, to mention him in his works, to dedicate a book to his name, to write his life, and else, as all our poets, orators, Historiographers have ever done, and the greatest revenge such men take of their adversaries, to persecute them with satires, invectives, and more, and tis both ways of great moment, as Plato gives us to understand. Paulus Jovius, in the fourth book of the life and deeds of Pope Leo Decimus, his noble patron, concludes in these words, "Because I cannot honor him as other rich men do, with like endeavour, affection, and piety, I have undertaken to write his life; since my fortunes will not give me leave to make a more sumptuous monument, I will perform those rites to his sacred ashes, which a small, perhaps, but a liberal wit can afford." But 1 rove Where this true love is wanting, there can be no firm peace, friendship from teeth outward, counterfeit, or for some by-respects, so long dissembled, till they have satisfied their own ends, which, upon every small occasion, breaks out into enmity, open war, defiance, heart-burnings, whispering, calumnies, contentions, and all manner of bitter melancholy discontents. And those men who have no other object of their love, than greatness, wealth, authority, and more, are rather feared than beloved; they neither love anyone nor are loved by anyone: and however borne with for a time, yet for their tyranny and oppression, griping, covetousness, currish hardness, folly, intemperance, imprudence, and such like vices, they are generally odious, abhorred of all, both God and men. Not your wife wants you saved, not your son, but everyone neighbors hate "Wife and children, friends, neighbors, all the world forsakes them, would feign to be rid of them," and are compelled many times to lay violent hands on them, or else God's judgments overtake them: instead of graces, come furies. So when fair Abigail, a woman of singular wisdom, was acceptable to David, Nabal was churlish and evil-conditioned; and therefore Mordecai was received, when Haman was executed, Haman the favorite, "that had his seat above the other princes, to whom all the king's servants that stood in the gates, bowed their knees and reverenced." Though they flourished many times, such hypocrites, such temporising foxes, and blear the world's eyes by flattery, bribery, dissembling their natures, or other men's weakness, that cannot so apprehend their tricks, yet in the end they will be discerned, and precipitated in a moment: "surely," says David, "thou hast set them in slippery places," Psalm thirty seven, 5, as so many Sejani, they will come down to the Gemonian scales; and as Eusebius in Ammianus, that was in such authority, to command the Emperor, be cast down headlong on a sudden. Or put case they escape, and rest unmasked to their lives' end, yet after their death their memory stinks as a snuff of a candle put out, and those that durst not so much as mutter against them in their lives, will prosecute their name with satires, libels, and bitter imprecations, they shall hear evil in all succeeding ages, and be odious to the world's end. Member three. Charity composed of all three Kinds, Pleasant, Profitable, Honest. Besides this love that comes from profit, pleasant, honest, for one good turn asks another in equity, that which proceeds from the law of nature, or from discipline and philosophy, there is yet another love compounded of all these three, which is charity, and includes piety, love, benevolence, friendship, even all those virtuous habits; for love is the circle equant of all other affections, of which Aristotle dilates at large in his Ethics, and is commanded by God, which no man can well perform, but he that is a Christian, and a true regenerate man; this is, "To love God above all, and our neighbor as ourselves;" for this love is a lychnus kindling and lit, a communicating light, apt to illuminate itself as well as others. All other objects are fair, and very beautiful, I confess; kindred, alliance, friendship, the love that we owe to our country, nature, wealth, pleasure, honor, and such moral respects, and more, of which read copious Aristotle in his morals; a man is beloved of a man, in that he is a man; but all these are far more eminent and great, when they shall proceed from a sanctified spirit, that hath a true touch of religion, and a reference to God. Nature binds all creatures to love their young ones; a hen to preserve her broo

Rahan. Episode Sixty One. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Andre Cheret. The magic spear. The son of Crao was far too impressed by his discovery to worry about the storm that was threatening. He was observing the fantastic carcass when worrying clamors arose. A few hunters appeared and he carefully slipped under the huge skull. They did not see Rahan. It is the “Wrath of Heaven” that they fear! Rahan is stupid for hiding! The men would pass very close to his strange refuge. Page Two. And be suddenly immobilized. Why are you running away, brothers! “Sky fire” is not dangerous for hunters! What. What are you doing in the head of the "Tahar"? Who are you? I am Rahan the son of Crao! Rahan feared that you would treat him like an enemy and. Our clan has only two enemies. The “Tahar” and the “Fire-spitting” from the sky! Come with us, brother. Our cave is a better shelter than this carcass! This cave is now yours, Rahan! Hold. Take. This is our last piece of meat. But our custom is to share with hunters who are unfortunate enough to venture into our territory. The son of Crao liked to find these feelings in "Those-who-walk-upright". He refused the meat with emotion. Page Three. The storm had burst and countless lightning bolts shredded the black sky. Why does Hangkar speak of "Misfortune"? Because we suffer every day, the “Wrath of Heaven.” But, above all, because the “Grand Tahar” makes hunting perilous. When Rahan sees this messenger of demons, he will understand our anguish! Hangkar described the "Tahar", a gigantic monster that lived in a mountain cave. Solitary, yet invulnerable, this monster sowed terror throughout the territory! This “Tahar" is the last! If he disappeared, our children would finally experience happiness! Why do you not kill him!? This is an impossible thing Rahan! Our arrows break on its hide and our spears have no more effect than a spine on the skin of a hunter! The “Tahar” is invulnerable! Page Four. Rahan did not answer, intrigued as he was by the lightning which, mysteriously, converged towards the crest of a hill. It is strange! Why do the "balls of fire" converge on this hill? Hangkar understands your astonishment, but he cannot explain this mystery to you! It is a miracle of the "Sacred Spear!" We will go and thank her when wrath or heaven has fallen! When the storm ceased Hangar led Rahan to the nearby hill. It is she who draws fire from the sky! See! All around a long spear buried in the ground, the ground was charred! This spear was neither wood nor horn nor bone! It was of a heavy, cold and rough material. A material that the son of Crao did not know. We discovered it near the body of an unknown hunter, a long time ago! Where did this hunter come from? We never knew it, but were soon to understand that his spear was magical. Page Five. Because all those who wanted to use it were, sooner or later, hit by the "balls of Fire"! That is why we leave it stuck on this hill, where it attracts the "Spit from the sky"! Oh! The “Tahar!” The ground began to shake as before the eruption of a volcano. While Hangkar led him into the cave, Rahan saw with horror, the most frightful of monsters emerge from the forest. Page Six. A moment later, the two men had joined the clan. This cave is our only safe haven! The “Tahar” cannot penetrate here. The ground shook even harder and the hideous head suddenly blocked the entrance to the cave. The hunters, no doubt accustomed to it, released their arrows without conviction. He always ends up getting tired and returning to his den! Does Rahan understand now, why we live in terror!? In fact, shortly after, the fantastic animal withdrew, smashing trees and overturning rocks. Ten clans would not have the time, even if they spent ten seasons there, to dig a trap of its size! The “Tahar” is a demon! He is immortal! Demons do not exist Hangkar! And no being is immortal! Page Seven. An idea occurred to the son of Crao. The lair of the "Tahar" could become a trap! All beasts fear fire. Since the "Sacred Spear" attracts the one from the sky, let us plant it in front of his lair! Thus, during the anger of the sky, the “Tahar” will remain on his the ground and the clan will be able to hunt in peace! Rahan is Brave. But he is a fool! All those who ventured near the lair of the "Tahar," were crushed, cut to pieces and devoured! If Hangkar and his people are afraid, Rahan will go alone! Under the anxious gaze of the hunters, the son of Crao went to fetch the heavy and cold spear. The tracks of the “Tahar” will be easy to follow. The tracks, in fact, led him to a large and undoubtedly very deep cavern. He glimpsed the monster there. Rahan will not be able to get any closer! But he knows how to deceive you "Tahar"! Page Eight. Climbing noiselessly up the rocks, he immediately dominated the cave. From there, he could throw the magic spear. Right in front of the entrance to the lair. It was then that screams rang out. Thunder rumbled again. Release the “Sacred Spear” Rahan! Hear! The wrath of heaven is not yet over! But the son of Crao only cared about the monster which, alerted by Hangkar's cries, stirred in its lair. Keep going Hangkar! Scream Again! Scream louder! Rahan could have stuck the spear in front of the cave. But he had just had a much better idea! We are lost! The “Tahar” emerges! Rahan climbed onto a ledge just above the cave entrance. In front of it, the ground was littered with rocks. The monstrous head suddenly burst out. Page Nine. Fiercely grasping the spear, he let himself fall. Ra-ha-ha! He felt the weapon slip under a scale, landed on the neck of the "Tahar" and found himself between two rocks, half dazed by the fall. The monster emerged from its lair, clawing furiously at the rocks with its tail. The blow struck could not be fatal to him, but the son of Crao knew that! He was hoping for something else! The thunder was unceasing, and lightning crackled distantly in the sky. Your audacity will have been for nothing! Over here, brother! Quickly. Quickly we may have a chance to escape from him. Why did you come Hangkar? For what? Uh. I, I Could not let an unknown hunter give us a lesson in courage. Page Ten. But this courage was useless! The “Tahar” is invulnerable! See! The monster came and went heavily. He had not yet seen the men hiding behind the rock. And they made the mistake of breaking cover too soon! We will not have time to get to the cave! The clan needs you, Hangka! Let us separate! I will attract him to me! Hangkar does not accept that you would sacrifice yourself for him! We will join the territory of shadows together! So let us try to stay together on the one of light! By incessant and sudden detours, Rahan and his companion could hope to escape the "Tahar." The cave was only two arrow-shots away when Hangkar, out of breath, collapsed on his knees. I do not have your youth. I am. Run away, Rahan, flee. Page Eleven. The clan, horrified, saw the "Tahar" approaching, swinging its giant tail above the two men. Nothing could save them! Ferociously, Rahan put up a final and futile defense. Rahan is going to die! But you will die too! The fire from heaven will steal your life! And suddenly there was a miracle. Lightning had just struck the monster! Ra-ha-ha! Rahan expected nothing else from the sacred spear! Was Rahan not right to assert that no invulnerable beings exist? The terror is over Hangkar! Several more times, during the storm, lightning struck the spear, striking into the charred skull of the monster. Each time there was a clamor of joy! Page Twelve. And each time, the exploit of the son of Crao was saluted. Rahan is not special brothers! The idea of using the sacred spear against the "Tahar" would have come to you one day! Rahan is as mischievous as he is cunning and Brave! Will he stay with us? A few days, Hangkar. Then he will go looking for other clans. Discovering other territories! Rahan has so much to learn from “Those-Who-Walk-Upright.” How he would like, for example, to know the secret of this spear and why it attracts the “Fire from the sky”! The spear once found on an unknown hunter, who came from an unknown country, was replanted on the hill. She would continue to protect the clan of the “Spitting Sky”. By leaving the clan, the son of Crao would, for the first time, leave a mystery behind him. That of this spear, a mystery that he would probably never clarify. Because how can we imagine, in these savage times, that certain hordes were already shaping a new material. A hard, cold material that we would call iron. Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

Part One, Introduction: https://rumble.com/v4d2ddr-anatomy-of-melancholy-part-1-of-4-introduction.-a-puke-tm-audiobook.html THE FIRST PARTITION. THE FIRST SECTION, MEMBER, SUBSECTION. Man's Excellency, Fall, Miseries, Infirmities; The causes of them. Man's Excellency. Man the most excellent and noble creature of the world, "the principal and mighty work of God, wonder of Nature," as Zoroaster calls him; a miracle of audacious nature, "the marvel of marvels," as Plato; "the abridgment and epitome of the world," as Pliny; microcosm, a little world, a model of the world, sovereign lord of the earth, viceroy of the world, sole commander and governor of all the creatures in it; to whose empire they are subject in particular, and yield obedience; far surpassing all the rest, not in body only, but in soul; an image of an image, created to God's own image, to that immortal and incorporeal substance, with all the faculties and powers belonging unto it; was at first pure, divine, perfect, happy, "created after God in true holiness and righteousness;" Congruent to God, free from all manner of infirmities, and put in Paradise, to know God, to praise and glorify him, to do his will, that he may give birth to gods like the gods, as an old poet says, to propagate the church. Man's Fall and Misery. But this most noble creature, Alas, a sad and tearful change, one exclaims, O pitiful change! is fallen from that he was, and forfeited his estate, become a miserable man, a castaway, a caitiff, one of the most miserable creatures of the world, if he be considered in his own nature, an unregenerate man, and so much obscured by his fall that, some few relics excepted, he is inferior to a beast, "Man in honor that understandeth not, is like unto beasts that perish," so David esteems him: a monster by stupendous metamorphoses, a fox, a dog, a hog, what not? Much changed from that? How much altered from that he was; before blessed and happy, now miserable and accursed; "He must eat his meat in sorrow," subject to death and all manner of infirmities, all kinds of calamities. A Description of Melancholy. “Great travail is created for all men, and an heavy yoke on the sons of Adam, from the day that they go out of their mother's womb, until that day they return to the mother of all things Namely, their thoughts, and fear of their hearts, and their imagination of things they wait for, and the day of death. From him that sitteth in the glorious throne, to him that sitteth beneath in the earth and ashes; from him that is clothed in blue silk and weareth a crown, to him that is clothed in simple linen. Wrath, envy, trouble, and restlessness, and fear of death, and rigor, and strife, and such things come to both man and beast, but sevenfold to the ungodly." All this befalls him in this life, and peradventure eternal misery in the life to come. Impulsive Cause of Man's Misery and Infirmities. The impulsive cause of these miseries in man, this privation or destruction of God's image, the cause of death and diseases, of all temporal and eternal punishments, was the sin of our first parent Adam, in eating of the forbidden fruit, by the devil's instigation and allurement. With these disobedience, pride, ambition, intemperance, incredulity, curiosity; from whence proceeded original sin, and that general corruption of mankind, as from a fountain, flowed all bad inclinations and actual transgressions which cause our several calamities inflicted upon us for our sins. And this belike is that which our fabulous poets have shadowed unto us in the tale of Pandora's box, which being opened through her curiosity, filled the world full of all manner of diseases. It is not curiosity alone, but those other crying sins of ours, which pull these several plagues and miseries upon our heads. For where there is sin, there is a tempest, as Chrysostom well observe. "Fools by reason of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted." “Fear comes like sudden desolation, and destruction like a whirlwind, affliction and anguish,” because they did not fear God. "Are you shaken with wars?" as Cyprian well urges to Demetrius, “are you molested with dearth and famine? Is your health crushed with raging diseases? Is mankind generally tormented with epidemic maladies? Tis all for your sins," Haggai, One 9, 10; Amos One; Jerimiah Seven. God is angry, punisheth and threatenseth, because of their obstinacy and stubbornness, they will not turn unto him. "If the earth be barren then for want of rain, if dry and squalid, it yields no fruit, if your fountains be dried up, your wine, corn, and oil blasted, if the air be corrupted, and men troubled with diseases, tis by reason of their sins:" which like the blood of Abel cry loud to heaven for vengeance, Lamentations, five 15. "That we have sinned, therefore our hearts are heavy," Isaiah Six, 11, and 12. “We roar like bears, and mourn like doves, and want health, and more, for our sins and trespasses.” But this we cannot endure to hear or to take notice of, Jerimiah, two, 30. "We are smitten in vain and receive no correction;" and chapter five, 3. “Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; they have refused to receive correction; they have not returned. Pestilence he hath sent, but they have not turned to him," Amos Four. Herod could not avoid John the Baptist, nor Domitian endure Apollonius to tell the causes of the plague at Ephesus, his injustice, incest, adultery, and the like. To punish therefore this blindness and obstinacy of ours as a concomitant cause and principal agent, is God's just judgment in bringing these calamities upon us, to chastise us, I say, for our sins, and to satisfy God's wrath. For the law requires obedience or punishment, as you may read at large, Deuteronomy. Twenty eight, 15. "If they will not obey the Lord, and keep his commandments and ordinances, then all these curses shall come upon them." "Cursed in the town and in the field, and more." "Cursed in the fruit of the body, and more." "The Lord shall send thee trouble and shame, because of thy wickedness." And a little after, “The Lord shall smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with emrods, and scab, and itch, and thou canst not be healed; with madness, blindness, and astonishing of heart." This Paul seconds, Romans two, 9. "Tribulation and anguish on the soul of every man that does evil." Or else these chastisements are inflicted upon us for our humiliation, to exercise and try our patience here in this life to bring us home, to make us to know God ourselves, to inform and teach us wisdom. “Therefore is my people gone into captivity, because they had no knowledge; therefore is the wrath of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched out his hand upon them." He is desirous of our salvation. Eager for our salvation, says Lemnius, and for that cause pulls us by the ear many times, to put us in mind of our duties: "That they which erred might have understanding, as Isaiah speaks twenty-nine, 24 and so to be reformed." "I am afflicted, and at the point of death," so David confesseth of himself, Psalm eighty-eight, verse 15, verse 9. "Mine eyes are sorrowful through mine affliction:" and that made him turn unto God. Great Alexander in the midst of all his prosperity, deified by a company of parasites, and now made a god, when he saw one of his wounds bleed, remembered that he was but a man, and remitted of his pride. As Pliny well perceived; "In sickness the mind reflects upon itself, with judgment surveys itself, and abhors its former courses;" so much so that he concludes to his friend Marius, "that it were the period of all philosophy, if we could so continue to sound, or perform but a part of that which we promised to do, being sick." Whoso is wise then, will consider these things," as David did in Psalm one hundred and forty four, verse last, and whatever fortune befalls him, make use of it. If he be in sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity, seriously to recount with himself, why this or that malady, misery, this or that incurable disease is inflicted upon him; it may be for his good, so it is expedient as Peter said of his daughter's illness. Bodily sickness is for his soul's health, he would have perished if he had not perished, had he not been visited, he had utterly perished; for "the Lord correcteth him whom he loveth, even as a father doth his child in whom he delighteth." If he be safe and sound on the other side, and free from all manner of infirmity; and to whom May grace, form, and health abound. And the world was won, not by lack of purses. And that he has grace, beauty, favor, health, A clean diet, and abound in wealth. Yet in the midst of his prosperity, let him remember that caveat of Moses, "Beware that he do not forget the Lord his God;" that he be not puffed up, but acknowledge them to be his good gifts and benefits, and "the more he hath, to be more thankful," as Agapetianus adviseth and use them aright. Instrumental Causes of our Infirmities. Now the instrumental causes of these our infirmities, are as diverse as the infirmities themselves; stars, heavens, elements, and more. And all those creatures which God hath made, are armed against sinners. They were indeed once good in themselves, and that they are now many of them pernicious unto us, is not in their nature, but our corruption, which hath caused it. For from the fall of our first parent Adam, they have been changed, the earth accursed, the influence of stars, altered, the four elements, beasts, birds, plants, are now ready to offend us. "The principal things for the use of man, are water, fire, iron, salt, meal, wheat, honey, milk, oil, wine, clothing, good to the godly, to the sinners turned to evil," Ecclesiasticus, also known as Sirch, thirty-nine, 26. "Fire, and hail, and famine, and dearth, all these are created for vengeance," Ecclesiasticus. Thirty nine, 29. The heavens threaten us with their comets, stars, planets, with their great conjunctions, eclipses, oppositions, quartiles, and such unfriendly aspects. The air with its meteors, thunder and lightning, intemperate heat and cold, mighty winds, tempests, unseasonable weather; from which proceed dearth, famine, plague, and all sorts of epidemic diseases, consuming infinite myriads of men. At Cairo in Egypt, every third year, as it is related by Boterus, and others, 300,000 on the day of the plague; and 200,000, in Constantinople, every fifth or seventh at the utmost. How doth the earth terrify and oppress us with terrible earthquakes, which are most frequent in China, Japan, and those eastern climates, swallowing up sometimes six cities at once? How doth the water rage with his inundations, irruptions, flinging down towns, cities, villages, bridges, and more, besides shipwrecks; whole islands are sometimes suddenly overwhelmed with all their inhabitants in Zealand, Holland, and many parts of the continent drowned, as the lake Erne in Ireland? We see nothing but the corpses of the citadel in the open sea. In the fens of Friesland in 1230, by reason of tempests, the sea drowned many thousands of men and cattle without number, all the country almost, men and cattle in it. How doth the fire rage, that merciless element, consuming in an instant whole cities? What town of any antiquity or note hath not been once, again and again, by the fury of this merciless element, defaced, ruined, and left desolate? in a word Whom the fire spares, the sea doth drown; whom sea. Pestilent air doth send to clay; Whom war escapes, sickness takes away. To descend to more particulars, how many creatures are at deadly feud with men? Lions, wolves, bears, and more. Some with hoofs, horns, tusks, teeth, nails: How many noxious serpents and venomous creatures, ready to offend us with stings, breath, sight, or quite kill us? How many pernicious fishes, plants, gums, fruits, seeds, flowers, and so on. could I reckon up on a sudden, which by their very smell many of them, touch, taste, cause some grievous malady, if not death itself? Some make mention of a thousand several poisons: but these are but trifles in respect. The greatest enemy to man, is man, who by the devil's instigation is still ready to do mischief, his own executioner, a wolf, a devil to himself, and others. We are all brethren in Christ, or at least should be, members of one body, servants of one lord, and yet no fiend can so torment, insult over, tyrannise, vex, as one man doth another. Let me not fall therefore, saith David, when wars, plague, famine were offered, into the hands of men, merciless and wicked men: There are scarcely any men worthy of this name, But wolves have more ferocity. We can for the most part foresee these epidemic diseases, and probably avoid them; Dearths, tempests, plagues, our astrologers foretell us; Earthquakes, inundations, ruins of houses, consuming fires, come by little and little, or make some noise beforehand; but the knaveries, impostures, injuries and villainies of men no art can avoid. We can keep our professed enemies from our cities, by gates, walls and towers, defend ourselves from thieves and robbers by vigilance and weapons; but this malice of men, and their pernicious endeavours, no caution can divert, no vigilance foresee, we have so many secret plots and devices to mischief one another. Sometimes by the devil's help as magicians, witches: sometimes by impostures, mixtures, poisons, stratagems, single combats, wars, we hack and hew, as if we were born to execution, like Cadmus' soldiers born to consume one another. Tis an ordinary thing to read of a hundred and two hundred thousand men slain in a battle. Besides all manner of tortures, brazen bulls, racks, wheels, strappadoes, guns, engines, and more. For one human body there are more tortures than members: We have invented more torturing instruments, than there be several members in a man's body, as Cyprian well observes. To come nearer yet, our own parents by their offences, indiscretion and intemperance, are our mortal enemies. "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." They cause our grief many times, and put upon us hereditary diseases, inevitable infirmities: they torment us, and we are ready to injure our posterity; And yet with crimes unknown to us, Our sons shall mark the coming age their own; And the latter end of the world, as Paul foretold, is still like to be the worst. We are thus bad by nature, bad by kind, but far worse by art, every man the greatest enemy unto himself. We study many times to undo ourselves, abusing those good gifts which God hath bestowed upon us, health, wealth, strength, wit, learning, art, memory to our own destruction, Your destruction from you. As Judas Maccabeus killed Apollonius with his own weapons, we arm ourselves to our own overthrows; and use reason, art, judgment, all that should help us, as so many instruments to undo us. Hector gave Ajax a sword, which so long as he fought against enemies, served for his help and defense; but after he began to hurt harmless creatures with it, he turned to his own harmless bowels. Those excellent means God hath bestowed upon us, well employed, cannot but much avail us; but if otherwise perverted, they ruin and confound us: and so by reason of our indiscretion and weakness they commonly do, we have too many instances. This Saint Austin acknowledges of himself in his humble confessions, "promptness of wit, memory, eloquence, they were God's good gifts, but he did not use them to his glory." If you will particularly know how, and by what means, consult physicians, and they will tell you, that it is in offending in some of those six non-natural things, of which I shall dilate more at large; they are the causes of our infirmities, our surfeiting, and drunkenness, our immoderate insatiable lust, and prodigious riot. More rubbish than a sword, it is a true saying, the board consumes more than the sword. Our intemperance it is, that pulls so many several incurable diseases upon our heads, that hastens old age, perverts our temperature, and brings upon us sudden death. And last of all, that which crucifies us most, is our own folly, madness, which Jupiter destroys, dementes; by subtraction of his assisting grace God permits it, weakness, want of government, our facility and proneness in yielding to several lusts, in giving way to every passion and disturbance of the mind: by which means we metamorphose ourselves and degenerate into beasts. All which that prince of poets observed of Agamemnon, that when he was well pleased, and could moderate his passion, he was, os eyes and Jovi par: like Jupiter in feature, Mars in valour, Pallas in wisdom, another god; but when he became angry, he was a lion, a tiger, a dog, and more, there appeared no sign or likeness of Jupiter in him; so we, as long as we are ruled by reason, correct our inordinate appetite, and conform ourselves to God's word, are as so many saints: but if we give reins to lust, anger, ambition, pride, and follow our own ways, we degenerate into beasts, transform ourselves, overthrow our constitutions, provoke God to anger, and heap upon us this of melancholy, and all kinds of incurable diseases, as a just and deserved punishment of our sins. Subsection Two. The Definition, Number, Division of Diseases. What a disease is, almost every physician defines. Fernelius calls it an "affection of the body contrary to nature." Fuschius and Crato, "an hindrance, hurt, or alteration of any action of the body, or part of it." Tholosanus, “a dissolution of that league which is between body and soul, and a disturbance of it; as health the perfection, and makes to the preservation of it." Labeo in Agellius, "an ill habit of the body, opposite to nature, hindering the use of it." Others otherwise, all to this effect. Number of Diseases. How many diseases there are, is a question not yet determined; Pliny reckons up 300 from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot: elsewhere he says, the multitude of diseases is infinite, their number is infinite. However it was in those times, it boots not; in our days I am sure the number is much augmented: Emaciation, and new fever, The band lies down on the ground. For besides many epidemic diseases unheard of, and altogether unknown to Galen and Hippocrates, as scurvy, small-pox, plica, sweating sickness, Gallic disease, and more, we have many proper and peculiar almost to every part. No man free from some Disease or other. No man among us so sound, of so good a constitution, that hath not some impediment of body or mind. We all suffer from our own infirmities, we have all our infirmities, first or last, more or less. There will be peradventure in an age, or one of a thousand, like Zenophilus the musician in Pliny, that may happily live 105 years without any manner of impediment; from Pollius Romulus, that can preserve himself "with wine and oil;" a man as fortunate as Quintus Metellus, of whom Valerius so much brags; a man as healthy as Otto Herwardus, a senator of Augsburg in Germany, whom Leovitius the astrologer brings in for an example and instance of certainty in his art; who because he had the significators in his birth fortunate, and free from the hostile aspects of Saturn and Mars, being a very cold man, "could not remember that ever he was sick." Paracelsus may brag that he could make a man live 400 years or more, if he might bring him up from his infancy, and diet him as he lists; and some physicians hold, that there is no certain period of man's life; but it may still by temperance and physic be prolonged. We find in the meantime, by common experience, that no man can escape, but that of Hesiod is true: The earth's full of maladies, and full the sea, Which set upon us both by night and day. Division of Diseases. If you require a more exact division of these ordinary diseases which are incident to men, I refer you to physicians; they will tell you of acute and chronic, first and secondary, lethals, salutares, errant, fixed, simple, compound, connected, or consequent, belonging to parts or the whole, in habit, or in disposition, and more. My division at this time, as most befitting my purpose, shall be into those of the body and mind. For them of the body, a brief catalog of which Fuschius hath made, Institut, book 3, section one, chapter 11. I refer you to the voluminous tomes of Galen, Areteus, Rhasis, Avicenna, Alexander, Paulus Aetius, Gordonerius: and those exact Neoterics, Savanarola, Capivaccius, Donatus Altomarus, Hercules de Saxonia, Mercurialis, Victorius Faventinus, Wecker, Piso, and more, that have methodically and elaborately written of them all. Those of the mind and head I will briefly handle, and apart. Subsection Three. Division of the Diseases of the Head. These diseases of the mind, forasmuch as they have their chief seat and organs in the head, which are commonly repeated amongst the diseases of the head which are diverse, and vary much according to their site. For in the head, as there be several parts, so there be diverse grievances, which according to that division of Heurnius, which he takes out of Arculanus, are inward or outward, to omit all others which pertain to eyes and ears, nostrils, gums, teeth, mouth, palate, tongue, weezle, chops, face, and others, belonging properly to the brain, as baldness, falling of hair, fur, lice, and more. Inward belonging to the skins next to the brain, called dura and pia mater, as all headaches, and else, or to the ventricles, stems, kells, tunicles, creeks, and parts of it, and their passions, as caro, vertigo, nightmare, apoplexy, falling sickness. The diseases of the nerves, cramps, stupor, convulsion, tremor, palsy: or belonging to the excrements of the brain, catarrhs, sneezing, rheums, distillations: or else those that pertain to the substance of the brain itself, in which they are conceived frenzy, lethargy, melancholy, madness, weak memory, drowsiness, or Coma Vigilia and vigil Coma. Out of these again I will single such as properly belong to the fantasy, or imagination, or reason itself, which Laurentius calls the disease of the mind; and Hildesheim, diseases of the imagination, or of injured reason, which are three or four in number, frenzy, madness, melancholy, dotage, and their kinds: as hydrophobia, lycanthropia, chorus of the holy vine, demonic diseases, Saint Vitus's dance, possession of devils, which I will briefly touch and point at, insisting especially in this of melancholy, as more eminent than the rest, and that through all his kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, cures: as Lonicerus hath done about apoplexy, and many other of such particular diseases. Not that I find fault with those who have written of this subject before, as Jason Pratensis, Laurentius, Montaltus, Thomas Bright, and others, they have done very well in their several kinds and methods; yet that which one omits, another may haply see; that which one contracts, another may enlarge. To conclude with Scribanius, “that which they had neglected, or perfunctorily handled, we may more thoroughly examine; that which is obscurely delivered in them, may be perspicuously dilated and amplified by us:” and so made more familiar and easy for every man's capacity, and the common good, which is the chief end of my discourse. Subsection Four. Dotage, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropia, Chorus sancti Viti, Extasis. Delirium, Dotage. Dotage, fatuity, or folly, is a common name to all the following species, as some will have it. Laurentius and Altomarus comprehended madness, melancholy, and the rest under this name, and call it the highest genus of them all. If it be distinguished from them, it is natural or congenital, which comes by some defect of the organs, and too much brain, as we see in our common fools; and it is for the most part intended or remitted in particular men, and thereupon some are wiser than others: or else it is acquired, an appendix or symptom of some other disease, which comes or goes; or if it continues, a sign of melancholy itself. Frenzy. Phrenitis, which the Greeks derive from the word other-wise, is a disease of the mind, with a continual madness or dotage, which hath an acute fever annexed, or else an inflammation of the brain, or the membranes or cells of it, with an acute fever, which causes madness and dotage. It differs from melancholy and madness, because their dotage is without an illness: this continual, with waking, or memory decayed, and more. Melancholy is most part silent, this clamorous; and many such like differences are assigned by physicians. Madness. Madness, frenzy, and melancholy are confounded by Celsus, and many writers; others leave out frenzy, and make madness and melancholy but one disease, which Jason Pratensis especially labors, and that they differ only a second greater or less, in quantity alone, the one being a degree to the other, and both proceeding from one reason They differ in intensity and remiss degree, says Gordonius, as the humor is intended or remitted. Of the same mind is Areteus, Alexander Tertullianus, Guianerius, Savanarola, Heurnius; and Galen himself writes promiscuously of them both by reason of their affinity: but most of our neoterics do handle them apart, whom I will follow in this treatise. Madness is therefore defined to be a violent endowment; or raving without a fever, far more violent than melancholy, full of anger and clamor, horrible looks, actions, gestures, troubling the patients with far greater vehemency both of body and mind, without all fear and sorrow, with such impetuous force and boldness, that sometimes three or four men cannot hold them. Differing only in this from frenzy, that it is without a fever, and their memory is most part better. It hath the same causes as the other, as choler adust, and blood incensed, brains inflamed, and more. Fracastorius adds, "a due time, and full age" to this definition, to distinguish it from children, and will have it confirmed impotence, to separate it from such as accidentally come and go again, as by taking henbane, nightshade, wine, and more. Of this fury there be different kinds; ecstasy, which is familiar with some persons, as Cardan says of himself, he could be in one when he lists; in which the Indian priests deliver their oracles, and the witches in Lapland, as Olaus Magnus writesth, Book 3, chapter 18. To predict all ecstasy, answer all questions in an ecstasy you will ask; what your friends do, where they are, how they fare, and more. The other species of this fury are enthusiasms, revelations, and visions, so often mentioned by Gregory and Beda in their works; obsession or possession of devils, sibylline prophets, and poetical furies; such as come by eating noxious herbs, tarantulas stinging, and others, which some reduce to this. The most known are these, lycanthropy, hydrophobia, the chorus of the holy vine. Lycanthropia. Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others wolf-madness, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts. Aetius and Paulus call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. Some make a doubt of it whether there be any such disease. Donat ab Altomari says, that he saw two of them in his time: Wierus tells a story of such a one at Padua in 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a wolf. He hath another instance of a Spaniard, who thought himself a bear; Forrestus confirms as much by many examples; one amongst the rest of which he was an eyewitness, at Alcmaer in Holland, a poor husbandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful look. Such belike, or little better, were king Praetus' daughters, that thought themselves kine. And Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel, as some interpreters hold, was only troubled with this kind of madness. This disease perhaps gave occasion to that bold assertion of Pliny, "some men were turned into wolves in his time, and from wolves to men again:" and to that fable of Pausanias, of a man that was ten years a wolf, and afterwards turned to his former shape: to Ovid's tale of Lycaon, and more. He that is desirous to hear of this disease, or more examples, let him read Austin in his eighteenth book on the City of God, chapter 5. Mizaldus, centenial 5, 77, Sckenkius, book one, Hildesheim, Talk two of Mania. Forrestus book 10 of diseases of the brain and others. This malady, says Avicenna, troubles men most in February, and is nowadays frequent in Bohemia and Hungary, according to Heurnius. Scheretzius will have it common in Livonia. They lie hid most part all day, and go abroad in the night, barking, howling, at graves and deserts; “they have usually hollow eyes, scabbed legs and thighs, very dry and pale,” said Altomarus; he gives a reason there of all the symptoms, and sets down a brief cure of them. Hydrophobia is a kind of madness, well known in every village, which comes by the biting of a mad dog, or scratching, says Aurelianus; touching, or smelling alone sometimes as Sckenkius proves, and is incident to many other creatures as well as men: so called because the parties affected cannot endure the sight of water, or any liquor, supposing still they see a mad dog in it. And which is more wonderful; though they be very dry, as in this malady they are, they will rather die than drink: about Venenis Caelius Aurelianus, an ancient writer, makes a doubt whether this Hydrophobia be a passion of the body or the mind. The part affected is the brain: the cause, poison that comes from the mad dog, which is so hot and dry, that it consumes all the moisture in the body. Francisci Hildesheim relates of some that died so mad; and being cut up, had no water, scarce blood, or any moisture left in them. To such as are so affected, the fear of water begins at fourteen days after they are bitten, to some again not till forty or sixty days after: commonly saith Heurnius, they begin to rave, fly water and glasses, to look red, and swell in the face, about twenty days after, if some remedy be not taken in the meantime, to lie awake, to be pensive, sad, to see strange visions, to bark and howl, to fall into a swoon, and oftentimes fits of the falling sickness Some say, little things like whelps will be seen in their urine. If any of these signs appear, they are past recovery. Many times these symptoms will not appear until six or seven months after, says Codronchus; and sometimes not till seven or eight years, as Guianerius; twelve as Albertus; six or eight months after, as Galen holds. Baldus the great lawyer died of it: an Augustine friar, and a woman in Delft, that were Forrestus' patients, were miserably consumed with it. The common cure in the country, for such at least as dwell near the seaside, is to duck them over head and ears in sea water; some use charms: every good wife can prescribe medicines. But the best cure to be had in such cases, is from the most approved physicians; they that will read of them, may consult with Dioscorides, book six c 37, Heurnius, Hildesheim, Capivaccius, Forrestus, Sckenkius and before all others Codronchus an Italian, who hath lately written two exquisite books on the subject. Chorus sancti Viti, or The Saint vine's dance; the lascivious dance, Paracelsus calls it, because they that are taken from it, can do nothing but dance till they be dead, or cured. It is so called, for that the parties so troubled were wont to go to Saint Vitus for help, and after they had danced there a while, they were certainly freed. Tis strange to hear how long they will dance, and in what manner, over stools, forms, tables; even great bellied women sometimes, and yet never hurt their children, will dance so long that they can stir neither hand nor foot, but seem to be quite dead. One in red clothes they cannot abide. Music above all things they love, and therefore the magistrates in Germany will hire musicians to play to them, and some lusty sturdy companions to dance with them. This disease hath been very common in Germany, as appears by those relations of Sckenkius, and Paracelsus in his book of Madness, who brags how many several persons he hath cured of it. Felix Platerus, alienatio mentis, chapter 3, reports of a woman in Basil whom he saw, that danced a whole month together. The Arabians call it a kind of palsy. Bodine, known as Jean Bodin, in his fifth book of Republic chapter 1, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius in his last epistle to Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of it. The last kind of madness or melancholy, is that demoniacal, if I may so call it, obsession or possession of devils, which Platerus and others would have to be preternatural: stupendous things are said of them, their actions, gestures, contortions, fasting, prophesying, speaking languages they were never taught, and more. Many strange stories are related of them, which because some will not allow, for Deacon and Darrel have written large volumes on this subject pro and con. I voluntarily omit. Fuschius, Institution book 3, section one chapter 11, Felix Plater, Laurentius, add to these another fury that proceeds from love, and another from study, another divine or religious fury; but these more properly belong to melancholy; of all which I will speak apart, intending to write a whole book of them. Subsection Five. Melancholy in Disposition, improperly so called, Equivocations. Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in disposition or habit. In disposition, it is that transitory melancholy which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or disturbance of the mind, any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causes anguish, dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike. In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy that is dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill disposed, solitary, any way moved, or displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions, no man living is free, no stoic, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well composed, but more or less, some time or other he feels the smart of it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality. "Man that is born of a woman, is of short continuance, and full of trouble." Zeno, Cato, Socrates himself, whom Aelian so highly commends for a moderate temper, that "nothing could disturb him, but going out, and coming in, still Socrates kept the same serenity of countenance, whatever misery soever befell him, if we may believe Plato his disciple, was much tormented with it. Quintus Metellus, in whom Valerius gives instance of all happiness, "the most fortunate man then living, born in that most flourishing city of Rome, of noble parentage, a proper man of person, well qualified, healthy, rich, honorable, a senator, a consul, happy in his wife, happy in his children," and more. yet this man was not void of melancholy, he had his share of sorrow. Polycrates Samius, who flung his ring into the sea, because he would participate in discontent with others, and had it miraculously restored to him again shortly after, by a fish taken as he angled, was not free from melancholy dispositions. No man can take care of himself; the very gods had bitter pangs, and frequent passions, as their own poets put upon them. In general, “as the heaven, so is our life, sometimes fair, sometimes overcast, tempestuous, and serene; as in a rose, flowers and prickles; in the year itself, a temperate summer sometimes, a hard winter, a drought, and then again pleasant showers: so is our life intermixed with joys, hopes, fears, sorrows, calumnies: pain and pleasure follow in turn," there is a succession of pleasure and pain. In the middle of the spring of the hares, Something to be loved rises up, it gnaws at the very flowers. "Even in the midst of laughing there is sorrow," as Solomon holds): even in the midst of all our feasting and jollity, as Austin infers in his Com. on the forty-first Psalm, there is grief and discontent. Among the delicacies something savage always strangles us, for a pint of honey thou shalt here likely find a gallon of gall, for a dram of pleasure a pound of pain, for an inch of mirth an ell of moan; as ivy doth an oak, these miseries encompass our life. And it is most absurd and ridiculous for any mortal man to look for a perpetual tenure of happiness in his life. Nothing so prosperous and pleasant, but it hath some bitterness in it, some complaining, some grudging; it is all bitter-sweet glycypicron, a mixed passion, and like a checker table black and white: men, families, cities, have their falls and wanes; now trines, sextiles, then quartiles and oppositions. We are not here as those angels, celestial powers and bodies, sun and moon, to finish our course without all offense, with such constancy, to continue for so many ages: but subject to infirmities, miseries, interrupted, tossed and tumbled up and down, carried about with every small blast, often molested and disquieted upon each slender occasion, uncertain, brittle, and so is all that we trust unto. "And he that knows not this is not armed to endure it, is not fit to live in this world, as one condoles our time, he knows not the condition of it, where with a reciprocity, pleasure and pain are still united, and succeed one another in a ring." Get out of the world, get thee gone hence if thou canst not brook it; there is no way to avoid it, but to arm thyself with patience, with magnanimity, to oppose thyself unto it, to suffer affliction as a good soldier of Christ; as Paul adviseth constantly to bear it. But forasmuch as so few can embrace this good council of his, or use it aright, but rather as so many brute beasts give away to their passion, voluntary subject and precipitate themselves into a labyrinth of cares, woes, miseries, and suffer their souls to be overcome by them, cannot arm themselves with that patience as they ought to do, it falleth out oftentimes that these dispositions become habits, and "many affects contemned", as Seneca notes, "make a disease. Even as one distillation, not yet grown to custom, makes a cough; but continual and inveterate causeth a consumption of the lungs; so do these our melancholy provocations: and according as the humor itself is intended, or remitted in men, as their temperature of body, or rational soul is better able to make resistance; so are they more or less affected. For that which is but a flea-biting to one, causes intolerable torment to another; and which one by his singular moderation, and well-composed carriage can happily overcome, a second is no whit able to sustain, but upon every small occasion of misconceived abuse, injury, grief, disgrace, loss, cross, humor, and more, if solitary, or idle, yields so far to passion, that his complexion is altered, his digestion hindered, his sleep gone, his spirits obscured, and his heart heavy, his hypochondria misaffected; wind, crudity, on a sudden overtake him, and he himself overcomes with melancholy. As it is with a man imprisoned for debt, if once in the gaol, every creditor will bring his action against him, and there likely hold him. If any discontent seize upon a patient, in an instant all other perturbations, for-what data the gate rushes, will set upon him, and then like a lame dog or broken-winged goose he droops and pines away, and is brought at last to that ill habit or malady of melancholy itself. So that as the philosophers make eight degrees of heat and cold, we may make eighty-eight of melancholy, as the parts affected are variously seized with it, or have been plunged more or less into this infernal gulf, or waded deeper into it But all these melancholy fits, however pleasing at first, or displeasing, violent and tyrannizing over those whom they seize on for the time; yet these fits I say, or men affected, are but improperly so called, because they continue not, but come and go, as by some objects they aye moved. This melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, mosbus sonticus, or chronicus, a chronic or continuous disease, a settled humor, as Aurelianus and others call it, not errant, but fixed; and as it was long increasing, so now being, pleasant, or painful, grown to an habit, it will hardly be removed. SECTION One. MEMBER Two. SUBSECTION. Digression of Anatomy. Before I proceed to define the disease of melancholy, what it is, or to discourse further of it, I hold it not impertinent to make a brief digression of the anatomy of the body and faculties of the soul, for the better understanding of that which is to follow; because many hard words will often occur, as mirach, hypocondries, emeralds, and more, imagination, reason, humors, spirits, vital, natural, animal, nerves, veins, arteries, chylus, phlegm; which by the vulgar will not so easily be perceived, what they are, how cited, and to what end they serve. And besides, it may peradventure give occasion to some men to examine more accurately, search further into this most excellent subject, and thereupon with that royal prophet to praise God, "for a man is fearfully and wonderfully made, and curiously wrought", that have time and leisure enough, and are sufficiently informed in all other worldly businesses, as to make a good bargain, buy and sell, to keep and make choice of a fair hawk, hound, horse, and others. But for such matters as concern the knowledge of themselves, they are wholly ignorant and careless; they know not what this body and soul are, how combined, of what parts and faculties they consist, or how a man differs from a dog. And what can be more ignominious and filthy, as Melancthon well inveighs, "than for a man not to know the structure and composition of his own body, especially since the knowledge of it tends so much to the preservation, of his health, and information of his manners?” To stir them up therefore to this study, to peruse those elaborate works of Galen, Bauhines, Plater, Vesalius, Falopius, Laurentius, Remelinus, and others, which have written copiously in Latin; or that which some of our industrious countrymen have done in our mother tongue, not long since, as that translation of Columbus and Microcosmographia, in thirteen books, I have made this brief digression. Also because Wecker, Melancthon, Fernelius, Fuschius, and those tedious Tracts on the Soul, which have more compendiously handled and written of this matter, are not at all times ready to be had, to give them some small taste, or notice of the rest, let this epitome suffice. Subsection Two. Division of the Body, Humours, Spirits. Of the parts of the body there may be many divisions: the most approved is that of Laurentius, out of Hippocrates: which is, into parts contained, or containing. Contained, are either humors or spirits. Humours. A humor is a liquid or fluent part of the body, comprehended in it, for the preservation of it; and is either innate or born with us, or adventitious and acquired. The radical or innate, is daily supplied by nourishment, which some call cambium, and make those secondary humors of dew and gluten to maintain it: or acquisite, to maintain these four first primary humors, coming and proceeding from the first concoction in the liver, by which means chylus is excluded. Some divide them into profitable and excrementitious. But Crato out of Hippocrates will have all four to be juice, and not excrements, without which no living creature can be sustained: which four, though they be comprehended in the mass of blood, yet they have their several affections, by which they are distinguished from one another, and from those adventitious, sinful, or diseased humours, as Melanchthon calls them. Blood. Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humor, prepared in the mesaraic veins, and made of the most temperate parts of the chylus in the liver, whose office is to nourish the whole body, to give it strength and color, being dispersed by the veins through every part of it. And from it spirits are first begotten in the heart, which afterwards by the arteries are communicated to the other parts. Pituita, or phlegm, is a cold and moist humour, begotten of the colder part of the chylus, or white juice coming out of the meat digested in the stomach, in the liver; his office is to nourish and moisten the members of the body, which as the tongue are moved, that they be not over dry. Choler, is hot and dry, bitter, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus, and gathered to the gall: it helps the natural heat and senses, and serves to the expelling of excrements. Melancholy. Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, begotten of the more starchy part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen, is a bridle to the other two hot humors, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones. These four humors have some analogy with the four elements, and to the four ages in man. Serum, Sweat, Tears. To these humors you may add serum, which is the matter of urine, and those excrementitious humors of the third concoction, sweat and tears. Spirits. Spirit is a most subtle vapour, which is expressed from the blood, and the instrument of the soul, to perform all his actions; a common tie or medium between the body and the soul, as some will have it; or as Paracelsus, a fourth soul of himself. Melanchthon holds the fountain of those spirits to be the heart, begotten there; and afterwards conveyed to the brain, they take another nature to them. Of these spirits there be three kinds, according to the three principal parts, brain, heart, liver; natural, vital, animal The natural are begotten in the liver, and then dispersed through the veins, to perform those natural actions. The vital spirits are made in the heart of the natural, which by the arteries are transported to all the other parts: if the spirits cease, then life ceases, as in a syncope or swooning. The animal spirits formed of the vital, brought up to the brain, and diffused by the nerves, to the subordinate members, give sense and motion to them all. Subsection three. Similar parts. Similar Parts. Containing parts, by reason of their more solid substance, are either homogeneous or heterogeneous, similar or dissimilar; so Aristotle divides them, Book One, chapter 1, of History of Animals; Laurentius, chapter 20, Book one. Similar, or homogeneous, are such as, if they be divided, are still severed into parts of the same nature, as water into water. Of these some be spermatical, some fleshy or carnal. Spermatical are such as are immediately begotten of the seed, which are bones, gristles, ligaments, membranes, nerves, arteries, veins, skins, fibers or strings, fat. Bones. The bones are dry and hard, begotten of the thickest of the seed, to strengthen and sustain other parts: some say there be 304, some 307, or 313 in a man's body. They have no nerves in them, and are therefore without sense. A gristle is a substance softer than bone, and harder than the rest, flexible, and serves to maintain the parts of motion. Ligaments are they that tie the bones together, and other parts to the bones, with their subserving tendons: membranes' office is to cover the rest. Nerves, or sinews, are without membranes, and full of marrow within; they proceed from the brain, and carry the animal spirits for sense and motion. Of these some be harder, some softer; the softer serve the senses, and there be seven pairs of them. The first be the optic nerves, by which we see; the second move the eyes; the third pair serve for the tongue to taste; the fourth pair for the taste in the palate; the fifth belong to the ears; the sixth pair is most ample, and runs almost over all the bowels; the seventh pair moves the tongue. The harder sinews serve for the motion of the inner parts, proceeding from the marrow in the back, of whom there be thirty combinations, seven of the neck, twelve of the breast, and more. Arteries. Arteries are long and hollow, with a double skin to convey the vital spirit; to discern which is the better, they say that Vesalius the anatomist was wont to cut up men alive. They arise in the left side of the heart, and are principally two, from which the rest are derived, the aorta and the venosus: the aorta is the root of all the others, which serve the whole body; the other goes to the lungs, to fetch air to cool the heart. Veins. Veins are hollow and round, like pipes, rising from the liver, carrying blood and natural spirits; they feed all the parts. Of these there be two chief, Vena porta and Vena cava, from which the rest are corrivated. That Vena porta is a vein coming from the concave of the liver, and receiving those mesaraical veins, by whom he takes the chylus from the stomach and guts, and conveys it to the liver. The other derives blood from the liver to nourish all the other dispersed members. The branches of that Vena porta are the mesaraical and haemorrhoids. The branches of the cavity are inward or outward. Inward, seminal or emulsifying. Outward, in the head, arms, feet, and more, and have several names. Fibers, Fat, Flesh. Fibers are strings, white and solid, dispersed through the whole member, and right, oblique, transverse, all which have their several uses. Fat is a similar part, moist, without blood, composed of the most thick and unctuous matter of the blood. The skin covers the rest, and hath a cuticle, or a little skin under it. Flesh is soft and ruddy, composed of the congealing of blood, and more. Subsection four. Dissimilar Parts. Dissimilar parts are those which we call organic, or instrumental, and they be inward or outward. The chiefest outward parts are situated forward or backward: forward, the crown and foretop of the head, skull, face, forehead, temples, chin, eyes, ears, nose, and more, neck, breast, chest, upper and lower part of the belly, hypochondrium, navel, groin, flank, and others; backward, the hinder part of the head, back, shoulders, sides, loins, hipbones, os sacrum, buttocks, and else. Or joints, arms, hands, feet, legs, thighs, knees, and more. Or common to both, which, because they are obvious and well known, I have carelessly repeated, and only those principal and greater; that he who wills may take the rest from the books on the soul. Inward organic parts, which cannot be seen, are diverse in number, and have several names, functions, and divisions; but that of Laurentius is most notable, into noble or ignoble parts. Of the noble there be three principal parts, to which all the rest belong, and whom they serve, brain, heart, liver; according to whose site, three regions, or a threefold division, is made of the whole body. As first of the head, in which the animal organs are contained, and brain itself, which by its nerves give sense and motion to the rest, and is, as it were, a privy counselor and chancellor to the heart. The second region is the chest, or middle belly, in which the heart as king keeps his court, and by his arteries communicates life to the whole body. The third region is the lower belly, in which the liver resides as a legate on the side, with the rest of those natural organs, serving for concoction, nourishment, expelling of excrements. This lower region is distinguished from the upper by the midriff, or diaphragm, and is subdivided again by some into three concavities or regions, upper, middle, and lower. The upper of the hypochondrium, in whose right side is the liver, the left the spleen; from which it is denominated hypochondriacal melancholy. The second of the navel and flanks, divided from the first by the rim. The last of the water course, which is again subdivided into three other parts. The Arabians make two parts of this region, Epigastrium and Hypogastrium, upper or lower. Epigastrium they call Mirach, from whence comes Mirachialis Melancholia, sometimes mentioned of them. Of these several regions I will treat in brief apart; and first of the third region, in which the natural organs are contained. De Anima. The Lower Region, Natural Organs. But you that are readers in the meantime, "Suppose you were now brought into some sacred temple, or majestical palace", as Melancthon says, "to behold not the matter only, but the singular art, workmanship, and counsel of this our great Creator. And it is a pleasant and profitable speculation, if it be considered aright." The parts of this region, which present themselves to your consideration and view, are such as serve to nutrition or generation. Those of nutrition serve to the first or second concoction; as the esophagus or gullet, which brings meat and drink into the stomach. The ventricle or stomach, which is seated in the midst of that part of the belly beneath the midriff, the kitchen, as it were, of the first concoction, and which turns our meat into chylus. It hath two mouths, one above, another beneath. The upper is sometimes taken for the stomach itself; the lower and nether door, as Wecker calls it, is named Pylorus. This stomach is sustained by a large kell or caul, called the omentum; which some will have the same with peritoneum, or rim of the belly. From the stomach to the very foundation are produced the guts, or intestines, which serve a little to another and distribute the chylus, and convey away the excrements. They are divided into small and great, by reason of their site and substance, slender or thicker: the slender is duodenum, or whole gut, which is next to the stomach, some twelve inches long, says Fuschius. The jejunum, or empty gut, continues to the other, which has many mesaraic veins annexed to it, which take part of the chylus to the liver from it. Ilium the third, which consists of many crinkles, which serves with the rest to receive, keep, and distribute the chylus from the stomach. The thick guts are three, the blind gut, colon, and right gut. The blind is a thick and short gut, having one mouth, in which the ileum and colon meet: it receives the excrements, and conveys them to the colon. This colon hath many windings, that the excrements pass not away too fast: the right gut is straight, and conveys the excrements to the fundament, whose lower part is bound up with certain muscles called sphincters, that the excrements may be the better contained, until such time as a man be willing to go to the stool. In the midst of these guts is situated the mesenterium or midriff, composed of many veins, arteries, and much fat, serving chiefly to sustain the guts. All these parts serve the first concoction. To the second, which is busy either in refining the good nourishment or expelling the bad, is chiefly belonging to the liver, like in color to congealed blood, the shop of blood, situated in the right hypochondria, in figure like to a half-moon, a generous member Melancthon styles it, a generous part; it serves to turn the chylus into blood, for the nourishment of the body. The excrements of it are either choleric or watery, which the other subordinate parts convey. The gall placed in the concave of the liver, extracts choler to it: the spleen, melancholy; which is situated on the left side, over against the liver, a spongy matter, that draws this black choler to it by a secret virtue, and feeds upon it, conveying the rest to the bottom of the stomach, to stir up appetite, or else to the guts as an excrement. That watery matter the two kidneys expurgate by those emulgent veins and ureters. The emulgent draws this superfluous moisture from the blood; the two ureters convey it to the bladder, which, by reason of its site in the lower belly, is apt to receive it, having two parts, neck and bottom: the bottom holds the water, the neck is constricted with a muscle, which, as a porter, keeps the water from running out against our will. Members of generation are common to both sexes, or peculiar to one; which, because they are impertinent to my purpose, I do voluntarily omit. Middle Region. Next in order is the middle region, or chest, which includes the vital faculties and parts; which, as I have said, is separated from the lower belly by the diaphragm or midriff, which is a skin consisting of many nerves, membranes; and among other uses it hath, is the instrument of laughing. There is also a certain thin membrane, full of sinews, which covers the whole chest within, and is called pleura, the seat of the disease called pleurisy, when it is inflamed; some add a third skin, which is termed mediastinus, which divides the chest into two parts, right and left; of this region the principal part is the heart, which is the seat and fountain of life, of heat, of spirits, of pulse and respiration, the sun of our body, the king and sole commander of it, the seat and organ of all passions and affections The first living, the last dying, it lives first, dies last in all creatures. Of a pyramidical form, and not much unlike a pineapple; a part worthy of admiration, that can yield such variety of affections, by whose motion it is dilated or contracted, to stir and command the humors in the body. As in sorrow, melancholy; in anger, choler; in joy, to send the blood outwardly; in sorrow, to call it in; moving the humours, as horses do a chariot. This heart, though it be one sole member, yet it may be divided into two creeks right and left. The right is like the moon increasing, bigger than the other part, and receives blood from the vena cava, distributing some of it to the lungs to nourish them; the rest to the left side, to engender spirits. The left creek hath the form of a cone, and is the seat of life, which, as a torch doth oil, draws blood unto it, begetting of it spirits and fire; and as fire in a torch, so are spirits in the blood; and by that great artery called aorta, it sends vital spirits over the body, and takes air from the lungs by that artery which is called venosa; so that both creeks have their vessels, the right two veins, the left two arteries, besides those two common anfractuous ears, which serve them both; the one to hold blood, the other air, for several uses. The lungs is a thin spongy part, like an ox's hoof, saith Fernelius, the town-clerk or crier, one terms it, the instrument of voice, as an orator to a king; annexed to the heart, to express their thoughts by voice. That it is the instrument of voice, is manifest, in that no creature can speak, or utter any voice, which wants these lights. It is, besides, the instrument of respiration, or breathing; and its office is to cool the heart, by sending air unto it, by the venous artery, which vein comes to the lungs by that rough artery which consists of many gristles, membranes, nerves, taking in air at the nose and mouth, and by it likewise exhales the fumes of the heart. In the upper region serving the animal faculties, the chief organ is the brain, which is a soft, marrowish, and white substance, engendered of the purest part of seed and spirits, included by many skins, and seated within the skull or brain pan ; and it is the most noble organ under heaven, the dwelling-house and seat of the soul, the habitation of wisdom, memory, judgment, reason, and in which man is most like unto God; and therefore nature hath covered it with a skull of hard bone, and two skins or membranes, of which the one is called dura mater, or meninx, the other pia mater. The dura mater is next to the skull, above the other, which includes and protects the brain. When this is taken away, the pious mother is to be seen, a thin membrane, the next and immediate cover of the brain, and not covering only, but entering into it. The brain itself is divided into two parts, the fore and hinder part; the fore part is much bigger than the other, which is called the little brain in respect of it. This fore part hath many concavities distinguished by certain ventricles, which are the receptacles of the spirits, brought hither by the arteries from the heart, and are there refined to a more heavenly nature, to perform the actions of the soul. Of these ventricles there are three, right, left, and middle. The right and left answer to their site, and beg animal spirits; if they be in any way hurt, sense and motion cease. These ventricles, moreover, are held to be the seat of the common sense. The middle ventricle is a common concourse and cavity of them both, and hath two passages, the one to receive pus, and the other extends itself to the fourth creek; in this they place imagination and thought, and so the three ventricles of the fore part of the brain are used. The fourth creek behind the head is common to the cerebellum or little brain, and marrow of the backbone, the last and most solid of all the rest, which receives the animal spirits from the other ventricles, and conveys them to the marrow in the back, and is the place where they say the memory is seated. Subsection five. Of the Soul and her Faculties. According to Aristotle, the soul is defined to be entelekheia, thorough or complete, the perfection or first act of an organic body, having power of life, which most philosophers approve. But many doubts arise about the essence, subject, seat, distinction, and subordinate faculties of it. For the essence and particular knowledge, of all other things it is most hard, be it of man or beast, to discern, as Aristotle himself, Tully, Picus Mirandula, Tolet, and other neoteric philosophers confess: "We can understand all things by her, but what she is we cannot apprehend." Some therefore make one soul, divided into three principal faculties; others, three distinct souls. Which question of late hath been much controverted by Picolomineus and Zabarel. Paracelsus will have four souls, adding to the three grand faculties a spiritual soul: which opinion of his, Campanella, in his book de sensu rerum much labors to demonstrate and prove, because carcasses bleed at the sight of the murder; with many such arguments And some again, one soul of all creatures whatever, differing only in organs; and that beasts have reason as well as men, though, for some defect of organs, not in such measure. Others make a doubt whether it be all in all, and all in every part; which is amply discussed in Zabarel among the rest. The common division of the soul is into three principal faculties, vegetal, sensitive, and rational, which make three distinct kinds of living creatures, vegetable plants, sensible beasts, rational men. How these three principal faculties are distinguished and connected, seems inaccessible to human ingenuity, is beyond human capacity, as Taurellus, Philip, Flavins, and others suppose. The inferior may be alone, but the superior cannot subsist without the other; so you sensibly include both the vegetal and the rational; which are contained in it, saith Aristotle, as a triangle in a quadrangle. Vegetal Soul. Vegetal, the first of the three distinct faculties, is defined to be "a substantial act of an organic body, by which it is nourished, augmented, and begets another like unto itself." In which definition, three several operations are specified, altrix, auctrix, procreator; the first is nutrition, whose object is nourishment, meat, drink, and the like; this organ is the liver in sensible creatures; in plants, the root or sap. His office is to turn the nutriment into the substance of the nourished body, which he performs by natural heat. This nutritive operation hath four other subordinate functions or powers belonging to it, attraction, retention, digestion, expulsion. Attraction. Attraction is a ministering faculty, which, as a loadstone doth iron, draws meat into the stomach, or as a lamp doth oil; and this attractive power is very necessary in plants, which suck up moisture by the root, as, another mouth, into the sap, as a like stomach. Retention. Retention keeps it, being attracted unto the stomach, until such time it be concocted; for if it should pass away straight, the body could not be nourished. Digestion. Digestion is performed by natural

Part 1 of 4: https://rumble.com/v4d2ddr-anatomy-of-melancholy-part-1-of-4-introduction.-a-puke-tm-audiobook.html Part 2 of 4: https://rumble.com/v4dgu6o-the-anatomy-of-melancholy-2-of-4-the-first-partition-by-robert-burton-1621..html THE SECOND PARTITION. THE CURE OF MELANCHOLY. THE FIRST SECTION, MEMBER, SUBSECTION. Unlawful Cures rejected. Inveterate Melancholy, however it may seem to be a continuous, inexorable disease, hard to be cured, accompanying them to their graves, most part, as Montanus observes, yet many times it may be helped, even that which is most violent, or at least, according to the same author, "it may be mitigated and much eased." Do not despair. It may be hard to cure, but not impossible for him that is most grievously affected, if he is willing to be helped. Upon this good hope I will proceed, using the same method in the cure, which I have formerly used in the rehearsing of the causes; first general, then particular; and those according to their several species. Of these cares some be lawful, some again unlawful, which though frequent, familiar, and often used, yet justly censured, and to be controversial. As first, whether by these diabolical means, which are commonly practiced by the devil and his ministers, sorcerers, witches, magicians, and more, by spells, cabilistical words, charms, characters, images, amulets, ligatures, philters, incantations, and else, this disease and the like may be cured? And if they may, whether it be lawful to make use of them, those magnetical cures, or for our good to seek after such means in any case? The first, whether they can do any such cares, is questioned among many writers, some affirming, some denying. Valesius, Malleus Maleficar, Heurnius, Caelius, Delrio, Wierus, Ludwig Lavater De spectris, part two, chapter 7. Holbrenner the Lutheran in Pistorium, Polydore Virgil, Tandlerus, Lemnius, Hippocrates and Avicenna amongst the rest, deny that spirits or devils have any power over us, and refer all with Pomponatius of Padua to natural causes and humours. Of the other opinion are Bodinus, Arnoldus, Marcellus Empyricus, I Pistorius, Paracelsus, Agrippa, Marcilius Ficinus and more. Galeottus, Jovianus Pontanus, Strabo, Geog Leo Suavius: Goclenius, Oswoldus Crollius, Ernestus Burgravius, Doctor Flood, and more. Cardan from subt. brings many proofs out of Ars Notoria, and Solomon's decayed works, old Hermes, Artefius, Costaben Luca, Picatrix, and more, that such cares may be done. They can make fire it shall not burn, fetch back thieves or stolen goods, show their absent faces in a glass, make serpents lie still, stanch blood, salute gouts, epilepsies, biting of mad dogs, toothache, melancholy, and all the evils of the world, make men immortal, young again as the Spanish marquis is said to have done by one of his slaves, and some, which jugglers in China maintain still (as Tragaltius writes) that they can do by their extraordinary skill in physic, and some of our modern chemists by their strange limbs, by their spells, philosopher's stones and charms. "Many doubt," says Nicholas Taurellus, "whether the devil can cure such diseases he hath not made, and some flatly deny it, however common experience confirms to our astonishment, that magicians can work such feats, and that the devil without hindrance can penetrate through all the parts of our bodies, and cure such maladies by means unknown to us." Daneus subscribes to this of Taurellus in his tract on the Sortiarii; Erastus de lamiai, maintains as much, and so do most divines, out of their excellent knowledge and long experience they can commit agents with patients, to gather the seeds of things, and to apply those materials, as Austin infers in the City of God and of the Trinity, book three Chapter 7 and 8, they can work stupendous and admirable conclusions; we see the effects only, but not the causes of them. Nothing so familiar as to hear of such concerns. Sorcerers are too common; cunning men, wizards, and white-witches, as they call them, in every village, which if they be sought unto, will help almost all infirmities of body and mind, Servators in Latin, and they have commonly Saint Catherine's wheel printed in the roof of their mouth, or in some other part about them, resist the charms of charms, Boissardus writes, repel diseases from arrows, motions, and others, that to doubt of it any longer, "or not to believe, were to run into that other skeptical extreme of incredulity," says Taurellus. Leo Suavius in his commentary upon Paracelsus seems to make it an art, which ought to be approved; Pistorius and others stiffly maintain the use of charms, words, characters, and more. Art is true, but few artists are found; the art is true, but there be but a few that have skill in it. Marcellus Donatus book two of De Medica Historia Mirabili, proves out of Josephus' eight books of antiquities, that, "Solomon so cured all the diseases of the mind by spells, charms, and drove away devils, and that Eleazer did as much before Vespasian." Langius in his Medical Epistisles holds Jupiter Menecrates, that did so many stupendous cures in his time, to have used this art, and that he was no other than a magician. Many famous cures are daily done in this kind, the devil is an expert physician, as Godelman calls him, and God permits oftentimes these witches and magicians to produce such effects, as Lavater, Polidore Virgil, admit Delrio and others. Such cares may be done, and as Paracelsius, Tome four of the disease they are mad stiffly maintains, "they cannot otherwise be cured but by spells, seals, and spiritual physic." Arnoldus, sets down the making of them, so doth Rolandus and many others. Assuming this, they can effect such cures, the main question is, whether it be lawful in a desperate case to crave their help, or ask a wizard's advice. Tis a common practice of some men to go first to a witch, and then to a physician, if one cannot the other shall. "It matters not," says Paracelsus, "whether it be God or the devil, angels, or unclean spirits care for him, so that he be eased." If a man falls into a ditch, as he pursues it, what matter is it whether a friend or an enemy helps him out? And if I be troubled with such a malady, what care I whether the devil himself, or any of his ministers by God's permission, redeem me? He calls a magician, God's minister and his vicar, applying that of you are gods profanely to them, for which he is lashed by Thomas Erastus. And elsewhere he encourages his patients to have a good faith, "a strong imagination, and they shall find the effects: let divines say to the contrary what they will." He proves and contends that many diseases cannot otherwise be cured. They must be taken care of by the rising spell; if they be caused by incantation, they must be cured by incantation. Constantinus approves of such remedies: Bartolus the lawyer, Peter Aerodius, Godefridus Salicetus, with others of that sect, allowed of them; so they be for the parties good, or not at all. But these men are refuted by Remigius, Bodinus, Godelmanus, Wierus, Delrio, Erastus de Lamiis; all our divines, schoolmen, and such as write cases of conscience are against it, the scripture itself absolutely forbids it as a mortal sin, Leviticus chapter eighteen, nineteen, twenty, Deuteronomy eighteen and others. Romans Eight, 19. "Evil is not to be done, that good may come of it." Much better it were for such patients that are so troubled, to endure a little misery in this life, than to hazard their souls' health for ever, and as Delrio counselleth, "much better die, than be so cured." Some take upon them to expel devils by natural remedies, and magical exorcisms, which they seem to approve out of the practice of the primitive church, as that above cited of Josephus, Eleazer, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Austin, Eusebius makes mention of such, and magic itself hath been publicly professed in some universities, as of old in Salamanca in Spain, and Krakow in Poland: but condemned in 1318, by the chancellor and university of Paris. Our pontifical writers retain many of these adjurations and forms of exorcisms still in the church; besides those used in baptism, they exorcise meats, and such as are possessed, as they hold, in Christ's name. Read Hieron. Mengus, Petrus Tyrus. What exorcisms they prescribe, besides those ordinary means of "fire suffumigations, lights, cutting the air with swords," herbs, odors: of which Tostatus, you shall find many vain and frivolous superstitious forms of exorcisms among them, not to be tolerated, or endured. Member two. Lawful Cures, first from God. Being so clearly evinced, as it is, all unlawful cures are to be refused, it remains to treat of such as are to be admitted, and those are commonly such which God hath appointed, by virtue of stones, herbs, plants, meats, and the like, which are prepared and applied to our use, by art and industry of physicians, who are the dispensers of such treasures for our good, and to be "honored for necessities' sake," God's intermediate ministers, to whom in our infirmities we are to seek for help. Yet not so that we rely too much, or wholly upon them: a Jove principle, we must first begin with prayer, and then use physic; not one without the other, but both together. To pray alone, and reject ordinary means, is to do like him in Aesop, that when his cart was stalled, lay flat on his back, and cried aloud help Hercules, but that was to little purpose, except as his friend advised him, having girded himself safely to the wheels, he whipped his horses withal, and put his shoulder to the wheel. God works by means, as Christ cured the blind man with clay and spittle: We must pray that there may be a sound mind in a sound body. As we must pray for health of body and mind, so we must use our utmost endeavors to preserve and continue it. Some kind of devils are not cast out but by fasting and prayer, and both are necessarily required, not one without the other. For all the physic we can use, art, excellent industry, is to no purpose without calling upon God, nothing helps to promise immense mountains to Crater: it is in vain to seek for help, run, ride, except God bless us. Not the Sicilians. They will develop a sweet taste. Not the spirit of the song of the Cythera. Not a house and a farm, not a heap of brass and gold. The patient can bring fevers to the owner. With house, with land, with money, and with gold, The master's fever will not be controlled. We must use our prayer and physic both together: and so no doubt but our prayers will be available, and our physic take effect. Tis that Hezekiah practiced, second Kings, twenty. Luke the Evangelist: and which we are enjoined, Colossians four not the patient only, but the physician himself. Hippocrates, a heathen, required this in a good practitioner, and so did Galen, and in that tract of his, whether the manners followed tis a rule which he doth inculcate, and many others. Hyperius in his first book speaking of that happiness and good success which all physicians desire and hope for in their cares, "tells them that it is not to be expected, except with a true faith they call upon God, and teach their patients to do the like.” The council of Lateran, Canon 22. decreed they should do so: the fathers of the church have still advised as much: whatever thou takest in hand, saith Gregory, “let God be of thy counsel, consult with him; that healeth those that are broken in heart, Psalm one hundred and forty seven, and bindeth up their sores." Otherwise as the prophet Jeremiah, chapter forty-six, denounced to Egypt, In vain thou shalt use many medicines, for thou shalt have no health. It is the same counsel which Comineus that political historiographer gives to all Christian princes, upon occasion of that unhappy overthrow of Charles Duke of Burgundy, by means of which he was extremely melancholy, and sick to death: insomuch that neither physic nor persuasion could do him any good, perceiving his preposterous error belike, adviseth all great men in such cases, "to pray first to God with all submission and penance, to confess their sins, and then to use physic." The very same fault it was, which the prophet reproaches in Asa king of Judah, that he relied more on physics than on God, and by all means would have him to amend it. And tis a fit caution to be observed of all other sorts of men. The prophet David was so observant of this precept, that in his greatest misery and vexation of mind, he put this rule first in practice. Psalm seventy seven, 3. "When I am in heaviness, I will think on God." Psalm eighty six, 4. "Comfort the soul of thy servant, for unto thee I lift up my soul:" and verse 7. "In the day of trouble I will call upon thee, for thou hearest me." Psalm fifty-four, 1. "Save me, O God, by thy name," and more. Psalm eighty two, Psalm twenty. And tis the common practice of all good men, Psalm one hundred and seven, 13. "when their heart was humbled with heaviness, they cried to the Lord in their troubles, and he delivered them from their distress." And they have found good success in so doing, as David confesseth, Psalm thirty, 12. "Thou hast turned my mourning into joy, thou hast loosened my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness." Therefore he adviseth all others to do the like, Psalm thirty one, 24. "All ye that trust in the Lord, be strong, and he shall establish your heart." It is reported by Suidas, speaking of Hezekiah, that there was a great book of old, of King Solomon's writing, which contained medicines for all manner of diseases, and lay open still as they came into the temple: but Hezekiah king of Jerusalem, caused it to be taken away, because it made the people secure, to neglect their duty in calling and relying upon God, out of a confidence in those remedies. Minutius that worthy consul of Rome in an oration he made to his soldiers, was much offended with them, and taxed their ignorance, that in their misery called more upon him than upon God. A general fault it is all over the world, and Minutius's speech concerns us all, we rely more on physic, and seek more often to physicians, than to God himself. As much faulty are they that prescribe, as they that ask, respecting wholly their gain, and trusting more to their ordinary receipts and medicines many times, than to him that made them. I would wish all patients on this behalf, in the midst of their melancholy, to remember that of Siracides, Ecclesiastes one, 11 and 12. “The fear of the Lord is glory and gladness, and rejoicing. The fear of the Lord maketh a merry heart, and giveth gladness, and joy, and long life:" and all such as prescribe physic, to begin in the name of God, as Mesue did, to imitate Laelius from Fonte Eugubinus, that in all his consultations, he still concludes with a prayer for the good success of his business; and to remember that of Cretus, one of their predecessors, avoid covetousness, and do nothing without invocation upon God. Member three. Whether it be lawful to seek to Saints for Aid in this Disease. That we must pray to God, no man doubts; but whether we should pray to saints in such cases, or whether they can do us any good, it may be lawfully disputed. Whether their images, shrines, relics, consecrated things, holy water, medals, blessings, those divine amulets, holy exorcisms, and the sign of the cross, be available in this disease? The papists on the one side stiffly maintain how many melancholy, mad, demoniacal persons are daily cured at Saint Anthony's Church in Padua, at Saint Vitus' in Germany, by our Lady of Loretto in Italy, our Lady of Sichem in the Low Countries: He gives light to the blind, health to the sick, life to the dead, walking to the lame, cures all diseases of body and mind, and in He exercises control over the demons themselves; she cures halt, lame, blind, all diseases of body and mind, and commands the devil himself, says Lipsius. "Twenty-five thousand in a day come thither," who but a god thus brought into that place; who brought them? In the ears, in the eyes of all, the deeds, the new news; new news lately done, our eyes and ears are full of her cares, and who can relate them all? They have a proper saint almost for every peculiar infirmity: for poison, gouts, agues, Petronella: Saint Romanus for such as are possessed; Valentine for the falling sickness; Saint Vitus for madmen, and more. and as of old Pliny reckons up Gods for all diseases, Febri fanum dicalum est, Lilius Giraldus repeats many of her ceremonies: all affections of the mind were heretofore accounted gods, love, and sorrow, virtue, honor, liberty, contumely, impudency, had their temples, tempests, seasons, Crepitus Belly, goddess Vacuna, goddess Cloacina, there was a goddess of idleness, a goddess of the draught, or jakes, Prema, Premunda, Priapus, bawdy gods, and gods for all offices. Varro reckons up 30,000 gods: Lucian makes Gout the gout a goddess, and assigns her priests and ministers: and melancholy comes not behind; for as Austin mentioneth, book four of the City of God, chapter 9. There was of old Angerona the goddess, and she had her chapel and feasts, to whom, saith Macrobius, they did offer sacrifice annually, that she might be pacified as well as the rest. Tis no new thing, you see this of papists; and in my judgment, that old doting Lipsius might have fitter dedicated his pen after all his labors, to this our goddess of melancholy, than to his Virgo Halensis, and been her chaplain, it would have become him better: but he, poor man, thought no harm in that which he did, and will not be persuaded but that he doth well, he hath so many patrons, and honorable precedents in the like kind, that justify as much, as eagerly, and more than he there saith of his lady and mistress: read but superstitious Coster and Gretser's Tract de Cruce, L Arcturus, Bellarmine, Delrio, Gregory Tolosanus. Syntax, Strozius Cicogna, Tyreus, Hieronymus Mengus, and you shall find infinite examples of cures done in this kind, by holy waters, relics, crosses, exorcisms, amulets, images, consecrated beads, and more. Barradius the Jesuit boldly gives it out, that Christ's countenance, and the Virgin Mary's, would cure melancholy, if one had looked steadfastly on them. Petrus Morales the Spaniard in his book confirms the same out of Carthusianus, and I know not whom, that it was a common proverb in those days, for such as were troubled in mind to say, let us see the son of Mary, as they now do post to Saint Anthony's in Padua, or to Saint Hilary's at Poitiers in France. In a closet of that church, there is at this day Saint Hilary's bed to be seen, "to which they bring all the madmen in the country, and after some prayers and other ceremonies, they lay them down there to sleep, and so they recover." It is an ordinary thing in those parts, to send all their madmen to Saint Hilary's cradle. They say the like of Saint Tubery in another place. Giraldus Cambrensis tells strange stories of Saint Ciricius' staff, that would cure this and all other diseases. Others say as much, as Hospinian observes, of the three kings of Cologne; their names written in parchment, and hung about a patient's neck, with the sign of the cross, will produce like effects. Read Lippomanus, or that golden legend of Jacobus de Voragine, you shall have infinite stories, or those new relations of our Jesuits in Japan and China, of Matthew Riccius, Acosta, Loyola, Xavier's life, an others. Jasper Belga, a Jesuit, cured a mad woman by hanging Saint John's gospel about her neck, and many such. Holy water did as much in Japan, and else. Nothing so familiar in their works, as such examples. But we on the other side seek to God alone. We say with David, Psalm forty six-one. "God is our hope and strength, and help in trouble, ready to be found." For their catalog of examples, we make no other answer, but that they are false fictions, or diabolical illusions, counterfeit miracles. We cannot deny but that it is an ordinary thing on Saint Anthony's day in Padua, to bring diverse madmen and demoniacal persons to be cured: yet we make a doubt whether such parties be so affected indeed, but prepared by their priests, by certain ointments and drams, to cozen the commonalty, as Hildesheim well says; the like is commonly practiced in Bohemia as Mathiolus gives us to understand in his preface to his comment upon Dioscorides. But we need not run so far for examples in this kind, we have a just volume published at home for this purpose. "A declaration of egregious popish impostures, to withdraw the hearts of religious men under the pretense of casting out of devils, practiced by Father Edmunds, alias Weston, a Jesuit, and divers Romish priests, his wicked associates," with the several parties' names, confessions, examinations, and more, which were pretended to be possessed. But these are ordinary tricks only to get opinion and money, mere impostures. Aesculapius of old, that counterfeit God, did as many famous cures; his temple, as Strabo relates, was daily full of patients, and as many several tables, inscriptions, pendants, gifts, and more, to be seen in his church, as at this day our Lady of Loretto's in Italy. It was a custom long since. “To offer the sailors garments to the deity of the deep.” To do the like, in former times they were seduced and deluded as they are now. Tis the same devil still, called heretofore Apollo, Mars, Neptune, Venus, Aesculapius, and more, as Lactantius observes. The same Jupiter and those bad angels are now worshiped and adored by the name of Saint Sebastian, Barbara, and others. Christopher and George are come in their places. Our lady succeeds Venus, they use her in many offices, the rest are otherwise supplied, as Lavater writes, and so they are deluded. "And God often winks at these impostures, because they forsake his word, and betake themselves to the devil, as they do that seek after holy water, crosses," and more. Wierus, book 4 Chapter 3. What can these men plead for themselves more than those heathen gods, the same cures done by both, the same spirit that seduceth; but read more of the Pagan god's effects in Austin, the city of God, book ten, Chapter 6, and of Aesculapius especially in Cicogna book three, Chapter 8, or put case they could help, why should we rather seek to them, than to Christ himself, since that he so kindly invites us unto him, "Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will ease you," Matthew Eleven and we know that there is one God, "one Mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ," first Timothy two, 5, "who gave himself a ransom for all men." We know that "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ" first John, two, 1 that there is no "other name under heaven, by which we can be saved, but by him," who is always ready to hear us, and sits at the right hand of God, and from whom we can have no repulsion, he alone wills, alone he can, he cares for the universe as individuals, and each one of us and alone, we are all as one to him, he cares for us all as one, and why should we then seek to any other but to him. Member four. Subsection one. Physician, Patient, Physic. Of those diverse gifts which our apostle Paul says God hath bestowed on man, this of physic is not the least, but most necessary, and especially conducive to the good of mankind. Next therefore to God in all our extremities, "for of the most high cometh healing," Ecclesiastes Thirty eight, 2, we must seek to, and rely upon the Physician, who is Manus Dei, says Hierophilus, and to whom he hath given knowledge, that he might be glorified in his wondrous works. "With such doth he heal men, and take away their pains," Ecclesiastes thirty-eight, 6. 7. "When thou hast need of him, let him not go from thee." The hour may come that their enterprises may have good success,” verse 13. It is not therefore to be doubted, that if we seek a physician as we ought, we may be relieved of our infirmities, such a one I mean as is sufficient, and worthily so called; for there be many mountebanks, quacksalvers, empirics, in every street almost, and in every village, that take upon them this name, make this noble and profitable art to be evil spoken of and contemned, by reason of these base and illiterate artists: but such a physician I speak of, as is approved, learned, skilful, honest, and more, of whose duty Wecker, Crato, Julius Alexandrinus, Heurnius annd more, treat at large. For this particular disease, him that shall take upon him to cure it, Paracelsus will have to be a magician, a chemist, a philosopher, an astrologer; Thurnesserus, Severinus the Dane, and some others of his followers, require as much: "many of them cannot be cured but by magic." Paracelsus is so stiff for those chemical medicines, that in his cures he will admit almost of no other physic, deriding in the mean time Hippocrates, Galen, and all their followers: but magic, and all such remedies I have already censured, and shall speak of chemistry elsewhere. Astrology is required by many famous physicians, by Ficinus, Crato, Fernelius; doubted of, and exploded by others: I will not take upon me to decide the controversy myself, Johannes Hossurtus, Thomas Boderius, and Maginus in the preface to his mathematical physic, shall determine for me. Many physicians explode astrology in physic, saith he, there is no use of it; Galen, Avicen. And more, that count them butchers without it, murderous physicians ignorant of Astrology, and more. Paracelsus goes farther, and will have his physician predestined to this man's cure, this malady; and time of cure, the scheme of each generation inspected, gathering of herbs, of administering astrologically observed; in which Thurnesserus and some iatromathematical professors, are too superstitious in my judgment. "Hellebore will help, but not always, not given by every physician, etc." but these men are too peremptory and self-conceited as I think. But what do I do, interposing in that which is beyond my reach? A blind man cannot judge of colors, nor I peradventure of these things. Only thus much I would require, honesty in every physician, that he be not over-careless or covetous, harpy-like to make a prey of his patient; For butchers, as Wecker notes, are among themselves tortured to expose a huge price, as a hungry surgeon often produces and wire-draws his cure, so long as there is any hope of pay, He does not cut the skin, unless it is full of bloody leech. Many of them, to get a fee, will give physic to every one that comes, when there is no cause, and they do so to irritate the silent disease, as Heurnius complains, stir up a silent disease, as it often falleth out, which by good counsel, good advice alone, might have been happily composed, or by rectification of those six non-natural things otherwise cured. This is to wage war on nature, to oppose nature, and to make a strong body weak. Arnaldus in these 8 and 11 Aphorisms gives cautions against, and expressly forbids it. "A wise physician will not give medicine, but upon necessity, and first try a medicinal diet, before he proceeds to medicinal cure." In another place he laughs those men to scorn, that think they can conquer demons and phantasms of the mind with long syrups, they can purge fantastical imaginations and the devil by physic. Another caution is, that they proceed upon good grounds, if so there be need of physic, and not mistake the disease; they are often deceived by the similitude of symptoms, says Heurnius, and I could give instance in many consultations, wherein they have prescribed the opposite physic. Sometimes they go too perfunctorily to work, in not prescribing a just course of physic: To stir up the humor, and not to purge it, doth often more harm than good. Montanus consiliorum 30, inveighs against such disturbances, "that purge to the halves, tire nature, and trouble the body to no purpose." Tis a crabbed humor to purge, and as Laurentius calls this disease, the reproach of physicians: Bessardus, the scourge of the physicians, their lash; and for that cause, more carefully to be respected. Though the patient be averse, saith Laurentius, desire help, and refuse it again, though he neglect his own health, it behoves a good physician not to leave him helpless. But most part they offend in that other extreme, they prescribe too much physic, and tire out their bodies with continual potions, to no purpose. Aetius, tetrabibi, will have them by all means therefore "to give some respite to nature," to leave off now and then; and Laelius a Fonte Eugubinus in his consultations, found it, as he there witnesseth, often verified by experience, "that after a deal of physic to no purpose, left to themselves, they have recovered." Tis that which Nic. Piso, Donatus Altomarus, still inculcate, to give nature rest. Subsection two. Concerning the Patient. When these precedent cautions are accurately kept, and that we have now got a skilful, an honest physician to our mind, if his patient will not be conformable, and content to be ruled by him, all his endeavors will come to no good end. Many things are necessarily to be observed and continued on the patient's behalf: First that he be not too niggardly miserable of his purse, or think it too much he bestows upon himself, and to save charges endangering his health. The Abderites, when they sent for Hippocrates, promised him what reward he would, "all the gold they had, if all the city were gold he should have it." Naaman the Syrian, when he went into Israel to Elisha to be cured of his leprosy, took with him ten talents of silver, six thousand pieces of gold, and ten changes of raiment, Second Kings verse 5. Another thing is, that out of bashfulness he do not conceal his grief; if aught trouble his mind, let him freely disclose it, the careless shame of fools hides bad sores: by that means he procures to himself much mischief, and runs into a greater inconvenience: he must be willing to be cured, and earnestly desire it. Part of health was wanting to heal, Seneca. Tis a part of his care to wish his own health, and not to defer it too long. He that by cherishing a mischief doth provoke, Too late at last refuseth to cast off his yoke, When the skin swells, to seek it to appease, With hellebore, is vain; meet your disease. By this means many times, or through their ignorance in not taking notice of their grievance and danger of it, contempt, supine negligence, exhaustion, wretchedness and peevishness; they themselves. The citizens, I know not of what city now, when rumor was brought that their enemies were coming, could not refrain from hearing it; and when the plague begins in many places and they certainly know it, they command silence and hush it up; but after they see their enemies now marching to their gates, and ready to surprise them, they begin to fortify and resist when it is too late; when, the sickness breaks out and can be no longer concealed, then they lament their supine negligence: tis no otherwise with these men. And often out of prejudice, a loathing, and distaste of physic, they had rather die, or do worse, than take any of it. "Barbarous immanence" Melancthon terms it, "and folly to be deplored, so to contemn the precepts of health, good remedies, and voluntarily to pull death, and many maladies upon their own heads." Though many again are in that other extreme too profuse, suspicious, and jealous of their health, too apt to take physic on every small occasion, to aggravate every slender passion, imperfection, impediment: if their finger do but ache, run, ride, send for a physician, as many gentlewomen do, that are sick, without a cause, even when they will themselves, upon every toy or small discontent, and when he comes, they make it worse than it is, by amplifying that which is not. Hieronymus Capivaccius sets it down as a common fault of all "melancholy persons to say their symptoms are greater than they are, to help themselves." And which Mercurialis notes, consiliorum 53. "to be more troublesome to their physicians, than other ordinary patients, that they may have a change of physic." A third thing to be required in a patient, is confidence, to be of good cheer, and have sure hope that his physician can help him. Damascus the Arabian requires likewise in the physician himself, that he be confident he can cure him, otherwise his physician will not be effectual, and promise withal that he will certainly help him, make him believe so at least. Galeotus gives this reason, because the form of health is contained in the physician's mind, and as Galen, holds "confidence and hope to be more good than physic," he cares most in whom most are confident. Axiocus was sick almost to death, and at the very sight of Socrates he recovered his former health. Paracelsus assigns it for an only cause, why Hippocrates was so fortunate in his cares, not for any extraordinary skill he had; but "because the common people had a most strong conception of his worth." To this of confidence we may add perseverance, obedience, and constancy, not to change his physician, or dislike him upon every toy; for he that so doth, saith Janus Damascen, “or consults with many, falls into many errors; or that useth many medicines." It was a chief caveat of Seneca to his friend Lucilius, that he should not alter his physician, or prescribed physic: “Nothing hinders health more; a wound can never be cured, that hath several plasters." Crato, consiliorum 186, taxeth all melancholy persons of this fault: "Tis proper to them, if things fall not out to their mind, and that they have not present ease, to seek another and another;" as they do commonly that have sore eyes, “twenty one after another, and they still promise all to cure them, try a thousand remedies; and by this means they increase their malady, make it most dangerous and difficult to be cured." "They try many", saith Montanus, "and profit by none:" and for this cause, consiliorum 24, he enjoins his patient before he takes him in hand, "perseverance and suffering, for in such a small time no great matter can be effected, and upon that condition he will administer physic, otherwise all his endeavor and counsel would be to small purpose." And in his thirty first consel for a notable matron, he tells her, “if she will be cured, she must be of a most abiding patience, faithful obedience, and singular perseverance; if she remits, or despairs, she can expect or hope for no good success.” Consiliorum 230, for an Italian Abbot, he makes it one of the greatest reasons why this disease is so incurable, "because the parties are so restless, and impatient, and will therefore have him that intends to be eased," "to take physic, not for a month, a year, but to apply himself to their prescriptions all the days of his life." Last of all, it is required that the patient be not too bold to practice upon himself, without an approved physician's consent, or to try conclusions, if he reads a receipt in a book; for so, many grossly mistake, and do themselves more harm than good. That which is conducive to one man, in one case, at the same time is opposite to another. An ass and a mule went laden over a brook, the one with salt, the other with wool: the mule's pack was wet by chance, the salt melted, his burden the lighter, and he thereby much eased: he told the ass, who, thinking to speed as well, wet his pack likewise at the next water, but it was much the heavier, he was quite tired. So one thing may be good and bad to several parties, upon different occasions. "Many things", saith Penottus, "are written in our books, which seem to the reader to be excellent remedies, but they that make use of them are often deceived, and take for physical poison." I remember in Valleriola's observations, a story of one John Baptist a Neapolitan, that finding by chance a pamphlet in Italian, written in praise of hellebore, would need adventure on himself, and took one dram for one scruple, and had not he been sent for, the poor fellow had poisoned himself. From whence he concludes out of Damascenus 2 and 3 Aphorisms, "that without exquisite knowledge, to work out of books is most dangerous: how unsavory a thing it is to believe writers, and take upon trust, as this patient perceived by his own peril." I could recite such another example of my own knowledge, of a friend of mine, that finding a receipt in Brassivola, would need to take hellebore in substance, and try it on his own person; but had not some of his relatives come to visit him by chance, he had by his indiscretion hazarded himself: many such I have observed. These are those ordinary precautions, which I should think fit to be noted, and he that shall keep them, as Montanus says, shall surely be much eased, if not thoroughly cured. Subsection three. Concerning Physic. Physic itself in the last place is to be considered; "for the Lord hath created medicines of the earth, and he that is wise will not abhor them." Ecclesiastes thirty-eight, 4, Verse 8. "Of such doth the apothecary make a confection," and more. Of these medicines there be diverse and infinite kinds, plants, metals, animals, and more, and those of several natures, some good for one, hurtful to another: some noxious in themselves, corrected by art, very wholesome and good, simple, mixed, and more, and therefore left to be managed by discreet and skilful physicians, and then applied to man's use. To this purpose they have invented methods, and several rules of art, to put these remedies in order, for their particular ends. Physic, as Hippocrates defines it, is naught else but "addition and subtraction;" and as it is required in all other diseases, so in this of melancholy it ought to be most accurate, it being, as Mercurialis acknowledgeth, so common an affection in these our times, and therefore fit to be understood. Several prescripts and methods I find in several men, some take upon them to cure all maladies with one medicine, severally applied, as that panacea, potable gold, so much controversial in these days, herb of the sun, and more. Paracelsus reduces all diseases to four principal heads, to whom Severinus, Ravelascus, Leo Suavius, and others adhere and imitate: those are leprosy, gout, dropsy, falling-sickness. To which they reduce the rest; as to leprosy, ulcers, itches, furrows, scabs, and more. To gout, stone, colic, toothache, headache, and more. To dropsy, age, jaundice, cachexia, and else. To the falling-sickness, belong palsy, vertigo, cramps, convulsions, nightmare, apoplexy, and more. "If any of these four principal be cured", saith Ravelascus, "all the inferior are cured," and the same remedies commonly serve: but this is too general, and by some contradicted: for this peculiar disease of melancholy, of which I am now to speak, I find several cures, several methods and prescriptions. Those that intend the practical cure of melancholy, says Duretus in his notes to Hollerius, set down nine peculiar scopes or ends; Savanarola prescribes seven special canons. Aelianus Montaltus, Faventinus in his empirics, Hercules of Saxony, and others, have their several injunctions and rules, all tending to one end. The ordinary is threefold, which I mean to follow. Dietary, Pharmaceutica, and Chirurgica, diet, or living, apothecary, surgery, which Wecker, Crato, Guianerius, and more, and most, prescribe; of which I will insist, and speak in their order. Section two. Member one. Subsection one. Diet rectified in substance. Diet, Diatitiki, victus, or living, according to Fuchsius and others, includes those six non-natural things, which I have before specified, are special causes, and being rectified, a sole or chief part of the cure. Johannes Arculanus, chapter 16 in 9 Rhasis, accounts the rectifying of these six with sufficient care. Guianerius, Tract 15, chapter 9, calls them, propria et primam curam, the principal cure: so doth Montanus, Crato, Mercurialis, Altomarus, and more, first to be tried, Lemnius, names them the hinges of our health, no hope of recovery without them. Reinerus Solenander, in his seventh consultation for a Spanish young gentlewoman, that was so melancholy she abhorred all company, and would not sit at table with her familiar friends, prescribes this physic above the rest, no good to be done without it. Aretus, book one chapter 7, an old physician, is of opinion, that this is enough of itself, if the party be not too far gone in sickness. Crato, in a consultation of his for a noble patient, tells him plainly, that if his highness will keep but a good diet, he will warrant him his former health. Montanus, consiliorum 27, for a nobleman of France, admonisheth his lordship to be most circumspect in his diet, or else all his other physic will be to small purpose. The same injunction I find verbatim in J Caesar Claudinus. Scoltzii, consiliorum 183. Trallianus, Laelius a Fonte Aeugubinus often brags, that he hath done more cures in this kind by rectification of diet, than all other physic besides. So that in a word I may say to most melancholy men, as the fox said to the weasel, that could not get out of the garner, and they must take care of it. Which howsoever I treat of, as proper to the meridian of melancholy, yet nevertheless, that which is here said with him in Tully, though writ especially for the good of his friends at Tarentum and Sicily, yet it will generally serve most other diseases, and help them likewise, if it be observed. Of these six non-natural things, the first is diet, properly so called, which consists in meat and drink, in which we must consider substance, quantity, quality, and that opposite to the preceding. In substance, such meats are generally commended, which are "moist, easy of digestion, and not apt to engender wind, not fried, nor roasted, but sod”, saith Valescus, Altomarus, Piso, and more "hot and moist, and of good nourishment; Crato consiliorum 21, book 2, admits roast meat, if the burnt and scorched surfaces, the brown we call it, be pared off. Salvianus, cries out on cold and dry meats; young flesh and tender is approved, as of kid, rabbits, chickens, veal, mutton, capons, hens, partridge, pheasant, quails, and all mountain birds, which are so familiar in some parts of Africa, and in Italy, and as Dublin reports, the common food of boors and clowns in Palestine. Galen takes exception at mutton, but without question he means that rammy mutton, which is in Turkey and Asia Minor, which have those great fleshy tails, of forty-eight pounds weight, as Vertomannus witnesseth. The lean of fat meat is best, and all manner of broths, and pottage, with borage, lettuce, and such wholesome herbs are excellent good, especially of a cock boiled; all spoon meat Arabians commend brains, but Laurentius, excepts against them, and so do many others; eggs are justified as a nutritious wholesome meat, butter and oil may pass, but with some limitation; so Crato confines it, and "to some men sparingly at set times, or in sauce," and so sugar and honey are approved. All sharp and sour sauces must be avoided, and spices, or at least rarely used: and so saffron sometimes in broth may be tolerated; but these things may be more freely used, as the temperature of the party is hot or cold, or as he shall find inconvenience by them. The thinnest, whitest, smallest wine is best, not thick, nor strong; and so of beer, the middle is fittest. Bread of good wheat, pure, well purged from the bran is preferred; Laurentius, would have it kneaded with rain water, if it might be gotten. Water. Pure, thin, light water by all means use, of good smell and taste, like to the air in sight, such as is soon hot, soon cold, and which Hippocrates so much approves, if at least it may be had. Rain water is purest, so that it fall not down in great drops, and be used forthwith, for it quickly putrefies. Next to it fountain water that riseth in the east, and runneth eastward, from a quick running spring, from flinty, chalky, gravelly grounds: and the longer a river runneth, it is commonly the purest, though many springs do yield the best water at their fountains. The waters in hotter countries, as in Turkey, Persia, India, within the tropics, are frequently purer than ours in the north, more subtile, thin, and lighter, as our merchants observe, by four ounces in a pound, pleasanter to drink, as good as our beer, and some of them, as Choaspis in Persia, preferred by the Persian kings, before wine itself. “Whoever has allayed his thirst with the water of the Clitorius, avoids wine, and amstemons delights in pure water only.” Many rivers I deny are not still muddy, white, thick, like those in China, Nile in Egypt, Tiber at Rome, but after they have been settled two or three days, defecate and clear, very commodious, useful and good. Many make use of deep wells, as of old in the Holy Land, lakes, cisterns, when they cannot be better provided; to fetch it in carts or gondolas, as in Venice, or camels' backs, as at Cairo in Egypt, Radzivilius observed 8000 camels daily there, employed about that business; some keep it in trunks, as in the East Indies, made four square with descending steps, and tis not lost, for I would not have any one so nice as that Grecian Calis, sister to Nicephorus, emperor of Constantinople, and married to Dominitus Silvius, duke of Venice, that out of incredible wantonness, would not use common water, would use no vulgar water; but she died, saith my author, of so foul a pure quantity, of so fulsome a disease, that no water could wash her clean. Plato would not have a traveler's lodge in a city that is not governed by laws, or hath not a quick stream running by it; for that corrupts the mind, this corrupts the health, the one corrupts the body, the other the mind. But this is more than needs, too much curiosity is naught, in time of necessity any water is allowed. However, pure water is best, and which, as Pindarus holds, is better than gold; an especial ornament it is, and "very commodious to a city", according to Vegetius, "when fresh springs are included within the walls," as at Corinth, in the midst of the town almost, there was a very high fountain fountains, a goodly mount full of fresh water springs: "if nature afford them not they must be had by art." It is a wonder to read of those stupend aqueducts, and infinite cost hath been bestowed in Rome of old, Constantinople, Carthage, Alexandria, and such populous cities, to convey good and wholesome waters: read Frontinus, Lipsius, Pliny, Strabo in his Geography. That aqueduct of Claudius was most eminent, fetched upon arches fifteen miles, each arch 109 feet high: they had fourteen such other aqueducts, besides lakes and cisterns, 700 as I take it; every house had private pipes and channels to serve them for their use. Peter Gillius, in his accurate description of Constantinople, speaks of an old cistern which he went down to see, 336 feet long, 180 feet broad, built of marble, covered over with arch-work, and sustained by 336 pillars, 12 feet asunder, and in eleven rows, to contain sweet water. Infinite cost in channels and cisterns, from the Nile to Alexandria, hath been formerly bestowed, to the admiration of these times; their cisterns are so curiously cemented and composed, that a beholder would take them to be all of one stone: when the foundation is laid, and the cistern made, their house is half built. That Segovian aqueduct in Spain, is much wondered at in these days, upon three rows of pillars, one above another, conveying sweet water to every house: but every city almost is full of such aqueducts. Amongst the rest he is eternally to be commended, that brought that new stream to the north side of London at his own charge: and Mister Otho Nicholson, founder of our waterworks and elegant conduit in Oxford. So much have all times attributed to this element, to be conveniently provided of it: although Galen hath taken exceptions at such waters, which run through leaden pipes, because of the ceruse that is generated in them, for that unctuous ceruse, which causes dysenteries and fluxes; yet as Alsarius Crucius of Genna well answers, it is opposite to common experience. If that were true, most of our Italian cities, Montpelier in France, with infinite others, would find this inconvenience, but there is no such matter. For private families, in what sort they should furnish themselves, let them consult with Petrus Crescentius, Pamphilius Hirelacus, and the rest. Amongst fishes, those are most allowed of, that live in gravelly or sandy waters, pikes, perch, trout, gudgeon, smelts, flounders, and more. Hippolytus Salvianus takes exception to the carp; but I dare boldly say with Dubravius, it is an excellent meat, if it comes not from muddy pools, that it retains not an unsavory taste. Erinacius Marinus is much commended by Oribatius, Aetius, and most of our late writers. Crato, consiliorum 21, book 2, censures all manner of fruits, as subject to putrefaction, yet tolerable at times, after meals, at second course, they keep down vapours, and have their use. Sweet fruits are best, as sweet cherries, plums, sweet apples, pearmains, and pippins, which Laurence extols, as having a peculiar property against this disease, and Plater magnifies, in every way appropriated to meet, but they must be corrected for their windiness: ripe grapes are good, and raisins of the sun, musk-melons well corrected, and sparingly used. Figs are allowed, and almonds blanched. Trallianus discommends figs, Salvianus olives and capers, which others especially like of, and so of pistick nuts. Montanus and Mercurialis out of Avenzoar, admit peaches, pears, and apples baked after meals, only corrected with sugar, and aniseed, or fennel-seed, and so they may be profitably taken, because they strengthen the stomach, and keep down vapours. The like may be said of preserved cherries, plums, marmalade of plums, quinces, and more, but not to drink after them. Pomegranates, lemons, oranges are tolerated, if they are not too sharp. Crato will admit of no herbs, but borage, bugloss, endive, fennel, aniseed, baum; Callenius and Arnoldus tolerate lettuce, spinach, beets, and more. The same Crato will allow no roots at all to be eaten. Some approve of potatoes, parsnips, but all corrected for wind. No raw salads; but as Laurentius prescribes, in broths; and so Crato commends many of them: or to use borage, hops, baum, steeped in their ordinary drink. Avenzoar magnifies the juice of a pomegranate, if it be sweet, and especially rose water, which he would have to be used in every dish, which they put in practice in those hot countries, about Damascus, where, if we may believe the relations of Vertomannus, many hogsheads of rose water are to be sold in the market at once, it is in so great request with them. Subsection two. Diet rectified in quantity. Man alone, says Cardan, eats and drinks without appetite, and uses all his pleasure without necessity, a vice of the soul, and thence come many inconveniences unto him. For there is no meat whatsoever, though otherwise wholesome and good, but if unseasonably taken, or immoderately used, more than the stomach can well bear, it will engender crudity, and do much harm. Therefore Crato advises his patient to eat but twice a day, and that at his set meals, by no means to eat without an appetite, or upon a full stomach, and to put seven hours' difference between dinner and supper. Which rule if we did observe in our colleges, it would be much better for our health: but custom, that tyrant, so prevails, that contrary to all good order and rules of physics, we scarcely admit of five. If after seven hours' tarrying he shall have no stomach, let him defer his meal, or eat very little at his ordinary time of repast. This very counsel was given by Prosper Calenus to Cardinal Caesius, laboring of this disease; and Platerus prescribes it to a patient of his, to be most severely kept. Guianerius admits of three meals a day, but Montanus, consiliorum 23, Ab Italo, ties him precisely to two. And as he must not eat too much, so he may not absolutely fast; for as Celsus contends, and Jacchinus, repletion and starvation may both do harm in two contrary extremes. Moreover, that which he doth eat, must be well chewed, and not hastily gobbled, for that causes crudity and wind; and by all means to eat no more than he can well digest. "Some think", saith Trincavelius, "the more they eat the more they nourish themselves:" eat and live, as the proverb is, "not knowing that only repairs man, which is well concocted, not that which is devoured." Melancholy men most part have good appetites, but ill digestion, and for that cause they must be sure to rise with an appetite; and that which Socrates and Disarius the physicians in Macrobius so much require, Saint Hierom enjoins the peasant to eat and drink no more than, will satisfy hunger and thirst. Lessius, the Jesuit, holds twelve, thirteen, or fourteen ounces, or in our northern countries, sixteen at most, for all students, weaklings, and such as lead an idle sedentary life, of meat, bread, and else, a fit proportion for a whole day, and as much or little more of drink. Nothing plagues the body and mind sooner than to be still fed, to eat and gorge beyond all measure, as many do. “By overmuch eating and continual feasts they stifle nature, and choke up themselves; which, had they lived coarsely, or like galley slaves had been tied to an oar, might have happily prolonged many fair years.” A great inconvenience comes by variety of dishes, which causeth the preceding distemperature, "than which", saith Avicenna, "nothing is worse; to feed on diversity of meats, or too much," Sertorius-like, to dine in light, and as commonly they do in Muscovy and Iceland, to prolong their meals all day long, or all night. Our northern countries offend especially in this, and we in this island, largely living on food and mud, as Polydore notes, are most liberal feeders, but to our own hurt. "Excess of meat breeds sickness, and gluttony causes choleric diseases: by surfeiting many perish, but he that dieteth himself prolongeth his life," Ecclesiates thirty-seven, 29, 30. We count it a great glory for a man to have his table daily furnished with variety of meats: but hear the physician, he pulls thee by the ear as thou sittest, and telleth thee, "that nothing can be more noxious to thy health than such variety and plenty." Temperance is a bridle of gold, and he that can use it aright. Will it make a man a God. To preserve thine honor, health, and to avoid therefore all those inflations, torments, obstructions, crudities, and diseases that come by a full diet, the best way is to feed sparingly of one or two dishes at most, to have the stomach is well settled, as Seneca calls it, "to choose one of many, and to feed on that alone," as Crato advises his patient. The same counsel Prosper Calenus gives to Cardinal Caesius, to use a moderate and simple diet: and though his table be jovially furnished by reason of his state and guests, yet for his own part to single out some one savory dish and feed on it. The same is inculcated by Crato, consiliorum 9, book two, to a noble personage affected with this grievance, he would have his highness to dine or sup alone, without all his honorable attendance and courtly company, with a private friend or so, a dish or two, a cup of Rhenish wine, and more. Montanus, consiliorum 24 for a noble matron enjoins her one dish, and by no means to drink between meals. The like, consiliorum 229, or not to eat till he be an hungry, which rule Berengarius did most strictly observe, as Hilbertus,writes in his life, To whom it has never been, Drink before thirst, nor food before hunger. And which all temperate men do constantly keep. It is a frequent solemnity still used with us, when friends meet, to go to the alehouse or tavern, they are not sociable otherwise: and if they visit one another's houses, they must both eat and drink. I criticize it not moderately used; but to some men nothing can be more offensive; they had better, I speak it with Saint Ambrose, pour so much water in their shoes. It much avails likewise to keep good order in our diet, “to eat liquid things first, broths, fish, and such meats as are sooner corrupted in the stomach; harder meats of digestion must come last." Crato would have the supper less than the dinner, which Cardan, disallows, and that by the authority of Galen, and for four reasons he will have the biggest supper: I have read many treatises to this purpose, I know not how it may concern some few sick men, but for my part generally for all, I should subscribe to that custom of the Romans, to make a sparing dinner, and a liberal supper; all their preparation and invitation was still at supper, no mention of dinner. Many reasons I could give, but when all is said pro and con, Cardan's rule is best, to keep that which we are accustomed to, though it be naught, and to follow our disposition and appetite in some things is not lost; to eat sometimes of a dish which is hurtful, if we have an extraordinary liking to it. Alexander Severus loved hares and apples above all other meats, as Lampridius relates in his life: one pope pork, another peacock, and more; what harm came of it? I conclude that our own experience is the best physician; that diet which is most propitious to one, is often pernicious to another, such is the variety of palates, humors, and temperatures, let every man observe, and be a law unto himself. Tiberius, in Tacitus, did laugh at all such, that thirty years of age would ask counsel of others concerning matters of diet; I say the same. These few rules of diet he that keeps, shall surely find great ease and speedy remedy by it. It is a wonder to relate that prodigious temperance of some hermits, anchorites, and fathers of the church: he that shall but read their lives, written by Jerome, Athanasius, and others, how abstemious heathens have been in this kind, those Curii and Fabritii, those old philosophers, as Pliny records, Xenophon. Emperors and kings, as Nicephorus relates, and Mauritius, Ludovicus Pius, and more, and that admirable example of Ludovicus Cornarus, a patrician of Venice, cannot but admire them. This they have done voluntarily and in health; what shall these private men do that are visited with sickness, and necessarily enjoined to recover, and continue their health? It is a hard thing to observe a strict diet, and he who lives with medicine lives miserably, as the saying is, what kind of life would this very thing be if you were deprived of these? as good be buried, as so much debarred of his appetite; evil medicine has passed, the physic is more troublesome than the disease, so he complained in the poet, so thou thinkest: yet he that loves himself will easily endure this little misery, to avoid a greater inconvenience; it is better to do this than to do worse. And as Tully holds, "better be a temperate old man than a lascivious youth." Tis the only sweet thing, which he adviseth, so to moderate ourselves, that we may have old age in youth, and old age in youth, be youthful in our old age, staid in our youth, discreet and temperate in both. Member two. Retention and Evacuation rectified. I have declared in the causes what harm costiveness hath done in procuring this disease; if it be so noxious, the opposite must needs be good, or mean at least, as indeed it is, and to this cure necessarily required; it is most profitable, says Montaltus, it avails very much. Altomarus, "commends walking in a morning, into some fair green pleasant fields, but by all means first, by art or nature, he will have these ordinary excrements evacuated." Piso calls it, Beneficium ventris, the benefit, help or pleasure of the belly, for it doth much ease it. Laurentius, Cratus, consiliorum 21, book two, you prescribe it once a day at least: where nature is defective, art must supply, by those lenitive electuaries, suppositories, seasoned prunes, turpentine, clysters, as shall be shown. Prosper Calenus, in his book, of black bile, he recommends clysters in hypochondriacal melancholy, still to be used as occasion serves; Peter Cnemander in a consultation of his for a hypochondriac, will have his patient continually loose, and to that end sets down there many forms of potions and clysters. Mercurial, consiliorum 88, if this benefit come not of its own accord, you prescribe clysters in the first place: so doth Montanus, consiliorum 24 31 and 229, he commends turpentine to that purpose: the same he ingeminates, consiliorum 230, for an Italian abbot. Tis very good to wash his hands and face often, to shift his clothes, to have fair linen about him, to be decently and comely attired, for dirt vitiant, nastiness defiles and dejects any man that is so voluntarily, or compelled by want, it dulleth the spirits. Baths are either artificial or natural, both have their special uses in this malady, and as Alexander supposed, yield as speedy a remedy as any other physic whatsoever. Aetius would have them daily used, constant bathing, Galen cracks how many several cures he has performed in this kind by the use of baths alone, and Rufus pills, moistening them which are otherwise dry. Rhasis makes it a principal care, the whole care being in moistening, to bathe and afterwards anoint with oil. Jason Pratensis, Laurentius, and Montanus set down their peculiar forms of artificial baths. Crato consiliorum 17, book two, fair water alone, and in his following counsel, we have found that the bath of fresh water alone is most often beneficial. So doth Fuchsius, Frisimelica, in Trincavelius. Some besides herbs prescribe a ram's head and other things to be boiled. Fernelius, consiliorum 44, will have them used ten or twelve days together; to which he must enter fasting, and so continue in a moderate heat, and after that frictions all over the body. Lelius Aegubinus, consiliorum 142, and Christopher Aererus, in a consultation of his, hold once or twice a week sufficient to bathe, the "water to be warm, not hot, for fear of sweating." FelixPlater, for a melancholy lawyer, "will have lotions of the head still joined to these baths, with a ley wherein capital herbs have been boiled." Laurentius speaks of baths of milk, which I find approved by many others. And still after bath, the body to be anointed with oil of bitter almonds, of violets, new or fresh butter, capon's grease, especially the backbone, and then lotions of the head, embrocations, and more. These kinds of baths have been in former times much frequented, and variously varied, and are still in general use in those eastern countries. The Romans had their public baths very sumptuous and stupendous, as those of Antoninus and Diocletian. Pliny says there were an infinite number of them in Rome, and mightily frequented; some bathed seven times a day, as Commodus the emperor is reported to have done; usually twice a day, and they were after anointed with most costly ointments: rich women bathed themselves in milk, some in the milk of five hundred she-asses at once: we have many ruins of such, baths found in this island, among those walls and rubbish of old Roman towns. Lipsius, Rosinus, Scot of Antwerp, and other antiquaries, tell strange stories of their baths. Gillius, reckons up 155 public baths in Constantinople, of fair building; they are still frequented in that city by the Turks of all sorts, men and women, and all over Greece, and those hot countries; to wipe away like that fulsomeness of sweat, to which they are there subject. Busbecius, in his epistles, is very copious in describing the manner of them, how their women go covered, a maid following with a box of ointment to rub them. The richer sort have private baths in their houses; the poorer go to the common, and are generally so curious in this behalf, that they will not eat nor drink until they have bathed, before and after meals some, "and will not make water, but they will wash their hands, or go to stool." Leo Afer makes mention of one hundred several baths at Fez in Africa, most sumptuous, and such as have great revenues belonging to them. Buxtorfius chapter 14,

2 of 4: https://rumble.com/v4dgu6o-the-anatomy-of-melancholy-2-of-4-the-first-partition-by-robert-burton-1621..html 3 of 4: https://rumble.com/v4dh2lr-anatomy-of-melancholy-part-3-of-4-partition-2.-a-puke-tm-audiobook.html 4 of 4: https://rumble.com/v4e2hjr-the-anatomy-of-melancholy-4-of-4.-robert-burton-1621.-a-puketm-audiobook.html Quotes: "Howsoever, it is a kind of policy in these days, to prefix a fantastical title to a book which is to be sold; for, as larks come down to a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gazing like silly passengers at an antic picture in a painter's shop, that will not look at a judicious piece." "If such a thing were now found, we should all fight for it, as the three goddesses did for the golden apple, we are so wise: we have women politicians, children metaphysicians; every silly fellow can square a circle, make perpetual motions, find the philosopher's stone, interpret Apocalypses, make new Theories, a new system of the world, new Logic, new Philosophy, and so on. Our country, says Petronius, "our country is so full of deified spirits, divine souls, that you may sooner find a God than a man among us," we think so well of ourselves, and that is an ample testimony of much folly." "Is not he mad that draws lines with Archimedes, whilst his house is ransacked, and his city besieged, when the whole world is in combustion, or we whilst our souls are in danger, death follows, life flees, to spend our time in toys, idle questions, and things of no worth?" The first of these is diet, which consists in meat and drink, and causes melancholy, as it offends in substance, or accidents, that is, quantity, quality, or the like. And well it may be called a material cause, since that, as Fernelius holds, “it hath such a power in begetting of diseases, and yields the matter and sustenance of them; for neither air, nor disturbances, nor any of those other evident causes take place, or work this effect, except the constitution of body, and preparation of humors, do concur. That a man may say, this diet is the mother of diseases, let the father be what he will, and from this alone, melancholy and frequent other maladies arise." "Now the common cause of this mischief, ariseth from ourselves or others, we are active and passive. It proceeds inwardly from ourselves, as we are active causes, from an overweening conceit we have of our good parts, own worth, which indeed is no worth, our bounty, favor, grace, valour, strength, wealth, patience, meekness, hospitality, beauty, temperance, gentry, knowledge, wit, science, art, learning, our excellent gifts and fortunes, for which, Narcissus-like, we admire, flatter, and applaud ourselves, and think all the world esteems so of us and as deformed women easily believe those that tell them they be fair, we are too credulous of our own good parts and praises, too well persuaded of ourselves." "and though they write of the contempt of glory,..., they will put their names to their books." "And so they bring up their children, rude as they are themselves, unqualified, untaught, uncivil most part. Who among our youth is legitimately trained in letters? Who touches orators or philosophers? Who reads history, that life of things to be done?" "How odious and abominable are those superstitious and rash vows of Popish monasteries, so to bind and enforce men and women to vow virginity, to lead a single life, against the laws of nature, opposite to religion, policy, and humanity, so to starve, to offer violence, to suppress the vigor of youth, by rigorous statutes, severe laws, vain persuasions, to debar them of that to which by their innate temperature they are so furiously inclined, urgently carried, and sometimes precipitated, even irresistibly led, to the prejudice of their soul's health, and good estate of body and mind: and all for base and private respects, to maintain their gross superstition, to enrich themselves and their territories as they falsely suppose, by hindering some marriages, that the world be not full of beggars, and their parishes pestered with orphans; stupid politicians; Do these things become flagella? Ought these things so to be carried? Better marry than burn, says the Apostle, but they are otherwise persuaded." But who shall dwell in these vast bodies, earths, worlds, “if they be inhabited? Rational creatures?” as Kepler demands, “or have they souls to be saved? Or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they lords of the world? And how are all things made for man?" "But in all nature what is there so stupendous as to examine and calculate the motion of the planets, their magnitudes, apogees, perigees, eccentricities, how far distant from the earth, the bigness, thickness, compass of the firmament, each star, with their diameters and circumference, apparent area, surfaces, by those curious aids of glasses, astrolabes, sextants, quadrants, of which Tycho Brahe in his mechanics, optics, divine optics, arithmetic, geometry, and such like arts and instruments?" "In the end, as Machiavelli observes, “virtue and prosperity beg rest; rest idleness; idleness riots; riot destruction from which we come again to good laws; good laws engender virtuous actions; virtue, glory, and prosperity; “and tis no dishonor then”, as Guicciardine adds, “for a flourishing man, city, or state to come to ruin,” “nor infelicity to be subject to the law of nature.”" "Let them rail then, scoff, and slander, a wise man is not affected by insults, a wise man, Seneca thinks, is not moved, because he knows, there is no remedy for it: kings and princes, wise, serious, prudent, holy, good men, divine, are all so served alike." "Love made the world, love built cities, soul of the world, invented arts, sciences, and all good things, incites us to virtue and humanity, combines and quickens; keeps peace on earth, quietness by sea, mirth in the winds and elements, expels all fear, anger, and rusticity;" "If any man take exception at my words, let him alter the name, read him for her, and tis all one in effect. But to my purpose: If women in general be so bad, and men worse than they, what a hazard is it to marry? Where shall a man find a good wife, or a woman a good husband?" "We have many such fondlings that are their wives' packhorses and slaves, for a wife overcomes her husband with a grave evil, as the comical poet hath it, there is no greater misery to a man than to let his wife rule, to carry her muff, dog, and fan, let her wear the breeches, lay out, spend, and do what she will, go and come whither, when she will, they give consent." ""This vice", says my author, "is so common with us in France, that he is of no account, a mere coward, not worthy the name of a soldier, that is not a notorious whoremaster." In Italy he is not a gentleman, that besides his wife hath not a courtesan and a mistress." "Or if I shall see a monk or a friar climb up a ladder at midnight into a virgin's or widow's chamber window, I shall hardly think he then goes to administer the sacraments, or to take her confession." "And first to begin of politicians, it hath ever been a principal axiom with them to maintain religion or superstition, which they determine of, alter and vary upon all occasions, as to them seems best, they make religion mere policy, a cloak, a human invention, nothing is equally effective in governing the minds of the people as superstition, as Tacitus and Tully hold. " procreare liberos lepidissimum. Hercle vero liberum esse, id multo est lepidius. “To be a father is very pleasant, but to be a freeman still more so.” Plautus Mil. Glor. act. 3. sc. 1. Miles Gloriosus ("The Braggart Soldier") "A man without religion, is like a horse without a bridle." No way better to curb than superstition, to terrify men's consciences, and to keep them in awe: they make new laws, statutes, invent new religions, ceremonies, as so many stalking horses, to their ends. For if this, religion, is false, as long as it is believed to be true, it tames the ferocity of the mind, controls the lusts, and makes subjects obedient to the prince." "Sickness and sorrows come and go, but a superstitious soul hath no rest; A mind imbued with superstition can never be quiet, no peace, no quietness." Homer. Quam cum chara domi conjux, fidusque maritus Unanimes degunt “How harmoniously do a loving wife and constant husband lead their lives.” Mox daturi progeniem vitiosorem, Horace "And yet with crimes to us unknown, Our sons shall mark the coming age their own." Dramatis Personae. A partial list of common, or referenced name, other names and lifespan, and important works. Abulensis, Alonso Tostado 1410 to 3 September 1455. De maleficis mulieribus 1440. Acosta the Jesuit. Jose de Acosta. 1539 15 Feb 1600. Historia natural y moral de las Indias 1590. Aegineta, Paulus Aegineta, Paul of Aegina, Al-kawabeli, 625 to 690, Epitomes iatrikes biblia hepta Aelian, Claudius Aelianus, meliglossos “honey tongued” 175 to 235, On the Nature of Animals. Aetius, Aetius of Amida, fifth century AD. Sixteen Books on Medicine, divided into four tetrabibli. Afer, Leo Afer, Johannes Leo Africanus, al-Hasan Muhammad al-Wazzan 1494 to 1554, Cosmographia et geographia de Affrica, 1526. Altomarus, Donatus Altomarus, Donato Antonio Altomare. 1502 to 1562, De medendis humani corporis malis, 1553. Aquinas, Thomas Aquinas, Tommaso d'Aquino 1225-1274 Arculanus, Johnanes Arculanus, Giovani of Arcoli. 1412 or 1484. Paraphrasisof the ninth book of theLiber ad Almansorem 1537 Aretino, Pietro Aretino, “the scourge of princes”, 20 Apr 1492 to 21 Oct 1556 Aerodius, Petrus Aerodius, Pierre Ayrault, 1536 to 21 July 1601, e l'ordre et instruction judiciaire chez les Grecs et les Romains 1576. Arnaldus, Arnaldus de Villa Nova, Arnaldus Villanovanus, Arnaud de Ville-Neuve, Arnaldo de Villanueva, c 1240 to 1311 Aurelianus, Caelius AurelianusMedicinales Responsiones, On Acute and Chronic Diseases Avicenna, Ibn Sina 980 to 1037. Austin, Saint Austin, Augustine of Hippo, Saint Augustine 354 to 430 Barletius, Marin Barleti, Marinus Barletius, c 1450 to c 1512 or 13, The history of the life and deeds of Scanderbeg, the Prince of Epirus. Barentonius, Gulielmus PostellusBarentonius 1510 to 1581. Bartholinus, Gaspar Bartholinus, Caspar Bartholin the Elder 12 February 1585 to 13 July 1629. Anatomicae Institutiones Corporis Humani, 1611. Bodine, Jean Bodin, 1530 to 1596. Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem1566. Les Six livres de la Republique 1576. Universae Naturae Theatrum, 1596. Bohemus, Aubanus Bohemus, Johannes Bohm 1485 to 9 June 1534. Mores, leges, et ritus omnium gentium 1520. Boterus Johannis Botero, Giovanni Botero, 1540 to 1617. Della ragion di Stato1589. Brassivola, Antonio Musa Brassavola 16 January 1500 to 1555. Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum 1536 Boissardus, Boissard, Jean Jacques, 1528 to 1602, De Divinatione et Magicis Praestigiis, 1605, Mascarades 1597. Buxdorfius, Johannes Buxdorfius, Johnnes of Buxdorf, 25 December 1564 to 13 September 1629, De Synagoga Judaica 1603 Cambrensis, Geraldus Cambrensis, Gerald of Wales 1146 to 1223. Topographica Hibernica, 1187. Camerarius, Joachim Camerarius, Kammermeister, 12 April 1500to 17 April 1574,the Elder, Epistolarum familiarum libri VI, 1583. Campanella, Tommaso Campanella, Giovanni Domenico Campanella 5 September 1568 to 21 May 1639.Atheismus Triumphatus 1610. Cardan, Girolamo Geronimo Cardano 1501 to 1576. De Subtilitate1557, De Rerum varietate, Libri XVII 1559. Capivaccius, HieronymusCapivaccius, 1523 to 1589. Nova methodus medendi, 1593, de uteri affectibus Castiglione, Baldassare Castiglione, Count of Casatico, 06 Dec 1478 to 02 Feb 1529, Il Cortegiano Castro, Rodericus a Castro, Rodrigo de Castro, 1546 to 1627 De universa mulierum medicina, 1603. Cicogna, Strozzius Cicogna, 1568 to 18 Jun 1613. The Palace of Enchantments Chrysostom, John Chrysostom, Chrysostomos, 347 to 14 Sep 407, Cluny, Bernard ofCluny, Morlanensis, Morlaix, morlay, twelfth century. De contemptus Mundi. Crollius, Oswaldo Crollius, Oswald Croll, 1563 to December 1609. Basilica Chymica 1608. Codronchus, Giovan Battista Codronchi, 1547 to 1628. De morbis veneficis ac veneficiis 1595. de Sale absynthii Libellus 1610. Cognatus, Marcilius Cognatus, Marsilius of Padua, Marsilio Mainardi 1270 to 1342, Defensor pacis 1324. Colerus, Jacob Colerus 1587 to 1610. De Animarum immortalitate1587. Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella4 to 70 AD, De re rustica Comineus, ? John Amos Comenius, Jan Amos Komensky, 28 March 1592 to 15 November 1670, Didactica Magna, 1631. Cornelius,Cornelio, Gemma 1535 to 1578. Crato, Johannes Crato von Krafftheim 22 November 1519 to 19 October 1585. Consilia et Epistolae medicinales 1591 Crescentiis, Pietro de' Crescenzi, Petrus de Crescentiis 1230 to 1320, Liber ruralium commodorum, aka Ruralia commode. Cyprian, Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus 210-14 SEP 258, De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate Didacus Stella, Diego de Estella 1524 to 1578. 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De corpore animato, Ethica sacra: hoc est de virtutibus, et vitiis libri quinquaginta Gordonius, Bernardus Gordonius, Bernard de Gordon, 1258 to 1330. Professor of Medicine at the University of Montpelier, Lilium Medicinae, 1303, Liber de conservacione vite humane1308. Gualthers, Bruel Praxis Medicinae 1632. Guianerius Haedus, Peter Haedeus, Pietro Cavretto 1427 to 1504. Anterotica, sive de Amoris Generibus 1503. Hercules of Saxony, Ercole Sassonia 1551 to August 29 1607. Opera Practica, 1607. Hernius, Johann van Heurne 1543 to 1601 Hierom, Saint Jerome, Saint Hierom, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, 347 to Sep 30 420 Hildesheim, Francisci Hildesheim, 1554 to 1614, Spicilegia, Spicilegium 1612 Hill, Nicholsas Hill, 1570 to 1610, Philosophia epicurea, democritiana, theophrastica, 1610. Horiatianus, Octavius Horatianus, Theodorus PriscianusRerum Medicarum Libri Quatuor 1532 Jovius, Paulus Jovius, Paolo Giovio 1483 to 1552 Jubertus Keckerman, Bartholomäus Keckermann 1572 to 25 August 1609, Systema Theologiae 1609 Lactantius, Lucius Caecilius Firmianus 250 to 325, De opificio Dei, 303 Langius, Carolus Langius, Charles de Langhe 1521 to 1573. Lansbergius Johan Philip Lansberge1561 to 1632, Progymnasmatum astronomiae restitutae. 1, De motu solis, 1628. Laurentius, Andreas Laurentius, Adre du Laurens 1558 to 1609 Professor of Anatomy at Monpelier. A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: of Melancholic Diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old Age 1599 Lipsius, Joseph Lipsius, 1547 to 1606, Manuductioadstoicamphilosophiam 1604 Lavater, Ludwig Lavater 1527-1586, De spectris, lemuribus et magnis atque insolitis fragoribus. 1569. Lemnius, Levinus Lemnius 20 May 1505 to Jul 1 1568. Occulta naturae miracula 1559. Livy 59 BC 17 AD Ab Urbe Condita, “From the Founding of the City.” Macrobius 390 to 440. Saturnalia, or Saturnaliorum Libri Septem, 431 Magninus, MagninusMediolanensis, Maino De Maineri, died 1368, Regimen sanitatis. Magnus, Albertus Magnus, 1200 to 15 November 1280. De secretis mulierum Martyr, Peter Martyr. Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, Peter Martyr of Angleria, 2 February 1457 to October 1526. Legatio Babylonica, 1511 Oceanidecas 1511. Mathiolis, Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli, 12 March 1501 to 1577. Di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo Libri cinque Della historia, known as Discorsi, 1544 Epistolarum Medicinalium Libri Quinque 1561, Commentarii, abbreviation of Petri Andreae Matthioli Medici Senensis Commentarii 1554. Mercatus, Lodovicus Mercatus, Luis de Mercado 1525 to 1611, Opera Omnia, Methodus medendi, De Mulierum affectionibus Melanelius, Melanchthon, Philip Melanchthon 1497 to 1560 Melanelius Mizaldus, Antonio Mizaldus, Anonio Mizauld 1510 to 1578. Montaigne, Michel Eyquem, Michel de Montaigne 28 February 1533 13 September 1592, Essays. Montaltus, Aelianus Montaltus, Philotheus Elianus Montalto, 1567 to 1616, de morbis capitis. Montanus, Johannes Baptista Montanus, Giovanni Battista Monte, Gian Battista da Monte 1498 to 6 May 1551. In nonum librumRhasisad Regem 1562, Medicina universa 1587. Munster, Sebastian Munster, 1488 to 1552. Cosmographia, 1544 Musculus Mutianus, Petrus Mutianus Konrad Mutian, Conradus Mutianus 1470-1526. Nevisanus, Giovanni Nevizzano, Late fifteenth century, to approximately 1540. Sylva Nuptialis 1525. Oddis, Marcu de Odis Marco Oddo, Marcus de Oddis 1526 to 1591, Olaus Magnus, 1490 to 1557 Orabasius 320 to 403, Collectiones medicae. Origen of Alexandria, Origen, Origen Adamantius 185 to 253. Paracelsus. Theophrastus von Hohenheim, 1493 to 24 September 1541. Credited as the Father of Toxicology. Prognosticatio Ad Vigesimum Quartum annum duratura 1536. Parthenius ofNicaea, Myrlea 14 AD. Erotica Pathemata Patricius, Franciscus Patricius, Francesco Patrizi, 25 April 1529 to 6 February 1597, Venetian Scientist. Discussiones peripateticae 1581, Nova de universis philosophia 1591. Perkins, William Perkins 1558 to 1602 Cases of Conscience, all three books complete, 1608 Peterach, Francesco Petrarca, 1304 to 1374 Petronius, Gaius Petronius Arbiter, Titus Petronius Niger 27 to 66, Satyricon. Plautus, Titus Maccius Plautus 254 to 184 BC Platerus, Felix Plater, Felix Platter 1536 to 1614. LaesionesMentis, Praxeos Medicae, 1602 Platearius, Matthaeus, De re medicina, 1400 Plutarch, 46 to 119, Lives of the Roman emperors. Porta, Baptista Porta, Giambattista della Porta, Giambattista della Porta, 1535 to 4 February 1615. Magia Natralis 1615. Quercetan Retrato de Joseph Duchesne, ou Quercetanus, 1544 to 1609. Traicté familier de l'exacte preparation spagirique des medicamens 1639. 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Savonarola’s third rule, to be occupied in many and great affairs. Savonarola’s fourth rule, distance from the country. Scaliger, Julius Caesar Scaliger, 23 April 1484 to 21 Oct 1558, Exotericarum exercitationum 1557. de emendatione temporum 1583. Scaliger, Joseph Justus Scaliger 5 Aug 1540 to 21 Jan 1609.One of the greatest contributors to renaissance History. Mesolabium 1594, Cyclometrica elementa duo 1594. Scaliger, Julius Caesar 1485 to 1558. Poeticeslibriseptem, 1561. Skenkius Schenkius, Ioannes Schenkius, Johannes Schenck von Grafenberg 20 June 1530 to 12 November 1598. Observationum medicarum rariorum, libri VII Sckenkius, George Skenkius Ital. med. Prax, prax. curat. Ital. med, observ. med. de Venenis. Sennertus, Daniel Sennertus, 25 Nov 1572 to 21 July 1637. “Epitome naturalis scientiae.” SigismundScheretzius, Sigismund Scherertz 2 December 1584 to 31 December 1639. LibellusConsolatoriusDeSpectris 1621. Solenander, Reinerus Solenander 1524 to 1601. 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Credits: Karl Hagen, D. Moynihan and Distributed Proofreaders. He that joins instruction with delight, Profit with pleasure, carries all the votes. ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR. Robert Burton was the son of Ralph Burton, of an ancient and genteel family at Lindley, in Leicestershire, and was born there on the eighth of February 1576. He received the first rudiments of learning at the free school of Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire from whence he was, at the age of seventeen, in the long vacation, 1593, sent to Brazen Nose College, in the condition of a commoner, where he made considerable progress in logic and philosophy. In 1599 he was elected student of Christ Church, and, for form's sake, was put under the tuition of Doctor John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxford. In 1614 he was admitted to the reading of the Sentences, and on the twenty ninth of November, 1616, had the vicarage of Saint Thomas, in the west suburb of Oxford, conferred on him by the dean and canons of Christ Church, which, with the rectory of Segrave, in Leicestershire, given to him in the year 1636, by George, Lord Berkeley, he kept, to use the words of the Oxford antiquary, with much ado to his dying day. He seems to have been first beneficed at Walsby, in Lincolnshire, through the munificence of his noble patroness, Frances, Countess Dowager of Exeter, but resigned the same, as he tells us, for some special reasons. At his vicarage he is remarked to have always given the sacrament in wafers. Wood's character of him is, that “he was an exact mathematician, a curious calculator of nativities, a general read scholar, a thorough-paced philologist, and one that understood the surveying of lands well. As he was by many accounted a severe student, a devourer of authors, a melancholy and humorous person; so by others, who knew him well, a person of great honesty, plain dealing and charity. I have heard some of the ancients of Christ Church often say, that his company was very merry, facete, and juvenile; and no man in his time did surpass him for his ready and dexterous interlarding his common discourses among them with verses from the poets, or sentences from classic authors; which being then all the fashion in the University, made his company the more acceptable.” He appears to have been a universal reader of all kinds of books, and availed himself of his multifarious studies in a very extraordinary manner. From the information of Hearne, we learn that John Rouse, the Bodleian librarian, furnished him with choice books for the prosecution of his work. The subject of his labour and amusement, seems to have been adopted from the infirmities of his own habit and constitution. Mister Granger says, “He composed this book with a view of relieving his own melancholy, but increased it to such a degree, that nothing could make him laugh, but going to the bridge-foot and hearing the ribaldry of the bargemen, which rarely failed to throw him into a violent fit of laughter. Before he was overcome with this horrid disorder, he, in the intervals of his vapors, was esteemed one of the most facetious companions in the University.” His residence was chiefly at Oxford; where, in his chamber in Christ Church College, he departed this life, at or very near the time which he had some years before foretold, from the calculation of his own nativity, and which, says Wood, “being exact, several of the students did not forbear to whisper among themselves, that rather than there should be a mistake in the calculation, he sent up his soul to heaven through a slip about his neck.” Whether this suggestion is founded in truth, we have no other evidence than an obscure hint in the epitaph hereafter inserted, which was written by the author himself, a short time before his death. His body, with due solemnity, was buried near that of Doctor Robert Weston, in the north aisle which joins next to the choir of the cathedral of Christ Church, on the twenty seventh of January 1639 to 40. Over his grave was soon after erected a comely monument, on the upper pillar of the said aisle, with his bust, painted to the life. On the original text is a horoscope calculation of his nativity. And under the bust, this inscription of his own composition: Known to few, unknown to fewer, Here lies Democritus the younger. To whom he gave life and death. Melancholy. 8 January 1639. A few months before his death, he made his will, of which the following is a copy: DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO HIS BOOK. Go forth my book into the open day; Happy, if made so by its garish eye. O'er earth's wide surface take thy vagrant way, To imitate thy master's genius try. The Graces three, the Muses nine salute, Should those who love them try to con thy lore. The country, city seek, grand thrones to boot, With gentle courtesy humbly bow before. Should nobles gallant, soldiers frank and brave Seek thy acquaintance, hail their first advance: From twitch of care thy pleasant vein may save, May laughter cause or wisdom give perchance. Some surly Cato, Senator austere, Haply may wish to peep into thy book: Seem very nothing, tremble and revere: No forceful eagles, butterflies ever look. They love not thee: of them then little seek, And wish for readers triflers like thyself. Of ludeful matron watchful catch the beck, Or gorgeous countess full of pride and pelf. They may say “pish!” and frown, and yet read on: Cry odd, and silly, coarse, and yet amusing. Should dainty damsels seek thy page to con, Spread thy best stores: to them be ne'er refusing: Say, fair one, master loves thee dear as life; Would he were here to gaze on thy sweet look. Should known or unknown student, freed from strife Of logic and the schools, explore my book: Cry mercy critic, and thy book withhold: Be some few errors pardoned though observed: An humble author to implore makes bold. Thy kind indulgence, even undeserved, Should melancholy wight or pensive lover, Courtier, snug cit, or carpet knight so trim Our blossoms cull, he'll find himself in clover, Gain sense from precept, laughter from our whim. Should learned leech with solemn air unfold, Thy leaves, beware, be civil, and be wise: Thy volume many precepts sage may hold, His well fraught head may find no trifling prize. Should crafty lawyer trespass on our ground, Caitiffs avaunt! Disturbing tribe away! Unless, white crow, an honest one be found; He'll better, wiser go for what we say. Should some ripe scholar, gentle and benign, With candor, care, and judgment thee peruse: Thy faults to kind oblivion he'll consign; Nor to thy merit will his praise refuse. Thou mayest be searched for polished words and verse. By flippant spouter, emptiest of praters: Tell him to seek them in some mawkish verse: My periods all are rough as nutmeg graters. The doggerel poet, wishing thee to read, Reject not; let him glean thy jests and stories. His brother I, of lowly sembling breed: Apollo grants to few Parnassian glories. Menaced by critic with sour furrowed brow, Momus or Troilus or Scotch reviewer: Ruffle your heckle, grin and growl and vow: Ill-natured foes you thus will find the fewer, When foul-mouthed senseless railers cry thee down, Reply not: fly, and show the rogues thy stern; They are not worthy even of a frown: Good taste or breeding they can never learn; Or let them clamor, turn a callous ear, As though in dread of some harsh donkey's bray. If chide by censor, friendly though severe, To such explain and turn thee not away. Thy vein, says he perchance, is all too free; Thy smutty language suits not learned pen: Reply, Good Sir, throughout, the context see; Thought chastens thought; so prithee judge again. Besides, although my master's pen may wander Through devious paths, by which it ought not stray, His life is pure, beyond the breath of slander: So pardon grant; tis merely but his way. Some rugged ruffian makes a hideous rout, Brandish thy cudgel, threaten him to baste; The filthy fungus far from thee cast out; Such noxious banquets never suit my taste. Yet, calm and cautious moderate thy ire, Be ever courteous should the case allow, Sweet malt is ever made by gentle fire: Warm to thy friends, give all a civil bow. Even censure sometimes teaches to improve, Slight frosts have often cured too rank a crop, So, candid blame my spleen shall never move, For skillful gardeners wayward branches lop. Go then, my book, and bear my words in mind; Guides safe at once, and pleasant them you'll find. THE ARGUMENT OF THE FRONTISPIECE. Ten distinct Squares here seen apart, Are joined in one by Cutter's art. One. Old Democritus under a tree, Sits on a stone with book on knee; About him hang there many features, Of Cats, Dogs and such like creatures, Of which he makes anatomy, The seat of black choler to see. Over his head appears the sky, And Saturn Lord of melancholy. Two. To the left a landscape of Jealousy, Presents itself unto thine eye. A Kingfisher, a Swan, an Hern, Two fighting-cocks you may discern, Two roaring Bulls each other hie, To assault concerning venery. Symbols are these; I say no more, Conceive the rest by that's afore. Three. The next of solitariness, A portraiture doth well express, By sleeping dog, cat: Buck and Doe, Hares, Conies in the desert go: Bats, Owls the shady bowers over, In melancholy darkness hover. Mark well: If it be not as it should be, Blame the bad Cutter, and not me. Four. It under column there doth stand. Inamorato with folded hand; Down hangs his head, terse and polite, Some ditty sure he doth indite. His lute and books about him lie, As symptoms of his vanity. If this do not enough disclose, To paint him, take thyself by the nose. Five. Hypocondriacus leans on his arm, Wind in his side doth him much harm, And troubles him full sore, God knows, Much pain he hath and many woes. About him pots and glasses lie, Newly brought from's Apothecary. This Saturn's aspects signify, You see them portrayed in the sky. Six. Beneath them kneeling on his knee, A superstitious man you see: He fasts, prays, on his Idol fixt, Tormented hope and fear betwixt: For Hell perhaps he takes more pain, Than thou dost Heaven itself to gain. Alas poor soul, I pity thee, What stars incline thee so to be? Seven. But see the madman rage downright With furious looks, a ghastly sight. Naked in chains bound doth he lie, And roars amain he knows not why! Observe him; for as in a glass, Thine angry portraiture it was. His picture keeps still in thy presence; Twixt him and thee, there's no difference. Eight, Nine Borage and Hellebor fill two scenes, Sovereign plants to purge the veins Of melancholy, and cheer the heart, Of those black fumes which make it smart; To clear the brain of misty fogs, Which dull our senses, and Soul clogs. The best medicine that ever God made For this malady, if well assayed. Ten. Now last of all to fill a place, Presented is the Author's face; And in that habit which he wears, His image to the world appears. His mind no art can well express, That by his writings you may guess. It was not pride, nor yet vainglory, Though others do it commonly. Made him do this: if you must know, The Printer would needs have it so. Then do not frown or scoff at it, Deride not, or detract a whit. For surely as thou dost by him, He will do the same again. Then look upon it, behold and see, As thou likest it, so it likes thee. And I for it will stand in view, Thine to command, Reader, adieu. The author's abstract of melancholy, dialogically. When I go musing all alone Thinking of divers things fore-known. When I build castles in the air, Void of sorrow and void of fear, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet, Methinks the time runs very fleet. All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy. When I lie waking all alone, Recounting what I have ill done, My thoughts on me then tyrannise, Fear and sorrow me surprise, Whether I tarry still or go, Methinks the time moves very slow. All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so mad as melancholy. When to myself I act and smile, With pleasing thoughts the time beguile, By a brook side or wood so green, Unheard, unsought for, or unseen, A thousand pleasures do me bless, And crown my soul with happiness. All my joys besides are folly, None so sweet as melancholy. When I lie, sit, or walk alone, I sigh, I grieve, making great moan, In a dark grove, or irksome den, With discontents and Furies then, A thousand miseries at once Mine heavy heart and soul ensconce, All my griefs to this are jolly, None so sour as melancholy. Methinks I hear, methinks I see, Sweet music, wondrous melody, Towns, palaces, and cities fine; Here now, then there; the world is mine, Rare beauties, gallant ladies shine, Whatever is lovely or divine. All other joys to this are folly, None so sweet as melancholy. Methinks I hear, methinks I see Ghosts, goblins, fiends; my phantasy Presents a thousand ugly shapes, Headless bears, black men, and apes, Doleful outcries, and fearful sights, My sad and dismal soul affrights. All my griefs to this are jolly, None so dammed as melancholy. Methinks I court, methinks I kiss, Methinks I now embrace my mistress. O blessed days, O sweet content, In Paradise my time is spent. Such thoughts may still my fancy move, So may I ever be in love. All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy. When I recount love's many frights, My sighs and tears, my waking nights, My jealous fits; O mine hard fate I now repent, but tis too late. No torment is so bad as love, So bitter to my soul can prove. All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so harsh as melancholy. Friends and companions get you gone, Tis my desire to be alone; Ne'er well but when my thoughts and I Do domineer in privacy. No Gem, no treasure like to this, Tis my delight, my crown, my bliss. All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy. Tis my sole plague to be alone, I am a beast, a monster grown, I will no light nor company, I find it now my misery. The scene is turned, my joys are gone, Fear, discontent, and sorrows come. All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so fierce as melancholy. I'll not change life with any king, I ravish am: can the world bring More joy, than still to laugh and smile, In pleasant toys time to beguile? Do not, O do not trouble me, So sweet content I feel and see. All my joys to this are folly, None so divine as melancholy. I'll change my state with any wretch, Thou canst from gaol or dunghill fetch; My pain's past cure, another hell, I may not in this torment dwell! Now desperate I hate my life, Lend me a halter or a knife; All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so dammed as melancholy. DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR TO THE READER. Gentle reader, I presume thou wilt be very inquisitive to know what antic or personate actor this is, that so insolently intrudes upon this common theatre, to the world's view, arrogating another man's name; whence he is, why he doth it, and what he hath to say; although, as he said, First, if I don't want to, I won't answer, who is going to force me? I am a free man born, and may choose whether I will tell; who can compel me? If I be urged, I will as readily reply as that Egyptian in Plutarch, when a curious fellow would needs know what he had in his basket, When you see what is veiled, what do you look for in the hidden thing? It was therefore covered, because he should not know what was in it. Seek not after that which is hid; if the contents please thee, “and be for thy use, suppose the Man in the Moon, or whom thou wilt to be the author;” I would not willingly be known. Yet in some sort to give thee satisfaction, which is more than I need, I will show a reason, both of this usurped name, title, and subject. And first of the name of Democritus; lest any man, by reason of it, should be deceived, expecting a pasquil, a satire, some ridiculous treatise, as I myself should have done, some prodigious tenet, or paradox of the earth's motion, of infinite worlds, in an infinite vacuum, from the accidental collision of atoms, in an infinite waste, so caused by an accidental collision of motes in the sun, all which Democritus held, Epicurus and their master Lucippus of old maintained, and are lately revived by Copernicus, Brunus, and some others. Besides, it hath been always an ordinary custom, as Gellius observes, “for later writers and impostors, to broach many absurd and insolent fictions, under the name of so noble a philosopher as Democritus, to get themselves credit, and by that means the more to be respected,” as artificers usually do, The new inscribe their praxatile upon the marble. Tis not so with me. No Centaurs here, or Gorgons look to find, My subject is of man and human kind. Thou thyself art the subject of my discourse. Whatever men do, vows, fears, in ire, in sport, Joys, wanderings, are the sum of my report. My intent is no otherwise to use his name, than Mercurius Gallobelgicus, Mercurius Britannicus, use the name of Mercury, Democritus Christianus, and cetera; although there be some other circumstances for which I have masked myself under this vizard, and some peculiar respect which I cannot so well express, until I have set down a brief character of this our Democritus, what he was, with an epitome of his life. Democritus, as he is described by Hippocrates and Laertius, was a little wearish old man, very melancholy by nature, averse from company in his latter days,and much given to solitariness, a famous philosopher in his age, coaevus with Socrates, wholly addicted to his studies at the last, and to a private life: wrote many excellent works, a great divine, according to the divinity of those times, an expert physician, a politician, an excellent mathematician, as Diacosmus and the rest of his works do witness. He was much delighted with the studies of husbandry, saith Columella, and often I find him cited by Constantinus and others treating of that subject. He knew the natures, differences of all beasts, plants, fishes, birds; and, as some say, could understand the tunes and voices of them. In a word, he was omnifariam doctus, a general scholar, a great student; and to the intent he might better contemplate, I find it related by some, that he put out his eyes, and was in his old age voluntarily blind, yet saw more than all Greece besides, and writ of every subject, There is nothing in the whole work of nature of which he has not written. A man of an excellent wit, profound conceit; and to attain knowledge the better in his younger years, he travelled to Egypt and Athens, to confer with learned men, “admired of some, despised of others.” After a wandering life, he settled at Abdera, a town in Thrace, and was sent for thither to be their lawmaker, recorder, or town-clerk, as some will; or as others, he was there bred and born. Howsoever it was, there he lived at last in a garden in the suburbs, wholly betaking himself to his studies and a private life, “saving that sometimes he would walk down to the haven,” “and laugh heartily at such variety of ridiculous objects, which there he saw.” Such a one was Democritus. But in the meantime, how doth this concern me, or upon what reference do I usurp his habit? I confess, indeed, that to compare myself unto him for aught I have yet said, were both impudency and arrogancy. I do not presume to make any parallel, He stands before me by three hundred thousand, I am small, I am nothing, I neither breathe nor hope. Yet thus much I will say of myself, and that I hope without all suspicion of pride, or self-conceit, I have lived a silent, sedentary, solitary, private life, to me and to you in the University, as long almost as Xenocrates in Athens, almost to old age to learn wisdom as he did, penned up most part in my study. For I have been brought up a student in the most flourishing college of Europe, the most august college, and can brag with Jovius, almost, in that light the residence of the Vacicani, the most famous of all the world, per I have learned many good things over the years; for thirty years I have continued, having the use of as good libraries as ever he had, a scholar, and would be therefore loath, either by living as a drone, to be an unprofitable or unworthy member of so learned and noble a society, or to write that which should be any way dishonourable to such a royal and ample foundation. Something I have done, though by my profession a divine, yet a whirlwind of talent, as he said, out of a running wit, an unconstant, unsettled mind, I had a great desire, not able to attain to a superficial skill in any, to have some smattering in all, to be one in all, none in each, which Plato commends, out of him Lipsius approves and furthers, “as fit to be imprinted in all curious wits, not to be a slave of one science, or dwell altogether in one subject, as most do, but to rove abroad, centum puer artium, to have an oar in every man's boat, to taste of every dish, and sip of every cup,” which, saith Montaigne, was well performed by Aristotle, and his learned countryman Adrian Turnebus. This roving humour, though not with like success, I have ever had, and like a ranging spaniel, that barks at every bird he sees, leaving his game, I have followed all, saving that which I should, and may justly complain, and truly, He who is everywhere is nowhere, which Gesner did in modesty, that I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of good method; I have confusedly tumbled over divers authors in our libraries, with small profit, for want of art, order, memory, judgment. I never travelled but in map or card, in which mine unconfined thoughts have freely expatiated, as having ever been especially delighted with the study of Cosmography. Saturn was lord of my geniture, culminating, and so on, and Mars principal significator of manners, in partile conjunction with my ascendant; both fortunate in their houses, and so on. I am not poor, I am not rich; there is nothing, nothing is lacking, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva's tower. Greater preferment as I could never get, so am I not in debt for it, I have a competence, old god from my noble and munificent patrons, though I live still a collegiate student, as Democritus in his garden, and lead a monastic life, He is the theater for me, sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world, And as if placed in glasses, as he said, in some high place above you all, like Stoicus Sapiens, seeing all the ages, past and present, with one glance as it were, I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil, and macerate themselves in court and country, far from those wrangling lawsuits, I used to laugh with myself at the vanity of the courts, the ambition of the market: I laugh at all, only secure, lest my suit go amiss, my ships perish, corn and cattle miscarry, trade decay, I have no wife nor children good or bad to provide for. A mere spectator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they act their parts, which methinks are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre or scene. I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, and others, daily musters and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies and sea-fights; peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, corantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, and other things. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions, now comical, then tragical matters. Today we hear of new lords and officers created, tomorrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh: he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, and carries on. This I daily hear, and such like, both private and public news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world; jollity, pride, perplexities and cares, simplicity and villainy; subtlety, knavery, candour and integrity, mutually mixed and offering themselves; I rub on privy private; as I have still lived, so I now continue, in the same state as before, left to a solitary life, and mine own domestic discontents: saving that sometimes, lest I should lie, as Diogenes went into the city, and Democritus to the haven to see fashions, I did for my recreation now and then walk abroad, look into the world, and could not choose but make some little observation, not so much a shrewd observer as a simple reciter, not as they did, to scoff or laugh at all, but with a mixed passion. Ye wretched mimics, whose fond heats have been, How oft! the objects of my mirth and spleen. I did sometime laugh and scoff with Lucian, and satirically tax with Menippus, lament with Heraclitus, sometimes again I was a luaher with a petulant spleen, and then again, bile burns the liver, I was much moved to see that abuse which I could not mend. In which passion howsoever I may sympathise with him or them, tis for no such respect I shroud myself under his name; but either in an unknown habit to assume a little more liberty and freedom of speech, or if you will needs know, for that reason and only respect which Hippocrates relates at large in his Epistle to Damegetus, wherein he doth express, how coming to visit him one day, he found Democritus in his garden at Abdera, in the suburbs, under a shady bower, with a book on his knees, busy at his study, sometimes writing, sometimes walking. The subject of his book was melancholy and madness; about him lay the carcases of many several beasts, newly by him cut up and anatomised; not that he did contemn God's creatures, as he told Hippocrates, but to find out the seat of this slow speed, or melancholy, whence it proceeds, and how it was engendered in men's bodies, to the intent he might better cure it in himself, and by his writings and observation teach others how to prevent and avoid it. Which good intent of his, Hippocrates highly commended: Democritus Junior is therefore bold to imitate, and because he left it imperfect, and it is now lost, as the succinctuary of Democritus, to revive again, prosecute, and finish in this treatise. You have had a reason of the name. If the title and inscription offend your gravity, were it a sufficient justification to accuse others, I could produce many sober treatises, even sermons themselves, which in their fronts carry more fantastical names. Howsoever, it is a kind of policy in these days, to prefix a fantastical title to a book which is to be sold; for, as larks come down to a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gazing like silly passengers at an antic picture in a painter's shop, that will not look at a judicious piece. And, indeed, as Julius Caesar Scaliger observes, “nothing more invites a reader than an argument unlooked for, unthought of, and sells better than a scurrile pamphlet,” and especially when novelty excites the palate. “Many men,” saith Gellius, “are very conceited in their inscriptions,” “and able”, as Pliny quotes out of Seneca, “to make him loiter by the way that went in haste to fetch a midwife for his daughter, now ready to lie down.” For my part, I have honourable, precedents for this which I have done: I will cite one for all, Anthony Zara, Pap. Epis., his Anatomy of Wit, in four sections, members, subsections, and so on, to be read in our libraries. If any man except against the matter or manner of treating of this my subject, and will demand a reason of it, I can allege more than one; I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, “no better cure than business,” as Rhasis holds: and howbeit, fool's work is for fools to be busy in toys is to small purpose, yet hear that divine Seneca, to do something other than nothing, better do to no end, than nothing. I wrote therefore, and busied myself in this playing labour, and oiled care to avoid striking torpor with Vectius in Macrobius, and I would turn the negative into a useful idleness. At the same time both delightful and suitable to say life, Entertaining and instructing the reader at the same time. Poets would profit or delight mankind, And with the pleasing have the instructive joined. Profit and pleasure, then, to mix with art, To inform the judgment, nor offend the heart, Shall gain all votes. To this end I write, like them, saith Lucian, that “recite to trees, and declaim to pillars for want of auditors:” as Paulus Aegineta ingenuously confesseth, “not that anything was unknown or omitted, but to exercise myself,” which course if some took, I think it would be good for their bodies, and much better for their souls; or peradventure as others do, for fame, to show myself. To know yours is nothing, unless the other knows that you know this. I might be of Thucydides' opinion, “to know a thing and not to express it, is all one as if he knew it not.” When I first took this task in hand, and what he said, impelled by genius, I undertook the business, this I aimed at; or to ease my mind by writing, to ease my mind by writing; for I had pregnant heart, fetal head, a kind of imposthume in my head, which I was very desirous to be unladen of, and could imagine no fitter evacuation than this. Besides, I might not well refrain, for where there is pain, there is a finger, one must needs scratch where it itches. I was not a little offended with this malady, shall I say my mistress Melancholy, my Aegeria, or my malus genius? and for that cause, as he that is stung with a scorpion, I would expel nail, nail, comfort one sorrow with another, idleness with idleness, as from the Theriacum viper, make an antidote out of that which was the prime cause of my disease. Or as he did, of whom Felix Plater speaks, that thought he had some of Aristophanes' frogs in his belly, still crying Breec, okex, coax, coax, oop, oop, and for that cause studied physic seven years, and travelled over most part of Europe to ease himself. To do myself good I turned over such physicians as our libraries would afford, or my private friends impart, and have taken this pains. And why not? Girolamo Cardano, known as Cardan, professeth he wrote his book, De Consolatione after his son's death, to comfort himself; so did Tully, the anglicized form of Cicero, write of the same subject with like intent after his daughter's departure, if it be his at least, or some impostor's put out in his name, which Lipsius probably suspects. Concerning myself, I can peradventure affirm with Marius in Sallust, “that which others hear or read of, I felt and practised myself; they get their knowledge by books, I mine by melancholising.” Expert believes Roberto. Something I can speak out of experience, painful experience has taught me; and with her in the poet, I learn to help those who are not ignorant of evil; I would help others out of a fellow-feeling; and, as that virtuous lady did of old, “being a leper herself, bestow all her portion to build an hospital for lepers,” I will spend my time and knowledge, which are my greatest fortunes, for the common good of all. Yea, but you will infer that this is to act, an unnecessary work, add the twice-cooked cramben, the same again and again in other words. To what purpose? “Nothing is omitted that may well be said,” so thought Lucian in the like theme. How many excellent physicians have written just volumes and elaborate tracts of this subject? No news here; that which I have is stolen, from others, And he said unto me, Thou art a thief of my page. If that severe doom of Synesius be true, “it is a greater offence to steal dead men's labours, than their clothes,” what shall become of most writers? I hold up my hand at the bar among others, and am guilty of felony in this kind, You have a guilty plea, I am content to be pressed with the rest. Tis most true, It keeps many people from writing unscathed, and “there is no end of writing of books,” as the wiseman found of old, in this scribbling age, especially wherein “the number of books is without number,” as a worthy man saith, “presses be oppressed,” and out of an itching humour that every man hath to show himself, desirous of fame and honour, we write unlearned and learned, he will write no matter what, and scrape together it boots not whence. “Bewitched with this desire of fame,” even in the middle, to the disparagement of their health, and scarce able to hold a pen, they must say something, “and get themselves a name,” saith Scaliger, “though it be to the downfall and ruin of many others.” To be counted writers, writers to be saved, to be thought and held polymaths and polyhistors, among the ignorant common people because of the name of windy art, to get a paper-kingdom: no hope of gain but of wide fame, in this precipitate, ambitious age, now, as the age is, among immature learning, ambitious and impetuous, tis Scaliger's censure, and they that are scarce auditors, hardly any listeners, must be masters and teachers, before they be capable and fit hearers. They will rush into all learning, armed civilian, divine, human authors, rake over all indexes and pamphlets for notes, as our merchants do strange havens for traffic, write great tomes, Since they are not really more learned, but more talkative, whereas they are not thereby better scholars, but greater praters. They commonly pretend public good, but as Gesner observes, tis pride and vanity that eggs them on; no news or aught worthy of note, but the same in other terms. Perhaps the printers should not be struck, or something must be written to prove that they lived. As apothecaries we make new mixtures everyday, pour out of one vessel into another; and as those old Romans robbed all the cities of the world, to set out their bad-sited Rome, we skim off the cream of other men's wits, pick the choice flowers of their tilled gardens to set out our own sterile plots. They castrate others to stuff their thin books with foreign fat, so Jovius inveighs. They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works. Unlearned thieves, and others. A fault that every writer finds, as I do now, and yet faulty themselves, Men of three letters, all thieves; they pilfer out of old writers to stuff up their new comments, scrape Ennius' dunghills, and out of Democritus' pit, as I have done. By which means it comes to pass, “that not only libraries and shops are full of our putrid papers, but every close-stool and jakes,” They write poems that they read while pooping; they serve to put under pies, to lap spice in, and keep roast meat from burning. “With us in France,” saith Scaliger, “every man hath liberty to write, but few ability.” “Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers,” that either write for vainglory, need, to get money, or as Parasites to flatter and collogue with some great men, they put cut bullshit, rubbish and nonsense. Amongst so many thousand authors you shall scarce find one, by reading of whom you shall be any whit better, but rather much worse, by which it is infected rather than completed, by which he is rather infected than any way perfected. He who reads such. What has he learned at last, what does he know but dreams, nonsense? So that oftentimes it falls out, which Callimachus taxed of old, a great book is a great mischief. Cardan finds fault with Frenchmen and Germans, for their scribbling to no purpose, He does not say that I will deter them from eating, but that they may find something new, he doth not bar them to write, so that it be some new invention of their own; but we weave the same web still, twist the same rope again and again; or if it be a new invention, tis but some bauble or toy which idle fellows write, for as idle fellows to read, and who so cannot invent? “He must have a barren wit, that in this scribbling age can forge nothing. Princes show their armies, rich men vaunt their buildings, soldiers their manhood, and scholars vent their toys;” they must read, they must hear whether they will or no And whatever comes to the cards once, all of them. He will return from the oven to know the lake, And the children and the old. What once is said and writ, all men must know, Old wives and children as they come and go. “What a company of poets hath this year brought out,” as Pliny complains to Sossius Sinesius. “This April every day some or other have recited.” What a catalogue of new books all this year, all this age, I say, have our Frankfort Marts, our domestic Marts brought out? Twice a year, They present themselves as new characters and show off, we stretch our wits out, and set them to sale, we do nothing with great effort. So that which Gesner much desires, if a speedy reformation be not had, by some prince's edicts and grave supervisors, to restrain this liberty, it will run on infinitely. Who is so eager for helluva books, who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning. For my part I am one of the number, we are the number, we are mere ciphers: I do not deny it, I have only this of Macrobius to say for myself, Omne meum, nihil meum, tis all mine, and none mine. As a good housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth, a bee gathers wax and honey out of many flowers, and makes a new bundle of all, Flowers love everything like bees in forests, I have laboriously collected this cento out of divers writers, and that without injury, I have wronged no authors, but given every man his own; which Hierom so much commends in Nepotian; he stole not whole verses, pages, tracts, as some do nowadays, concealing their authors' names, but still said this was Cyprian's, that Lactantius, that Hilarius, so said Minutius Felix, so Victorinus, thus far Arnobius: I cite and quote mine authors, which, howsoever some illiterate scribblers account pedantical, as a cloak of ignorance, and opposite to their affected fine style, I must and will use, I took it, I did not steal it; and what Marcus Terentius Varro, in book Six of “About the country”, speaks of bees, at least the witches do nothing more than winking, I can say of myself, Whom have I injured? The matter is theirs most part, and yet mine, it appears whence it was taken, which Seneca approves, but it appears otherwise than whence it was taken, which nature doth with the aliment of our bodies incorporate, digest, assimilate, I do to digest what I drew, dispose of what I take. I make them pay tribute, to set out this my Maceronicon, the method only is mine own, I must usurp that of Wecker from Ter. nothing is said that has not been said before, the method alone shows the artist, we can say nothing but what hath been said, the composition and method is ours only, and shows a scholar. Oribasius, Aesius, Avicenna, have all out of Galen, but to their own method, in a different style, not different faith. Our poets steal from Homer; he spews, saith Aelian, they lick it up. Divines use Saint Augustine, also known as Austin's words verbatim still, and our story-dressers do as much; he that comes last is commonly best: Until the age is gr

Rahan. Episode Sixty. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Andre Cheret. The Childhood Secret of Rahan. In these wild times when "Those-who-walk-upright" fought fiercely to ensure the survival of the species, one clan lived happily. Because its territory was full of game and its leader the fairest, the wisest of hunters. This clan was that of the blue mountain and this chief was called Crao. This morning, Crao and his people were raising their traps. When. Look Crao! A couple unknown to the clan, along with three “Saber-tooth” tigers were lying in the clearing. The bloody axes that the man and woman still clutched proved that their fight with the wild beasts had been terrible. We will never know where they came from! Page Two. This hunter and his companion fought until their last breath. May they be buried with the respect due to the braves. Weak cries rose from a nearby crevice. It is a “Rah”. Crying! Crao understands why the hunters confronted the "Goraks"! The child they discovered must have been born in the green leaf season. Your mother and father sacrificed themselves for you, “little man”! Come! But they will continue to live in you, “Little man”! “Those of the Blue Mountain” will make you a hunter worthy of them! And since we don't know the name they gave you, we'll call you "Rah-Hank", "the son of the brave"! Page Three. The child was entrusted to Shawa the Elder, Crao's own mother. Shawa was gentle and the guttural name bothered her. Ra-hank. Ra-hank is a name for "Four-Hands", yes? Shawa prefers to call you "Ra-han" and why not "Rahan"? Her age was respected. This name that she suggested was adopted by everyone. The season of yellow leaves was followed by the season without leaves, hunting became more difficult and more dangerous. Crao and his family always came back, exhausted but happy. These meats will feed the clan until the new moon! How is our little Rahan, mother? He spoke! The first words Rahan spoke were Crao, Shawa. And his own name he stammered "Rahaa." Ha-ha-ha! You are becoming a man, my son! Page Four. Because Rahan, for everyone, was now Crao's son, a son. And he was proud to see him trotting between the huts. He is already curious about everything. He will resemble you Crao. And the round of seasons continued. Ten times that of “Green Leaves” returned, with its gentle warmth. Where is Rahan Mother? He is challenging the others, as usual! On the run this time! My strength is failing me, Crao. You will soon have to take care of our Rahan alone! Do not talk like that, mother! For his ten springs, Rahan already demonstrated astonishing physical qualities. No other child outdistanced him in the race. Ra-ha! Rahan won! No one was more agile than him in jumping. No one climbed more nimbly in the trees. Ha-ha-ha! Page Five. But he also knew how to listen to the wise advice of Crao who knew a thousand things. The agile and strong hunter is not yet a hunter, Rahan! When he shows himself, he only becomes more cunning than the beasts he tracks! When he can, patiently and tenaciously stay on the lookout for days and nights! Crao also spoke, and remembered very well, all about men. All “Those-Who-Walk-Upright” are from the same horde! The same horde! The strong must support the weakest! All hunters are brothers, whether their hair is the color of night or whether it is, like yours, the color of fire! Crao also spoke of the distant territories that the clan had once crossed. He described the terrible clashes with the herds of “Two-teeth.” Page Six. One day he revealed the secret of the necklace he never took off. These claws were bequeathed to Crao by his father who himself received them from his father. Each symbolizes the best of what “Those-who-walk-upright” have in them. Courageousness. Loyalty. Generosity. Tenacity. Wisdom. And Rahan-the-turbulent, Rahan-the-intrepid listened, listened. Crao knows you will not be a hunter like the others, Rahan. You will be the most skillful, the most cunning, the bravest. But you will never forget that you are only a man, a brother of all men! One day, it was very sad. Shawa the old, Shawa the sweet, Had fallen asleep forever. Goodbye, mother. We will meet again in the “Territory-of-shadows”! Page Seven. Rahan mourned for a long time the one who had shown him so much tenderness. Rahan knew that Shawa was not his mother. Why does Rahan not have a mother like the others? You had one, Rahan. And a father too. Both were young and beautiful. But they were killed by "Goraks" a long time ago, while protecting your life, the life they gave you! And Crao replaced mine! Rahan loves you as he would have loved them, Crao! But when he grows up he will kill all the "Goraks"! This revenge soon began. One evening, in fact, two saber-toothed tigers came roaming around the outskirts of the village. Page Eight. Four hunters come with Crao! The others will protect the women! The men armed themselves with spears. And, for the first time, Rahan disobeyed Crao. No one saw him, light and supple, slipping through the thickets. He was the first to discover the big beasts lurking in the clearing. Crao had told him about the ferocity of these monsters, but he overcame his fear. Get up, “Goraks”! Rahan has come to kill you! The wild animals gathered themselves together to pounce. And the two spears flew away, almost at the same time. One to avenge my mother! The other to avenge my father! Page Nine. The astonishment petrified the hunters who came running. The felines, their sides pierced, were dying in the grass. Rahan was disobedient and was too bold! But I think that from now on he will be able to accompany us hunting! Crao hid his pride poorly. Alas, Rahan never accompanied him hunting! That night, the bowels of the earth suddenly began to rumble. And the blue mountain, until that day so peaceful, seemed to burst. It was a terrible night, one that Rahan would never forget! The blue mountain threw rocks towards the sky, vomiting a frightening torrent of fire which, in an instant, submerged everything! Page Ten. Huddled under a flat rock, Rahan experienced the horrible nightmare. All the huts were burning and collapsing. Men, women and children surrounded on all sides were bogged down in the molten lava. It was the night of terror. When the anger of the cursed mountain ceased, the village had disappeared! Crao! Crao! Where are you Crao! Oh! Crushed under a huge rock, Crao had only a moment to live. Approach, Ra-han, Approach. My son. You are. The only survivor. Of the Clan. This necklace is yours! Be. Always worthy of what it represents! Page Eleven. Rahan swears to it! You will join Shawa the sweet, but you will remain alive in the heart of Rahan. Rahan will always be the son of Crao! A final glint of pride passed through the eyes of Crao. And then he gave up his spirit. Rahan will never forget your advice father! At the age of twelve, Rahan found himself alone in a wild world about which he still knew nothing. He fled the cursed valley where all his family had perished. From then on, he lived like a beast, feeding on the fruits of the jungle, hiding in caves as soon as darkness fell. All the weapons had been swallowed up by the torrent of fire, and he had to face many dangers with a simple bamboo. Page Twelve. He learned to kill to survive. And his desire to live was so fierce that one day, attacked by a "Long-mane" he slit the beast's throat with his teeth. Ra-ha-ha! That day his first cry of a victorious hunter erupted, a cry that would often resound in the forests and near the rivers. The rivers! For the son of Crao, who did not know how to swim, these "water paths" were impassable. He was walking along one of them one morning. When he discovered two spears buried in the ground! Oh! Rahan will finally have weapons! He grabbed these spears when clamors arose. He saw two men crawling on the water. He was confused. “Fire Hair” is stealing our spears! Page thirteen. Other hunters appeared from the bushes, threateningly. He brandished one of the spears. And the words of Crao came back to his mind. We do not kill "Those Who Walk Upright"! He lowered the spear. Rahan did not know. He did not want to steal, he thought the spears were forgotten there! Your tongue is made for lying! Maybe the river clan will cut it off! And Rahan was taken towards a village. The leader of the clan was a brutal being. Cutting a quarter of meat, he barely raised his head. So you wanted to steal the spears! No! Crao taught Rahan never to steal! If Rahan had seen “Those who crawled on the water” he would not have touched their spears! Page Fourteen. You lie! I will cut out your tongue myself at daybreak! The chief brandished a knife, like Rahan had never seen before. The weapon smooth and polished like the tusk of a “Two teeth” shone in the sunset light. Its strong blade seems to be able to cut through anything! Alone in a hut Rahan thought for a long time about this marvelous knife. Even the stones that throw stars that Crao cut so well were not so formidable! Rahan would like to own this knife! Before his tongue is cut out! The captive's youth undoubtedly tranquilized the man responsible for his surveillance, because it did not take long for him to doze off. Page Fifteen. He rushed into the darkness as the hunters emerged from the huts. A few axes flew and arrows whizzed around him. They will quickly lose track of Rahan! Since the terrible night, the forest had become his domain. Rahan will have to be as wary of “Those-who-walk-upright” as he is wary of wild animals! Other seasons passed. Fascinated by the marvelous fruit of fire suspended in the sky, Rahan dreamed of discovering the “Endless River”. Or, according to Crao, where the sun god took refuge every night. And every day he discovered new horizons. But the sun seemed to be fleeing him! Page Sixteen. He sometimes saw villages at the bottom of the valleys that he cautiously avoided. How far was the happy time of sweet Shawa, of his carefree childhood. Rahan lives like a savage beast! Rahan betrays the memory of Crao! But, one night, his destiny would return to its true course. That night he thought he heard Crao, returning from the “Territory of Shadows.” You are not loyal to the claw necklace Rahan! How will you demonstrate loyalty, generosity, and wisdom. If you avoid “Those-who-walk-upright”!? The clans are as numerous as the leaves on a tree, but you have to know them! Go to them, my son! Go to the men! Page Seventeen. Put your courage and your cunning at the service of men! Fight against mysteries to awaken the minds of men! Tear from nature its secrets to deliver them to men! It will be so, father! And that night, in front of a ghost that existed only in his thoughts, with one hand on his necklace and the other on his ivory knife, Rahan swore that such would be his destiny! Dawn found him again in the kingdom of the "Four Hands" which he had seen fifteen times since that morning when the Blue Mountain clan had discovered him. Ra-ha-ha! His cry frightened the birds and annoyed the young monkeys. But the son of Crao did not care. Happy and confident, he set off to discover “Those-who-walk-upright.” Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

Daedalus, or science and the future. A paper read to the heretics, Cambridge on February fourth, 1923. By J B S Haldane. Introduction. I have slightly expanded certain parts of this paper since reading it. It has therefore probably lost any unity which it may once have possessed. It will be criticized for its undue and unpleasant emphasis on certain topics. This is necessary if people are to be induced to think about them, and it is the whole business of a university teacher to induce people to think. Daedalus, or science and the future. As I sit down to write these pages I can see before me two scenes from my experience of the late war. The first is a glimpse of a forgotten battle of 1915. It has a curious suggestion of a rather bad cinema film. Through a blur of dust and fumes there appear, quite suddenly, great black and yellow masses of smoke which seem to be tearing up the surface of the earth and disintegrating the works of man with an almost visible hatred. These form the chief parts of the picture, but somewhere in the middle distance one can see a few irrelevant looking human figures, and soon there are fewer. It is hard to believe that these are the protagonists in the battle. One would rather choose those huge substantive oily black masses which are so much more conspicuous, and suppose that the men are in reality their servants, and playing an inglorious, subordinate, and fatal part in the combat. It is possible, after all, that this view is correct. Had I been privileged to watch a battle three years later, the general aspect would have been very similar, but there would have been fewer men and more shell-bursts. There would probably, however, have been one very significant addition. The men would have been running, with mad terror in their eyes, from gigantic steel slugs, which were deliberately, relentlessly, and successfully pursuing them. The other picture is of three Europeans in India looking at a great new star in the Milky Way. These were apparently all of the guests at a large dance who were interested in such matters. Amongst those who were at all competent to form views as to the origin of this cosmoclastic explosion, the most popular theory attributed it to a collision between two stars, or a star and a nebula. There seem, however, to be at least two possible alternatives to this hypothesis. Perhaps it was the last judgment of some inhabited world, perhaps a too successful experiment in induced radio-activity on the part of some of the dwellers there. And perhaps also these two hypotheses are identical, and what we were watching that evening was the detonation of a world on which too many men came out to look at the stars when they should have been dancing. These two scenes suggest, very briefly, a part of the case against science. Has mankind released from the womb of matter a Demogorgon which is already beginning to turn against him, and may at any moment hurl him into the bottomless void? Or is Samuel Butler’s even more horrible vision correct, in which man becomes a mere parasite of machinery, an appendage to the reproductive system of huge and complicated engines which will successively usurp his activities, and end by ousting him from the mastery of this planet ? Is the machine-minder engaged on repetition-work the goal and ideal to which humanity is tending? Perhaps a survey of the present trend of science may throw some light on these questions. But first we may consider for a moment the question whether there is any hope of stopping the progress of scientific research. It is after all a very recent form of human activity, and a sufficiently universal protest of mankind would be able to arrest it even now. In the middle ages public opinion made it so dangerous as to be practically impossible, and I am inclined to suspect that Mister Chesterton, for example, would not be averse to a repetition of this state of things. The late M Joseph Reinach, an able and not wholly illiberal thinker, publicly advocated it. I think, however, that, so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear. Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table. And competitive nationalism, even if war is wholly or largely prevented, will hardly forego the national advantages accruing from scientific research. If we look at the other most probable alternative the prospect is little more hopeful. In this country the Labour Party alone among political organizations includes the fostering of research in its official programme. Indeed, as far as biological research is concerned, labour may prove a better master than capitalism, and there can be little doubt that it would be equally friendly to physical and chemical research if these came to lead immediately to shortened hours rather than to unemployment. In particular there is perhaps reason to think that that form of sentimentalism which hampers medical research in this country by legislation would be less likely to flourish in a robust and selfish Labour Party of the Australian type than in parties whose members enjoy the leisure which seems necessary to the development of such emotional luxuries. It is of course possible that civilization may collapse throughout the world as it has done in parts of Russia, and science with it; but such an event would, in all probability, only postpone the problem for a few thousand years. And even in Russia we must not forget that first-rate scientific research is still being carried on. The possibility has been suggested, I do not know how seriously, that the progress of science may cease through lack of new problems for investigation. Mister Chesterton in The Napoleon of Notting Hill, a book written fifteen years or so ago, prophesied that hansom-cabs would still be in existence a hundred years hence owing to a cessation of invention. Within six years there was a hansom cab in a museum, and now that romantic but tardy vehicle is a memory like the trireme the velocipede, and the 1907 Voisin biplane. I do not suggest that Mister Chesterton be dragged, a heavier Hector, behind the last hansom cab, but I do contend that, in so far as he claims to be a prophet rather than the voice of one crying in the wilderness, he may be regarded as negligible for the purpose of our discussion. I shall try shortly to show how far from complete are any branches of science at the present time. But first a word on Mister H G Wells might not be out of place. The very mention of the future suggests him. There are two points which I wish to make about Mister Wells. In the first place, considered as a serious prophet, as opposed to a fantastic romancer, he is singularly modest. In 1902, for example, in a book called Anticipations the gave it as his personal opinion that by 1950 there would be heavier than air flying machines capable of practical use in war. That, said he, was his own view, though he was well aware that it would excite considerable ridicule. I propose in this paper to make no prophecies rasher than the above. The second and more important point is that he is a generation behind the time. When his scientific ideas were formed, flying and radiotelegraphy for example, were scientific problems, and the centre of scientific interest still lay in physics and chemistry. Now these are commercial problems, and I believe that the centre of scientific interest lies in biology. A generation hence it may be elsewhere, and the views expressed in this paper will appear as modest, conservative, and unimaginative as do many of those of Mister Wells to-day. I will touch only very briefly on the future of physics, as the subject is inevitably technical. At present physical theory is in a state of profound suspense. This is primarily due to Einstein, the greatest Jew since Jesus. I have no doubt that Einstein’s name will still be remembered and revered when Lloyd George, Foch, and William Hohenzollern share with Charlie Chaplin that ineluctable oblivion which awaits the uncreative mind. I trust that I may be excused if I trespass from the strict subject of my theme to add my quota to the rather numerous mis-statements of Einstein’s views which have appeared during the last few years, Ever since the time of Berkeley it has been customary for the majority of metaphysicians to proclaim the ideality of Time, of Space, or of both. But they soon made it clear that, in spite of this, time would continue to wait for no man, and space to separate lovers. The only practical consequence that they generally drew was that their own ethical and political views were somehow inherent in the structure of the universe. The experimental proof or disproof of such deductions is difficult, and, if the late war may be regarded as an experimental disproof of certain of Hegel's political tenets, costly and unsatisfactory. Einstein, so far from deducing a new decalogue, has contented himself with deducing the consequences to space and time themselves of their ideality. These are mostly too small to be measurable, but some, such as the deflection of light by the sun’s gravitational field, are susceptible of verification, and have been verified. The majority of scientific men are now being constrained by the evidence of these experiments to adopt a very extreme form of Kantian idealism. The Kantian Ding-an-sich is an eternal four dimensional manifold, which we perceive as space and time, but what we regard as space and what as time is more or less fortuitous. It is perhaps interesting to speculate on the practical consequences of Einstein’s discovery. I do not doubt that he will be believed. A prophet who can give signs in the heavens is always believed. No one ever seriously questioned Newton’s theory after the return of Halley’s comet. Einstein has told us that space, time, and matter are shadows of the fifth dimension, and the heavens have declared his glory. In consequence Kantian idealism will become the basal working hypothesis of the physicist and finally of all educated men, just as materialism did after Newton's day. We may not call ourselves materialists, but we do interpret the activities of the moon, the Thames, influenza, and aeroplanes in terms of matter. Our ancestors did not, nor, in all probability, will our descendants. The materialism, whether conscious or sub-conscious does not very much matter, of the last few generations has led to various results of practical importance, such as sanitation, Marxian socialism and the right of an accused person to give evidence on his or her own behalf. The reign of Kantian idealism as the basal working hypothesis, first of physics, and then of every-day life, will in all probability last for some centuries. At the end of that time a similar step in advance will be taken. Einstein showed that experience cannot be interpreted in terms of space and time. This was a well-known fact, but so long as space and time did not break down in their own special sphere, that of explaining the facts of motion, physicists continued to believe in them, or at any rate, what was much more important, to think in terms of them for practical purposes. A time will however come, as I believe, when physiology will invade and destroy mathematical physics, as the latter have destroyed geometry. The basic metaphysical working hypothesis of science and practical life will then, I think, be something like Bergsonian activism. I do not for one moment suggest that this or any other metaphysical system has any claims whatever to finality. Meanwhile we are in for a few centuries during which many practical activities will probably be conducted on a basis, not of materialism, but of Kantian idealism. How will this affect our manners, morals, and politic? Frankly I do not know, though I think the effect will be as great as that of Newton’s work, which created most of the intellectual forces of the eighteenth century. The Condorcets, Benthams and Marxs of the future will I think be as ruthlessly critical of the metaphysics and ethics of their times as were their predecessors, but not quite so sure of their own, they will lack a certain heaviness of touch which we may note in Utilitarianism and Socialism. They will recognise that perhaps in ethics as in physics, there are so to speak fourth and fifth dimensions that show themselves by effects which, like the perturbations of the planet Mercury, are hard to detect even in one generation, but yet perhaps in the course of ages are quite as important as the three dimensional phenomena. If the quantum hypothesis is generally adopted, even more radical alterations in our thinking will be necessary. But I feel it premature even to suggest their direction in the present unsatisfactory state of quantum mechanics. It may be that as Poincare, the other Poincare, suggested we shall be forced to conceive of all change as occurring in a series of clicks, and all space as consisting of discrete points. However this may be it is safe to say that a better knowledge of the properties of radiation will permit us to produce it in a more satisfactory manner than is at present possible. Almost all our present sources of light are hot bodies, 95 percent of whose radiation is invisible. To light a lamp as a source of light is about as wasteful of energy as to burn down one’s house to roast one’s pork. It is a fairly safe prophecy that in 50 years light will cost about a fiftieth of its present price, and there will be no more night in our cities. The alternation of day and night is a check on the freedom of human activity which must go the way of other spatial and temporal checks. In the long run I think that all that applied physics can do for us is to abolish these checks. It enables us to possess more, travel more, and communicate more. I shall not attempt to predict in detail the future developments of transport and communication. They are only limited by the velocity of light. We are working towards a condition when any two persons on earth will be able to be completely present to one another in not more than one twenty fourth of a second. We shall never reach it, but that is the limit which we shall approach indefinitely. Developments in this direction are tending to bring mankind more and more together, to render life more and more complex, artificial, and rich in possibilities, to increase indefinitely man’s powers for good and evil. But there are two prerequisites for all progress of this kind, namely continuous supplies of human and mechanical power. As industries become more and more closely interwoven, so that a dislocation of any one will paralyse a dozen others, and that is the position towards which we are rapidly moving, the ideal of the leaders of industry, under no matter what economic system, will be directed less and less to the indefinite increase of production in the intervals between such dislocations, and more and more to stable and regular production, even at the cost of reduction of profits and output while the industry is proceeding normally. It is quite possible that capitalism itself may demand that the control of certain key industries be handed over completely to the workers in those industries, simply in order to reduce the number of sporadic strikes in them. And as industrial progress continues an ever larger number, perhaps the majority, of industries will become key industries. The solution may be entirely different, we may well see a return to feudalism. But the probability is that the problem will be solved. This view may seem optimistic, but it is more likely than the alternative thesis which may be briefly stated as follows: “No human society will ever succeed in producing a stable organisation in which the majority of the population is employed otherwise than in agriculture, animal-rearing, hunting or fishing.” It took some thousands of years to produce the stable agricultural society which forms the basis of European life and whose morals we are too apt to regard as eternal truths. It should take a shorter time to evolve a stable industrial society. The people that do so will inherit the earth. In sum, I believe that the progress of science will ultimately make industrial injustice as self-destructive as it is now making international injustice. As for the supplies of mechanical power, it is axiomatic that the exhaustion of our coal and oil-fields is a matter of centuries only. As it has often been assumed that their exhaustion would lead to the collapse of industrial civilization, I may perhaps be pardoned if I give some of the reasons which lead me to doubt this proposition. Water-power is not, I think, a probable substitute, on account of its small quantity, seasonal fluctuation, and sporadic distribution. It may perhaps, however, shift the centre of industrial gravity to well-watered mountainous tracts such as the Himalayan foothills, British Columbia, and Armenia. Ultimately we shall have to tap those intermittent but inexhaustible sources of power, the wind and the sunlight. The problem is simply one of storing their energy in a form as convenient as coal or petrol. If a windmill in one's back garden could produce a hundredweight of coal daily, and it can produce its equivalent in energy, our coalmines would shut down tomorrow. Even to-morrow a cheap, foolproof, and durable storage battery may be invented, which will enable us to transform the intermittent energy of the wind into continuous electric power. Personally, I think that four hundred years hence the power question in England may be solved somewhat as follows: The country will be covered with rows of metallic windmills working electric motors which in their turn supply current at a very high voltage to great electric mains. At suitable distances, there will be great power stations where during windy weather the surplus power will be used for the electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen. These gases will be liquefied, and stored in vats vacuum jacketed reservoirs, probably sunk in the ground. If these reservoirs are sufficiently large, the loss of liquid due to leakage inwards of heat will not be great; thus the proportion evaporating daily from a reservoir 100 yards square by 60 feet deep would not be one, one thousandth of that lost from a tank measuring two feet each way. In times of calm, the gases will be recombined in explosion motors working dynamos which produce electrical energy once more, or more probably in oxidation cells. Liquid hydrogen is weight for weight the most efficient known method of storing energy, as it gives about three times as much heat per pound as petrol. On the other hand it is very light, and bulk for bulk has only one-third of the efficiency of petrol. This will not, however, detract from its use in aeroplanes, where weight is more important than bulk. These huge reservoirs of liquefied gases will enable wind energy to be stored, so that it can be expended for industry, transportation, heating, and lighting, as desired. The initial costs will be very considerable, but the running expenses less than those of our present system. Among its more obvious advantages will be the fact that energy will be as cheap in one part of the country as another, so that industry will be greatly decentralized; and that no smoke or ash will be produced. It is on some such lines as these, I think, that the problem will be solved. It is essentially a practical problem, and the exhaustion of our coalfields will furnish the necessary stimulus for its solution. Even now perhaps Italy might achieve economic independence by the expenditure of a few million pounds upon research on the lines indicated. I may add in parenthesis that, on thermodynamical grounds which I can hardly summarize shortly, I do not much believe in the commercial possibility of induced radio-activity. Before I turn to the principal part of my subject I should like to consider very briefly the influence on art and literature of our gradual conquest of space and time. I think that the blame for the decay of certain arts rests primarily on the defective education of the artists. An artist must understand his subject matter. At present not a single competent poet and very few painters and etchers outside the Glasgow School understand industrial life, and I believe that there is only one architect of any real originality who understands the possibilities of ferro-concrete. I do not know his name, but he produced in Soissons before the war a market-place with the dignity and daring of an ancient Egyptian temple. If I knew that he had been entrusted with the rebuilding of Soissons, I could not regret its destruction. Now if we want poets to interpret physical science as Milton and Shelley did, Shelley and Keats were the last English poets who were at all up-to-date in their chemical knowledge, we must see that our possible poets are instructed, as their masters were, in science and economics. I am absolutely convinced that science is vastly more stimulating to the imagination than are the classics, but the products of this stimulus do not normally see the light because scientific men as a class are devoid of any perception of literary form. When they can express themselves we get a Butler or a Norman Douglas. Not until our poets are once more drawn from the educated classes, I speak as a scientist, will they appeal to the average man by showing him the beauty in his own life as Homer and Virgil appealed to the street urchins who scrawled their verses on the walls of Pompeii. And if we must educate our poets and artists in science, we must educate our masters, labour and capital, in art. Personally I believe that we may have good hopes of both. The capitalist’s idea of art in industry at present tends to limit itself to painting green and white stripes on the front of his factories in certain cases. This is a primitive type of decoration, but it has, I think, the root of the matter in it. Before long someone may discover that frescoes inside a factory increase the average efficiency of the worker 1.03 percent and art will become a commercial proposition once more. Even now it is being discovered that artistic advertising often pays. Similarly I do not doubt that labour will come to find that it cannot live by bread, or shall we say bread and beer, alone. But it can hardly be expected to make this discovery until it is assured of its supply of bread and beer. Applied chemistry has introduced into human life no radical novelty of the importance of the heat-engine or the telegraph. It has vastly increased the production of various types of substance the most important being metals. But there were explosives, dyes, and drugs before chemistry was a science, and its progress along present lines will mainly alter life in a quantitative manner. Perhaps the biggest problems before it in metallurgy are the utilization of low-grade iron ores, and the production of aluminium from clay, which contains up to 24 percent of that metal. I do not think that even when this is accomplished aluminium will oust iron and steel as they ousted bronze and flint, but it and its alloys will certainly take the second, and possibly the first place as industrial metals. There is just a hope, though I fear little more, that a large-scale production of perfume may form the basis of a re-education of our rather rudimentary sense of smell, but the most interesting possibilities of chemical invention are very clearly in biological chemistry, and for the following reasons. Desirable substances fall on the whole into two classes. The first are desirable on account of their physical or chemical properties, for example iron, wood or glass, which we use as a part of systems such as fires, houses, or razors, which procure us certain benefits. The second are desirable on account of their physiological properties. Such substances include foods, drinks, tobacco, and drugs. Colours and scents occupy an intermediate position. The value of this second class of substances rests on a quite special relationship to the human organism which depends in the most intimate way on the constitution of the latter, and has not in general been at all fully explained in terms of physics and chemistry. For example fires can be made of coal or peat instead of wood, but no other chemical substance has the same effect as water or alcohol. So unless a chemical substance has new physiological properties its production will merely serve to improve or make possible some appliance whose use lies within the sphere of applied physics. Within historical time two and only two substances of the second class have come into universal use in Europe, namely caffeine and nicotine, which were introduced into this country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There are others of immense importance, such as chloroform and quinine, but their use is not universal. But coffee, tea, and tobacco, with alcohol, are as much a part of normal life as food and water. There is no reason to suppose that the list of such substances is exhausted. During the war Embden the professor of physiology in Frankfurt University discovered that a dose of about 7 grams of acid sodium phosphate increases a man’s capacity for prolonged muscular work by about 20 percent, and probably aids in prolonged mental work. It can be taken over very lengthy periods. A group of coal-miners took it for nine months on end with very great effect on their output. It has no after-effects like those of alcohol, and one cannot take a serious overdose as it merely acts as a purgative. They gave certain Stosstruppen too much! Thousands of people in Germany take it habitually. It is possible that it may become as normal a beverage as coffee or tea. It costs one and nine per pound, or one third of a penny per dose. The vast majority of chemical substances with physiological properties are unsuited for daily use like castor oil, or dangerous like morphine; probably none are without bad effects in certain cases. Those which are susceptible of daily use are of the utmost social importance. Tobacco has slight but definite effects on the character. Coffee-houses in London in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and cafes in modern Europe were and are civilizing influences of incalculable value. But these substances are profoundly obnoxious to a certain type of mind. It would perhaps be fantastic to suggest that Sir Walter Raleigh owed his death in part to his sovereign’s objection to tobacco. But if he is not its proto-martyr it is at least probable that more men have died for tobacco smoking at the hands of Sikhs, Senussis, and Wahabis, whose religions forbid this practice, than died under the Roman empire for professing Christianity. Should it ever be generally realised that temperance is a mean we may expect that mankind will ultimately have at its disposal a vast array of substances like wine, coffee, and tobacco, whose intelligent use can add to the amenity of life and promote the expression of man’s higher faculties. But before that day comes chemistry will be applied to the production of a still more important group of physiologically active substances, namely foods. The facts about food are rather curious. Everyone knows that food is ultimately produced by plants, though we may get it at second or third hand if we eat animals or their products. But the average plant turns most of its sugar not into starch which is digestible, but into cellulose which is not, but forms its woody skeleton. The hoofed animals have dealt with this problem in their own way, by turning their bellies into vast hives of bacteria that attack cellulose, and on whose by-products they live. We have got to do the same, but outside our bodies. It may be done on chemical lines. Irvine has obtained a 95 percent yield of sugar from cellulose, but at a prohibitive cost. Or we may use micro-organisms, but in any case within the next century sugar and starch will be about as cheap as sawdust. Many of our foodstuffs, including the proteins, we shall probably build up from simpler sources such as coal and atmospheric nitrogen. I should be inclined to allow 120 years, but not much more, before a completely satisfactory diet can be produced in this way on a commercial scale. This will mean that agriculture will become a luxury, and that mankind will be completely urbanized. Personally I do not regret the probable disappearance of the agricultural labourer in favour of the factory worker, who seems to me a higher type of person from most points of view. Human progress in historical time has been the progress of cities dragging a reluctant countryside in their wake. Synthetic food will substitute the flower garden and the factory for the dunghill and the slaughterhouse, and make the city at last self-sufficient. There's many a strong farmer whose heart would break in two If he could see the townland that we are riding to. Boughs have their fruit and blossom at all times of the year, Rivers are running over with red beer and brown beer, An old man plays the bagpipes in a golden and silver wood, Queens, their eyes blue like the ice, are dancing in a crowd. I should have liked had time allowed to have added my quota to the speculations which have been made with regard to inter-planetary communication. Whether this is possible I can form no conjecture; that it will be attempted I have no doubt whatever. With regard to the application of biology to human life, the average prophet appears to content himself with considerable if rather rudimentary progress in medicine and surgery, some improvements in domestic plants and animals, and possibly the introduction of a little eugenics. The eugenic official, a compound, it would appear, of the policeman, the priest and the procurer, is to hale us off at suitable intervals to the local temple of Venus Genetrix with a partner chosen, one gathers, by something of the nature of a glorified medical board. To this prophecy I should reply that it proceeds from a type of mind as lacking in originality as in knowledge of human nature. Marriage “by numbers”, so to speak, was a comparatively novel idea when proposed by Plato 2,300 years ago, but it has already actually been practised in various places, notably among the subjects of the Jesuits in Paraguay. It is moreover likely, as we shall see, that the ends proposed by the eugenist will be attained in a very different manner. But before we proceed to prophecy I should like to turn back to the past and examine very briefly the half dozen or so important biological inventions which have already been made. By a biological invention I mean the establishment of a new relationship between man and other animals or plants, or between different human beings, provided that such relationship is one which comes primarily under the domain of biology rather than physics, psychology or ethics. Of the biological inventions of the past, four were made before the dawn of history. I refer to the domestication of animals, the domestication of plants, the domestication of fungi for the production of alcohol, and to a fourth invention, which I believe was of more ultimate and far-reaching importance than any of these, since it altered the path of sexual selection, focussed the attention of man as a lover upon woman’s face and breasts, and changed our idea of beauty from the steatapygous Hottentot to the modern European, from the Venus of Brassempouy to the Venus of Milo. There are certain races which have not yet made this last invention. And in our own day two more have been made, namely bactericide and the artificial control of conception. The first point that we may notice about these inventions is that they have all had a profound emotional and ethical effect. Of the four earlier there is not one which has not formed the basis of a religion. I do not know what strange god will have the hardihood to adopt Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant in the place of Triptolemus and Noah, but one may remark that it is impossible to keep religion out of any discussion of the practices which they popularized. The second point is perhaps harder to express. The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. But if even physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological invention is a perversion. There is hardly one which, on first being brought to the notice of an observer from any nation which had not previously heard of their existence, would not appear to him as indecent and unnatural. Consider so simple and time-honoured a process as the milking of a cow. The milk which should have been an intimate and almost sacramental bond between mother and child is elicited by the deft fingers of a milkmaid, and drunk, cooked, or even allowed to rot into cheese. We have only to imagine ourselves as drinking any of its other secretions, in order to realise the radical indecency of our relation to the cow. The Hindus have recognized the special and physiological relation, of man to the cow by making the latter animal holy. A good Hindu would no more kill a cow than his foster-mother. But the holiness of the cow has unfortunately extended to all its products, and the extensive use of cowdung in Indian religious ceremonies is disgusting to the average European. The latter however, is insensitive to the equally loathsome injunctions of the Catholic Church with regard to human marriage. It would perhaps be better if both marriage and milking could be secularized. No less disgusting a priori is the process of corruption which yields our wine and beer. But in actual fact the processes of milking and of the making and drinking beer appear to us profoundly natural; they have even tended to develop a ritual of their own whose infraction nowadays has a certain air of impropriety. There is something slightly disgusting in the idea of milking a cow electrically or drinking beer out of tea-cups. And all this of course applies much more strongly to the sexual act. I fancy that the sentimental interest attaching to Prometheus has unduly distracted our attention from the far more interesting figure of Daedalus. It is with infinite relief that amidst a welter of heroes armed with gorgon's heads or protected by Stygian baptisms the student of Greek mythology comes across the first modern man. Beginning as a realistic sculptor (he was the first to produce statues whose feet were separated) it was natural that he should proceed to the construction of an image of Aphrodite whose limbs were activated by quicksilver. After this his interest inevitably turned to biological problems, and it is safe to say that posterity has never equalled his only recorded success in experimental genetics. Had the housing and feeding of the Minotaur been less expensive it is probable that Daedalus would have anticipated Mendel. But Minos held that a labyrinth and an annual provision of 50 youths and 50 virgins were excessive as an endowment for research, and in order to escape from his ruthless economies Daedalus was forced to invent the art of flying. Minos pursued him to Sicily and was slain there. Save for his valuable invention of glue, little else is known of Daedalus. But it is most significant that, although he was responsible for the death of Zeus’ son Minos he was neither smitten by a thunderbolt, chained to a rock, nor pursued by furies. Still less did any of the rather numerous visitors to Hades discover him either in Elysium or Tartarus. We can hardly imagine him as a member of the throng of shades who besieged Charon’s ferry like sheep at a gap. He was the first to demonstrate that the scientific worker is not concerned with gods. The unconscious mind of the early Greeks, who focussed in this amazing figure the dim traditions of Minoan science, was presumably aware of this fact. The most monstrous and unnatural action in all human legend was unpunished in this world or the next. Even the death of Icarus must have weighed lightly with a man who had already been banished from Athens for the murder of his nephew. But if he escaped the vengeance of the gods he has been exposed to the universal and age long reprobation of a humanity to whom biological inventions are abhorrent, with one very significant exception. Socrates was proud to claim him as an ancestor. The biological invention then tends to begin as a perversion and end as a ritual supported by unquestioned beliefs and prejudices. Even now surgical cleanliness is developing its rites and its dogmas, which, it may be remarked, are accepted most religiously by women. With the above facts in your minds I would ask you to excuse what at first sight might appear improbable or indecent in any speculations which appear below, and to dismiss from your minds the belief that biology will consist merely in physical and chemical discoveries as applied to men, animals and plants. I say advisedly “will consist”, for we are at present almost completely ignorant of biology, a fact which often escapes the notice of biologists, and renders them too presumptuous in their estimates of the present position of their science, too modest in their claims for its future. If for example we take a typical case of applied biology such as the detection and destruction of the cholera bacillus, we find a great deal of science involved, but the only purely biological principle is the very important but not very profound one that some bacteria kill some men. The really scientific parts of the process are the optical and chemical methods involved in the magnification, staining and killing of the bacilli. When on the other hand we come to immunization to typhoid we find certain purely biological principles involved which are neither simple nor at all completely understood. Actually biological theory consists of some ancient but not very easily stated truths about organisms in general, due largely to Aristotle, Hippocrates and Harvey, a few great principles such as those formulated by Darwin, Mayer, Claude Bernard, and Mendel, and a vast mass of facts about individual organisms and their parts which are still awaiting adequate generalization. Darwin’s results are beginning to be appreciated, with alarming effects on certain types of religion, those of Weismann and Mendel will be digested in the course of the present century, and are going to affect political and philosophical theories almost equally profoundly. I need hardly say that these latter results deal with the question of reproduction and heredity. We may expect, moreover, as time goes on, that a series of shocks of the type of Darwinism will be given to established opinions on all sorts of subjects. One cannot suggest in detail what these shocks will be, but since the opinions on which they will impinge are deep seated and irrational, they will come upon us and our descendants with the same air of presumption and indecency with which the view that we are descended from monkeys came to our grandfathers. But owing to man’s fortunate capacity for thinking in watertight, or rather idea-tight, compartments, they will probably not have immediate and disruptive effects upon society any more than Darwinism had. Far more profound will be the effect of the practical applications of biology. I believe that the progress of medicine has had almost, if not quite, as deep an effect on society in Western Europe as the industrial revolution. Apart from the important social consequences which have flowed from the partial substitution of the doctor for the priest, its net result has been that whereas four hundred years ago most people died in childhood, they now live on an average, apart from the late war, until forty-five. Bad as our urban conditions often are, there is not a slum in the country which has a third of the infantile death-rate of the royal family in the middle ages. Largely as a result of this religion has come to lay less and less stress on a good death, and more and more on a good life, and its whole outlook has gradually changed in consequence. Death has receded so far into the background of our normal thoughts that when we came into somewhat close contact with it during the war most of us failed completely to take it seriously. Similarly institutions which were based on short lives have almost wholly collapsed. For example the English land system postulated that the land-owner should die aged about forty, and be succeeded by his eldest son, aged about twenty. The son had spent most of his life on the estate, and had few interests outside it. He managed it at least as well as anyone else could have done. Nowadays the father dodders on till about eighty, and is generally incompetent for ten years before his death. His son succeeds him at the age of fifty or so, by which time he may be a fairly competent colonel or stockbroker, but cannot hope to learn the art of managing an estate. In consequence he either hands it over to an agent who is deprived of initiative and often corrupt, or runs it unscientifically, gets a low return, and ascribes to Bolshevism what he should really lay at the door of vaccination. But to return, if I may use the expression, to the future, I am going to suggest a few obvious developments which seem probable in the present state of biological science, without assuming any great new generalizations of the type of Darwinism. I have the very best precedents for introducing a myth at this point, so perhaps I may be excused if I reproduce some extracts from an essay on the influence of biology on history during the twentieth century which will, it is hoped, be read by a rather stupid undergraduate member of this university to his supervisor during his first term 150 years hence. “As early as the first decade of the twentieth century we find a conscious attempt at the application of biology to politics in the so-called eugenic movement. A number of earnest persons, having discovered the existence of biology, attempted to apply it in its then very crude condition to the production of a race of super-men, and in certain countries managed to carry a good deal of legislation. They appear to have managed to prevent the transmission of a good deal of syphilis, insanity, and the like, and they certainly succeeded in producing the most violent opposition and hatred amongst the classes whom they somewhat gratuitously regarded as undesirable parents. There was even a rebellion in Nebraska. However, they undoubtedly prepared public opinion for what was to come, and so far served a useful purpose. Far more important was the progress in medicine which practically abolished infectious diseases in those countries which were prepared to tolerate the requisite amount of state interference in private life, and finally, after the league’s ordinance of 1958, all over the world; though owing to Hindu opposition, parts of India were still quite unhealthy up to 1980 or so. But from a wider point of view the most important biological work in the first third of the century was in experimental zoology and botany. When we consider that in 1912 Morgan had located several Mendelian factors in the nucleus of Drosophila, and modified its sex-ratio, while Marmorek had taught a harmless bacillus to kill guinea-pigs, and finally in 1913 Brachet had grown rabbit embryos in serum for some days, it is remarkable how little the scientific workers of that time, and a fortiori the general public, seem to have foreseen the practical bearing of such results. As a matter of fact it was not until 1940 that Selkovski invented the purple alga Porphyrococcus fixator which was to have so great an effect on the world’s history. In the 50 years before this date the world’s average wheat yield per hectar had been approximately doubled, partly by the application of various chemical manures, but most of all by the results of systematic crossing work with different races; there was however little prospect of further advance on any of these lines. Porphyrococcus is an enormously efficient nitrogen-fixer and will grow in almost any climate where there are water and traces of potash and phosphates in the soil, obtaining its nitrogen from the air. It has about the effect in four days that a crop of vetches would have had in a year. It could not, of course have been produced in the course of nature, as its immediate ancestors would only grow in artificial media and could not have survived outside a laboratory. Wherever nitrogen was the principal limiting factor to plant growth it doubled the yield of wheat, and quadrupled the value of grass land for grazing purposes. The enormous fall in food prices and the ruin of purely agricultural states was of course one of the chief causes of the disastrous events of 1943 and 1944. The food glut was also greatly accentuated when in 1942 the Q strain of Porphyrococcus escaped into the sea and multiplied with enormous rapidity. Indeed for two months the surface of the tropical Atlantic set to a jelly, with disastrous results to the weather of Europe. When certain of the plankton organisms developed ferments capable of digesting it the increase of the fish population of the seas was so great as to make fish the universal good that it is now, and to render even England self-supporting in respect of food. So great was the prosperity in England that in that year the coal-miner’s union entered its first horse for the Derby, a horse-race which still took place annually at that time. It was of course as the result of its invasion by Porphyrococcus that the sea assumed the intense purple colour which seems so natural to us, but which so distressed the more aesthetically minded of our great grand-parents who witnessed the change. It is certainly curious to us to read of the sea as having been green or blue. I need not detail the work of Ferguson and Rahmatullah who in 1957 produced the lichen which has bound the drifting sand of the world's deserts, for it was merely a continuation of that of Selkovski, nor yet the story of how the agricultural countries dealt with their unemployment by huge socialistic windpower schemes. It was in 1951 that Dupont and Schwarz produced the first ectogenetic child. As early as 1901 Heape had transferred embryo rabbits from one female to another, in 1925 Haldane had grown embryonic rats in serum for ten days, but had failed to carry the process to its conclusion, and it was not till 1940 that Clark succeeded with the pig, using Kehlmann’s solution as medium. Dupont and Schwarz obtained a fresh ovary from a woman who was the victim of an aeroplane accident, and kept it living in their medium for five years. They obtained several eggs from it and fertilized them successfully, but the problem of the nutrition and support of the embryo was more difficult, and was only solved in the fourth year. Now that the technique is fully developed, we can take an ovary from a woman, and keep it growing in a suitable fluid for as long as twenty years, producing a fresh ovum each month, of which 90 percent can be fertilized, and the embryos grown successfully for nine months, and then brought out into the air. Schwarz never got such good results, but the news of his first success caused an unprecedented sensation throughout the entire world, for the birthrate was already less than the deathrate in most civilised countries. France was the first country to adopt ectogenesis officially, and by 1968 was producing 60,000 children annually by this method. In most countries the opposition was far stronger, and was intensified by the Papal Bull “Nunquam prius audito", and the similar fetwa of the Khalif, both of which appeared in 1960. As we know ectogenesis is now universal, and in this country less than 30 percent of children are now born of woman. The effect on human psychology and social life of the separation of sexual love and reproduction which was begun in the nineteenth century and completed in the twentieth is by no means wholly satisfactory. The old family life had certainly a good deal to commend it, and although nowadays we bring on lactation in women by injection of placentin as a routine, and thus conserve much of what was best in the former instinctive cycle, we must admit that in certain respects our great grandparents had the advantage of us. On the other hand it is generally admitted that the effects of selection have more than counterbalanced these evils. The small proportion of men and women who are selected as ancestors for the next generation are so undoubtedly superior to the average that the advance in each generation in any single respect, from the increased output of first-class music to the decreased convictions for theft, is very startling. Had it not been for ecto-genesis there can be little doubt that civilization would have collapsed within a measurable time owing to the greater fertility of the less desirable members of the population in almost all countries. It is perhaps fortunate that the process of becoming an ectogenetic mother of the next generation involves an operation which is somewhat unpleasant, though now no longer disfiguring or dangerous, and never physiologically injurious, and is therefore an honour but by no means a pleasure. Had this not been the case, it is perfectly possible that popular opposition would have proved too strong for the selectionist movement. As it was the opposition was very fierce, and characteristically enough this country only adopted its present rather stringent standard of selection a generation later than Germany, thought it is now perhaps more advanced than any other country in this respect. The advantages of thorough-going selection, have, however, proved to be enormous. The question of the ideal sex ratio is still a matter of violent discussion, but the modern reaction towards equality is certainly strong.” Our essayist would then perhaps go on to discuss some far more radical advances made about 1990, but I have only quoted his account of the earlier applications of biology. The second appears to me to be neither impossible nor improbable, but it has those features which we saw above to be characteristic of biological inventions. If reproduction is once completely separated from sexual love mankind will be free in an altogether new sense. At present the national character is changing slowly according to quite unknown laws. The problem of politics is to find institutions suitable to it. In the future perhaps it may be possible by selective breeding to change character as quickly as institutions. I can foresee the election placards of 300 years hence, if such quaint political methods survive, which is perhaps improbable, “Vote for Smith and more musicians”, “Vote for O’Leary and more girls ”, or perhaps finally “Vote for Macpherson and a prehensile tail for your great-grandchildren We can already alter animal species to an enormous extent, and it seems only a question of time before we shall be able to apply the same principles to our own. I suggest then that biology will probably be applied on lines roughly resembling the above. There are perhaps equally great possibilities in the way of the direct improvement of the individual, as we come to know more of the physiological obstacles to the development of different faculties. But at present we can only guess at the nature of these obstacles, and the line of attack suggested in the myth is the one which seems most obvious to a Darwinian. We already know however that many of our spiritual faculties can only be manifested if certain glands, notably the thyroid and sex-glands, are functioning properly, and that very minute changes in such glands affect the character greatly. As our knowledge of this subject increases we may be able, for exam to control our passions by some more direct method than fasting and flagellation, to stimulate our imagination by some reagent with less after-effects than alcohol, to deal with perverted instincts by physiology rather than prison. Conversely there will inevitably arise possibilities of new vices similar to but even more profound than those opened up by the pharmacological discoveries of the nineteenth century. The recent history of medicine is as follows. Until about 1870 medicine was largely founded on physiology, or, as the Scotch called it “Institutes of medicine”. Disease was looked at from the point of view of the patient, as injuries still are. Pasteur’s discovery of the nature of infectious disease transformed the whole outlook, and made it possible to abolish one group of diseases. But it also diverted scientific medicine from its former path, and it is probable that, were bacteria unknown, though many more people would die of sepsis and typhoid, we should be better able to cope with kidney disease and cancer. Certain diseases such as cancer are probably not due to specific organisms, whilst others such as phthisis are due to forms which are fairly harmless to the average person, but attack others for unknown reasons. We are not likely to deal with them effectually on Pasteur’s lines, we must divert our view from the micro-organism to the patient Where the doctor cannot deal with the former he can often keep the patient alive long enough to be able to do so himself. And here he has to rely largely on a knowledge of physiology. I do not say that a physiologist will discover how to prevent cancer. Pasteur started life as a crystallographer. But whoever does so is likely at least to make use of physiological data on a large scale. The abolition of disease will make death a physiological event like sleep. A generation that has lived together will die together. I suspect that man’s desire for a future life is largely due to two causes, a feeling that most lives are incomplete, and a desire to meet friends from whom we have parted prematurely. A gentle decline into the grave at the end of a completed life’s work will largely do away with the first, and our contemporaries will rarely leave us sorrowing for long. Old age is perhaps harder on women than on men. They live longer, but their life is too often marred by the sudden change which generally overtakes them between forty and fifty, and sometimes leaves them a prey to disease, though it may improve their health. This change seems to be due to a sudden failure of a definite chemical substance produced by the ovary. When we can isolate and synthesize this body we shall be able to prolong a woman’s youth, and allow her to age as gradually as the average man. Psychology’ is hardly a science yet. Like biology it has arrived at certain generalizations of a rather abstract and philosophic character, but these are still to some extent matters of controversy. And though a vast number of most important empirical facts are known, only a few great generalizations from them, such as the existence of the subconscious mind, have yet been made. But anyone who has seen even a single example of the power of hypnotism and suggestion must realise that the face of the world and the possibilities of existence will be totally altered when we can control their effects and standardize their application, as has been possible, for example, with drugs which were once regarded as equally magical. Infinitely greater, of course, would be the results of the opening up of systematic communication with spiritual beings in another world, which is claimed as a scientific possibility. Spiritualism is already Christianity's most formidable enemy, and we have no data which allows us to estimate the probable effect on man of a religion whose dogmas are a matter of experiment, .whose mysteries are prosaic as electric lighting, whose ethics are based on the observed results in the next world of a good or bad life in this. Yet that is the prospect before us if spiritualism obtains the scientific verification which it is now demanding, not perhaps with great success. I have only been able, in the time at my disposal, to traverse a very few of the possible fields of scientific advance. If I have convinced anyone present that science has still a good deal up her sleeve, and that of a sufficiently Startling character, I shall be amply repaid. If anything I have said appears to be of a gratuitously disgusting nature, I would reply that certain phenomena of normal life do seem to many to be of that nature, and that these phenomena are of the utmost scientific and practical importance. I have tried to show why I believe that the biologist is the most romantic figure on earth at the present day. At first sight he seems to be just a poor little scrubby underpaid man, groping blindly amid the mazes of the ultra-microscopic, engaging in bitter and lifelong quarrels over the nephridia of flatworms, waking perhaps one morning to find that someone whose name he has never heard has demolished by a few crucial experiments the work which he had hoped would render him immortal. There is real tragedy in his life, but he knows that he has a responsibility which he dare not disclaim, and he is urged on, apart from all utilitarian considerations, by something or someone which he feels to be higher than himself. The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions. These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides. In the past they have been, in general, men like Voltaire, Bentham, Thales, Marx, and very possibly the divine Julius, but I think that Darwin furnishes an example of the same relentlessness of reason in the field of science. I suspect that as it becomes clear that at present reason not only has a freer play in science than elsewhere, but can produce as great effects on the world through science as through politics, philosophy, or literature, there will be more Darwins. Such men are interested primarily in truth as such, but they can hardly be quite uninterested in what will happen when they throw down their dragon's teeth into the world. I do not say that biologists as a general rule try to imagine in any detail the future applications of their science. The central problems of life for them may be the relationship between the echinoderms and brachio-pods, and the attempt to live on their salaries. They do not see themselves as sinister and revolutionary figures. They have no time to dream. But I suspect that more of them dream than would care to confess it. I have given above a very small selection from my dreams. Perhaps they are bad dreams. It is of course almost hopeless to attempt any very exact prophecies as to how in detail scientific knowledge is going to revolutionize human life, but I believe that it will continue to do so, and even more profoundly than I have suggested. And though personally I am Victorian enough in my sympathies to hope that after all family life, for example, may be spared, I can only reiterate that not one of the practical advances which I have predicted is not already fore-shadowed by recent scientific work. If a chemist or physicist living at the end of the seventeenth century had been asked to predict the future application of his science he would doubtless have made many laughable errors in the best Laputan style, but he would have been certain that it would somehow be applied, and his faith would have been justified. We must regard science then from three points of view. First it is the free activity of man’s divine faculties of reason and imagination. Secondly it is the answer of the few to the demands of the many for wealth, comfort and victory, for gifts which it will grant only in exchange for peace, security and stagnation. Finally it is man’s gradual conquest, first of space and time, then of matter as such, then of his own body and those of other living beings, and finally the subjugation of the dark and evil elements in his own soul. None of these conquests will ever be complete, but all, I believe will be progressive. The question of what he will do with these powers is essentially a question for religion and aesthetic. It may be urged that they are only fit to be placed in the hands of a being who has learned to control himself, and that man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches. The answer to this contention may, I think, be found in the daily papers. For scores of centuries idealists had urged that wars must cease and all the earth be united under one rule. As long as any other alternative was possible it was persisted in. The events of the last nine years constituted a reductio ad absurdum of war, but when we ask who was responsible for this we shall find that it was not the visionaries but men like Black, Kekule, and Langley, who enlarged man’s power over nature until he was forced by the inexorable logic of facts to form the nucleus of an international government. We have already reacted against the frame of mind that engendered the league of nations, but we have not reacted at all completely. The league exists and is working, and in every country on earth there are many people, and ordinary normal people, who favour the idea in one form or another of a world state. I do not suggest that a world-state will arise from the present league, or for the matter of that from the third international. I merely observe that there is a widespread and organized desire for such an institution, and several possible nuclei for it. It may take another world-war or two to convert the majority. The prospect of the next world-war has at least this satisfactory element. In the late war the most rabid nationalists were to be found well behind the front line. In the next war no one will be behind the front line. It will be brought home to all whom it may concern that war is a very dirty business. No doubt there is a fair chance that the possibility of human organization on a planetary scale may be rendered impossible by such a war. If so mankind will probably have to wait for a couple of thousand years for another opportunity. But to the student of geology such a period is negligible. It took man 250,000 years to transcend the hunting pack. It will not take him so long to transcend the nation. I think then that the tendency of applied science is to magnify injustices until they become too intolerable to be borne, and the average man whom all the prophets and poets could not move, turns at last and extinguishes the evil at its source. Marx’ theory of industrial evolution is a particular example of this tendency, though it does not in the least follow that his somewhat artificial solution of the problem will be adopted. It is probable that biological progress will prove to be as incompatible with certain of our social evils as industrial progress has proved to be with war or certain systems of private ownership. To take a concrete example it is clear that the second biological invention considered by my future essayist would be intolerable in conjunction with our present system of relations between classes and sexes. Moral progress is so difficult that' I think any developments are to be welcomed which present it as the naked alternative to destruction, no matter how horrible may be the stimulus which is necessary before man will take the moral step in question. To sum up then, science is as yet in its infancy, and we can foretell little of the future save that the thing that has not been is the thing that shall be; that no beliefs, no values, no institutions are safe. So far from being an isolated phenomenon the late war is only an example of the disruptive results that we may constantly expect from the progress of science. The future will be no primrose path. It will have its own problems. Some will be the secular problems of the past, giant flowers of evil blossoming at last to their own destruction. Others will be wholly new. Whether in the end man will survive his accessions of power we cannot tell. But the problem is no new one. It is the old paradox of freedom re-enacted with mankind for actor and the earth for stage. To those who believe in the divinity of that part of man which aspires after knowledge for its own sake, who are able, in the words of Boethius: "The goal is to see you.” "The principle, the carrier, the guide, the track, the limit are the same." The prospect will appear most hopeful. But it is only hopeful if mankind can adjust its morality to its powers. If we can succeed in this, then science holds in her hands one at least of the keys to the thorny and arduous path of moral progress, th

Rahan. The son of the fierce ages. Episode Fifty Nine. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Guy Zam. The King Tree. If there are so many hunters it is because they are going to track down a “Two-tooth”! The long line of hunters could be seen on the crest of the hill. It was about to disappear towards the other side, when a noise alerted the son of Crao. A man, not far from him, was quickly descending from a tree. He too saw the hunters, but why was he happy? Rahan could have signaled his presence but intrigued, he preferred to discreetly follow this “lookout.” He seems to be eager to report to his own what he saw! Page Two. Indeed, a little later. And the clan of “The King Tree” was heading towards the valley of the two teeth! All the able-bodied hunters were there! Zarook has been waiting for this moment for a long time! Tomorrow at dawn we will seize the “King Tree”! The son of Crao could not understand the enthusiasm of these men. And we too will soon be able to go hunting without fearing for our women and children! Get ready brothers! Who do they want to fight? Rahan wants to know! Attending to checking their spears and their bows, the hunters did not see him crawling towards an isolated hut. And he surprised one of them! Do not scream! Rahan will not take your life if you explain your clan's plans to him! Do not, do not squeeze! Koam Will Speak. Page Three. The man spoke. He said how and why always, his clan and that of the forest fought over a fantastic tree. But tomorrow the king tree will be ours. Zarook is very cowardly to take advantage of the hunters' absence to attack their women and children! Rahan will warn these women of the danger! The son of Crao slipped out of the hut when Koam raised the alarm. Alert! Alert! An enemy has slipped into the camp! The nearest hunters saw him and drew their bows. But Rahan had lightning reflexes. The panel of woven leaves intended for the roof of a hut found a completely different use! Stak! Stak! Page Four. The men did not have time to grab new arrows. He was already rushing into the forest, jumping on a branch. They will not pursue Rahan into the Kingdom of the "Four Hands"! For a long, very long time, he flew from tree to tree, in the direction that Koam had indicated to him. He was finally going to allow himself a moment of rest when cries of fear rose near him. Why are these little infants afraid? Rahan means them no harm! Two panicked children were fleeing on the enormous branch. As agile as young monkeys, they dived towards a vine. Page Five. And disappeared into the foliage. What were the little men doing in this tree?! Would Rahan be on the king tree? Rahan's supposition was quickly confirmed. The branches on which he walked all belonged to the same tree! A tree that alone constituted a veritable forest! A tree whose main branches were so big that ten men could have sat on them! It is incredible! Rahan wants to see this tree from the ground! The vine he let himself slide down was bigger than his wrist! As he descended, his astonishment grew. What he saw was unimaginable! And yet. Rahan does not dream! He is under "The King Tree." Page Six. A group of fifty hunters holding their hands could not have circumnavigated the gigantic trunk! The roof of this fantastic tree stretched over a distance of several arrow ranges! Yes, the “King Tree” was indeed a forest within the forest! Everything in this tree was beyond measure. The roots like crevasses in the bark. A crack at the base of the trunk was wide enough to accommodate several men! The son of Crao was approaching it when stones of all sizes fell around him! Page Seven. In a few leaps he was in the crack where a new surprise awaited him. This part of the trunk was hollow. Rough steps had been cut in it! Although rudimentary, this “Staircase” was easy to climb. Rahan quickly climbed towards the daylight. But, then appeared ten hands, that grabbed his arms and his hair and forcefully pulled him from the trunk! Zarook will regret sending you to spy on us! The son of Crao managed as best he could to free himself, but he suddenly slipped on the branch! Ah! He instinctively grabbed a knot but he was too far from the ground to risk the jump. He was at the mercy of these women! Page Eight. These, shortly after, dragged him into the tangle of branches. Groups of children, here and there, observed the captive with curiosity. Those who walk upright are wrong! Rahan is not part of the Zarook clan. Oh! The huts of a village rose on the branches of the king tree! A woman and two men stood in front of the largest. Those are the ones in charge when our hunters are gone! They will decide your fate! An instant later. I am Rahan, the son of Crao! Rahan is not an enemy! He came to warn you that the Zarook clan will attack at daybreak! We have never seen you before! How do I know if you're telling the truth!? Page Nine. If the fiery-haired man's intentions are good, let him prove it! Let him go to the spring and bring us some water! We will keep his necklace and his cutlass! Do you accept “Fire Hair”? Rahan accepts! Tell him where to find the source! An instant later. This test is very easy! Rahan hopes that it will earn him the trust of those of the "king tree"! The son of Crao had to go quite far into the forest before discovering the source. He was filling the bamboo container when a small growl arose behind him. A young puma was rolling in the grass. No. Rahan does not want to play with you! Go away! Page Ten. Ooh! You are going to bring down Rahan! Go away! Go away! But the young feline was happy because he was playing. He clung to Rahan’s steps, trotting between his legs Rahan was aware of the danger. The mother of this puma, undoubtedly looking for her little one, could appear at any moment! Worried, he quickened his pace. Which had the effect of further amusing the annoying little creature! But the “king tree” finally appeared. He was hanging the container on a vine when he smelled the scent of the big beast. But he was already too late! Without his knife, Rahan could not face it. He did not have time to run to the crack in the trunk. And the mother puma jumped towards him! Page Eleven. As the container of water rose towards the branches, he grabbed another vine and he also felt himself being pulled towards the foliage! The man having escaped from him, the mother puma returned to her den, not without punishing her little one's escape with a few paws! However. Rahan could have fled, but he came back. He has proven his loyalty to us! He is definitely our brother! Why do you live in the King Tree? Our mothers' mothers already lived here! Look around you and you will understand! The “King Tree" is for us a safe refuge from the dangers of the jungle! The son of Crao observed with emotion these women and these children, these mutilated men and these tired old men. Page Twelve. When the men of the clan go hunting, you wait for them to return to the king tree. Yes, we bring back enough food to last for several days. We also make a reserve of stones there, in anticipation of an attack. Because we know that, as always, Zarook has been intent upon seizing the "king tree"! We offered to share our refuge with the women and elders of Zarook’s clan, when his people go hunting! But Zarook will not accept! He wants to be the sole master of the “king tree.” And at dawn, he will launch his hunters against you! What can your stones do against their arrows!? But Rahan will not abandon you! We will repel these cowards! The decision of the son of Crao had been made. He would fight alongside these children, these women, these shapeless people! Page thirteen. Throughout the night, the defense of the "King Tree" was organized. The reserve of projectiles was distributed on carefully chosen forks. Remembering the way he had avoided the arrows of Zarook's hunters, he had shields of vines woven. Here we will pile up stones and dead branches. Even the old people, and the crippled, were doing their best. They were still busy when the lights of day pierced the foliage. Listen! Zarook and his people arrive! Hear their war song! Convinced that they would easily win the fight, Zarook's men were not looking to surprise. Their singing ceased when they emerged into the vast clearing. Page Fourteen. Zarook means you no harm! Abandon the tree-king and flee this territory! The “King Tree” belongs to our clan! Not yet, Zarook! To seize The King Tree, you will have to chase us away! You want this, women! We will remove you from up there! Enraged, Zarook led a group of men towards the crack of the gigantic trunk. But barely had he rushed in when his spear was brutally torn from him! Rahan would have liked to avoid the fight. But he sees that it is impossible! The son of Crao displayed such energy that he was able to push these hunters out of the trunk. Ra-ha-ha! Page Fifteen. But others, despite the rain of stones, were already approaching! Rahan will not stop this pack! We must do what we planned! As he quickly climbed the steps, a group of men rushed behind! Attention women! Prepare yourselves! Hurry! Fast! The dead branches gathered for this purpose were thrown inside the trunk. In a few moments the tangle was such that the staircase became impassable to the attackers. This failure defused the anger of Zarook. We will climb the “Tree-King” by the vines! Our arrows will make these stone throwers flee! Page Sixteen. Shortly after, the arrows flew towards the women and children lying in wait on the branches. But the shields that were braided during the night effectively protected them! We will soon have no more stones, Rahan! The shield was unknown to the hunters of Zarook, who were surprised to miss their targets. It was the man with “fire hair” who taught them to stop the arrows! The son of Crao smiled when, in small groups, the attackers gripped the ropes. No matter, they do not have any more stones! To the Vines! Brothers! To the Vines! He waited until they were far from the ground to act. The ivory blade attacked the first vine. Page Seventeen. A moment later, he jumped from one branch to another, cutting the fibers of all the vines on which the men were climbing. And, while the children were still alive, the attackers fell in clusters! Many remained lifeless on the ground. And others suggested giving up the fight. They are not afraid of fighting us and we cannot get up there either by the trunk or by the vines. Their leader, shouting, ran under the “King Tree.” Show yourself “Fire-hair”! Zarook challenges you! Zarook will send you to the land of shadows! Rahan is here, Zarook! Zarook, surprised, only had time to raise his head. Page Eighteen. At the same time offering his jaw to the son of Crao! Rahan could easily steal your life. But it is not up to him to decide your fate! Rahan had grabbed Zarook's belt. What? What are you doing? And both rose towards the foliage! Stunned, and afraid of hitting their leader, the hunters did not dare release their arrows. If you squirm, Rahan will let you go! Did you not dream of climbing this tree? The women, helped by the children, joyfully hoisted the two men up. Everyone quickly regained their gravity. Yours have failed, Zarook! And you are at our mercy! See those you wanted to drive out of the “King Tree”, those you would have delivered to the dangers of the jungle! Page Nineteen. These dangers also threaten the children, women, and old men of my clan. Zarook spoke of his people with great emotion. If a leader has a duty to protect the weak and elders of his clan, he must never do so to the detriment of another clan! The trio consulted. Since this pointless fight caused no casualties, we will spare Zarook! Let him return to his village and meditate on his failure! Zarook behaved like a coward. He does not deserve your pity! This is not pity, but wisdom! Peace must return between you! The "King Tree" is a blessing of nature that your clans should not fight over, but share! It would then become a wonderful refuge for all the weak in this forest! Page Twenty. The son of Crao spoke for a long time, he knew how to find the words that went to the heart of "Those-who-walk-upright." “Fire-hair” is right. My brothers will no longer attempt to seize the King Tree! And when they leave for a long hunt, they will entrust him with their wives and children! In these fierce times, it sometimes took little to awaken the good feelings that lay dormant in every man. Zarook will keep his promise! What are you doing, “Fire-hair”? Rahan knew that The “King Tree” would no longer be a source of discord. Nothing was keeping him here anymore. Rahan will leave you. But he will never forget your courage, little ones! At nightfall, the son of Crao reached the hills. One last time he contemplated the ocean of greenery from which the fantastic tree emerged and set off towards other landscapes, to meet other men. Because this was his destiny. Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

Rahan. Episode Fifty Eight. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Andre Cheret. The God of happiness. While hollowing out the shell of a "wooden fruit", the son of Crao observed the meat that had been roasting on the fire. For a while, something intrigued him. The “Tears of Heaven” extinguish the flames. These, on the contrary, revive them! Each time a drop of fat fell on the flames they, in fact, became brighter! So the “white flesh” keeps the fire going!? Cries of fear tore him from his thoughts. A man, desperately clinging to a strange stump, was being carried away by the river! Page Two. Courage Brother! Rahan Never gives up on “Those-Who-Walk-Upright”! You don't know "Crawling on water". But Rahan will bring you back to the shore, you can let go! The Son of Crao had become a wonderful swimmer, and he quickly joined the man. No! No! Galaw has suffered too much to find the “God-of-Happiness”! He will not abandon Him to the river! The God of Happiness? The man's hands clenched on the curious stump as Rahan pulled him toward shore. A moment later he was saved, but, at last, he lost consciousness. Stupor froze the son of Crao, who had just turned over the stump. Oh! Page Three. If one side was perfectly flat, the other side represented a face. In the middle of the front, an arrow was stuck. A Shield? Rahan rejected the idea. The Half-Head was far too heavy to be a "Shield" Galaw spoke of the “God-of-happiness.” When Rahan had pulled out the arrow, the sculpted face even better expressed serenity and happiness. The fire was going out but the fat was still dripping into the hull of the “Fruit-of-wood.” Rahan will know if the juice from the "White Flesh" Burns as well as the herbs! Galaw had recovered his spirits. You risked your life to save Galaw! Who are you then? I am Rahan, son of Crao! Rahan will share his meat with Galaw! Page Four. With caution, he removed the burning shell from the embers. Galaw says he suffered to find the “God-of-Happiness.” Does Rahan have the right to expand his story? Rahan is from now on Galaw's brother! He will know! Oh, what? What? The son of Crao had just plunged a piece of lighted vine into the melted fat. The “Juice of the white flesh” did not burn, and Galaw was disappointed, already talking about his clan. Mine lived in peace, under the protection of the "God of happiness" but one day. Taking advantage of the absence of hunters "Those of the Endless Cave" invaded our village. Despite the courage of our women, they overthrew the sacred totem and seized the "Face of Happiness" that they had always coveted! Page Five. To take it back, Galaw and a hunter went, one night, to the “endless cave.” Look here Galaw! Here! Look! In the wooden hull, the vine soaked in grease burned imperceptibly. And the little clear flame still danced at its end! Was this day of wild times that of the first “Oil Lamp”? Who knows? Galaw can continue! Rahan listens to him! Galaw and his companion were able to recapture the “God-of-Happiness” But as they fled, "Those of the Cave" shot their arrows. Tarik was killed! For two days Galaw managed to escape from them. But the god of happiness made his escape difficult, and he ended up being surrounded by the river. Page Six. And Galaw preferred to surrender to the river, rather than let the “God-of-happiness” fall into the hands of sacrileges! Zlang! Chtok! The son of Crao had listened in silence. Eat Galaw! When the day comes again, Rahan will accompany you to your family! Night fell very quickly. The little flame still danced at the end of the vine strand. No torch could make light for that long! With this light "Those-who-walk-upright" could chase away the darkness from their huts and their caves! They would no longer fear the spirits of the night! Rahan observed the Great wooden face, peaceful under the moon. After the theft of this totem, did the curse hit your clan? Was the hunting less good? Page Seven. Oh no! Rahan suspected it. It is not a totem that ensures the happiness of a clan. Happiness is born from the courage of hunters! But Rahan respects the beliefs of his brothers and he understands what Galaw wanted. To return the god of happiness! Alas! I do not know if we can bring him back to my people! Listen! With his ear pressed to the ground, Galaw seemed anxious. The big “Lezarks” gather around the swamps! If they spread into the forest we are lost! The “Lizards”! The son of Crao knew these hideous monsters, half lizard, half crocodile. He imagined them, tearing themselves away from the fetid mud of the marshes. Page Eight. The strongest and bravest hunters can only flee from the "Lezarks"! Galaw and Rahan will leave at daybreak! What trap are you preparing? It is not a trap. The “Long-arms” will help us carry the “God-of-happiness”! At the first light of dawn the two men plunged into the forest. The travois, in fact, allowed them to easily drag the heavy half-head of the totem. My brothers live in this valley. We will be with them very soon! They will be grateful to Rahan for helping Galaw to return the “God-of-happiness”! Branches suddenly cracked behind them. The “Lezarks”!? No! “Those-of-the-endless-cave”! Page Nine. The hunters who burst forth brandished great bows. Run away, Galan! Save your “God-of-happiness”! While his companion disappeared into the thickets, the son of Crao, to protect his escape, charged towards the men! Ra-ha-ha! A volley of arrows made him realize that this reaction was insane! Chtok! Chtok! Chtok! Either "Fire-hair" is stupid, or he has lost his mind! We could have sent him to the “territory of shadows”! These hunters obviously did not seek to kill, but to give a warning. Rahan is not afraid of your arrows! The men's mocking laughter rang out as "Fire-hair" darted towards a tree. The bows rose again. Ha-ha-ha! Page Ten. Chtok! Clang! And, a few arrows stuck into the trunk, framing the son of Crao! Others, fired with stupefying skill, brushed against his skull, preventing him from climbing any higher! Chtok! Stok! Stop! Rahan surrenders! Ha-ha-ha! You have now become Reasonable “Hair of Fire”! Give us your weapon! Fraham waits! Annoyed at having been so easily captured, Rahan also wanted to prove his skill. So. But do not move! The ivory blade shaved the neck before burying itself in the quiver of skin. Fraham did not flinch! You deserve to belong to our clan, “Fire-hair”! Page Eleven. However, in the nearby valley, people were cheering the return of Galaw. Galaw brought back the “God-of-happiness”! Long life! Long live Galaw! If Galaw lives it is thanks to a “hunter with fiery hair”! His name is Rahan! It was he who saved Galaw from the river, and who helped him bring back the “God of happiness”. So! Why is this "Rahan" not with you? By protecting Galaw's escape, he undoubtedly fell into the hands of "Those-in-the-Cave"! The Clan's Duty is clear! We must save the fire-haired man! The clamor that arose greeted both these words. They almost forgot the tense face turned towards the forest, which embodied to them, the “god of misfortune.” And the men who readjusted the half-head of a large totem, and finally found the peaceful look of the “God-of-happiness”! Page Twelve. In the endless caverns the son of Crao appeared before the clan of Fraham. Why did Rahan protect Galaw? Because you stole the “God of Happiness” from his clan! Galaw lied! We took back the “God-of-happiness” because it belongs to us! It was our fathers' fathers who erected the great totem pole! Because we used to live in the valley. But Galaw and his people chased us away! And, yet we would have agreed to share with them the protection of “God-of-happiness”! The son of Crao smiled bitterly. He had then been deceived! Rahan will never again take sides without thinking! He was about to express his regrets when a man rushed into the cave. Those-from-the-valley are here! They are attacking! Page thirteen. They did not have time to bring down the huge gate. Galaw and his hunters were bursting in! We have just delivered “Hair of Fire”! And we're going to finish with yours, Fraham! It was tumult. Stop! “Those-who-walk-upright” must not fight each other like wild animals! But the screams drowned out Rahan's voice. On all sides, terrible hand-to-hand combat matched the men of Galaw to those of Fraham. And then, the furious clamors were, in turn, smothered by a crash of broken branches. The “Lezarks”! The “Lezarks” have come! Boom! And the “Lezarks” appeared! Page Fourteen. The vision of these monsters scared the most daring hunters. The hideous bodies rolled over each other, tangled together in a teeming mass which, eventually, spread out in front of the cavern. The “lezarks” can stay like this for moons and moons before returning to the swamps! And we will die of thirst and hunger! Faced with danger, the two clans forgot their quarrel. Why Die? This cave probably has other exits! Page Fifteen. Probably yes. But all those who have ventured into the belly of the earth have had to retreat before the darkness! The darkness? Rahan knows how to fight that! Rahan thought back to the “Fruit-of-wood” with the juice of the white flesh. The little flame danced at the end of the vine. And while he explained his project, the terrifying besiegers swarmed in front of the cavern. Only one "Lezark" must pass! Just one! The nearest monster rushed forward, forcing its way under the slowly rising grate. At the same time as the gate fell behind him, ten arrows pierced his scaly sides! Ra-ha-ha! We will have more white flesh than Rahan wanted! Page Sixteen. The son of Crao, shortly after, lit a fire on which he placed a large slab of slate. Skeptical, but intrigued, everyone obeyed his instructions. Let “Those-from-the-Cave” fuel the fire! Let “Those-of-the-Valley” prune the bamboos and cut the vine pieces! From the flesh of the butchered "Lezark", Rahan cut the fat which, thrown onto the hot slate, melted into a sickening odor. And this oily juice was collected in bamboo tubes, in which a wick-vine was immersed. And those of Fraham, like those of Galaw, were very soon masters of these lights which marvelously illuminated the roof of the cave. Forward, brothers! Let us attack the darkness! Page Seventeen. The “Endless Cave” deserved its name. The hunters of Galaw, and the Fraham clan had the impression of sinking into the bowels of the mountain. In this labyrinth with oozing walls they sometimes discover the remains of a daring person who, overcome by darkness, could not go any further! How long did they walk like this? No one would have been able to say it. But their anguish suddenly dissipated. Look! The sun awaits us! A moment later they overlooked a valley. Galaw and his people screamed. The devastated village that they saw was theirs! Women and children wandered between the destroyed huts and around the large toppled totem pole. Page Eighteen. A little after. When the “leazarks” appeared we were able to take refuge on the hill. But these monsters destroyed everything! Gravely, the two leaders observed the totem. Why do the clans constantly fight over the “God of Happiness”? Why not stay united as you were in the cave and under the mountain!? “Fire-Hair” is right! If Galaw admits that the "God-of-Happiness" belongs to everyone, we will bring ours to the valley! Galaw accepts! We will rebuild the village together! And we rebuild it on the hill, where the "Lezarks" never come! The first concern of the reconciled clans was to hoist the great totem to the height. Very soon, solid huts would rise around it. The son of Crao was certain that he knew what prodigious feats "Those-who-walk-upright" were capable of, when they were united in their efforts! Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

SOUL MOUNTAIN. GAO XINGJIAN. Translated from the Chinese by Mabel Lee. Reformatted for machine text by PukeOnaPlate2024. One. The old bus is a city reject. After shaking in it for twelve hours on the potholed highway since early morning, you arrive in this mountain county town in the South. In the bus station, which is littered with ice-block wrappers and sugar cane scraps, you stand with your backpack and a bag and look around for a while. People are getting off the bus or walking past, men humping sacks and women carrying babies. A crowd of youths, unhampered by sacks or baskets, have their hands free. They take sunflower seeds out of their pockets, toss them one at a time into their mouths and spit out the shells. With a loud crack the kernels are expertly eaten. To be leisurely and carefree is endemic to the place. They are locals and life has made them like this, they have been here for many generations and you wouldn’t need to go looking anywhere else for them. The earliest to leave the place travelled by river in black canopy boats and overland in hired carts, or by foot if they didn’t have the money. Of course at that time there were no buses and no bus stations. Nowadays, as long as they are still able to travel, they flock back home, even from the other side of the Pacific, arriving in cars or big air-conditioned coaches. The rich, the famous and the nothing in particular all hurry back because they are getting old. After all, who doesn’t love the home of their ancestors? They don’t intend to stay so they walk around looking relaxed, talking and laughing loudly, and effusing fondness and affection for the place. When friends meet they don’t just give a nod or a handshake in the meaningless ritual of city people, but rather they shout the person’s name or thump him on the back. Hugging is also common, but not for women. By the cement trough where the buses are washed, two young women hold hands as they chat. The women here have lovely voices and you can’t help taking a second look. The one with her back to you is wearing an indigo-print headscarf. This type of scarf, and how it’s tied, dates back many generations but is seldom seen these days. You find yourself walking towards them. The scarf is knotted under her chin and the two ends point up. She has a beautiful face. Her features are delicate, so is her slim body. You pass close by them. They have been holding hands all this time, both have red coarse hands and strong fingers. Both are probably recent brides back seeing relatives and friends, or visiting parents. Here, the word xifu means one’s own daughter-in-law and using it like rustic Northerners to refer to any young married woman will immediately incur angry abuse. On the other hand, a married woman calls her own husband laogong, yet your laogong and my laogong are both used. People here speak with a unique intonation even though they are descendants of the same legendary emperor and are of the same culture and race. You can’t explain why you’re here. It happened that you were on a train and this person mentioned a place called Lingshan. He was sitting opposite and your cup was next to his. As the train moved, the lids on the cups clattered against one another. If the lids kept on clattering or clattered and then stopped, that would have been the end of it. However, whenever you and he were about to separate the cups, the clattering would stop, and as soon as you and he looked away the clattering would start again. He and you reached out, but again the clattering stopped. The two of you laughed at the same instant, put the cups well apart, and started a conversation. You asked him where he was going. “Lingshan.” “What?” “Lingshan, ling meaning spirit or soul, and shan meaning mountain.” You’d been to lots of places, visited lots of famous mountains, but had never heard of this place. Your friend opposite had closed his eyes and was dozing. Like anyone else, you couldn’t help being curious and naturally wanted to know which famous places you’d missed on your travels. Also, you liked doing things properly and it was annoying that there was a place you’ve never even heard of. You asked him about the location of Lingshan. “At the source of the You River,” he said, opening his eyes. You didn’t know this You River either, but was embarrassed about asking and gave an ambiguous nod which could have meant either “I see, thanks” or “Oh, I know the place”. This satisfied your desire for superiority, but not your curiosity. After a while you asked how to get there and the route up the mountain. “Take the train to Wuyizhen, then go upstream by boat on the You River.” “What’s there? Scenery? Temples? Historic sites?” you asked, trying to be casual. “It’s all virgin wilderness.” “Ancient forests?” “Of course, but not just ancient forests.” “What about Wild Men?” you said, joking. He laughed without any sarcasm, and didn’t seem to be making fun of himself which intrigued you even more. You had to find out more about him. “Are you an ecologist? A biologist? An anthropologist? An archaeologist?” He shook his head each time then said, “I’m more interested in living people.” “So you’re doing research on folk customs? You’re a sociologist? An ethnographer? An ethnologist? A journalist, perhaps? An adventurer?” “I’m an amateur in all of these.” The two of you started laughing. “I’m an expert amateur in all of these!” The laughing made you and him cheerful. He lit a cigarette and couldn’t stop talking as he told you about the wonders of Lingshan. Afterwards, at your request, he tore up his empty cigarette box and drew a map of the route up Lingshan. In the North it is already late autumn but the summer heat hasn’t completely subsided. Before sunset, it is still quite hot in the sun and sweat starts running down your back. You leave the station to have a look around. There’s nothing nearby except for the little inn across the road. It’s an old-style two-storey building with a wooden shopfront. Upstairs the floorboards creak badly but worse still is the grime on the pillow and sleeping mat. If you wanted to have a wash, you’d have to wait till it was dark to strip off and pour water over yourself in the damp and narrow courtyard. This is a stopover for the village peddlers and craftsmen. It’s well before dark, so there’s plenty of time to find somewhere clean. You walk down the road looking around the little town, hoping to find some indication, a billboard or a poster, or just the name “Lingshan” to tell you you’re on the right track and haven’t been tricked into making this long excursion. You look everywhere but don’t find anything. There were no tourists like you amongst the other passengers who got off the bus. Of course you’re not that sort of tourist, it’s just what you’re wearing: strong sensible sports shoes and a backpack with shoulder straps, no-one else is dressed like you. But this isn’t one of the tourist spots frequented by newlyweds and retirees. Those places have been transformed by tourism, coaches are parked everywhere and tourist maps are on sale. Tourist hats, tourist T-shirts, tourist singlets and tourist handkerchiefs printed with the name of the place are in all the little shops and stalls, and the name of the place is used in the trade names of all the “foreign exchange currency only” hotels for foreigners, the “locals with references only” hostels and sanatoriums, and of course the small private hotels competing for customers. You haven’t come to enjoy yourself in one of those places on the sunny side of a mountain where people congregate just to look at and jostle one another and to add to the litter of melon rind, fruit peel, soft drink bottles, cans, cartons, sandwich wrappings and cigarette butts. Sooner or later this place will also boom but you’re here before they put up the gaudy pavilions and terraces, before the reporters come with their cameras and before the celebrities come to put up plaques with their calligraphy. You can’t help feeling rather pleased with yourself, and yet you’re anxious. There’s no sign of anything here for tourists, have you made a blunder? You’re only going by the map on the cigarette box in your shirt pocket, what if the expert amateur you met on the train had only heard about the place on his travels? How do you know he wasn’t just making it all up? You’ve never seen the place mentioned in travel accounts and it’s not listed in the most up-to-date travel guides. Of course, it isn’t hard to find places like Lingtai, Lingqiu, Lingyan and even Lingshan on provincial maps and you know very well that in the histories and classics, Lingshan appears in works dating back to the ancient shamanistic work Classic of the Mountains and Seas and the old geographical gazetteer Annotated Water Classic. It was also at Lingshan that Buddha enlightened the Venerable Mahakashyapa. You’re not stupid, so just use your brains, first find this place Wuyizhen on the cigarette box, for this is how you’ll get to Lingshan. You return to the bus station and go into the waiting room. The busiest place in this small town is now deserted. The ticket window and the parcel window are boarded up from the inside so knocking is useless. There’s no-one to ask so you can only go through the lists of stops above the ticket window: Zhang Village, Sandy Flat, Cement Factory, Old Hut, Golden Horse, Good Harvest, Flood Waters, Dragon Bay, Peach Blossom Hollow, the names keep getting better, but the place you want isn’t there. This is just a small town but there are several routes and quite a few buses go through. The busiest route, with five or six buses a day, is to Cement Factory but that’s definitely not a tourist route. The route with the fewest buses, one a day, is sure to go to the furthest destination and it turns out that Wuyizhen is the last stop. There’s nothing special about the name, it’s just like any other place name and there’s nothing magical about it. Still, you seem to have found one end of a hopeless tangle and while you’re not ecstatic, you’re certainly relieved. You’ll need to buy a ticket in the morning an hour before departure and you know from experience that with mountain buses like this, which run once a day, just to get on will be a fight. Unless you’re prepared to do battle, you’ll just have to queue up early. But, right now, you’ve lots of time, although your backpack’s a nuisance. As you amble along the road timber trucks go by noisily sounding their horns. In the town the noise worsens as trucks, some with trailers, blast their horns and conductors hang out of windows loudly banging the sides of the buses to hasten the pedestrians off the road. The old buildings on both sides stand flush with the road and all have wooden shopfronts. The downstairs is for business and upstairs there is washing hung out to dry, nappies, bras, underpants with patched crotches, floral-print bedspreads, like flags of all the nations, flaping in the noise and dust of the traffic. The concrete telegraph poles along the street are pasted at eye level with all sorts of posters. One for curing body odour catches your attention. This is not because you’ve got body odour but because of the fancy language and the words in brackets after “body odour”. Body odour, known also as scent of the immortals, is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell. It often affects social relationships and can delay life’s major event: marriage. It disadvantages young men and women at job interviews or when they try to enlist, therefore inflicting much suffering and anguish. By using a new total treatment, we can instantly eradicate the odour with a rate of up to 97.53 percent success. For joy in life and future happiness, we welcome you to come and rid yourself of it. After that you come to a stone bridge: no body odour here, just a cool, refreshing breeze. The bridge spanning the broad river has a bitumen surface but the carved monkeys on the worn stone posts testify to its long history. You lean on the concrete railing and survey the township alongside the bridge. On both banks, black rooftops overlapping like fishscales stretch endlessly into the distance. The valley opens out between two mountains where the upper areas of gold paddy fields are inlaid with clusters of green bamboos. The river is blue and clear as it trickles over the sandy shores, but close to the granite pylons dividing the current it becomes inky green and deep. Just past the hump of the bridge the rushing water churns loudly and white foam surfaces from whirlpools. The ten-metre-high stone embankment is stained with water levels, the new greyish-yellow lines were probably left by the recent summer floods. Can this be the You River? And does it flow down from Lingshan? The sun is about to set. The bright orange disc is infused with light but there’s no glare. You gaze into the distance at the hazy layers of jagged peaks where the two sides of the valley join. This ominous black image nibbles at the lower edges of the glowing sun which seems to be revolving. The sun turns a dark red, gentler, and projects brilliant gold reflections onto the entire bend of the river: the dark blue of the water fusing with the dazzling sunlight throbs and pulsates. As the red sphere seats itself in the valley it becomes serene, awesomely beautiful, and there are sounds. You hear them, elusive, distinctly reverberating from deep in your heart and radiating outwards until the sun seems to prop itself up on its toes, stumble, then sink into the black shadows of the mountains, scattering glowing colours throughout the sky. An evening wind blows noisily by your ears and cars drive past, as usual sounding their deafening horns. You cross the bridge and see there a new dedication stone with engraved characters painted in red: “Yongning Bridge. Built in the third year of the Kaiyuan reign period of the Song Dynasty and repaired in 1962. This stone was laid in 1983.” It no doubt marks the beginning of the tourist industry here. Two food stalls stand at the end of the bridge. In the one on the left you eat a bowl of bean curd, the smooth and tasty kind with all the right ingredients. Hawkers used to sell it in the streets and lanes but it completely disappeared for quite some years and has recently been revived as family enterprises. In the stall on the right you eat two sesame-coated shallot pancakes, straight off the stove and piping-hot. Then at one of the stalls, you can’t remember which, you eat a bowl of sweet yuanxiao dumplings broiled in rice wine. They are the size of large pearls. Of course, you’re not as academic about food as Mister Ma the Second who toured West Lake, but you do have a hefty appetite nevertheless. You savour this food of your ancestors and listen to customers chatting with the proprietors. They’re mostly locals and all know one another. You try using the mellifluous local accent to be friendly, you want to be one of them. You’ve lived in the city for a long time and need to feel that you have a hometown. You want a hometown so that you’ll be able to return to your childhood to recollect long lost memories. On this side of the bridge you eventually find an inn on an old cobblestone street. The wooden floors have been mopped and it’s clean enough. You are given a small single room which has a plank bed covered with a bamboo mat. The cotton blanket is a suspicious grey, either it hasn’t been washed properly or that’s the original colour. You throw aside the greasy pillow from under the bamboo mat and luckily it’s hot so you can do without the bedding. What you need right now is to off-load your luggage which has become quite heavy, wash off the dust and sweat, strip, and stretch yourself out on the bed. There’s shouting and yelling next door. They’re gambling and you can hear them picking up and throwing down the cards. A timber partition separates you and, through the holes poked into the paper covering the cracks, you make out the blurred figures of some bare chested men. You’re not so tired that you can drop off to sleep just like that. You tap on the wall and instantly there’s loud shouting next door. They’re not shouting at you but amongst themselves, there are always winners and losers and it sounds as though the loser is trying to get out of paying. They’re openly gambling in the inn despite the public security office notice on the wall prohibiting gambling and prostitution. You decide to see if the law works. You put on some clothes, go down the corridor and knock on the half-closed door. Your knocking makes no difference, they keep shouting and yelling inside and nobody takes any notice. So you push open the door and go in. The four men sitting around the bed in the middle of the room all turn to look at you. But it’s you and not they who gets a rude shock. The men all have bits of paper stuck on their faces, on their foreheads, lips, noses and cheeks, and they look ugly and ridiculous. They aren’t laughing and are glaring at you. You’ve butted in and they’re clearly annoyed. “Oh, you’re playing cards,” you say, putting on an apologetic look. They go on playing. The long paper cards have red and black markings like mahjong and there’s a Gate of Heaven and a Prison of Hell. The winner penalizes the loser by tearing off a strip of newspaper and sticking it on a designated spot. Whether this is a prank, a way of letting off steam, or a tally, is something agreed upon by the gamblers and there is no way for outsiders to know what it’s all about. You beat a retreat, go back to your room, lie down again, and see a thick mass of black specks around the light globe. Millions of mosquitoes are waiting for the light to go out so that they can come down and feast on your blood. You quickly let down the net and are enclosed in a narrow conical space, at the top of which is a bamboo hoop. It’s been a long time since you’ve slept under a hoop like this, and you’ve long since passed the age of being able to stare at the hoop to lose yourself in reverie. Today, you can’t know what traumas tomorrow will bring. You’ve learnt through experience everything you need to know. What else are you looking for? When a man gets to middle age shouldn’t he look for a peaceful and stable existence, find a not-too-demanding sort of a job, stay in a mediocre position, become a husband and a father, set up a comfortable home, put money in the bank and add to it every month so there’ll be something for old age and a little left over for the next generation? Two. It is in the Qiang region halfway up Qionglai Mountain, in the border areas of the Qinghai-Tibetan highlands and the Sichuan basin, that I witness a vestige of early human civilization, the worship of fire. Fire, the bringer of civilization, has been worshipped by the early ancestors of human beings everywhere. It is sacred. The old man is sitting in front of the fire drinking liquor from a bowl. Before each sip he puts a finger into it and flicks some on the charcoals which splutter noisily and send out blue sparks. It is only then that I perceive that I too am real. “That’s for the God of the Cooking Stove, it’s thanks to him that we can eat and drink,” he says. The dancing light of the fire shines on his thin cheeks, the high bridge of his nose, and his cheekbones. He tells me he is of the Qiang nationality and that he’s from Gengda village down the mountain. I can’t ask straight out about demons and spirits, so I tell him I’m here to do some research on the folk songs of the mountain. Do traditional song masters and dancers still exist here? He says he’s one of them. The men and women all used to form a circle around the fire and dance right through to daybreak, but later on it was banned. “Why?” I know quite well but I ask. I’m being dishonest again. “It was the Cultural Revolution. They said the songs were dirty so we turned to singing Sayings of Mao Zedong songs instead.” “And what about after that?” I persist in asking. This is becoming a habit. “No-one sings those anymore. People are doing the dances again but not many of the young people can do them, I’m teaching the dances to some of them.” I ask him for a demonstration. Without any hesitation, he instantly gets to his feet and proceeds to dance and sing. His voice is low and rich, he’s got a good voice. I’m sure he’s Qiang even if the police in charge of the population register insist that he isn’t. They think anyone claiming to be Tibetan or Qiang is trying to evade birth restrictions so they can have more children. He sings song after song. He says he’s a fun-loving person, and I believe him. When he finished up as village head, he went back to being one of the mountain people, an old mountain man who likes good fun, though unfortunately he is past the age for romance. He also knows incantations, the kind hunters employ when they go into the mountains. They are called mountain blackmagic or hexes and he has no qualms about using them. He really believes they can drive wild animals into pits or get them to step into snares. They aren’t used only on animals, they’re also used against other human beings for revenge. A victim of mountain blackmagic won’t be able to find his way out of the mountains. They are like the “demon walls” I heard about as a child: when a person has been travelling for some time at night in the mountains, a wall, a cliff or a deep river appears right in front of him, so that he can’t go any further. If the spell isn’t broken the person’s feet don’t move forward and even if he keeps walking, he stays exactly where he started off. Only at daybreak does he discover that he has been going around in circles. That’s not so bad, the worst is when a person is led into a blind alley, that means death. He intones strings of incantations. It’s not slow and relaxed like when he is singing, but just nan-nan-na na to a quick beat. I can’t understand it at all but I can feel the mystical pull of the words and a demonic, powerful atmosphere instantly permeates the room, the inside of which is black from smoke. The glow of the flames licking the iron pot of mutton stew makes his eyes glint. This is all starkly real. While you search for the route to Lingshan, I wander along the Yangtze River looking for this sort of reality. I had just gone through a crisis and then, on top of that, a doctor wrongly diagnosed me with lung cancer. Death was playing a joke on me but now that I’ve escaped the demon wall, I am secretly rejoicing. Life for me once again has a wonderful freshness. I should have left those contaminated surroundings long ago and returned to nature to look for this authentic life. In those contaminated surroundings I was taught that life was the source of literature, that literature had to be faithful to life, faithful to real life. My mistake was that I had alienated myself from life and ended up turning my back on real life. Life is not the same as manifestations of life. Real life, or in other words the basic substance of life, should be the former and not the latter. I had gone against real life because I was simply stringing together life’s manifestations, so of course I wasn’t able to accurately portray life and in the end only succeeded in distorting reality. I don’t know whether I’m now on the right track but in any case I’ve extricated myself from the bustling literary world and have also escaped from my smoke-filled room. The books piled everywhere in that room were oppressive and stifling. They expounded all sorts of truths, historical truths to truths on how to be human. I couldn’t see the point of so many truths but still got enmeshed in the net of those truths and was struggling hopelessly, like an insect caught in a spider’s web. Fortunately, the doctor who gave the wrong diagnosis saved my life. He was quite frank and got me to compare the two chest X-rays taken on two separate occasions, a blurry shadow on the left lobe of the lung had spread along the second rib to the wall of the windpipe. It wouldn’t help even to have the whole of the left lobe removed. The outcome was obvious. My father had died of lung cancer. He died within three months of it being discovered and it was this doctor who had correctly diagnosed it. I had faith in his medical expertise and he had faith in science. The chest X-rays taken at two different hospitals were identical, there was no possibility of a technical mistake. He also wrote an authorization for a sectional X-ray, the appointment was in two weeks’ time. This was nothing to get worried about, it was just to determine the extent of the tumor. My father had this done before he died. The outcome would be the same whether or not I had the X ray, it was nothing special. That I in fact would slip through the fingers of Death can only be put down to good luck. I believe in science but I also believe in fate. I once saw a four-inch length of wood which had been collected in the Qiang region by an anthropologist during the 1930s. It was a carved statue of a person doing a handstand. The head had ink markings for the eyes, nose and mouth, and the word “longevity” had been written on the body. It was called “Wuchang Upside Down” and there was something oddly mischievous about it. I ask the Qiang retired village head whether such talismans are still around. He tells me these are called “old root”. This wooden idol has to accompany the newborn from birth to death. At death it accompanies the corpse from the house and after the burial it is placed in the wilderness to allow the spirit to return to nature. I ask him if he can get me one so that I can carry it on me. He laughs and says these are what hunters tuck into their shirts to ward off evil spirits, they wouldn’t be of any use to someone like me. “Is there an old hunter who knows about this sort of magic and can take me hunting with him?” I ask. “Grandpa Stone would be the best,” he says after thinking about it. “How can I find him?” I ask right away. “He’s in Grandpa Stone’s Hut.” “Where’s this Grandpa Stone’s Hut?” “Go another twenty li on to Silver Mine Gully then follow the creek right up to the end. There you’ll find a stone hut.” “Is that the name of the place or do you mean the hut of Grandpa Stone?” He says it’s the name of the place, that there’s in fact a stone hut, and that Grandpa Stone lives there. “Can you take me to him?” I ask. “He’s dead. He lay down on his bed and died in his sleep. He was too old, he lived to well over ninety, some even say well over a hundred. In any case, nobody’s sure about his age.” “Are any of his descendants still alive?” “In my grandfather’s generation and for as long as I can remember, he was always on his own.” “Without a wife?” “He lived on his own in Silver Mine Gully. He lived high up the gully, in the solitary hut, alone. Oh, and that rifle of his is still hanging on the wall of the hut.” I ask him what he’s trying to tell me. He says Grandpa Stone was a great hunter, a hunter who was an expert in the magical arts. There are no hunters like that these days. Everyone knows that his rifle is hanging in the hut, that it never misses its target, but nobody dares to go and take it. “Why?” I’m even more puzzled. “The route into Silver Mine Gully is cut.” “There’s no way through?” “Not anymore. Earlier on people used to mine silver there, a firm from Chengdu hired a team of workers and they began mining. Later on, after the mine was looted, everyone just left, and the plank roads they had laid either broke up or rotted.” “When did all this happen?” “When my grandfather was still alive, more than fifty years ago.” That would be about right, after all he’s already retired and has become history, real history. “So since then nobody’s ever gone there?” I become even more intrigued. “Hard to say, anyway it’s hard to get there.” “And the hut has rotted?” “Stone collapses, how can it rot?” “I was talking about the ridgepole.” “Oh, quite right.” He doesn’t want to take me there, nor does he want to find a hunter for me, so that’s why he’s leading me on like this, I think. “Then how do you know the rifle’s still hanging on the wall?” I ask, regardless. “That’s what everyone says, someone must’ve seen it. They all say that Grandpa Stone is incredible, his corpse hasn’t rotted and wild animals don’t dare to go near. He just lies there all stiff and emaciated, and his rifle is hanging there on the wall.” “Impossible,” I declare. “With the high humidity up here in the mountain, the corpse would have rotted and the rifle would have turned into a pile of rust.” “I don’t know. Anyway, people have been saying this for years.” He refuses to give in and sticks to his story. The light of the fire dances in his eyes and I seem to detect a cunning streak in them. “And you’ve never seen him?” I won’t let him off. “People who have seen him say that he seems to be asleep, that he’s emaciated, and that the rifle is hanging there on the wall above his head,” he says, unruffled. “He knew black magic. It’s not just that people don’t dare go there to steal his rifle, even animals don’t dare to go near.” The hunter is already myth. To talk about a mixture of history and legend is how folk stories are born. Reality exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience. However, once related, even personal experience becomes a narrative. Reality can’t be verified and doesn’t need to be, that can be left for the “reality-of-life” experts to debate. What is important is life. Reality is simply that I am sitting by the fire in this room which is black with grime and smoke and that I see the light of the fire dancing in his eyes. Reality is myself, reality is only the perception of this instant and it can’t be related to another person. All that needs to be said is that outside, a mist is enclosing the green-blue mountain in a haze and your heart is reverberating with the rushing water of a swift-flowing stream. Three. So you arrive in Wuyizhen, on a long and narrow street inlaid with black cobblestones, and walking along this cobblestone street with its deep single-wheel rut, you suddenly enter your childhood, you seem to have spent your childhood in an old mountain town like this. The one-wheel handcarts can no longer be seen and instead of the creak of jujube axles greased with bean oil, the streets are filled with the din of bicycle bells. Cyclists here need the skills of an acrobat. With heavy hessian bags slung across the saddle, they cause loud swearing as they weave through people with carrying poles or pulling wooden carts and the hawkers under the awnings. It is loud, colorful swearing which mingles with the general din of the hawkers’ calls, bargaining, joking and laughing. You breathe in the smell of soya sauce pickles, boiled pork, raw hide, pine wood, dried rice stalks and lime as your eyes busily take in the narrow shopfronts lining the street with products of the South. There are soya bean shops, oil shops, rice shops, Chinese and Western medicine shops, silk and cotton shops, shoe shops, tea shops, butcher stalls, tailor shops, and shops selling stoves, rope, pottery, incense, candles and paper money. The shops, squashed up one against the other, are virtually unchanged from Qing Dynasty times. The smashed signboard of the Ever Prosperous Restaurant has been repaired and one of the flat-bottomed pans used for frying its speciality guotie dumplings is beaten like a gong to announce it is back in business. The wine banner is again hanging from the upstairs window of the First Class Delicacies Restaurant. The most imposing structure is the state-run department store, a newly renovated three-storey concrete building. A single display window is the size of one of the old shops but the insides of the glass windows look as if they have never been cleaned. The photographer’s shop is eye-catching: photos of women in coquettish poses and wearing awful dresses are on display. They are all local beauties and not movie poster film stars from some place at the other end of the earth. This place really produces good looking women, every one of them is stunning. They have their beautiful cheeks cupped in their hands and their eyes have alluring looks. They’ve been carefully coached by the photographer but they are garishly dressed. Enlargements and color prints are available and there’s a sign saying photos can be collected in twenty days, apparently they have to be developed in the city. Had fate not otherwise decreed, you could have been born in this town, grown up, and married here. You would have married a beautiful woman like one of these, who would long since have borne you sons and daughters. At this point, you smile and quickly move off in case people imagine you’ve taken a fancy to one of the women and start getting the wrong idea. And yet it is you who are carried away by your imagination. As you look up at the balconies above the shops with their curtained windows and pots of miniature trees and flowers, you can’t help wondering about the people who live here. There’s a big apartment with an iron padlock on the door, the pillars are now crooked but the carved eaves and railings which have fallen into disrepair indicate how imposing the place was at one time. The fates of its owners and their descendants fill you with curiosity. The shop at the side sells Hong Kong style dresses and jeans, and the stockings on show have a Western woman showing off her legs on the packaging. At the front door there’s a gold-plated sign, “Ever New Technical Development Company”, but it’s not clear what sort of technical development it is. Further on is a shop with heaps of unprocessed lime, and further on still is probably a miller’s and next to that a vacant allotment where rice noodles are drying on wires strung between posts. You turn back and go into a small lane next to the hot water urn of the tea stall, then turning a corner you are again lost in memories. Within a half-closed door is a damp courtyard, overgrown with weeds, desolate and lonely, with piles of rubble in the corners. You recall the back courtyard with the crumbling wall of your childhood home. You were afraid but it had a fascination for you, for the fox fairies of story books came from there. After school, without fail, you would go off alone with some trepidation to have a look. You never saw a fox fairy but that feeling of mystery always lingered in your childhood memories. There is an old stone bench riddled with cracks and a well which is probably dry. The mid-autumn wind blows through the dry yellow weeds in the rubble and the sun is very bright. These homes with their courtyard doors shut tight all have their histories which are all like ancient stories. In winter, the north wind is howling through the lane, you are wearing new warm padded cloth shoes and are with other children stamping your feet by the wall. You can remember the words of the ditty: In moonlight thick as soup I ride out to burn incense For Luo Dajie who burnt to death For Dou Sanniang who died in a rage Sanniang picked beans But the pods were empty She married Master Ji But Master Ji was short So she married a crab The crab crossed a ditch Trod on an eel The eel complained It complained to a monk The monk said a prayer A prayer to Guanyin So Guanyin pissed The piss hit my son His belly hurt So I got an exorcist to dance. The dance didn’t work But still cost heaps of money Pale withered weeds and lush green new sprouts in the roof-tiles quiver in the wind. How long is it since you’ve seen grass growing in roof-tiles? Your bare feet patter on the black cobblestone street with its deep single-wheel rut, you’ve run out of your childhood back into the present. The bare feet, the dirty black feet, patter right there in front of your eyes. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never run barefoot, what is crucial is this image in your mind. After a while you find your way out of the little lanes and make it back on the highway. This is where the bus from the county town turns around to go back. There’s a bus station by the road with a ticket window and some benches inside, this is where you got off the bus earlier on. Diagonally across the road is an inn, a row of single-storey rooms, and the whitewashed brick wall has a sign “Good Rooms Within”. It looks clean and you have to find somewhere to stay, so you go in. An old attendant is sweeping the corridor and you ask her if there’s a room. She says yes. You ask her how much further is it to Lingshan. She gives you a cold look, this is a state-run inn, she’s on a monthly state award wage and isn’t generous with words. “Number two,” she says pointing with the broom handle to a room with the door open. You take your luggage in and notice there are two beds. On one there’s someone lying on his back, one leg crossed over the other, with a copy of Unofficial Record of the Flying Fox in his hands. The title is written on the brown paper cover of the book, apparently on loan from a bookstall. You greet him and he puts down the book to give a friendly nod. “Hello.” “Staying here?” “Yes.” “Have a cigarette.” He tosses you a cigarette. “Thanks.” You sit on the empty bed opposite. It happens that he wants to chat. “How long have you been here?” “Ten or so days.” He sits up and lights himself a cigarette. “Here buying stock?” you ask, taking a guess. “I’m here for timber.” “Is it easy getting timber here?” “Have you got a quota?” he asks instead, starting to become interested. “What quota?” “A state-plan quota, of course.” “No” “Then it’s not easy to get.” He lies down again. “Is there a timber shortage even in this forest region?” “There’s timber around but prices are different.” He can’t be bothered, he can tell you’re not in the game. “Are you waiting for cheaper prices?” “Yes,” he responds indifferently, taking up his book again to read. “You stock buyers really get to know about a lot of things.” You have to flatter him so that you can ask him some questions. “Not really.” He becomes modest. “The place Lingshan, do you know how to get there?” He doesn’t reply so you can only say you’ve come to do some sightseeing and is there anywhere worth seeing. “There’s a pavilion by the river. If you sit there you’ll get a good view of the other side of the river.” “Enjoy your rest!” you say for want of something to say. You leave your bags, find the attendant to register and set off. The wharf is at the end of the highway. The steps, made of long slabs of rock, go down steeply for more than ten metres and moored there are several black canopy boats with their bamboo poles up. The river isn’t wide but the riverbed is, clearly it’s not the rainy season. There is a boat on the opposite bank and people are getting on and getting off. The people on the stone steps are all waiting for it to come across. Up from the wharf, on the embankment, there is a pavilion with upturned eaves and curling corners. The outside is lined with empty baskets and resting inside are farmers from the other side who were here for the market and have sold all of their goods. They are talking loudly and it sounds like the language used in the short stories of the Song Dynasty. The pavilion has been painted recently and under the eaves the dragon and phoenix design has been repainted and the two principal columns at the front are inscribed with the couplet: Sitting at rest know not to discuss the shortcomings of other people Setting out on a journey fully appreciate the beauty of the dragon river You go around to look at the two columns at the back. These words are written there: On departing do not forget to heed the duckweed waters Turn back to gaze in wonder at Lingshan amongst the phoenixes. You’re intrigued. The boat is probably about to arrive as the people resting and cooling off have got up and are rushing to shoulder their carrying poles. Only an old man is left sitting in the pavilion. “Venerable elder, may I ask if these couplets.” “Are you asking about the couplets on the principal columns?” the old man corrects me. “Yes, venerable master, might I ask who wrote the couplets on the principal columns?” you say with added reverence. “The scholar Mister Chen Xianning!” His mouth opens wide, revealing sparse black teeth, as he enunciates each of the words with great precision. “I don’t know of him.” You’d best be frank about your ignorance. “At which university does this gentleman teach?” “People like you wouldn’t know, of course. He lived more than a thousand years ago.” The old man is contemptuous. “Please don’t make fun of me, venerable elder,” you say, trying to stop him ridiculing you. “You don’t need glasses, can’t you see?” he says pointing up to the beam at the top of the columns. You look up and see on the beam which hasn’t been repainted, these words written in vermilion: Erected during the Great Song Dynasty in the first month of spring in the tenth year of the Shaoxing reign period and repaired during the Great Qing Dynasty on the twenty-ninth day of the third month of the nineteenth year of the Qianlong reign period. Four. I set out from the hostel of the nature reserve and go back to the house of the Qiang retired village head. A big padlock is hanging on his door. This is the third time I’ve been back but again he’s not there. It seems that this door which can lead me into that mystical world has closed for me. I wander on in fine drizzling rain. It’s been a long time since I have wandered about in this sort of misty rain. I pass by the Sleeping Dragon Village Hospital, it looks deserted. The forest is quiet but there is always a stream somewhere not too far away, for I can hear the sound of trickling water. It’s been ages since I have had such freedom, I don’t have to think about anything and I let my thoughts ramble. There’s no one on the highway, and no vehicles are in sight. As far as the eye can see it is a luxuriant green. It is the middle of spring. The big deserted compound on the side of the road is probably the headquarters of the bandit chief Song Guotai mentioned by the reserve warden last night. Forty years ago, a single mountain road for horse caravans was the only access to this place. To the north it crossed the 5000-metre-high Balang Mountains into the Qinghai- Tibetan highlands and to the south it went through the Min River valley into the Sichuan basin. The opium smugglers from the South and the salt smugglers from the North all obediently put down money here to buy passage through. This was called showing proper respect. If there was a fuss and proper respect wasn’t shown, it would be a case of arriving and not returning. They would all be sent to meet the King of Hell. It is an old timber compound. The two big heavy wooden gates are wide open and inside, surrounded on three sides by two-storey buildings, is an overgrown courtyard big enough for a caravan of thirty or forty horses. Probably in those days, as soon as the gates were closed, the eaved balconies with their wooden railings would be thick with armed bandits so that caravans thinking of stopping the night would be trapped like turtles in a jar. Even if a shoot-out took place there wouldn’t have been anywhere in the courtyard to escape the bullets. There are two sets of stairs in the courtyard. I go up. The floorboards creak noisily and I deliberately tread heavily to show my presence. However the upstairs is deserted. One after another I push open the doors to empty rooms smelling of dust and mildew. Only a dirty grey towel hanging on a wire and an old worn shoe show that the place has been lived in, but probably some years ago. When the reserve was established the supply and marketing cooperative, local produce purchasing depot, grain and oil depot, veterinary clinic as well as the village administrative office and the personnel were all relocated in the narrow hundred metres of street built by the reserve administration where there is not a trace of Song Guotai’s hundred or so men and their hundred or so rifles once housed in this compound. In those times they would lie on rush mats smoking opium and fondling their women. These women, who had been abducted, had to cook for them in the daytime and sleep in turn with them at night. At times, either because the loot wasn’t shared equally or because of a woman, fights would break out and wild rioting probably took place on the floors of this very building. “Only the bandit chief Song Guotai could keep them under control. This fellow was ruthless and cruel, and renowned for his cunning.” The warden of the reserve does political work and he is eloquent and convincing. He says his lectures to university students here for practical work range from protection of the giant panda to patriotism and that his lectures can reduce the women students to tears. He says that amongst the women the bandits abducted there was even a soldier of the Red Army. In 1936, during the Long March, when a regiment of the Red Army was passing through the Mao’ergai grasslands, one of the battalions was attacked by bandits. The ten or so girls of the laundry detachment were abducted and raped. The youngest was seventeen or eighteen and was the only one to survive. She was passed around several of the bandits and eventually an old Qiang man purchased her to be his wife. She lives in a nearby mountain flatland and can still recite the name of her battalion, regiment and company, as well as the name of her commanding officer who is now an important official. He’s quite excited and says of course he can’t talk about all these things to the students, then goes back to talking about the bandit chief Song Guotai. This Song Guotai started out as a junior assistant, he says, for an opium merchant. When the merchant was killed by Big Brother Chen, the bandit chief who had taken over the district, he threw in his lot with the new boss. By wheeling and dealing he soon became Big Brother’s confidante and had access to the small courtyard where Big Brother lived at the back of the compound. The small courtyard was later blown up by the Liberation Army in a mortar attack and is now a mass of trees and shrubs. But in those years it was really a Little Chongqing, a replica of the wartime capital, where Big Brother Chen and his harem debauched themselves on sex and liquor. The only man allowed to wait on him was Song Guotai. A caravan arrived from Ma’erkang full of bandits who had been eying this strip of territory where all you had to do was to sit there waiting for the loot to come to you. A fierce battle raged for two days with deaths and injuries to both sides, but before any clear victory or defeat, they held peace negotiations and sealed an agreement in blood. The gates were opened and the other party invited inside. Upstairs and downstairs two lots of bandits joined in finger-guessing games and drinking liquor. Actually it was Big Brother’s plan to get the other side drunk so that he could deal with them swiftly. He got his mistresses to flit about from table to table with their breasts exposed. It wasn’t just the other bandits, who of either side could resist? Everyone was rotten drunk. Only the two bandit chiefs were still sitting upright at the table. As pre-arranged, Big Brother snapped his fingers loudly and Song Guotai came to pour more liquor. In one swift action, faster than it takes to tell this, he snatched the rival bandit chief ’s machine gun from the table and one bullet each sent the pair sprawling, Big Brother included. Then he asked: Anyone who doesn’t want to surrender? The bandits looked at one another, not one dared to utter so much as half a murmur of dissent. Song Guotai thereupon moved into Big Brother’s little courtyard and all the mistresses came into his possession. He tells all this with great drama, he isn’t boasting when he says he has the women students in tears. He goes on to say that in 1950 they came into the mountains to exterminate the bandits. The little courtyard was surrounded by two companies of soldiers. At daybreak they shouted to the bandits to put down their weapons, change their wicked ways and reform, and warned that there was a blockade of several machine guns at the main gate so no-one should try to escape. It’s as if he’d taken part in the battle himself. “What happened then?” I ask. “At first they stubbornly resisted so the little courtyard was bombarded with mortar. The surviving bandits threw down their guns and came out to surrender. Song Guotai was not amongst them. When a search was made of the little courtyard they only found a few weeping women huddled together. Everyone said the house had a secret tunnel which went up into the mountain but it was never found, and he has never shown up anywhere. It’s over forty years now, some say he’s still alive and others say he’s dead but there’s no real evidence, only theories.” He sits back into the round cane chair and tapping his fingers on the edge where his hands are resting, he begins to analyze these theories. “There are three theories about what happened to him. One is that after escaping he fled to another area, changed his name, and settled somewhere to work in the fields as a peasant. The second is that he could have been killed in the gun fight but the bandits wouldn’t admit to it. Bandits have their own set of rules, they may be embroiled in a terrible fight amongst themselves but they won’t divulge anything to an outsider. They have their own ethics, a code of bandit chivalry if you like, and yet on the other hand they are cruel and wicked. Bandits have two sides to them. The women had all been abducted but once they came into his lair, they became a part of the gang. They were abused by him and yet kept secrets for him.” He is shaking his head not because he finds it incomprehensible but because he is moved by the complexity of the human world, it seems. “Of course one can’t dismiss the third possibility that he fled onto the mountain, couldn’t get out, and starved to death.” “Do people get lost on the mountain and die there?” I ask. “Of course, and not just the peasants from elsewhere who come to dig for medicinal herbs. There are even local hunters who have died on this mountain.” “Oh?” This is even more intriguing. “Just last year a hunter went up the mountain and didn’t come back for ten or so days. It was only then that his relatives sought out the village authorities, and we were notified. We contacted the forestry police and had them send us tracker dogs. We got them to sniff his clothes and carried out the search by following them. Afterwards we found him caught in a crack in the rocks. He had died there.” “How did he come to be stuck in the crack in the rocks?” “Could’ve been anything, he probably panicked. He was hunting and hunting’s prohibited in the reserve. There’s also the case of a man killing his younger brother.” “How did this happen?” “He mistook his brother for a bear. The brothers had gone into the mountain to lay traps. There’s good money in musk. Laying traps has been modernized, a trap can be made with a small piece of wire pulled out of a steel construction cable and a person can lay several hundred in a day on the mountain. It’s impossible for us to supervise an area of this size. They’re all so greedy, it’s hopeless. The brothers went into the mountain to lay traps and in the process were separated. It would be superstitious to believe what the mountain folk say: according to them the brothers fell foul of black magic. The two of them bumped into each other after going in a circle around the top of the mountain. There was a heavy mist. The elder brother saw his younger brother, mistook him for a bear, and shot him with his rifle. The elder brother had killed the younger brother. He went home during the night and lay his and his brother’s rifles alongside one another by the bamboo gate of the pig pen so that his mother would see them when she got up to feed the pigs first thing in the morning. He didn’t go inside the house but went back up the mountain to where his brother lay dead and slit his own throat.” I leave the empty upstairs and stand for a while in the courtyard big enough for a whole caravan of horses, then head back to the highway. There still is no sign of people or vehicles. I look at the dark green mountain enveloped in a haze of rain and mist on the opposite side. A steep greyish-white logging chute is over there and the vegetation has been totally ravaged. Earlier on, before the highway was put through, both sides of the mountain would have been covered in thickly wooded forest. I am becoming obsessed with getting to the primeval forest at the back of the mountain and find myself drawn to it by some inexplicable force. The light drizzle gets heavier and turns into a thin film which completely enshrouds the ridge, obscuring the mountain and gully even more. There is the rumble of thunder behind the mountain, muffled and indistinct. Suddenly, I realize that the noise of the river below the highway is much louder, there is a perpetual roar as it charges endlessly at great speed from the snowclad mountains to pour into the Min River. It possesses an intimidating and violent energy not found in rivers flowing over flat country. Five. It is by the pavilion that you encounter her. It is an undefinable longing, a vague hope, it is a chance meeting, a wonderful meeting. You come again at dusk to the riverside, the pounding of clothes being washed reverberates from the bottom of the pitted stone steps. She is standing near the pavilion and like you she is looking at the mountain on the other side. You can’t take your eyes off her. She stands out in this small mountain village. Her figure, poise and enigmatic expression can’t be found among the local people. You walk away but she lingers in your mind and when you return to the pavilion she is no longer there. It is already dark and in the pavilion a couple of cigarettes glow from time to time as they are smoked, people are there quietly talking and laughing. You can’t see their faces, but from their voices you guess that there are probably two men and two women. They don’t seem to be locals, who always talk loudly whether they’re flirting or being aggressive. You go up and eavesdrop. It seems they are talking about what they have had to do to get away on this excursion: deceive their parents, lie to the head of the work unit, and think up all sorts of stories. Talking about it is such fun they can’t stop cackling with laughter. You’ve already passed that age and don’t have to be supervised by anyone, still you aren’t having as much fun as they are. They probably arrived in the afternoon, but as you recall there’s only the one morning bus from the county town. Anyway they probably have their own ways and means. She doesn’t seem to be among them and didn’t seem to be as cheerful as this crowd. You leave the pavilion and walk straight down along the river-bank. You no longer need to think about finding your way. There are several dozen houses by the river but only the last one, which sells cigarettes, liquor and toilet paper, has the half door-flap of the shop open. The cobblestone road swerves back towards the town and then there’s a high wall. In the weak yellow streetlight on the right, through the dark doorway, is the village administrative office. The tall buildings and large courtyard with a watchtower must once have been the residence of a rich and powerful family at one time. Further on is a vegetable plot fenced off with broken bricks and opposite is a hospital. Two lanes up is a cinema, built just a few years back, and now showing a martial arts movie. You’ve been around this small town more than once so you don’t need to go to see what time the evening session starts. The lane at the side of the hospital cuts through to the main street and comes out right opposite the big department store. You know all this perfectly, as if you’re an old resident of the town. You could even act as a guide if anyone wanted one, and you desperately need to talk with someone. You didn’t think that after dark there’d be so many people about on this small street. Only the department store has the iron door shut and the grill up and padlocked in front of the windows. Most of the shops are still open but the stalls that were out during the day have been put away and replaced by small tables and chairs or bamboo bed planks. People are out on the street eating and chatting, inside the shops watching television as they eat and chat, and silhouetted on the curtains of upstairs windows moving about. Someone is playing a flute and there are small children crying and yelling, every household is making its own full-blast din. Songs popular a few years ago in the cities are playing on tape recorders, tenderness laced with petulant lyrics alongside the beat of heavy metal electronic music. People sit in their doorways chatting with people across the street and it is at this time that married women in singlet and shorts and plastic slippers take tubs of dirty bath water to pour into the street. Gangs of adolescent boys are everywhere, deliberately brushing against the young girls strolling hand in hand. Suddenly, you see her again, in front of a fruit stall. You walk more quickly, she’s buying pomelos, which are just coming into season. You push in front and ask how much they cost. She touches the round unripe pomelo and walks off. You say, that’s right, they’re not ripe. You catch up to her. Like to join me? You seem to hear her agree, she even gives a nod which makes her hair shake. You had been nervous, terrified of a rebuff, you hadn’t imagine she’d agree so spontaneously. You instantly relax and you keep pace with her. Are you also here because of Lingshan? You should have been able to say something smarter than that. Her hair shakes again, then you begin to chat. On your own? She doesn’t answer. The front of the hairdresser’s shop is fitted with neon lights and you see her face. It’s youthful and that slight weariness is distinctly attractive. You look at the women with their heads under the dryers and getting their hair done and say that modernization has been most rapid in this. She looks away, laughs, and you laugh with her. Her hair covers her shoulders and is black and shiny. You want to say, you have lovely hair, but think it would be going a bit too far, so you don’t say it. You walk along with her, and don’t say anything else. It’s not that you don’t want to get on closer terms with her but that you can’t think of the right words to say. You can’t help feeling embarrassed and want to get out of this dilemma as quickly as possible. May I walk with you? Again, this is really a stupid thing to say. You’re really a funny person, you seem to hear her mumbling. She looks reproachful and yet approving. However you can tell she’s trying to look cheerful, you must keep up with her quick steps. She’s not a child and you’re no teenager, you try flirting with her. I can be your guide, you say, this was built in the Ming Dynasty and goes back at least five hundred years, you’re talking about the heat retaining wall behind the Chinese herbalist’s shop, one of the flying eaves of the gable curls upwards out of the darkness into the star-lit sky. There’s no moon tonight. In the Ming Dynasty, five hundred years ago, no, even just a few decades ago, to walk along this road at night you had to carry a lantern. If you don’t believe me you only have to go off this main street and you’ll be in pitch-black lanes. You don’t even have to go back a few decades, just take twenty or thirty paces and you’ll be back in those ancient times. While chatting you come to the front of the First Class Fragrance Teahouse where there are adults and children standing along the wall. You stand on tiptoes to look inside and stay there as well. The narrow door leads into the long teahouse where all the square tables have been put away. On the rows of benches are the backs of craning heads and right in the middle is a square table draped with a yellow-bordered red cloth: a storyteller in a robe with wide sleeves is seated on a high stool behind it. “The sun goes down, thick clouds hide the moon, and as usual the Snake Lord and his wife lead their pack of demons back to the Palace of Blue Vastness. On seeing the plump fair-skinned boys and girls and the lavish banquet of pork, beef and lamb, they are delighted. The Snake Lord says to his wife: This good fortune is due to you. Today’s birthday celebration is magnificent. One of the demons says: Today being her Ladyship’s birthday requires wind and string music and the Master of the Grotto has had to busy himself with these.” Bang! He slams his wooden clapper on the table, “Indeed, lofty aspirations produce ideas!” He puts aside the clapper and taking the drum stick strikes a few dull beats on the slack drum skin. In his other hand he takes up a tambourine threaded with metal bits which he slowly shakes so that it tinkles. Then in his old rasping voice he begins to explain: “The Snake Lord gives instructions and in all four quarters are activities which immediately transform the Palace of Blue Vastness with colorful decorations and a medley of wind and string instruments.” He suddenly raises his voice, “And, when the frog heard, it croaked loudly and the owl waved his conductor’s baton.” He deliberately imitates the recitation style used by TV performers and makes the audience roar with laughter. You look at her and both of you laugh. This is the happy face you’ve been hoping for. Shall we go in and sit down? You’ve found something to say. You lead her past wooden benches and peoples’ legs, find a bench which isn’t full and squeeze in. Just look at the storyteller trying to get the audience worked up. He’s standing up and banging his clapper again, very loudly. “The birthday salutations now begin! All the lesser demons,” he gaily hums as he turns to the left performing the actions of bowing with hands cupped together in salutation, then turns to the right to wave his hands and sing in the voice of the old seductress, “Thank you, thank you.” They’ve been telling this story for a thousand years, you say close to her ear. And they’ll still go on telling it. She seems to be your echo. Will they go on telling it for another thousand years? you ask. Hum, she replies, pursing her lips like a cheeky child. You feel very happy. “Let’s go back to Chen Fatong. He makes it to the foot of Donggong Mountain in three days, a journey normally taking seven times seven equals forty-nine days, where he encounters the Daoist Wang. Fatong bows in salutation and says: I have a request of the Venerable Master. The Daoist Wang responds with a salutation and Fatong asks: May I ask where the Palace of Blue Vastness can be found? Why do you ask? The demons there are really fierce. Who would dare go there? My surname is Chen and my name, Fatong, means ‘comprehending Buddha’s laws’. I have come especially to capture the demons. The Daoist Master heaves a sigh and says, young boys and girls have just been sent there today, they may already be in the Snake Lord’s belly. On hearing this, Fatong exclaims, I must go quickly to their rescue!” Bang! You see the storyteller raising his drum stick in his right hand and rattling the tambourine in his left hand. His eyes open wide until they show the whites and as he recites a chant his whole body begins to shake. You smell something, a subtle fragrance in the midst of the strong smell of tobacco and sweat, it’s coming from her hair and from her. There is the cracking of melon seeds as people eat the seeds with their eyes fixed on the storyteller, who has donned a monk’s robe. He is holding a magic sword in his right hand and a dragon’s horn in his left and talking faster and faster, as if he is spitting out a string of pearls. “Laying down three tim

Scanned by Highroller. Proofed by the best Elf proofer's Aunt. Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet. Formatted for Machine Text by PukeOnaPlate, 2023 Marching Through Georgia. By S M Stirling. CHAPTER ONE. "Finally in seventeen eighty-three, by the Peace of Paris. Great Britain made peace with the American revolutionists and their European allies. However, the revival of British naval strength in the last years of the war made Spain and France ready to offer a face-saving compromise, particularly when they could do so at the expense of the weakest partner in their coalition, the Netherlands. Franco-Spanish gains in the West Indies were to be balanced by allowing Britain to annex the Dutch Cape colony, which had been occupied in seventeen seventy nine to prevent its use by the French, almost as an afterthought, in an operation nearly cancelled. Poor and remote, the Cape was renamed after Francis Drake and used as a dumping ground for Britain's other inheritance from the American wan the Loyalists, tens of thousands of whom had fought for the Crown and now faced exile as penniless refugees. As early as seventeen eighty-one shiploads were arriving; after the Peace, whole regiments set sail with their families and slaves as the southern ports of Savannah and Charleston were evacuated. They were joined by large numbers of Hessian and other German mercenaries formerly in British service. Within a decade over 250,000 immigrants had arrived, swamping and assimilating the thin scattering of Dutch-Afilkaander settlers. 200 Years: A Social History of the Domination, by Alan E Sorensson, P-H-D. Archona Press, 1983. NORTH CAUCASUS FRONT, 20,000 feet. APRIL 14, 1942: Oh four hundred hours. The shattering roar of six giant radial engines filled the hold of the Hippo-class transport aircraft, as tightly as the troopers of Century A, First Airborne Legion. They leaned stolidly against the bucking, vibrating walls of the riveted metal box, packed in their cocoons of parasail and body harness, strapped about with personal equipment and weapons like so many deadly slate-grey Christmas trees. The thin, cold air was full of a smell of oil and iron, brass and sweat and the black greasepaint that striped the soldiers' faces; the smell of tools, of a trade, of war. High at the front of the hold, above the ramp that led to the crew compartment, a dim red light began to flash. Centurion Eric von Shrakenberg clicked off the pocket flashlight, folded the map back into his case and sighed. 0400, he thought. Ten minutes to drop. Eighty soldiers here in the transport; as many again in the one behind, and each pulled a Helot-class glider loaded with heavy equipment and twenty more troopers. He was a tall young man, a hundred and eighty centimeters even without the heavy-soled paratrooper's boots, hard smooth athlete's muscle rolling on the long bones. Yellow hair and mustache were cropped close in the Draka military style; new lines scored down his face on either side of the beak nose, making him look older than his twenty-four years. He sighed again, recognizing the futility of worry and the impossibility of calm. Some of the old sweats seemed to have it, the ones who'd carried the banners of the Domination of the Draka from Suez to Constantinople and east to Samarkand and the borderlands of China in the last war. And then spent the next twenty years hammering Turks and Kurds and Arabs into serfs as meek as the folk of the old African provinces. Senior Decu-rion McWhirter there, for instance, with the Constantinople Medal and the Afghan ribbon pinned to his combat fatigues, bald head shining in the dim lights. He looked at the watch again. Oh four oh five. Time was creeping by. Only two hours since liftoff, if you could believe it. I'll fret, he thought. Staying calm would drive me crazy. Christ, I could use a smoke. It would take the edge off; skydiving was the greatest thing since sex was invented, but combat was something you never really got used to. You were nervous the first time; then you met the reality, and it was worse than you'd feared. And every time after that, the waiting was harder. Eric had come to believe he would not survive this war many months ago; his mind believed it, at least. The body never believed in death, and always feared it. It was odd; he hated the war and its purposes, but during the fighting, that conflict could be put aside. Garrison duty was the worst. In search of peace, he returned to The Dream. It had come to him often, these last few years. Sometimes he would be walking through orchards, on a cool and misty spring morning; cherry blossoms arched above his head, heavy with scent, over grass starred with droplets of fog. There was a dog with him, a setter. Or it might be a study with a fire of applewood, lined with books with stamped leather spines, windows closed against slow rain. He had always loved books; loved even the smell and texture of them, their weight. There was a woman, too: walking beside him or sitting with her red hair spilling over his knees. A dream built of memories, things that might have been, things that could never be. Abruptly he shook himself free of it. War was full of times with nothing to do but dream, but this was not one of them. Most of the others were waiting quietly, with less tension than he remembered from the first combat drop last summer, blank-faced, lost in their own thoughts. Occasional pairs of lovers gripped hands. The old Spartans were right about that, he thought. It does make for better fighters, although they'd probably not have approved of a heterosexual application. A few felt his gaze, nodded or smiled back. They had been together a long time, he and they; he had been private, NCO and officer-candidate in this unit. If this had been a legion of the Regular Line, they would all have been from the same area, too; it was High Command policy to keep familiar personnel together, on the theory that while you might enlist for your country, you died for your friends. And to keep your pride in their eyes. The biggest drop of the war. Two full legions, First and Second Airborne, jumping at night into mountain country. Twice the size of the surprise assault in Sicily last summer, when the Domination had come into the war. Half again the size of the lightning strike that had given Fritz the Maikop oil fields intact last October, right after Moscow fell. Twenty-four thousand of the Domination's best, leaping into the night,"fangs out and hair on fire." He grimaced. He'd been a tetrarch in Sicily, with only thirty-three troopers to command. A soldier's battle, they'd called it. Which meant bloody chaos, and relying on the troops and the regimental officers to pull it out of the can. Still, it had succeeded, and the parachute chiliarchoi had been built up to legion size, a tripling of numbers. Lots of promotions, if you made it at all. And a merciful transfer out once Italy was conquered and the "pacification" began; there would be nothing but butcher's work there now, best left to the Security Directorate and the Janissaries. Sofie Nixon, his comtech, lit two cigarettes and handed him one at arm's length, as close as she could lean, padded out with the double burden of parasail and backpack radio. "No wrinkles, Cap," she shouted cheerfully, in the clipped tones of Capetown and the Western Province. Listening to her made him feel nineteen again, sometimes. And sometimes older than the hills, slang changed so fast. That was a new one for "no problems. "All this new equipment: to listen to the briefing papers, hell, it'll be like the old days. We can be heroes on the cheap, like our great-granddads were, shootin' down black spear-chuckers," she continued. With no change of expression: "And I'm the Empress of Siam; would I lie?" He smiled back at the cheerful, cynical face. There was little formality of rank in the Draka armies, less in the field, least of all among the volunteer elite of the airborne corps. Conformists did not enlist for a radical experiment; jumping out of airplanes into battle was still new enough to repel the conservatives. Satisfied, Sofie dragged the harsh, comforting bite of the tobacco into her lungs. The Centurion was a good sort, but he tended to, worry too much. That was part of being an officer, of course, and one of the reasons she was satisfied to stay at monitor, stick-commander. But he overdid it; you could wreck yourself up that way. And he was very much of the Old Domination, a scion of the planter aristocracy and their iron creed of duty; she was city-bred, her grandfather a Scottish mercenary immigrant, her father a dock-loading foreman. Me, I'm going to relax while I can, she thought. There was a lot of waiting in the Army, that was about the worst thing, apart from the crowding and the monotonous food, and good Christ but being under fire was scary. Not nice-scary like being on a board when the surf was hot, or a practice jump; plain bad. You really felt good afterward, though, when your body realized it was alive. She pushed the thought out of her head. The sitreps had said this was going to be much worse than Sicily, and that had been deep-shit enough. Still, there had been good parts. The Italians really had some pretty things, and the paratroops got the first pick. That jewelry from the bishop's palace in Palermo was absolutely divine! And the tapestry, she sighed and smiled, in reminiscence. There had been leave, too, empty space on transport airships heading south, if you knew the right people. It was good to be able to peacock a little, do some parrying, with a new campaign ribbon and the glamour of victory, and some pretties to show off. Her smile grew smug. She had been very popular, with all the sexes and their permutations; a change from ugly-duckling adolescence. Men are nice, definitely, she thought. Pity I had to wait 'til I reported to boot camp to start in on 'em. That was the other thing about the Army; it was better than school. Draka schooling was sex-segregated, on the theory that youth should not be distracted from learning and their premilitary training. Either that or sheer conservatism. Eight months of the year spent isolated in the countryside: from five to eighteen it had been her life, and the last few years had been growing harder to take. She was glad to be out of it, the endless round of gymnastics and classes and petty feuds and crushes; the Army was tougher, paratroop school more so, but what you did off duty was your own business. It was good to be an adult, free. Even the winter in Mosul had been all right. The town was a hole, of course, provincial, and all new since the Draka conquest in 1916. Nothing like the mellow beauty of Capetown, with its theaters and concerts and famous nightspots. Mosul, well, what could you expect of a place whose main claim to fame was petrochemical plants? They'd been up in the mountains most of the time, training hard. She flexed her shoulders and neck complacently. She'd thought herself fit before, but four months of climbing under full load and wrestling equipment over boulders had taken the last traces of puppy fat off and left her with what her people considered the ideal feminine figure, sleek, compactly curved, strong, and quick. Sofie glanced sidelong at her commander; she thought he'd been noticing, since she qualified for comtech. Couldn't tell, though; he was one for keeping to himself. Just visited the officer's Rest Center every week or so. But a man like that wouldn't be satisfied with serf girls; he'd want someone he could talk to. Or maybe it's my face? She thought worriedly, absently stripping the clip out of the pistol-grip well of her machinepistol and inserting it again. It was still obstinately round and snub-nosed; freckles were all very well, enough men had described it as cute, but it obstinately refused to mature into the cold, aquiline regularity that was most admired. She sighed, lit another cigarette, started running the latest costume drama over again in her head. Tragic Destiny: Signy Anders and Derek Wallis as doomed Loyalist lovers fighting the American rebels, with Carey Plesance playing the satanic traitor George Washington. God, it must have been uncomfortable wearing those petticoats, she thought. No wonder they couldn't do anything but look pretty and faint; how could you fight while wearing a bloody tent? Good thing Africa cured them of those notions. 0410, Eric thought. Time. The voice of the pilot spoke in his earphones, tinny and remote. "Coming up on the drop zone, Centurion," she said. "Wind direction and strength as per briefing. Scattered cloud, bright moonlight." A pause. "Good luck." He nodded, touching his tongue to his lip. The microphone was smooth and heavy in his hand. Beside him the American war correspondent, Bill Dreiser, looked up from his pad and then continued jotting in shorthand. Dreiser finished the paragraph and forced his mind to consider it critically, scanning word by word with the pinhead light on the other end of the pen. Useful, when you had to consult a map or instrument without a conspicuous light; the Domination issued them to all its officers, and he had been quick to pick one up. The device was typical of that whole bewildering civilization; he turned it in his hands, feeling the smooth careful machining of its duralumin parts, admiring the compact powerful batteries, the six different colors of ink, the moving segments that made it a slide rule as well. Typical indeed, he thought wryly. Turned out on specialized machine tools, by illiterate factory-serfs who thought the world was flat and that the Combine that owned their contracts ruled the universe. He licked dry lips, recognizing the thought for what it was: a distraction from fear. He had been through jump training, of course, an abbreviated version tailored to the limitations of a sedentary American in early middle age. And he had seen enough accidents to the youngsters about him to give him well-justified nightmares; if those magnificent young animals could suffer their quota of broken bones and wrenched backs, so could he. And they would be jumping into the arms of Hitler's Wehrmacht; his years reporting from Berlin had not endeared him to the National Socialists. He glanced across the echoing gloom of the cargo hold to where Eric sat, smoking a last cigarette. His face was impassive, showing no more emotion than it had at briefings around the sand table in Mosul. A strange young man. The eagle-faced blond good looks were almost a caricature of what a landed aristocrat of the Domination of the Draka was expected to be, so was his manner, most of the time. Easy enough to suppose there was nothing there but the bleakly efficient, intellectual killing machine of legend, the amoral and ruthless superman driven by the Will to Power whom Nietzsche had proclaimed. He had mentioned that to Eric, once. A useful myth, had been the Draka's reply. That had led them to a discussion of the German thinker's role in developing the Domination's beliefs; and of how Nietzsche's philosophy had been modified by the welcoming environment he found among the Draka, so different from the incomprehension and contempt of his countrymen. The Domination was founded by losers, Eric had said, letting an underlying bitterness show through. Ex-masters like the Loyalists and all those displaced European aristocrats and Confederate southerners, prophets without followers like Carlyle and Gobineau and Nietzsche. The outcasts of Western civilization, not the "huddled masses" you Yankees got. My ancestors were the ones who wouldn't give up their grudges. Now they're coming back for their revenge. Dreiser shrugged and brought his mind back to the present, tugging at the straps of his harness one more time. Times like this you could understand the isolationists; he had been born in Illinois and raised in Iowa himself, and knew the breed. A lot of them were decent enough, not fascist sympathizers like the German-American Bund, or dupes like Lindberg. Just decent people, and it was so tempting to think the oceans could guard American wholesomeness and decency from the iron insanities and corruptions of Europe. Not that he had ever subscribed to that habit of thought; it led too easily to white sheets and hatred, destroying a tradition to protect it. Or to the Babbirtry that had driven him to Paris in the 1920's; the America he returned to in the Depression years was more alive than Hoover's had been, finally acknowledging its problems. Trying to do something about the submerged third of the population, taking up the cause of the Negro abandoned during Reconstruction, reforming the Hispanic backwaters south of the Rio Grande, where annexation in 1848 had produced states free only in name. Dreiser ground his teeth, remembering the pictures from Pearl Harbor, oily smoke pouring to the sky from Battleship Row, the aircraft carrier Enterprise exploding in a huge globe of orange fire as the Japanese divebombers caught her in the harbor mouth. The United States had paid a heavy price for the illusion of isolation, and now it was fighting on its own soil, full-fledged states like Hawaii and the Philippines under enemy occupation. His prewar warnings of the Nazi menace had not been heeded, now his reports might serve to keep the public aware that Japan was not the only enemy, or the most dangerous of the Axis. "JUMPMASTERS TO YOUR STATIONS!" Eric's amplified voice overrode even the engines; there was a glisten of eyes, a hundredfold rattle as hands reflexively sought the ripcords. "PREPARE TO OPEN HATCH DOORS." "And step into the shit," came the traditional chorus in reply. Far to the south in Castle Tarleton, overlooking the Draka capital of Archona, a man stood leaning on the railing of a gallery, staring moodily at the projacmap that filled the huge room below. He was an Arch-Strategos, a general of the Supreme General Staff. The floor of the room was glass, twenty meters by thirty; the relief map was eerily three dimensional and underlit to put contrast against contour marks and unit counters. The mountains of Armenia extended in an infinity of scored rock, littered with the symbols of legions, equipment, airstrips, and roads; the red dots of aircraft crawled north toward Mt. Elbruz and the passes of the Caucasus. Stale tobacco scented the air, and the click-humm of the equipment echoed oddly in the unpeopled spaces. "Risky," he said, nodding toward the map. "Twenty legions of armor, thirty mechanized. Another sixty of Janissary motorized infantry. Six thousand tanks, twenty thousand infantry carriers, a thousand SP guns. Two million troops, and it all depends on two legions of paratroopers. North of the mountains, in an open-field battle of maneuver, we can take the Fritz. The Ivans are still holding hard east of the Volga, the Germans took on too much; they haven't got a strategic reserve to speak of. But butting our heads into the Caucasus, fighting our way over the mountains, inch by inch." He shook his head. "We can't afford a war of attrition; there aren't enough Draka; it would ruin us. And there may not be any limit to the number of serfs we can conscript for the Janissaries, but there are limits to the number we can arm safely." "War is risk," the officer beside him replied. The cat-pupiled eye of Intelligence was on her collar; she had the same air of well-kept middle age as he, and a scholar's bearing. "Breaking the Ankara Line was a risk, too, but it gave us Anatolia, back in seventeen. The general laughed, rubbing at his leg. The fragments from the Austrian antiairship burst had severed tendons and cut nerves; the pain was a constant backdrop to his life, and worse on these cold nights. Pain does not hurt, he reminded himself. Only another sensation. The Will is Master. "Then I was an optimistic young centurion, out at the sharp end, sure I could pull it out of the kaak even if the high command fucked it up," he said. "Now the new generation's out there, and probably expecting to have to scoop up my mistakes." "I was driving a field ambulance in sixteen, all you male lords of creation thought us fit for, then." He laughed. "We weren't quite so stretched for reliable personnel, then." The woman snorted and poked a finger into his ribs. "Hai, that was a joke, Cohortarch," he complained with a smile. "So was that, you shameless reactionary bastard," she retorted. "If you're going to insult me, do it when we're on-duty and I can't object." He nodded, and grew grim. "Well, we're committed to this attack; the Domination wasn't built by playing safe. There'll never be another chance like this. Thank the White Christ that Hitler attacked the Soviets after he finished off the French. If they'd stayed in Europe, we'd never have been able to touch them." She nodded, hesitated, spoke: "Your boy's in the first wave, isn't he, Karl?" The man nodded, turning away from the railing and leaning his weight against the ebony cane at his side. "Eric's got a Century in the First Airborne," he said quietly, looking out over the city. "And my daughter's flying an Eagle out of Kars." The outer wall was window from floor to ceiling; Castle Tarleton stood on a height that gave a fine view of the Domination's capital. The fort had been built in seventeen ninty-one, when the Crown Colony of Drakia was new. The hilltop had been for practical reasons, once: Cavalry had been based here, rounding up labor for the sugar plantations of Natal, where the ancestors of the Draka were settling into their African home. Those had been American loyalists, mostly southerners; driven from their homes by vengeful neighbors after the triumph of the Revolution. The British had seized the Cape from its Dutch masters during that war, and found it cheap enough to pay their supporters with the stolen goods of colonial empire. "Strange," Karl von Shrakenberg continued, softly enough to make her lean toward the craggy face. "I can command a legion handily enough, by Gobineau's ghost, I wish they'd give me a field command! Run my estate; I even get along well with my daughters. But my son. Where do the children go? I remember taking him from the midwife, I remember setting him on my shoulders and naming the stars for him, putting him on his first pony. And now? We hardly speak, except to argue. About absurdities: politics, books. When did we become strangers? When he left, there was nothing. I wanted to tell him, everything: to come back alive, that I loved him. Did he know it?" His companion laid a hand on his shoulder. "Why didn't you say it?" She asked softly. "If you can tell me?" He sighed wearily. "Never was very good with words, not that sort. And there are things you can say to a friend that you can't to your blood, perhaps, if Mary were still alive." He straightened, his eyes focusing on the world beyond the glass. "Well. This view was always a favorite of mine. It's seen a lot." Together they looked down across the basin, .conscious of the winds hooting off the high plateau at their backs, cold and dry with winter. The first small fort of native fieldstone had grown over the years, grown with the colony of Drakia, named for Francis Drake and heir to that ruthless freebooter's spirit. It was a frontier post guarding the ranches and diamond mines, at first. Railways had snaked by to the great gold fields of the Whiteridge; local coal and iron had proved more valuable still, and this was a convenient post for a garrison to watch the teeming compounds of serf factory hands that grew beside the steel mills and machine-works. Then the Crown Colony became the autonomous Dominion of Draka and needed a capital, a centrum for a realm that stretched from Senegal to Aden, from the Cape to Algeria. Lights starred the slopes beneath them, fading the true stars above, mansions with roofs of red tile, set in acres of garden. A monorail looped past, a train swinging through silently toward the airship haven and airport to the west, windows yellow against the darkness. A tracery of streets, sprawling over ridge and valley to the edge of sight, interrupted by the darker squares of parkland. Archona was the greatest city of the Domination, eight million souls. Through the center slashed the broad Way of the Annies, lined with flowering jacaranda trees, framed between six-story office blocks, their marble and tile washed snow-pale in moonlight. The Assembly building, with its great two hundred meter dome of iridescent stained glass; the Palace where Archon Gunnarson had brought law into conformity with fact and proclaimed the Domination a sovereign state, back in 1919. Karl's mouth quirked; he had been here in the Castle on that memorable day. The staff officers had raised a loyal glass of Paarl brandy, then gone back to their planning for the pacification of the New Territories and the next war. None of them had expected the Versailles peace to last more than a generation, whatever the American president might say of a "war to end war." Unconsciously, his lip curled in contempt; only a Yankee could believe something that obviously fatuous. "You grew up here, didn't you, Sannie?" he said, shaking of! The mood of gloom. "Ja,' she replied. "Born over there," she pointed past the block of government buildings, to where the scattered colonnades of the University clustered. "In the house where Thomas Carlyle lived. Nietzsche visited my father there, seemed to think it was some sort of shrine. That was a little while after he moved to the Domination. Anthony Trollope stopped by as well, they tell me. While he was researching that book, Prussia in the Antipodes, back in the 1870's. He was the one the English didn't pay any attention to, and then wished they had." They both smiled; it was an old joke in the Domination, that the British had been warned so openly of the Frankenstein's monster they had created by unleashing the Draka south of Capricorn. Their gaze lifted, to the glow that lit the northern horizon, the furnaces and factories of the Ferrous Metals Combine, stamping and grinding out the engines of war. The serfs of the industrial combines were being kept to their tasks; for the rest, there was little traffic. Mobilization among the citizens had left little of Archona's vaunted nightlife, and curfew kept the subject races off the central streets. "Well," he said, offering her an arm with a courtesy old-fashioned even in their generation of Draka. "Shall we see if, somewhere in this bureaucrat's paradise of a city, two ancient and off-duty warriors can find a drink?" He would face the waiting as he would any other trial; as befitted a von Shrakenberg of Oakenwald. Even if I'm the last, he thought, as his halting boot echoed through the empty halls of the fortress. Thump! Eric's parachute unfolded, a rectangle of blackness against the paling stars of dawn. He blinked; starlight and moonlight were almost painfully bright after the crowded gloom of the transport, silence caressed his mind. Straps caught at crotch and waist and armpits, then cradled him in their padding. Above him the night was full of thunder, as hundreds of the huge transports spilled their cargos of troops and equipment into the thin air, south and east still more formations bulked black against the stars, transports and glider-tugs. Chutes blossomed, sorted themselves into formations, turned to their destinations. A paratrooper lost velocity fast, the transports drew ahead and above quite quickly. Above a flight of Falcon Three fighters banked, their line stretching into an arc, moonlight glinting on the bubble canopies. Sharks of the sky. This is the best time, Eric thought, as the flight of transports vanished, climbing and turning for height and home, southward to their bases. Silence, except for the fading machines and the hiss of the wind through the silk. Silence over a great scattered cloudscape, castles and billows of silver under a huge cool moon; air like crisp white wine in the lungs, aloneness. A feeling beyond the self, peace, joy, freedom, in a life bound on the iron cross of duty, in the service of repression and death. There had been a few other times like this; making love with Tyansha, or single-handing a ketch through monsoon storms. But always here, alone in the sky. His hands were working on the lines, turning and banking; these new sail-chutes flew; like gliders. None of the old business of dropping all over the farmyard, where the wind and fate pleased. You could jump high and sail to your drop zone quietly, with no thunder of engines to announce you. And you could land soft; that was important. Paratroopers had to carry most of their equipment, as much again as their own body weight. With a load like that you could break your back just stepping into a ditch, if you weren't careful. The rest of the Century were forming up behind, wheeling like a flight of birds of prey; he saw with relief that the gliders, with their cargo of heavy weapons and specialists, were following. The Legion was dropping on the whole pass that took the Ossetian Military Highway through the mountains from north to south, but the bulk of it was landing at the southern end. The Second Cohort was the northernmost unit, and Century A was the point formation of Second Cohort. They would take the shock of whatever reaction force the Fritz could muster to relieve their cut-off comrades south of the mountains. Two hundred of them, to blunt the enemy spearheads, they were going to need that special equipment, and the thirty-odd specialists in the tetrarchy of combat engineers. Very badly. Now. The cloud cover was patchy, light and shadow. Southward, the main peaks of the Caucasus shone snow white. Below was a black-purple immensity of scree, talus-slope, dark forests of beech and holm oak, sloping down to a valley and a thread of road winding up into the mountains. On a map it was nothing, a narrow sliver of highland between the Black and Caspian Seas. Over it all loomed the great mass of Mount Elbruz; beyond it was the south slope, ex-Soviet Georgia; beyond that the Draka armored legions massing in the valleys of Armenia. The symbolism of it struck him, all Europe was in shadow, in a sense. From the Elbe to the Urals, there was a killing underway great enough to leave even the cold hearts at Castle Tarleton shaken. Eric had been a student of history, among other things, his mouth quirked at the supreme irony that the Draka should come as deliverers. Still, true enough, he thought, as his body automatically leaned and twisted to turn the parasail. The rule of the Domination was cruel and arbitrary, merciless in breaking resistance. But his people made war for land and booty, killed to enforce submission. What the Intelligence reports said was happening below was madness come to earth: slaughter for its own sake, an end rather than a means. The Fritz must be convinced they've won it all, he thought, as his eyes automatically scanned for the landing zone. There. He stooped, a giddy exhilarating slide across the sky, a breathless joy. For a moment he was a bird, a hunting bird, an eagle. Stooping on the world, feeling the air rushing past his wings. Be practical, Eric, he reminded himself severely. Once they grounded they would have only their feet, and the south slope of the mountains was German-held. But lightly, by the spearhead divisions of General Von Paulus' Sixth Army, itself the vanguard of Army Group South. They had fought their way across the Ukraine, through the great encirclement battles at Kiev and Kharkov, even with most of their armor up north for the attack on Moscow. The frantic Russian counterattacks had failed; the Panzers came south, ground down by a thousand miles of route-march over frozen wasteland and the costly destruction of Zhukov's Siberians. The offensive continued, on through the winter and the mud of spring; east to the Volga at Stalingrad, wheeling south and east to Astrakhan, south into the Kalmyk steppe, taking Maikop and Krasnodar, on to the Kuban. Now. Now they were a very long way from home, thousands of miles of mud trail, torn-up railway, scorched earth. Good troops, but exhausted, fought out, short of supplies. If the paradrop could hold the passes behind them, they could be crushed out of existence by waves of Janissary infantry, then the Draka armor would pour into the Russian plains, close to their bases, fresh, with superior weapons and limitless supplies, against enemies who had battered each other into broken-backed impotence. The ground was coming up fast; he could smell it, a wet green scent of trees and spring meadow-grass and rock. This area had been swarming with Draka reconnaissance planes for months; the contours were springing out at him, familiar from hundreds of hours poring over photomaps. He banked to get a straight run at the oblong meadow. Carefully now, don't get caught in that fucking tree line. Branches went by three meters below. He hauled back on the lines, turning up the forward edge of the parasail; it climbed, spilled air, slowed. With the loss of momentum it turned from a wing to a simple parachute once more, and good timing landed him softly on his feet, boots vanishing in knee-high grass starred with white flowers. Landing was a plunge from morning into darkness and shadow, as the sun dropped below the mountains to the southeast. And always, there was a sense of sadness, of loss; lightness turning to earthbound reality. Not an eagle any more, went through him. More like a hyena, a mordant part of his mind prompted. Come to squabble over the carcass of Russia with the rival pack. Swiftly, he hit the quick-release catches and the synthsilk billowed out, white against the dark grass. He turned, clicking on the shielded red flashlight, waving it in slow arcs above his head. The first troopers of his Century were only seconds behind him, grey rectangles against the stars. They landed past him, a chorus of soft grunts and thuds, a curse and a clatter as somebody rolled. A quick check, mapcase, handradio, binoculars, Holbars T-6 assault rifle, three 75-round drums of 5 millimeter for it, medikit, iron rations, fighting dagger in his boot, bush knife across his back. That was an affectation, the machete-sword was more a tradition than anything else, but. Dropping their chutes and jogging back by stick and section, rallying to the shouts of their decurions and tetrarchs, platoon-commanders, the troopers hurried to form in the shadows of the trees. The mottled grey of their uniforms was nearly invisible in the dim light, and their faces were white ovals beneath the rims of their wide-flared steel helmets. Sofie jogged over to her position with the headquarters communication lochos, the antennae waving over her shoulder; she had the headset on already, tufts of bright tow hair ruffling out between the straps. As usual, she had clipped her helmet to her harness on touchdown; also as usual, she had just lit a cigarette. The match went scrit against the magazine well of her machinepistol; she flicked it away and held out the handset. For Dreiser, leaving the airplane had been a whirling, chaotic rush. For a moment he tumbled, then remembered instructions. Arms and legs straight. That brought the sickening spiral to a stop; he was flying forward, down toward silver clouds and the dark holes between them. "Flying, hell, I'm falling," he said into the rush of cold wind. His teeth chattered as he gripped the release toggle and gave the single firm jerk the Draka instructors had taught. For a heart-stopping moment there was nothing, and then the pilot chute unfolded, dragging out the main sail. It bloomed above him, the reduction in speed seeming to drag him backward out of his fall. Air gusted past him, more slowly now that the parachute was holding. He glanced up to the rectangle above him, a box of dozens of long cloth tubes fastened together side by side, held taut by the rush of air. "The parasail functions as both a parachute and a wing," he quoted to himself." To acquire forward speed, lean forward. Steer by hauling on left or right cords, or by shifting the center of gravity." God, it's working. Blinking his eyes behind the goggles that held his glasses to his face, he peered about for the recognition-light. The aircraft had vanished, nothing more than a thrumm of engine noise somewhere in the distance. There it was, a weak red blinking: he shifted his weight forward, increasing the angle of glide. Cautiously; you could nose down in these things, and he doubted he could right it again before he hit. The meadow rose up to strike; he flung himself back, too soon, lost directional control, and barely avoided landing boot-first in another chute at a hundred feet up. Ground slammed into his soles and he collapsed, dragging. "Watch where yo' puttin' y'feet. Yankee pigfuckah," an incongruously young and feminine voice snarled as he skidded through tall grass and sharp-edged gravel on his behind, scrabbling at the release straps until the billowing mass of fabric peeled away to join the others flapping on the ground. He stood, turned, flung himself down again as the dark bulk of a glider went by a foot above his head, followed by a second. "Jesus!" he swore, as they landed behind him and collided with a brief crunch of splintering plywood and balsa. Boots hurdled him, voices called in throttled shouts. As he came to his feet, the meadow seemed to be in utter chaos, groups of Draka paratroopers dashing about, parasails still banking in, color-coded lights flashing. But visibly, the mass of men, women, and machinery was sorting itself into units, moving according to prearranged plans. Behind him the detachable nose of a glider broke free under enthusiastic hands and the ramp to the cargo-hold dropped; a pilot staggered down to sit cradling his head in his hands, while a file of troopers ran up to begin unloading crates. Dreiser walked toward the spot where the Draka commanders would be gathering, feeling strength return to his rubbery legs and a strange exhilaration building. Did it, by God! he thought. So much for being an old man at thirtyeight. Now, about the article, let's see: The landing showed once again the value of careful preparation and training. Modern warfare, with its complex coordination of different arms, is something new on this earth. Our devotion to the "minuteman" tradition of the amateur citizen-soldier is a critical handicap. Eric took the handset, silent for a moment as the gliders came in with a shush of parted air, guiding themselves down into the field marked with discarded parasails. Moonlight and predawn glow cast their wings in patterns of shade and light as flaps and slots opened to shed lift. Around him there was a holding of breath as the landing skids cut turf with a screeching of steel on gravel. The sailplanes slewed to a halt, the wing of one catching the other's tail with a crunch of plywood. A sigh gusted up as the detachable nose-sections fell away and figures began unloading. Sofie gently tapped his hand. "Set's workin' fine, Centurion," she said. "Got the Cohort Sparks already, green-beepers from all the handradios in the Century. want a smoke?" "Trying to give it up," he grunted, lifting the phone to his ear and clicking the pressure-button in his call sign. "You should too." He glanced at his watch: 0420 almost exactly. Forty-five minutes to dawn. "Hey, Centurion, do I complain about your baby girls?" she replied, grinning. The rest of the head-quarters tetrarchy were falling in around him: Senior Decurion McWhirter, two five-trooper rifle "sticks" who would double as runners, two rocket-gun teams and a heavy machine gun. They both fell silent as the hissing of static gave way to voices, coded sequences and barked instructions. Unconsciously, Eric nodded several times before speaking. "Yes? Yes, sir. No sir; just coming in, but it looks good." Reception was excellent; he could hear a blast of small-arms fire in the background, the rapid snarl of Draka assault-rifles, the slower thump and chatter of German carbines and MG 34's. "Ah, good." Then he and the comtech winced in unison. "The armor landed where? Sorry, sir, I know you didn't design this terrain. Right, proceed according to plan, hold them hard as long as I can. Any chance of extra antitank. Yes, Conortarch, I appreciate everybody wants more firepower, but we are the farthest north. Yes, sir, we can do it. Over and out, status report when Phase A is complete. Thank you, sir, and good luck to you, too." "Because we're both going to need it," he added under his breath as he released the send button. The Legion had had a Cohort of light tanks, Cheetahs with 75 millimeter guns in oscillating turrets. Those had apparently come down neatly in a gully. The gliders were emptying, stacks of crates and heavy weapons being lifted onto their wheeled carts. Paratroopers jumped with light weapons, their Holbars assault rifles, machine guns, machinepistols for techs and weapons teams, the 85 millimeter recoilless-rocket guns that served as tetrarchy antitank. The gliders held much of the Century's fighting power, trenchmortars, the 100 millimeter automortars, 120 millimeter recoilless guns, heavy machine guns, flame-throwers, demolition charges, ammunition. Not to mention most of their food and medical supplies. It would likely be all they had until the regular supply drops started. And already the trunks of the birches were showing pale in the light of dawn. A sudden sense of the. Unlikeliness of it all struck Eric. He had been born in the heartlands of the Domination, fourteen thousand kilometers away in southern Africa. And here he stood, on soil that had seen. How many armies? Indoeuropeans moving south to become Hittites, Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Armenians, Arabs, Turks, Czarist Russians, Bolsheviks. And now a Century of Draka, commanded by a descendant of Hessian mercenaries, come to kill Germans who might be remote cousins, and who had marched two thousand kilometers east to meet him. What am I doing here? Where did it start? He thought. Such a long way to journey, to die among angry strangers. A journey that had lasted all his life. The start? Oakenwald Plantation, of course. In the year of his birth, and last year, six months ago. But that was the past, and the battle was here and now, an ending awaiting him. An end to pain, weariness; an end to the conflict within, and to loneliness. You could forget a great deal in combat. Eric von Shrakenberg took a deep breath and stepped forward, into the war. CHAPTER TWO. Napoleonic wars cut off imports, and industries had to be established if only because the mines were far inland; the need for a strong military-industrial complex maintained the pressure. Lack of navigable waterways led to an early development of steam transport and southern Africa proved to be rich in copper, iron, and coal, as well as precious metals. Gold prompted rapid expansion northward; plantation agriculture remained dominant, but increasingly, its markets were local. Steam-engine pioneer Richard Trevithick was only the first of many British engineers to find Drakia welcoming. With no local entrepreneurial class, the landed aristocracy stepped in to invest, followed by the State and the free-employee guilds: the social pattern of the countryside repeated itself in the growing industrial cities of the early nineteenth century. Outright enslavement of the natives was forbidden by the British, but the proto-Draka quickly developed a system of indentured labor and debtpeonage distinguishable only in name. 200 Years: A Social History of the Domination by Alan E Sorensson, P-H-D. Archona Press. 1983. ARCHONA TO OAKENWALD PLANTATION OCTOBER, 1941. The airdrop on Sicily had earned Eric von Shrakenburg a number of things: a long scar on one thigh, certain memories, and a field-promotion to Centurion's rank. When the First Airborne Chiliarchy was pulled back into reserve after the fall of Milan, the promotion was confirmed; a rare honor for a man barely twenty-four. With it came fourteen-day leave passes to run from October First, 1941, and unlike most of his comrades, he had not disappeared into the pleasure quarter of Alexandria. The new movement orders had already been cut: Draka Forces Base Mosul, Province of Mesopotamia. Paratroopers were cutting-edge assault troops; obviously, the High Command did not expect the de facto truce with Hitler to last. And that would be a more serious matter than overrunning an Italy taken by surprise and abandoned by its Axis allies. It was well for a man to visit the earth that bore him before he died. He would spend his leave in Oakenwald, the von Shrakenberg plantation, now that the quarrel with his father had been patched up. After a fashion. Travel space was scarce, as mobilization built toward its climax, but even in the Draka army it helped to be the son of an Arch-Strategos, a staff general. A place was found on a transport-dirigible heading south with a priority cargo of machine-parts; two days nonstop to the high plateau of southern Africa. He spent the last half-hour in the control gallery, for the view; they were coming in to Archona from the north, and it was a side of the capital free citizens seldom saw, unless business took them there. For a citizen, Archona was the marble-and-tile public buildings and low-rise office blocks, parks and broad avenues, the University campus, and pleasant, leafy suburbs with the gardens for which the city was famed. Beyond the basin that held the freemen's city lay the world of the industrial combines, hectare upon hectare, eating ever deeper into the bush country of the middleveld. A spiderweb of roads, rail-sidings, monorails, landing platforms for freight airships. The sky was falling into night, but there was no sleep below, only an unrestfulness full of the light of arclamps and the bellowing flares of the blast furnaces, factory-windows carpeted the low hills, shifts working round the clock. Only the serfcompounds were dark, the flesh-and-blood robots of the State exhausted on their pallets, a brief escape from a lockstep existence spent in that wilderness of metal and concrete. Eric watched it with a fascination tinged with horror as the crew guided the great bulk of the lighter-than-air ship in, until light-spots danced before his eyes. And remembered. In the center of Archona, where the Avenue of Triumph met the Way of the Armies, there was a square with a victory monument. A hundred summers had turned the bronze green and faded the marble plinth; about it were gardens of unearthly loveliness, where children played between the flower-banks. The statue showed a group of Draka soldiers on horseback, their weapons were the Ferguson rifle-muskets and double-barreled dragoon pistols of the eighteenth century. Their leader stood dismounted, reins in one hand, bush-knife in the other. A black warrior knelt before him, and the Draka's boot rested on the man's neck. Below, in letters of gold, were words: To the Victors. That was their monument; northern Archona was a monument to the vanquished, and so were the other industrial cities that stretched north a thousand kilometers to Katanga; so were mines and plantations and ranches from the Cape to Shensi. Eric slept the night in transit quarters; he got the bed, but there were two other officers on the floor, for lack of space. He would not have minded that, or even their insistence on making love, if the sexual athletics had not been so noisy. In the morning the transport clerk was apologetic; also harried. Private autocars were up on blocks for the duration, mostly; in the end, all she could offer was a van taking two Janissaries south to pick up recruits from the plantations. Eric shrugged indifferently, to the clerk's surprise. The city-bred might be prickly in their insistence on the privileges of the master caste, but a von Shrakenberg was raised to ignore such trivia. Also. He remembered the rows of Janissary dead outside Palermo, where they had broken the enemy lines to relieve the encircled paratroops. The roadvan turned out to be a big, six-wheeled Kellerman steamer twenty years old, a round-edged metal box with running boards chest-high and wheels taller than he. It had been requisitioned from the Transportation Directorate, and still had eyebolts in the floor for the leg shackles of the work gangs. The Janissaries rose from their kitbags as Eric approached, flicking away cigarettes and giving him a respectful but unservile salute; the driver in her grimy coverall of unbleached cotton bowed low, hands before eyes. "Carry on," Eric said, returning the salute. The serf soldiers were big men, as tall as he, their snug uniforms of dove-grey and silver making his plain Citizen Force walking-out blacks seem almost drab. Both were in their late thirties and Master Sergeants, the highest rank subject-race personnel could aspire to. They were much alike, hard-faced and thickmuscled, unarmed, here within the Police Zone, but carrying steel-tipped swagger sticks in white-gloved hands. One was ebony black, the other green-eyed and tanned olive, and might have passed for a freeman save for the shaven skull and serf identity-number tattooed on his neck. The Draka climbed the short, fixed ladder and swung into the seat beside the driver. While the woman fired the van's boiler, he propped his Priority pass inside the slanted windscreen that ran to their knees; that ought to save them delay at the inevitable Security Directorate roadblocks. The vehicle pulled out of the loading bay with the smooth silence of steam power, into the crowded streets; he brought out a book of poetry, Rimbaud, and lost himself in the fire-bright imagery. When he looked up in midmorning they were south of the city. Crossing the Whiteridge and the scatter of mining and manufacturing settlements along it, past the huge, man-made heaps of spoilage from the gold mines. Some were still rawly yellow with the cyanide compounds used to extract the precious metal; others were in every stage of reclamation, down to forested mounds that might have been natural. This ground had yielded more gold in its century and a half than all the rest of the earth in all the years of humankind; four thousand meters beneath the road, men still clawed at rock hot enough to raise blisters on naked skin. Then they were past, into the farmlands of the high plateau. He rolled down the window, breathing deeply. The Draka took pains to keep industry from fouling the air or water too badly; masters had to breathe and drink, too, after all. Still, it was a relief to smell the goddess breath of spring overtaking the carrion stink of industrial-age war. The fourlane asphalt surface of the road stretched dead straight to meet the horizon that lay around them like a bowl; waist-high fields of young corn flicked by, each giving an instant's glimpse down long, leafy tunnels floored with brown, plowed earth. Air that smelled of dust and heat ana green poured in, and the sea of corn shimmered as the leaves rippled. They spent noon at a roadside waystation that was glad to see him, Eric was not surprised, remembering how sparse passenger traffic had been. Most of the vehicles had been drags, heavy haulers pulling articulated cargo trucks, or plantation vans heading to the rail stations with produce, once there had been a long convoy of wheeled personnel carriers taking Janissary infantry toward the training camps in the mountains to the east. He strolled, stretching his legs and idly watching the herds of cattle and eland grazing in the fields about, listened to the silence and the rustling of leaves in the eucalyptus trees that framed the low pleasant buildings of colored brick with their round stained-glass windows; sat in the empty courtyard and ate a satisfying luncheon of fried grits, sausage, and eggs, not forgetting to have food and beer sent out to the van. The manager had time on her hands, and was inclined to be maternal. It was not until he had sat and listened politely to her rambling description of a son and daughter who were with the Fifth Armored in Tashkent that he suspected that he was procrastinating; his own mother had died only a few years after his birth, and he did not generally tolerate attempts at coddling. Not until he found himself seriously considering her offer of an hour upstairs with the pretty but bedraggled serving-wench was he sure of it. He excused himself, looked in the back window of the van, saw that one of the Janissary NCO's had the driver bent over a bench and was preparing to mount. Eric rapped on the glass with impatient disgust, and the soldier released her to scurry, whimpering, back to the driver's seat, zipping her overall with shaking fingers. It would be no easier to meet his father again if he delayed arrival until nightfall. Restlessly, he reopened the book; anticipation warred with. Yes, fear: he had been afraid at that last interview with his father. Karl von Shrakenberg was not a man to be taken lightly. The quiet sobbing of the driver as she wrestled with the wheel cut across his thoughts. Irritated, he found a handkerchief and handed it across to her, then pulled the peaked cap down over his eyes and turned a shoulder as he settled back and pretended to sleep. Useless gesture, he thought with self-contempt. A serf without a protector was a victim, and there were five hundred million more like this one. The system ground on, they were the meat, and the fact that he was tied on top of the machine did not mean he could remake it. And there were worse places than this, much worse: in a mine, or the newly taken Italian territories he had helped to conquer, to the drumroll beat of the Security Directorate's execution squads, liquidation rosters, destructive-labor camps. Shut up, he thought. Shut up, wench, I've troubles of my own! It was still light when they turned in under the tall stone arch of the gates, the six wheels of the Kellerman crunching on the smooth, crushed rock, beneath the sign that read: "Oakenwald Plantation, establish seventeen eighty-eight K von Shrakenberg, Landholder." But the sun was sinking behind them. Ahead, the jagged crags of the Maluti Mountains were outlined in the Prussian blue of shadow and sandstone gold. This valley was higher than the plateau plains west of the Caledon River; rocky, flat-topped hills reared out of the rolling fields. The narrow plantation road was lined with oaks, huge branches meeting twenty meters over their heads; the lower slopes of the hills were planted to the king-trees as well. Beyond were the hedged fields, divided by rows of Lombardy poplar: wheat and barley still green with a hint of gold as they began to head out, contour-ploughed cornfields, pastures dotted with white-fleeced sheep, spring lambs, horses, yellow-coated cattle. The fieldworkers were heading in, hoes and tools slanted over their shoulders, mules hanging their heads as they wearily trudged back toward the stables. A few paused to look up in curiosity as the vehicle passed; Eric could hear the low, rhythmic song of a work team as they walked homeward, a sad sweet memory from childhood. Despite himself he smiled, glancing about. It had been, by the White Christ and almighty Thor, two years now since his last visit. "You can't go home again," he said softly to himself. "The problem is, you can't ever really leave it, either." Memory turned in on itself, and the past colored the present; he could remember his first pony, and his father's hands lifting him into the saddle, how his fingers smelled of tobacco and leather and strong soap. And the first time he had been invited into his father's study to talk with the adults after a dinner party. Ruefully, he smiled as he remembered holding the brandy snifter in an authoritative pose anyone but himself must have recognized as copied from Pa's. And yet it was all tinged with sorrow and anger, impossible to forget, hurtful to remember, a turning and itching in his mind. He looked downslope; beyond that screen of pines was a stock dam where the children of the house had gone swimming sometimes, gods alone knew why, except that they were supposed to use the pool up by the manor. There, one memorable day, he had knocked Frikkie Thyssen flat for sneering at his poetry. The memory brought a grin; it had been the sort of epic you'd expect a twelve-year-old in love with Chapman's Homer to do, but that little bastard Thyssen wouldn't have known if it had been a work of genius. And over there in the cherry orchard he had lost his virginity under a harvest moon one week after his thirteenth birthday, to a giggling field wench twice his age and weight. And then there had been Tyansha, the Circassian girl. Pa had given her to him on his fourteenth birthday. The dealer had called her something more pronounceable, but that was the name she had taught him, along with her mother tongue. She had been. Perhaps four years older than he; nobody had been keeping records in eastern Turkey during those years of blood and chaos. There were vague memories of a father, she had said, and a veiled woman who held her close, then lay in a ditch by a burning house and did not move. Then the bayonets of the Janissaries herding her and a mob of terrified children into trucks. Thirst, darkness, hunger; then the training creche. Learning reading and writing, the soft blurred Draka dialect of English; household duties, dancing, the arts of pleasing. Friends, who vanished one by one into the world beyond the walls. And him. Her eyes had been what he had noticed first, huge, a deep pale blue, like a wild thing seen in the forest. Dark-red hair falling to her waist, past a smooth, pale, high-cheeked face. She had worn a silver-link collar that emphasized the slender neck and the serf-number tattooed on it, and a wrapped white sheath-dress to show off her long legs and high, small breasts. Hands linked before her, she had stood between his smiling father and the impassive dealer, who slapped her riding-crop against one boot, anxious to be gone. "Well boy, does she please?" Pa had asked. Eric remembered a wordless stutter until his voice broke humiliatingly in a squeak; his elder brother John had roared laughter and slapped him on the back, urging him forward as he led her from the room by the hand. Hers had been small and cool; his own hands and feet felt enormous, clumsy; he was hideously aware of a pimple beside his nose. She had been afraid, not showing it much, but he could tell. He had not touched her; not then, or in the month that followed. Not even at the first shyly beautiful smile. Gods, but I was callow, Eric thought in sadly affectionate embarrassment. They had talked; rather, he had, while she replied in tense, polite monosyllables, until she began to shed the fear. He had showed her things, his battle prints, his butterfly collection, that had disgusted her, and the secret place in the pine grove, where he came to dream the vast vague glories of youth. A month, before she crept in beside him one night. A friend, one of the overseer's sons, had asked casually to borrow her; he had beaten the older boy bloody. Not wildly, in the manner of puppy fights, but with the pankration disciplines, in a cold ferocity that ended only when he was pulled off. There had been little constraint between them, in private. She even came to use his first name without the "master," eventually. He had allowed her his books, and she had devoured them with a hunger that astonished him; so did her questions, sometimes disconcertingly sharp. Making love with a lover was. Different. Better; she had been more knowledgeable than he, if less experienced, and they had learned together. Once in a haystack, he remembered; prickly, it had made him sneeze. Afterward they had lain holding hands, and he had shown her the southern sky's constellations. She died in childbirth three years later, bearing his daughter. The child had lived, but that was small consolation. That had been the last time he wept in public; the first time since his mother had died when he was ten. And it had also been the last time his father had beaten him; for weakness. Casual fornication aside, it was well enough for a boy to have a serf-girl of his own. Even for him to care for her, since it helped keep him from the temptations that all-male boarding schools were prone to. But the public tears allowable for blood-kin were unseemly for a concubine. Eric had caught the thong of the riding crop in one hand and jerked it free. "Hit me again, and I'll kill you," he had said, in a tone flat as gunmetal. Had seen his father's face change as the scales of parental blindness fell away, and the elder von Shrakenberg realized that he was facing a very dangerous man, not a boy. And that it is not well to taunt an unbearable grief. He shook his head and looked out again at the familiar fields; it was a sadness in itself, that time healed. Grief faded into nostalgia, and it was a sickness to try and hold it. That mood stayed with him as they swung into the steep drive and through the gardens below Oakenwald's Great House. The manor had been built into the slope of a hill, for defense, in the early days, and it still gave a memorable view. The rocky slope had been terraced for lawns, flowerbanks, ornamental trees, and fountains; forest grew over the steepening slope behind, and then a great table of rock reared two hundred meters into the darkening sky. The manor itself was ashlar blocks of honey-colored local sandstone, a central three-story block fronted with white marble columns and topped with a low-pitched roof of rose tile; there were lower wings to each side, arched colonnades supporting second-story balconies. There was a crowd waiting beneath the pillars, and a parked grey-painted staff car with a strategos red-and-black checkerboard pennant fixed to one bumper; the tall figure of his father stood amidst the household, leaning on his cane. Eric took a deep breath and opened the door of the van, pitching his baggage to the ground and jumping down to the surface of the drive. Air washed over him cool and clean, smelling of roses and falling water, dusty crushed rock and hot metal from the van; bread was baking somewhere, and there was woodsmoke from the chimneys. The globe lights came on over the main doors, and he saw who awaited: his father, of course; his younger sister Johanna in undress uniform; the overseers, and some of the house servants behind. He waved, then turned back to the van for a moment, pulling a halfempty bottle out of his kit and leaning in for a parting salute to the Janissaries. They looked up, and their faces lit with surprised gratitude as he tossed the long-necked glass bulb; it was Oakenwald Kijafla, cherry brandy in the same sense that Dom Perignon was sparkling wine, and beyond the pockets of most freemen. "Tanks be to yaz, Centurion, sar," the black said, his teeth shining white. "Sergeants Miller and Assad at yar s'rvice, sar." "For Palermo," he said, and turned his head to the driver. She raised a face streaked with the tracks of dried tears from where it had rested on the wheel, glancing back apprehensively at the soldiers. "Back, and take the turning to the left, half a kilometer to the Quarters. Ask for the headman, he'll put you all up." A young houseboy had run forward to take Eric's baggage; he craned his head to see into the long cabin of the van after making his bow, his face an O of surprise at the bright Janissary uniforms. And he kept glancing back as he bore the valise and bag away. Eric paused to take a few parcels out of it, reflecting that they probably had another vo

Rahan. The son of the fierce ages. Episode fifty-seven. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Guy Zam. The bridge of monkeys. The fast river was dug like a trench in the jungle, and the son of Crao watched the female “Four hands” which had just swung from one bank to the other. And who arched the strong line to allow her little ones to overcome the obstacle. Greek! Greek! The “Four-Hands” are sometimes as cunning as “Those-Who-Walk-Upright”. Page Two. Amused by the garland of young monkeys, Rahan did not see the stump coming towards him. Ah! He had the impression of lightning in his neck, and he was carried away by the current. Which, a moment later, projected him towards a nearby creek. He remained lying there, inanimate, with his face happily out of the water. When he regained consciousness, he found himself at the foot of a tree. His wrists were tied and his cutlass stuck in the trunk! Oh! He heard the growl of a feline and saw the puma, crouching in the grass, twenty steps away from him! The beast that observed him seemed ready to pounce. Wait “Puma”, wait, at least give Rahan a chance. Page Three. Very gently, so as not to excite the beast, the son of Crao got up, offered his bonds to the ivory blade. Rahan is ready “Pumak”! Attack and you will see that his claw is as formidable as yours! The puma took a step and picked itself up. It was going to pounce when. Back, “Taouk”! We don't know yet if this hunter is friend or foe! The old man who came out of the thickets made a sign and the docile beast came and snuggled up against his legs. It was Hangka who pulled you out of the water, “Fire hair”! Hangka tied your hands because he didn't know your intentions! Who are you? What clan are you from? Page Four. You do not have a clan, and Hangka was kicked out of his! Only Taouk remained faithful to him. The old man explains how and why he had been chased away by a warlike and cruel chief, Gahor-the-Savage, whose orders he contested. Gahor only keeps close to him those who prefer war to hunting! And these beings are terrorizing the entire territory! They kill and pillage without any mercy! This very morning they went to attack those of the stone tooth! Follow me and you will understand, Hangka lives like a hermit but, from up there, he sees a lot of things! Preceded by his puma, the old man leapt between the rocks with surprising agility. Page Five. And the son of Crao, shortly after discovered a strange landscape. Do you see this camp, on the “Stone Tooth”? As you see, we can only arrive at this by going around it through the forest. Gahor, his men and their Puma’s have set off at dawn. When they have crossed the forest, these unfortunate people from the "Stone tooth" will have no chance of escaping from them. Rahan will warn “Those of the Stone Tooth”! Gahor and his people are already far away! By the path of the "Four Hands" Rahan can catch up with the fastest hunters! You are generous, brother! Hangka wishes you could avoid a massacre! Crao's son disappeared into the foliage. His agility was such that he actually overtook Gahor and his warriors. Page Six. They were taking a pause, their spears stuck in the ground, their docile pumas at their feet. We do not know "Crawling on Water" but neither do "Those of the Stone Tooth"! They will therefore be trapped! None of them will escape us! These warriors had not set off again when Rahan was already fluttering towards the “Stone Tooth.” Cries of fear resounded when he emerged from the forest. Rahan is not an enemy! He comes to tell you to stay on your guard, because Gahor-the-wild is going to attack you! The son of Crao suddenly realized that this warning was useless. The “Stone Tooth” clan comprised only around ten hunters, with their wives and children. Page Seven. How could this handful of men resist the formidable tribe of Gahor! We often prayed that these monsters would spare our clan! But since Rahan saw them on the way to the "Stone Tooth" we are lost! Their Pumaks will slaughter our women and children! No, brothers! Nothing is ever lost! Rahan knows how to make the pumas back down! Fire! Grasping two flaming branches. The son of Crao rushed back into the forest, setting fire to a thicket here, to a bush there, and further to another. The wind was favorable and the high cliff at the "Stone tooth" was soon protected by a barrage of fire. Page Eight. Shortly after the fire raged, and presented Gahor's men with an impassable obstacle. The pumas! Hold them back! If these men did not fear the fire, they could no longer control their wild animals which, in panic, escaped from them and fled in all directions. We have gained time, but as soon as the fire goes out Gahor will attack us! What a pity that your people do not know how to “crawl on water”! They could have dived past the other side of this abyss! Oh! A vision suddenly imposed itself on the son of Crao. He saw the female "Four Hands” crossing the river with her young. What a “Four Hands” can do Rahan should be able to do it too! Page Nine. I Idea that he exposed was wildly audacious. Rahan is going to go over the other cliff! He will throw you vines that you will attach to these trees! During this time, let the women and children cut bamboos of this length! Lots of bamboo quickly, brothers! Quickly! Ra-ha-ha! The cry that accompanies his dive revealed no fear. It was the cry of Rahan taking action! If there were only hunters, a single vine would be enough. In safety on this side of the abyss he could only have thought of his fate. But the thought did not even cross his mind. Page Ten. But women and children must pass too! The long vines he cut were thick and too heavy to be thrown up to the stone tooth. But Rahan came across a very fine one which he weighed down with a stone. Catch it brothers! Rahan will attach a bigger one to its end! A moment later this thin vine made it possible to pull a much stronger one up to the stone tooth. Rahan would never have had the strength to throw it to the other side! When this vine was firmly attached on both sides, the son of Crao tied four others around his waist. It seems that this hunter wants to help those of the stone tooth! He could not have known that two warriors from Gahor, looking for their pumas, had just seen him. Page Eleven. The fire-haired man is as agile as a four-hands! We must alert Gahor! Let us kill him first! The son of Crao arrived in the middle of "Bridge" when the angry screams reached him. And he saw the men preparing to cut the vines with spears! Being rushed into the water worried him less to see so much effort called into question! But suddenly. Attack, Taouk! Attack! The unexpected and unanticipated intervention of old Hangka and his puma reversed the situation! One warrior of Gahor managed to escape but the other did not have time! Page Twelve. The fire will not hold Gahor back much longer! We must act quickly! Cheers from the clan greeted Rahan, as he reached the stone tooth and tied the vines to the trunks. And what seemed impossible was going to come true! Maintaining balance thanks to the line serving as a "Hand hold", Rahan cleverly wedged the bamboos. Between the vines which would support the deck of the “Bridge”. The lighter children took turns to supply him with bamboo. It was a delicate and perilous task. But the fragile footbridge took shape, and soon connected the two cliffs. However. And you saw Hankga and the “Fire-hair” enemy throw vines at those of the stone tooth!? I saw this, Gahor! And Hangka's "Puma" cut Taraou's throat! Page thirteen. You heard!? The fire has gone away and we are going to attack! Death to those of the stone tooth! Kill! Kill! The clamors reached the stone tooth as children and women evacuated it in small groups. And the hunters were about to take their turn on the bridge when the howling pack appeared. Come on, brothers! Rahan will stop them from cutting the vines! Armed with a long bamboo, the son of Crao Guarded the "Bridge" allowing the withdrawal of his companions. Gahor will kill you with his own hands! When they were safe on the other cliff, he launched the challenge. So, Gahor? Would you be afraid of coming to take Rahan's life? Page Fourteen. Gahor hesitated, but rage overcame him. In the middle of the fragile footbridge the duel to the death began. The bamboo and the spear collided. And suddenly. Ah! Ha-Ha-Ha! Farewell “Fire hair”! A crossbeam gave way under his feet, and Rahan seemed to be swallowed up. You should never have challenged Gahor, “Fire-hair." But the bamboo he hugged held him to the vines. He was now at the mercy of Gahor who raised his spear. On the other side of the abyss the clan of the stone tooth believed lost the one who had saved them. But Rahan, instinctively taking advantage of the new situation, caused such a pendulum movement on the bridge. Page Fifteen. That Gahor was thrown into the void. Ah! Gahor cannot crawl on water. He is going to join the territory of shadows! Death to the fiery-haired enemy! As he attempted to climb onto the bridge, the son of Crao saw Gahor's warriors rushing. To avoid the fate of their leader, they clung firmly to the "Hand hold." Kill! Kill! Rahan only had one final trick left. Destroy the pathway! Slipping his hand into the lace of his knife so that the weapon does not escape him. Page Sixteen. He energetically attacked the vines. What does it matter if Rahan falls with them! He knows how to crawl on the water! The footbridge, suddenly dislocated, disappeared under the men’s feet! Rahan secured his grip by cutting the last two vines. When the fibers gave way, there was drama. Under the sudden shock, these vines became tangled, encircling his wrist! And while the last warriors were thrown into the abyss, he himself remained suspended from half of the bridge which fell towards the cliff! Page Seventeen. The shock was incredibly violent. Flattened against the wall, without consciousness, he did not see those of the stone tooth. Cut the "Hand hold" from which a few the men of Gahor still hung. May the vines not unravel! And that life remains in him! He did not feel that he was very gently being raised up. The day had not come for the son of Crao to join the territory of shadows. And yet, when he came to, a puma was observing him! His fingers reached for the ivory weapon still laced to his wrist. Do not worry, Rahan Taouk means you no harm! Page Eighteen. Hangka the elder was there with those of the stone tooth. All of them were saved thanks to your audacity! And the warriors of Gahor? Gone forever under the water! But don't blame yourself! They were no longer men, but monsters! From now on, happiness will return to our territory! And Hangka will no longer live as a hermit since those of the stone tooth accept him into their clan! But, on behalf of everyone, Hangka would like to ask you a question. How did you imagine launching a path of vines over an abyss!? Which god inspired you with this extraordinary idea? It was not a god. Uh, only a “four hands”! The "Four Hands" often imitate "Those-Who-Walk-Upright". This time it was us who imitated the “Four-hands”! And the son of Crao, modestly, tried to prove that he had only copied monkeys! Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

A Voyage to Arcturus, published in 1920. by DAVID LINDSAY. “Shall I speak with many words, or few words?” “If you wish to say what is not, many words will not suffice. If you wish to say what is, a few words will be enough.”

BUYING A FISHING ROD. FOR MY GRANDFATHER. STORIES. GAO XINGJIAN. Translated from the Chinese by Mabel Lee. Reformatted for Machine Text, PukeOnaAPlate 2023. THE TEMPLE. We were deliriously happy: delirious with the hope, infatuation, tenderness, and warmth that go with a honeymoon. Fangfang and I had planned the trip over and over, even though we had only half a month off: ten days of wedding leave, plus one week of additional work leave. Getting married is a major event in life, and for us nothing was more important, so why not ask for some extra time? That director of mine was so miserly: anyone who went to him requesting leave had to haggle; there were never instant approvals. The two weeks I had written in my application he changed to one week, including a Sunday, and it was with reluctance that he said, “I’ll expect you to be back at work by the due date.” “Of course, of course,” I said. “We wouldn’t be able to afford the salary deduction if we stayed any longer.” It was only then that he signed his name, thereby granting us permission to go on leave. I wasn’t a bachelor anymore. I had a family. I would no longer be able to go off to restaurants with friends as soon as I got paid at the beginning of the month. I wouldn’t be able to spend so recklessly that by the end of the month I wouldn’t have the money to buy a pack of cigarettes and would have to go through my pockets and search the drawers for coins. But I won’t go into all that. I’m saying that I, we, were very happy. In our short lives, there hadn’t been much happiness. Both Fangfang and I had experienced years of hardship, and we had learned what life was all about. During those catastrophic years in this country, our families suffered through many misfortunes, and to some extent we still resented our generation’s fate. But I won’t go into that, either. What was important was that we could now count ourselves happy. We had half a month’s leave, and although it was only half a honeymoon, for us it couldn’t have been sweeter. I am not going to go into how sweet it was. You all know about that and have experienced it yourselves, but this particular sweetness was ours alone. What I want to tell you about is the Temple of Perfect Benevolence: “perfect” as in “perfect union,” and “benevolence” as in “benevolent love.” But the name of the temple is not really of great importance. It was a dilapidated ruin, and certainly not a famous tourist attraction. No one knew about it other than the locals, and I suspect that even the locals who knew what it was called were few. In any case, the temple we happened to visit wasn’t one where people burned incense or prayed, and if we hadn’t carefully examined the stone tablet with traces of writing in the drain of the water pump we wouldn’t even have known that the temple had a name. The locals referred to it as “the big temple,” but it was nothing compared with the Retreat for the Soul Temple, in Hangzhou, or the Jade Cloud Temple, in Beijing. Situated on a hill beyond the town, it was little more than an old two-story building with flying eaves and the remnants of a stone gate in front of it. The courtyard walls had collapsed. The bricks of the outer wall had been carried off by peasants to build their houses or construct pens for their pigs, and only a circle of unfired bricks remained, overgrown with weeds. However, from a distance, from the small street of the county town, the glazed yellow tiles sparkling in the sunlight caught our eyes. We had come to this town quite by accident. Our train was still at the platform after the announced departure time, probably waiting for an express that was behind schedule to pass through. The chaotic scramble of passengers getting on and off had settled and, apart from the conductors chatting at the carriage doors, there was no one on the platform. Beyond the station was a valley with an expanse of gray roofs. Farther still, a chain of heavily wooded mountains gave this ancient town an exceptional air of tranquillity. Suddenly I had an idea. I said, “Should we take a look at this town?” Fangfang, sitting opposite and looking at me lovingly, gave a slight nod. Her eyes seemed to speak, and, sensitive to each other, we communicated on the same wavelength. Without a word, we took our bags from the luggage rack and rushed to the door of our carriage. As soon as we had jumped onto the platform, we both laughed. I said, “We’ll leave on the next train.” “I don’t mind if we don’t leave at all,” Fangfang answered. After all, we were traveling, and it was our honeymoon. If we fell in love with a place, we would go there, and if we went on liking the place, we would stay longer. All the time, wherever we went, the happiness of newlyweds accompanied us. We were the happiest people in the world. Fangfang was holding my arm; I was holding our bags. We wanted the conductors on the platform and the countless pairs of eyes on the other side of the train windows to look at us with envy. We no longer had to drive ourselves mad trying to get transferred back to the city. Nor did we have to keep begging our parents for help. And we didn’t have to worry about our residential status or our jobs anymore. We even had our own apartment, our own home; it wasn’t very big, but it was comfortable. You belonged to me and I belonged to you, and, Fangfang, I know what you want to say: Our relationship was no longer immoral! And what does that mean? It means that we want everyone to share in our happiness. We’ve had so many problems, and we’ve troubled all of you with them, and you have all worried because of us. How can we repay you? With some candies and cigarettes after our wedding? No, we are repaying you with our happiness. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m saying, is there? That was how we came to this quiet old town in the valley. But it turned out that the town was nowhere near as tranquil as it had seemed when we were looking out the train window. Below the gray roof tiles, the lanes and alleys throbbed with activity. It was nine in the morning, and people were selling vegetables, rock melons, and freshly picked apples and pears. Streets in county towns like this one aren’t wide, so mule carts, horse carts, and trucks were all jammed together, with drivers cracking their whips and honking their horns. Dust filling the air, dirty water tossed out beside vegetable stalls, melon rinds all over the ground, squawking hens flapping in the hands of their buyers: these were sights that made us feel close to the town. It all felt so different from the time when we were graduates sent to work in the countryside. Now we were just visitors passing through, tourists, and the complicated relationships between the people here had nothing to do with us. Inevitably, this made us city dwellers feel somewhat superior. Fangfang clutched my arm tightly and I leaned close to her, and we could sense people’s eyes on us. But we didn’t belong to this town; we were from another world. We walked right past them, but they didn’t gossip about us; they only gossiped about the people they knew. Eventually, there were no more vegetable stalls and very few people. We had left behind the bustle and din of the market. I saw from my watch that it had taken us only a half hour to walk the length of the main road from the railway station. It was still early. It would be an anticlimax just to return to the station and wait for the next train, and Fangfang was already thinking about spending the night here! She didn’t say so, but I could see her disappointment. A man was heading toward us, ostentatiously swinging his arms as he walked. He was probably a cadre. “Excuse me, could you tell me how to get to the county hostel?” I asked. He looked at Fangfang and me for a moment, then enthusiastically pointed it out to us. “Go that way,” he told us, “then head left. The red three-story brick building is the county hostel.” He asked whom we were looking for, and seemed to want to take us there himself. We explained that we were tourists passing through and asked if there were any sights worth seeing. He patted his head: this, it seemed, was a problem. After giving the matter some thought, he said, “There actually aren’t any scenic spots in this county. But there’s a big temple up on the hill to the west of town, if you want to go there. You’ll have to climb the hill, though, and it’s steep!” “That’s not a problem. We’ve come here to do some hiking,” I said. Fangfang hastened to add, “That’s right. We’re not afraid of climbing a hill.” At this, the man led us to the corner of the street. The hill was now directly in front, and at the top was the old temple, its glazed tiles sparkling in the sun. But then the man glanced at the high-heeled shoes Fangfang was wearing and said, “You’ll have to wade across a river.” “Is the water deep?” I asked. “Above the knees.” I looked at Fangfang. “That’s nothing. I’ll manage.” She didn’t want to let me down. We thanked him and began walking in the direction he had indicated. When we turned onto the dusty dirt road, I couldn’t help but feel bad as I looked at the new highheeled shoes with thin straps that Fangfang had on. Still, she charged ahead. “You’re really a crazy little thing,” I said, catching up with her. “As long as I’m with you.” Do you remember, Fangfang? You said this as you nestled against me. We followed a path down to the riverbank. On both sides, corn grew straight, taller than a man, and we walked through the green gauze canopy, with no one in sight either ahead or behind. Taking Fangfang in my arms, I gently kissed her. What’s wrong with that? She doesn’t want me to talk about that. So let’s go back to the Temple of Perfect Benevolence. It was on the other side of the river, at the top of the hill. We could see tufts of weeds growing between the glistening yellow tiles. The river was clear and cool. I held Fangfang’s shoes and my leather sandals in one hand and Fangfang’s hand in the other, while she scooped up her skirt with her free hand. Barefoot, we felt our way across. It had been a long time since I’d walked barefoot, so my feet were sensitive to even the smooth stones on the riverbed. “Is it hurting your feet?” I asked Fangfang. “I like it,” you replied softly. On our honeymoon, even having sore feet was a happy sensation. All the misfortunes of the world seemed to flow away with the river water, and we returned for a moment to our youth. We frolicked in the water like mischievous children. As I steadied her with one hand, Fangfang leaped from rock to rock, and from time to time she hummed a song. Once across the river, we started to run up the hill, laughing and shouting. Then Fangfang cut her foot and I was very upset, but she comforted me, saying that it was all right, it would be nothing as soon as she put on her shoes. I said that it was my fault, but she replied that she’d do anything to make me happy, even let her feet get cut. All right, all right, I won’t go on about it. But because you are the friends we value most, who have shared our anxieties with us, we should also share our happiness with you. It was in this manner that we finally climbed to the top of the hill and arrived at the outer gate in front of the temple. Within the collapsed courtyard wall was a gutter with pure water from the pump running through. In what had been the courtyard, someone had planted a patch of vegetables, and next to that was a manure pit. We recalled the years we had spent shoveling manure with production units in the countryside. Those difficult times had trickled away like water, leaving some sadness but sweet memories as well. And there was our love, too. In the glorious sunlight, no one could interfere with this secure love of ours. No one would be able to harm us again. Near the big temple was an iron incense burner. It was probably too heavy to move and too thick to break apart, so it continued to keep the old temple company, standing guard in front of the main door. The door was padlocked. Boards had been nailed over the rotten wooden lattice windows, but they, too, had rotted. The place was probably now being used as a storehouse for the local production team. No one else was around, and it was very peaceful. We could hear the mountain wind moaning in the ancient pines in front of the temple, and as no one was there to disturb us, we lay down on the grass in the shade of the trees. Fangfang rested her head on my arm, and we looked up at a thread of cloud about to disappear into the blue sky. Ours was an indescribable happiness, a true contentment. Intoxicated by this tranquillity, we would have gone on lying there, but we heard heavy footsteps on the flagstones. Fangfang sat up, and I got to my feet to have a look. A man was walking along the stone path from the gate toward the temple. He was a big fellow, with a mass of tangled hair on his head and an untrimmed beard covering his cheeks. He was scowling. From beneath bushy eyebrows, his stern eyes surveyed us. The wind had turned cool. Probably noticing our curious looks, the man raised his head slightly in the direction of the temple. Then, squinting, he studied the weeds swaying among the shiny tiles. He stopped in front of the incense burner and, striking it with one hand, made it ring. His fingers, gnarled and rough, looked as if they, too, were made of cast iron. In his other hand he held a tattered black cotton bag. He didn’t seem to be a commune member who had come to tend the vegetables. He was sizing us up again, looking at Fangfang’s high-heeled shoes and our travel bags in the grass. Fangfang immediately put her shoes back on. Then, unexpectedly, he addressed us. “Are you from out of town? Are you enjoying yourselves here?” I nodded. “It’s good weather,” he said. He seemed to want to talk. The eyes under those thick eyebrows had become less stern, and he appeared well meaning. He was wearing leather shoes with soles made from rubber tires, and the seams had split in places. The legs of his trousers were wet, so it was obvious he had come across the river from town. “It’s cool, and the view is quite beautiful,” I said. “Sit down. I’ll be leaving shortly.” It seemed that he was offering a kind of apology. He, too, sat down on the grass beside the flagstones. He opened his bag and said, “Would you like a melon?” “No, thanks,” I immediately said. But he threw me one anyway. I caught it and was about to throw it back. “It’s nothing. I’ve got half a bag of them here,” he said, raising the heavy bag to show me and taking out another melon as he spoke. I couldn’t say no, so I took a parcel of snacks from my travel bag, opened it, and held it out to him. “Try our snacks,” I said. He took a small piece of cake and put it on top of his bag. “That’s enough for me,” he said. “Go on, eat it.” He squeezed the melon in his big hands, cracking the brittle skin. “They’re clean. I washed them in the river.” He tossed away a piece of rind and shouted in the direction of the gate, “Take a break! Come and eat some melon!” “But there are long-horned grasshoppers here!” A boy’s voice came from beyond the gate; then the boy himself appeared on the slope, holding a wire cage. “There are plenty of them. I’ll catch some for you later,” the man replied. The little boy came toward us, bouncing and jumping as he ran. “Is it school vacation?” I asked, and, copying the man, cracked our melon into pieces. “It’s Sunday today, so I brought him out,” he replied. We were so engrossed with our own holiday that we had forgotten what day of the week it was. Fangfang took a bite of the melon and smiled at me to indicate that he was a good man. There are, in fact, many good people in the world. “Eat it. It’s from Uncle and Auntie over there,” he said to the boy, who was staring at the cream cake on top of his bag. The boy had grown up in this town and had clearly never seen such a cake. He took it and ate it right away. “Is he your son?” I asked. The man didn’t reply, but said to the boy, “Take some melon and go play. I’ll catch grasshoppers for you later.” “I want to catch five of them!” the boy said. “All right, we’ll catch five.” The man watched as the boy ran off with the wire cage in his hand. There were deep creases at the corners of his eyes. “He isn’t my son,” he said, looking down and taking out a cigarette. He struck a match and dragged hard. Then, sensing our surprise, he added, “He’s the child of my paternal cousin. I want to adopt him, but it depends on whether he’s willing to come and stay with me.” Suddenly we understood that this stern man’s heart was churning with emotion. “What about your wife?” Fangfang couldn’t help asking. There was no reply. He puffed hard on his cigarette, got up, and left. We felt the chill of the mountain air. On the brilliant yellow tiles, the fresh grass that had sprouted in the spring was as tall as the old, withered stalks, and both swayed in the breeze. In the blue sky, a floating cloud that seemed to hang on the corner of a flying eave created the impression that the temple itself was tilting. A broken tile at the edge of the eave looked as if it were about to fall. Probably it had sat that way for years without falling. The man was standing on a mound that had once been a wall, and for a long time he just stared out at the mountains and valleys. In the distance the ridges were higher and steeper than the hill we were on, but on the mountain slopes there were no terraced fields and no houses to be seen. “You shouldn’t have asked him,” I said. “Oh stop.” Fangfang looked upset. “There’s a grasshopper here!” came the boy’s voice from the other side of the hill. It seemed far away but was quite clear. The man strode off in that direction, swinging the bag of rock melons as he disappeared from sight. I put a hand on Fangfang’s shoulder and pulled her toward me. “Don’t.” She turned away. “There’s a bit of grass in your hair,” I explained, removing a pine needle that had stuck to her hair. “That tile is about to fall,” Fangfang said. She, too, had noticed the broken tile hanging there precariously. “It would be good if it fell. Otherwise it might injure someone,” she mumbled. “It might be a while before it does fall,” I said. We walked to the mound where the man had been standing. In the valley there was a stretch of farmland, dense crops of luxuriant green barley and broomcorn millet, waiting for the autumn harvest. Below us, on a level part of the slope, stood a few mud huts, their bottom halves newly coated in brilliant white lime. The man was holding the boy’s hand as they made their way down a small winding track, past the huts and through the crops. Suddenly, like a colt that had broken free of its reins, the boy bolted off, dashing ahead, then turning and running back. He seemed to be waving the cage at the man. “Do you think the man caught grasshoppers for him?” Fangfang, do you remember asking me that? “Of course,” I said. “Of course.” “He caught five of them!” you said cheekily. Well, that’s the Temple of Perfect Benevolence that we visited on our honeymoon, and which I wanted to describe for all of you. IN THE PARK. “I haven’t strolled in a park for a long time. I never have the time to spare, or the inclination anymore.” “It’s the same with everyone. After work, people just hurry home. Life’s always a rush.” “I remember when I was a child, I really liked coming to this park to roll around on the grass.” “I used to come with my father and mother.” “I really liked it when there were other children.” “Yes.” “Especially when you were there as well.” “I remember.” “At the time, you had two little plaits.” “At the time, you always wore dungarees, and you were very cocky.” “You were unfriendly, always haughty.” “Really?” “Yes, nobody would dare antagonize you.” “I don’t remember, but I liked playing with you and I even used to kick a rubber ball with you.” “Nonsense, you didn’t ever kick a rubber ball! You used to wear little white shoes and were always afraid of getting them dirty.” “That’s right, when I was little I was really fond of wearing white sneakers.” “You were like a princess.” “Sure, a princess wearing sneakers.” “Then your family moved.” “That’s right.” “At first you often came to visit on Sundays, but later on not as much.” “I had grown up.” “My mother really liked you.” “I know.” “There were no daughters in our family.” “Everyone said we looked alike, like an older sister and a younger brother.” “Don’t forget we’re the same age, that I’m two months older.” “But I seemed older than you; I was always taller by a hand, as if I were your older sister.” “At the time, girls got tall earlier. Enough of that, let’s talk about something else.” “What will we talk about, then?” The path under the trees has clipped Japan cypresses growing on both sides. On the slope behind the cypresses, a young woman wearing a dress and carrying a red handbag sits down on a stone bench. “Let’s sit down awhile, too.” “All right.” “The sun’s about to set.” “Yes, it’s beautiful.” “I don’t like this artificial sort of beauty.” “Didn’t you say you liked going to parks?” “That was when I was little. I’ve lived in the mountain regions. I was a woodcutter for seven years in primitive forests.” “You managed to survive.” “Forests are really awesome.” The young woman wearing a dress gets up from the stone bench and looks to the end of the shady path beyond the neatly clipped cypresses. Several people are coming from that direction, among them a tall youth with hair over his temples. Beyond the treetops and the wall, the sky is infused with brilliant red and purple-red colors of the sunset, and rippling clouds begin to spread overhead. “I haven’t seen a beautiful sunset like this for a long time. The sky seems to be on fire.” “It’s like a wildfire.” “Like what?” “It’s like a forest wildfire.” “Well, keep talking.” “When there’s a forest wildfire, the sky is just like this. The fire spreads swiftly and with a vengeance, and there’s not time to cut down the forest. It’s really terrifying. All the felled trees fly into the air, and from a distance they look like bits of straw drifting up in a fire, and crazed leopards come out of the forests to throw themselves into the rivers, swimming right at you.” “Don’t the leopards attack people?” “They’re past thinking about that.” “Can’t you use your rifles on them?” “People are also traumatized; from riverbanks they just stare vacantly at the fire.” “Isn’t there anything that can be done?” “Mountain streams can’t stop it. The trees on the other side get scorched, start crackling, and suddenly they’re alight. For a distance of more than several li around it’s so smoky and hot, you can’t breathe. All you can do is wait for the wind to change or for the fire to get to the river, exhaust itself, and burn out.” The young woman in the dress sits down again on the stone bench; her red handbag is beside her. “Tell me some more about your experiences during those years.” “There’s nothing much to tell.” “How can there be nothing much to tell? All that was very interesting.” “But there’s not much point in talking about all that now. Talk about what you’ve been doing all these years.” “Me?” “Yes, you.” “I’ve got a daughter.” “How old?” “Six.” “Is she just like you?” “Everyone says she’s just like me.” “Is she like you when you were little? Does she wear white sneakers?” “No, she likes to wear leather shoes. Her father buys her one pair after another.” “You’re lucky. He sounds like a nice person.” “He’s quite good to me, but I don’t know if I’m lucky or not.” “And isn’t your work also quite good?” “Yes, compared with what many other people my age do, my work’s all right. I sit in an office, answer the phone, and take documents to my superiors.” “Are you a secretary?” “I’m looking after documents.” “That sort of work is confidential, it shows that they trust you.” “It’s much better than being a laborer. Didn’t you also manage to get through a hard time? Since you went to university, I suppose you’re doing some kind of professional work now?” “Yes, but it was all through my own efforts.” The colors of the sunset vanish. The sky is now a dark red, but on the horizon, above the treetops, there is an orange-yellow glow on the edge of a dark cloud. On the slope it is becoming dark in the grove and the young woman on the bench is sitting with her head bowed. She seems to look at her watch and then stands up. She is holding her handbag but decides to put it down again on the bench, as she looks at the path beyond the cypresses. Apparently noticing the moon by the clouds, she turns away and starts to pace, her eyes looking at the ground. “She’s waiting for someone.” “Waiting for someone is awful. Nowadays it’s the young men who don’t show up for dates.” “Are there too many young women in the city?” “There’s no shortage of young men, it’s just that there are too few decent young men.” “But this young woman is very good looking.” “If the woman falls in love first, it’s always unlucky.” “Will he turn up?” “Who knows? Having to wait really makes a person go crazy.” “Luckily we’re past that age. Have you ever waited for someone?” “It was he who first sought me. Have you ever made someone wait?” “I’ve never failed to show up for a date.” “Do you have a girlfriend?” “I seem to.” “Then why don’t you get married?” “I probably will.” “It seems you don’t really like her.” “I feel sorry for her.” “Feeling sorry is not love. If you don’t love her, don’t go on deceiving her!” “I’ve only ever deceived myself.” “That’s also deceiving the other person.” “Let’s talk about something else.” “All right.” The young woman sits down. Then she immediately stands up again, looking toward the path. The last smudge of faint red on the horizon is barely visible. She sits down again but, as if sensing people are watching, she puts down her head and appears to be fiddling with her skirt at the knees. “Will he turn up?” “I don’t know.” “This shouldn’t happen.” “There are too many things that shouldn’t happen.” “Is this girlfriend of yours pretty?” “She is a sad case.” “Don’t talk like that! If you don’t love her, don’t deceive her. Just find yourself a young woman you truly love, someone good-looking.” “Someone good-looking wouldn’t necessarily like me.” “Why?” “Because I don’t have a good father.” “Don’t talk like that, I don’t want to listen.” “Then it’s best not to listen. I think we should leave.” “Will you come to my home?” “I should bring your daughter a present. It will also count as my best wishes to you.” “Don’t talk like that.” “What’s wrong with that?” “You’re always hurting me.” “That’s never been my intention.” “I wish you happiness.” “I don’t want to hear that word.” “Then aren’t you happy?” “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s been hard just to meet this once after all these years, so let’s not talk about depressing things like that.” “Very well, then let’s talk about something else.” The young woman suddenly stands up. Someone is coming along the path, walking very quickly. “Well, at least he’s turned up.” It’s a youth carrying a canvas satchel. He doesn’t slow down and keeps walking. The young woman looks away. “It’s not the person she’s waiting for. Life’s often that way, oddly enough.” “She’s crying.” “Who?” The young woman sits down with her hands over her face, her hands are raised and seem to be covering her face, but it can’t be seen clearly. Birds are twittering. “So there are still birds here.” “Not only forests have birds.” “Well, there are still sparrows here.” “You’ve become quite arrogant.” “That’s how I managed to survive. If I hadn’t kept that bit of arrogance, I wouldn’t be here today.” “Don’t be so cynical; you’re not the only person who has suffered. Everyone was sent to work in the country. You should realize that it was much worse for the young women sent to the country where they had neither relatives or friends. The reason I married him was because I had no better option. His parents arranged for my transfer back to the city.” “I wasn’t blaming you.” “No one has the right to blame anyone.” The streetlights have turned on and produce a wan yellow light among the green leaves of the trees. The night sky is gray and indistinct; even the stars can’t be seen clearly in the city sky, making the light from the streetlights among the trees appear too bright. “I think we should leave.” “Yes, we shouldn’t have come here.” “People might think we are lovers. If your husband finds out, he won’t misunderstand, will he?” “He’s not that kind of person.” “Then, he’s a pretty good person.” “You can come and stay at our place.” “Only if he invites me.” “Won’t it be the same if I invite you?” “Too bad I didn’t know your address. That was why I went to look you up at your workplace. Otherwise, I would have gone directly to visit you at home.” “You don’t have to go into all that nonsense.” “There’s no need for us to snipe at each other like that.” “You’re the one who is saying one thing and meaning something else.” “Let’s talk about something else.” “All right.” It has become dark in the grove and the young woman can no longer be seen. However, with the light shining on them, the lustrous green leaves of a white poplar seem to glow. There’s a hint of a breeze, and the trembling leaves of the white poplar shimmer like satin. “She hasn’t left yet, has she?” “No, she’s leaning against a tree.” A big tree stands a few paces from the empty stone bench, and someone is leaning against it. “What’s she doing?” “Crying.” “It’s not worth it!” “Why not?” “It’s not worth crying over him. She won’t have a problem finding a good man who loves her, a person worthy of her love. She should just leave.” “But she’s still hoping.” “Life’s road is wide and she will find her own way.” “Don’t think you know everything; you don’t understand how a woman feels. It’s just so easy for a man to hurt a woman. The woman is always weaker.” “If she knows she is weaker, why doesn’t she try to learn to be stronger?” “Fine-sounding words.” “There’s no need to look for things to worry about. There are enough worries in life. One should be able to accept things.” “There are so many things that should be.” “I’m saying that people should only do the things that they should do.” “That’s the same as saying nothing.” “Quite right. I shouldn’t have come to see you.” “That’s also saying nothing.” “All right, we should go. I’ll buy you dinner.” “I don’t want to eat. Can’t we talk about something else?” “What about?” “Talk about yourself.” “Let’s talk about the next generation. What’s your daughter’s name?” “I wanted to have a son.” “Having a daughter is the same.” “No, when a boy grows up he won’t have to suffer as much.” “People of the future won’t have as much suffering, because we’ve already suffered for them.” “She’s crying.” The sound of rustling leaves is in the breeze overhead, but the sound of weeping is clearly in it, and coming from the direction of the stone bench and the tree. “We should go and console her.” “It wouldn’t help.” “But we should still try.” “Then you go.” “In such a situation it would only be appropriate for a woman to go.” “She doesn’t need that sort of consolation.” “I don’t understand.” “You don’t understand anything.” “Best not to. Once you do, it becomes a burden.” “Then why do you want to console others? Why don’t you just console yourself?” “What do you mean?” “You don’t understand how other people feel. If feelings are a burden, it’s best for you not to understand.” “Let’s leave.” “Will you come to my home?” “There’s no need.” “Are we going to say good-bye just like that? I’ve already invited you to come for dinner tomorrow. He’ll be there, too.” “I think it would be best if I didn’t come. What do you think?” “That’s entirely up to you.” In the darkness, the sound of weeping becomes more distinct. Intermittently, stifled sobs mingle with the sound of leaves trembling in the evening breeze. “When I get married I’ll write you a letter.” “It’s best that you don’t write anything.” “If I pass through for work later on, I might come to visit you again.” “It’s best that you don’t.” “Yes, it was a mistake.” “What mistake are you talking about?” “I shouldn’t have come to see you again.” “No, it wasn’t a mistake for you to have come!” “Neither of us is to blame. The mistakes of that era are to blame. But all that’s in the past and we have to learn to forget.” “But it’s hard to forget everything.” “Maybe with the passing of more time.” “You had best go.” “Don’t you want me to see you onto a bus?” The two of them stand up. From behind the gray tree trunk near the barely visible empty stone bench, there is a sob that couldn’t be stifled. However, the person can’t be seen. “Do you think maybe it’d be best that we urge her to go home?” The silky, tender, new green leaves on the white poplar shimmer in the glow of the streetlight. CRAMP. Cramp. His stomach is starting to cramp. Of course, he thought he could swim farther out. But about a kilometer from shore his stomach is starting to cramp. At first he thinks it’s a stomachache, that will pass if he keeps moving. But when his stomach keeps tightening, he stops swimming any farther and feels it with his hand. The right side is hard, and he knows it’s a cramp in his stomach because of the cold water. He hadn’t exercised enough to prepare himself before entering the water. After dinner, he had set off alone from the little white hostel and had come to the beach. It was early autumn, windy, and at dusk, few people were going into the water. Everyone was either chatting or playing poker. In the middle of the day men and women were lying everywhere on the beach, but now there were only five or six people playing volleyball, a young woman in a red swimsuit, the others young men. The swimsuit and the trunks were all dripping wet, they’d just come out of the water. On this autumn day, the water was probably too cold for them. Along the whole coastline no one else was in the water. He had gone straight into the water without looking back, thinking that the woman might be watching him. He can’t see them now. He looks back, toward the sun. It’s setting, about to set behind the rehabilitation hospital’s beachfront pavilion on the hill. The lingering brilliant yellow rays of the sun hurt his eyes, but he can see the beachfront pavilion on top of the hill, the outline of the hazy treetops above the coast road, and the boat-shaped rehabilitation hospital from the first floor up; anything below can’t be seen, because of the surging sea and the direct rays of the sun. Are they still playing volleyball? He is treading water. White-crested waves on the ink green sea. The surging waves surround him, but no fishing boats are at work. Turning his body, he is borne up by the waves. Up ahead on the gray-black sea is a dark spot, far in the distance. He drops down between the waves and can no longer see the surface of the sea. The sloping sea is black and shiny, smoother than satin. The cramp in his stomach gets worse. Lying on his back and floating on the water, he massages the hard spot on his abdomen until it hurts less. Diagonally in front, above his head, is a feathery cloud; up there, the wind must be even stronger. As the waves rise and fall, he is borne up and then dropped between them. But just floating like this is useless. He has to swim quickly toward shore. Turning, he tries hard to keep his legs pressed together and, by so doing, counteract the wind and the waves to enhance his speed. But his stomach that had gained some slight relief again starts hurting. This time the pain comes faster. He 3 6 Cramp feels his right leg immediately become stiff, and the water go right over his head. He can see only ink green water, so limpid and, moreover, extremely peaceful, except for the rapid string of bubbles he breathes out. His head emerges from the water and he blinks, trying to shake the water from his eyelashes. He still can’t see the coastline. The sun has set, and the sky above the undulating hills glows with the color of roses. Are they still playing volleyball? That woman, it’s all because of that red swimsuit of hers. He’s sinking again, surrendering to the pain. He rapidly strikes out with his arms but, taking in air, swallows a mouthful of water, salty seawater, and coughing feels like a needle being jabbed into his stomach. He has to turn again, to lie flat on his back with his arms and legs apart. This way he can relax and let the pain subside a little. The sky above has turned gray. Are they still playing volleyball? They are important. Did the woman in the red swimsuit notice him entering the water, and will they look out to sea? That dark spot back there in the gray-black sea, is it a small boat? Or is it a pontoon that has broken loose from its mooring, and would anyone be concerned with what has happened to it? At this point, he can rely only upon himself. Even if he calls out, there is only the sound of the surging waves, monotonous, never ending. Listening to the waves has never been so lonely. He sways, but instantly steadies himself. Next, an icy current charges relentlessly by and carries him, helpless, along with it. Turning on his side, with his left arm stroking out, his right hand pressing against his abdomen, and his feet kicking, he massages. It still hurts, but it’s bearable. He knows he can now depend only on the strength of his own kicking to fight his way out of the cold current. Whether or not he can bear it, he’ll just have to, because this is the only way he’ll be able to save himself. Don’t take it too seriously. Serious or not, he has a cramp in the abdomen and he’s one kilometer from shore, out in deep sea. He’s not sure anymore if it’s one kilometer, but senses that he’s been floating in line with the coast. The strength of his kicking barely offsets the thrust of the current. He must struggle to get out of it, or else before too long he’ll be like that dark spot floating on the waves, and vanish into the gray-black sea. He must endure the pain, he must relax, he must kick as hard as he can, he can’t slacken off, and above all he mustn’t panic. With great precision he has to coordinate his kicking, breathing, and massaging. He can’t be distracted by any other thoughts, and he can’t allow any thoughts of fear. The sun has set very quickly, and there is a hazy gray above the sea, but he can’t see any lights on the shore yet. He can’t even see the coast clearly, or the curves of the hills. His feet have kicked something! He panics, and feels a spasm in his stomach, sharp and painful. He gently moves his legs; there are stinging circles on his ankles. He has run into the tentacles of a jellyfish and he sees the gray-white creature, like an open umbrella, with thin floating membranous lips. He is perfectly capable of grabbing it and pulling out its mouth and its tentacles. Over the past few days he has learned from the children living here by the sea how to catch and preserve jellyfish. Below the windowsill of his hostel window, there are seven salted jellyfish with their tentacles and mouths pulled out. Once the water is squeezed out, all that remain are sheets of shriveled skin, and he too will be just a piece of skin, a corpse, no longer able to float to the shore. Let the thing live. But he wants to live even more, and he will never catch jellyfish again, that is, if he can return to shore, and he won’t even go into the sea again. He kicks hard, his right hand pressed against his stomach. He stops thinking about anything else, only about kicking in rhythm, evenly, as he pushes through the water. He can see the stars, they are wonderfully bright, in other words, his head is now pointing in the direction of the coast. The cramp in his abdomen has gone but he keeps rubbing it carefully, even though this slows him down. When he emerges from the sea and comes onto the shore, the beach is completely deserted. The tide is coming in again and he thinks he was helped by the tide. The wind blowing on his bare body is colder than it had been in the seawater, and he shivers. He collapses onto the beach, but the sand is no longer warm. Getting to his feet, he immediately starts running. He’s in a hurry to tell people he’s just escaped death. In the front hall of the hostel the same group is playing poker. They are all looking intently at the faces or at the cards of their opponents, and no one bothers to look up at him. He goes back to his own room, but his roommate, who is probably still chatting in the room next door, isn’t there. He takes a towel from the windowsill, aware that the jellyfish, with a coat of salt on them and squashed under a rock outside his window, are still full of water. Afterward, he puts on fresh clothes and shoes and, feeling warm, returns alone to the beach. The sound of the sea is all-embracing. The wind is stronger and lines of gray-white waves are charging onto shore. The black seawater suddenly spreads out, and because he doesn’t jump in time, his shoes get soaked. He walks a little farther off, following the shore, along the dark beach. There is no longer any starlight. He hears voices, male and female, and the figures of three people. He stops. They are pushing two bicycles, and one of them has a girl with long hair sitting on the pillion. The wheel sinks into the sand and the person pushing seems to be struggling. But they keep talking and laughing; the voice of the girl sitting on the pillion is particularly happy. They stop in front of him, holding their bicycles. A young guy takes a big bag from the back rack of the other bicycle and hands it to the woman. They start taking off their clothes. Two skinny boys, stark naked and waving their arms, prance about, yelling: “It’s really cold, it’s really cold!” There is also the happy, cackling laughter of the girl. “Do you want to drink it now?” asks the girl leaning on the bicycle. They go over, take a wine bottle from the girl, take turns drinking from the bottle, pass it back to the girl, then run toward the sea. “Hey! Hey!” “Hey.” The tide noisily charges forward and keeps rising. “Hurry back!” The girl screams out, but it is only the crashing of the waves that respond. In the faint light reflected on the sea surging up to the shore, he sees that the girl leaning on the bicycle is supporting herself on crutches. THE ACCIDENT. It happened like this. A gust of wind swept up a pile of dirt from the roadwork outside Xinhua Bookshop on the other side of the road, swirled it up in an arc, then dumped it everywhere. The dust has just settled. It is five o’clock in the afternoon, right after the fourth beep has sounded on the radio in the radio repair shop in Desheng Avenue. It isn’t the dust storm season and the weather is only starting to turn warm. Some cyclists are still wearing short gray cotton coats, although on the pavements there are already young women in pale blue spring clothes. There are endless streams of cyclists and pedestrians, but it isn’t at a time when everyone is finishing work and traffic congestion is at its worst. However, inevitably there are people who are finishing work early, as inevitably there are people on work leave, so there are busy and idle people coming and going on the street. At this time of day it’s always like this. The buses aren’t too crowded even if all the seats have been taken and some people are standing, holding on to the handrail as they look out of the windows. A bicycle fitted with an extra wheel for a baby-buggy with a red-and-blue checkered cloth shade is crossing diagonally from the other side of the road, and a man is riding it. Coming from the opposite direction is a two-carriage electric trolley bus that is going quite fast, but not too fast. It is clearly going more slowly than the small pale green sedan car about to overtake the bicycle, but neither is necessarily exceeding the city speed limit. The man on the bicycle arches his back, pedaling hard, and the little green car overtakes him on the other side. On this side, the trolley bus is heading toward him. The man hesitates but doesn’t brake, and the bicycle with the buggy unhurriedly continues to cross diagonally. The trolley bus sounds the horn but doesn’t reduce its speed. As the man crosses the white line in the middle of the road, the dust from the gust of wind has already settled, so his vision isn’t obscured. Unblinkingly, he looks up; about forty, he is not a young man, and his hat, tilted slightly to the back of his head, shows that he is balding. He must be able to see the trolley bus coming toward him, and hear the horn. He hesitates again, seems to brake, although not hard, and the bicycle with the buggy clumsily continues crossing the road diagonally. The trolley bus is now close and the horn is sounding nonstop. However, the bicycle keeps going, as before. Sitting in the buggy under the shade is a child with rosy cheeks, barely three or four years old. Suddenly there is the screech of brakes and the horn sounds louder and louder as the trolley bus fast approaches. The bicycle’s front wheel continues heading diagonally toward the bus, slowly, as the horn grows louder and the screeching of the brakes turns shrill. The bus has reduced its speed, but the front of the bus keeps moving ominously forward, closing in like a wall. The bus and the bicycle are about to collide and a woman on the pavement on this side of the road starts screaming. Pedestrians and cyclists alike all look on, but no one seems capable of moving. As the front wheel of the bicycle passes the front of the bus, the man starts pedaling hard, maybe he will just make it, but he reaches forward to touch the red-and-blue checkered shade, as if he is trying to push it down. As his hand touches the shade, the buggy flies off, bouncing on the single wheel. The man’s legs are caught as he throws up his arms and falls backward off the bicycle. In the clamor of the horn and brakes and women screaming, before onlookers have time to gasp, the man is instantly crushed under the wheels. The bicycle he was riding, completely twisted, is thrown ten or so feet along the road. The pedestrians on both sides of the road are aghast and cyclists get off their bicycles. It is quiet all around, and only the gentle singing from the radio repair shop can be heard: You may remember Our meeting in the mist, under the broken bridge. It is probably a record of some post–Deng Lijun singer from Hong Kong. Front wheels in a pool of blood, the bus comes to a halt. Blood on the front of the bus is dripping back down onto the body. The first to approach the body is the bus driver, who has opened the door and jumped down. Next, people from both sides of the road also come running, while others surround the overturned buggy, which has rolled into the gutter. A middle-aged woman takes the child from the buggy, shakes it, and examines it all over. “Is it dead?” “It’s dead!” “Is it dead?” Talk in low voices all around. The child, drained of color, has its eyes shut tight, and blue veins can be seen through the child’s soft skin. But there is no sign of external injury. “Don’t let him get away!” “Hurry, call the police!” “Don’t move anything! Don’t go over there. Leave everything as it is!” A crowd several layers deep has surrounded the front of the bus. Only one person is curious enough to lift the twisted wreck of the bicycle. The bell rings as he puts it back down. “I clearly sounded the horn and braked! Everyone saw it; he was intent on getting himself killed by charging into the bus, how can you blame me?” It is the strained voice of the driver trying to explain, but no one takes any notice. “You can all be witnesses, all of you saw it!” “Move aside! Move aside, move aside, all of you!” A policeman with a big hat emerges from the crowd. “We’ve got to hurry to save the child’s life! Quick, stop a car and get the child to a hospital!” It is a man’s voice. A young man in a coffee-colored leather jacket runs to the line in the middle of the road, waving an arm. A small Toyota sedan sounds its horn nonstop to make its way through the pedestrians who have spilled onto the roadway. Next, one of those 130 light trucks comes along, and it stops. Inside the windows of the bus involved in the accident, passengers are bickering with the conductress. Another trolley bus pulls up behind. The doors of the one in front open and the passengers surge out, blocking the trolley bus that has just arrived. There is a loud clamor of voices. I will never, never be able to forget. The singing on the stereo is drowned out. Blood is still dripping, and there is a stench of blood in the air. “Waaa.” The child’s repressed wailing finally breaks out. “It’s a good sign!” “It’s still alive!” There are sighs of happy relief. As the wailing grows louder, people also come back to life: it is as if they have been liberated. They then all rush to join the crowd surrounding the body. Screaming sirens. A police car with flashing blue lights on the roof has arrived, and the crowd parts as four policemen quickly get out. Two of them are wielding batons, and people stand back immediately. Traffic has come to a standstill and long queues of vehicles are waiting at both ends of the street. Honking horns have replaced the din of voices. One of the policemen goes to the middle of the road and waves his white-gloved hands to direct the traffic. The police summon the conductress from the second trolley bus. She tries at first to make excuses, then reluctantly takes the child from the middle-aged woman and gets into the 130 light truck. A white glove signals. The truck drives off, taking with it the child’s shrill screams and wailing. As the police wielding batons shout at them, the onlookers move back to form a rectangle that includes the twisted wreck of the bicycle. What is happening to the driver can now be seen from this side of the road. He is wiping off the sweat with his cotton cap. A policeman is questioning him. He takes out his driver’s license in its red plastic folder, and the policeman confiscates it. He immediately protests. “Why are you making excuses? If you’ve run over the man, then you’ve run over him!” A youth pushing a bicycle yells out. The conductress wearing sleeve-protectors comes out of the bus and rebukes the youth. “He was trying to get himself killed. The horn was sounding and the bus had braked, yet the man wouldn’t give way. He just went under the bus.” “The man was in the middle of the road and had a child with him. It was broad daylight, so he must have seen him!” someone in the crowd says angrily. “What does it matter to drivers like him if they run over someone? He won’t have to pay for it with his life.” This is said with derision. “What a tragedy. If he didn’t have the child with him, he would have got across long ago!” “Is there any hope for the man?” “His brain came out?” “I just heard this plop.” “You heard it?” “Yes, it went plop.” “Stop all this talk!” “Ai, life’s like that, a person can die just like that.” “He’s crying.” “Who?” “The driver.” The driver, sitting on his haunches with his head down, has covered his eyes with his cap. “He didn’t do it deliberately.” “If this had happened to anyone, they would.” “The man had a child with him? What happened to the child? What happened to the child?” someone who has just arrived asks. “The child wasn’t hurt, it was very lucky.” “Luckily the child was saved.” “The man was killed!” “Were they father and child?” “Why did he have to hook a buggy to his bicycle? It’s hard enough not to have an accident even with just one person on a bicycle.” “And he’d just picked up the child from kindergarten to take home.” “Kindergartens are hopeless, they won’t let you leave children for a whole day!” “You’re lucky if you can get into one.” “What’s there to look at! From now on, if you run without looking across the road.” A big hand drags away a child who is trying to squeeze between people in the crowd. The Hong Kong star has stopped singing. People are crowded on the steps of the radio repair shop. Red lights flashing, the ambulance has arrived. As medical personnel in white carry the body to the ambulance, the people in doorways of all the shops stand on their toes. The fat cook wearing an apron from a small eatery nearby has also come out to watch. “What happened? Was there an accident? Was someone killed?” “It was father and son, one of them is dead.” “Which of them died?” “The old man!” “What about the son?” “Unhurt.” “That’s shocking! Why didn’t he pull his father out of the way?” “It was the father who had pushed his son out of the way!” “Each generation is getting worse, the man was wasting his time bringing up the son!” “If you don’t know what happened, then don’t crap on.” “Who’s crapping on?” “I wasn’t trying to start an argument with you.” “The child was carried away.” “Was there a small child as well?” Others have just arrived. “Do you mind not shoving?” “Did I shove you?” “What’s there to look at? Move on! Everyone move on!” On the outer fringes of the crowd people are being arrested. Traffic security personnel with red armbands have arrived and they are more savage than the police. The driver, who is pushed into the police car, turns and tries to struggle, but the door shuts. People start to walk away and others get on their bicycles and leave. The onlookers thin out, but people keep arriving, stopping their bicycles or coming down off the pavement. The second trolley bus leads a long line of sedans, vans, jeeps, and big limousines slowly past the buggy with the torn red and-blue checkered shade in the gutter on this side of the road. Most of the people standing on shop steps have either gone inside or left, and the long stream of cars has passed. At the center of what has become a small crowd in the middle of the road, two policemen are taking measurements with a tape measure, while another makes notes in a little notebook. The blood under the wheels of the bus has begun to congeal and is turning black. In the trolley bus with its doors open, the conductress sits by a window staring blankly across to this side of the street. On the other side of the street, the faces in the windows of an approaching trolley bus look out and some people even poke their heads out. People have finished work: it is peak traffic time, and there are even more pedestrians and people riding bicycles. However, shouts from the police and traffic security personnel stop people from going to the middle of the road. “Was there an accident?” “Was someone killed?” “Must have been, look at all that blood.” “The day before, there was an accident on Jiankang Road. A sixteen-year-old was taken to the hospital, but they couldn’t save him, they said he was an only son.” “Nowadays, whose family doesn’t have only one son?” “Ai, how will the parents survive?” “If traffic management isn’t improved, there’ll be more accidents!” “Well, there won’t be any fewer.” “Every day after school, I worry until my Jiming gets home.” “It’s easier for you with your son, daughters are more worry to parents.” “Look, look, they’re taking photographs.” “So what if they are, it’s not going to help.” “Did he deliberately run over the man?” “Who knows?” “It couldn’t have been attached, otherwise it would have been hit for sure.” “I was just passing by.” “Some drivers drive like maniacs, and aggressively. If you don’t get out of the way, they certainly won’t make way for you!” “There are people who work off their frustrations by killing people, so anyone could be a victim.” “It’s hard to guard against such occurrences, it’s all decided by fate. In my old village there was a carpenter. He was good at his trade but he liked to drink. Once he was building someone a house and, on his way home at night, rotten drunk, he tripped and cracked his head open on a sharp rock.” “For some reason, the past couple of days my eyelid has been twitching.” “Which one?” “When you’re walking you shouldn’t be so engrossed in thought all the time. Quite a few times I’ve seen you.” “Nothing’s ever happened.” “If something had, it’d be too late and I wouldn’t be able to bear it.” “Stop it! People are looking at us.” The lovers look at one another and, holding each other’s hands even more tightly, walk off. They finish taking photographs of the scene of the accident, and the policeman with the tape measure takes a shovelful of dirt and spreads it over the blood. The wind has died down completely and it is getting dark. The conductress sitting by the window of the trolley bus has put on the lights and is counting the takings from the tickets. A policeman carries the wreckage of the bicycle on his shoulder to the car. Two men with red armbands get the buggy from the gutter, put it into the car, and leave with the policemen. It is time for dinner. The conductress is left standing at the door of the trolley bus and looks around impatiently while waiting for the depot to send a driver. Passersby only occasionally glance at the empty bus stopped for some reason in the middle of the road. It is dark and no one notices the blood covered with dirt in front of the bus that can no longer be seen. Afterward, the streetlights come on and at some time the empty bus has driven off. Cars speed endlessly on the road again and it is as if nothing has happened. By around midnight hardly anyone is about. A street-washing truck slowly approaches from the intersection some way off where traffic lights flash from time to time next to an iron railing with a blue poster. There is a row of words in white: FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY AND THAT OF OTHERS, PLEASE OBSERVE TRAFFIC RULES. At the spot where the accident had occurred, the truck slows down and, turning on its high-speed sprinkler jets, flushes clean any remaining traces of blood. The road cleaners don’t necessarily know that a few hours ago an accident had occurred and that the unfortunate victim had died right here. But who is the deceased? In this city of several million, only the man’s family and some close friends would know him. And if the dead man wasn’t carrying identification papers, right now they might not even know about the accident. The man probably was the child’s father, and when the child calms down, it will probably be able to say the father’s name. In that case, the man must have a wife. He was doing what the child’s mother should have been doing, so he was a good father and a good husband. As he loved his child, presumably he also loved his wife, but did his wife love him? If she loved him, why wasn’t she able to carry out her duties as his wife? Maybe he had a miserable life, otherwise why was he so distracted? Could it have been a personal failing and he was always indecisive? Maybe something was troubling him, something he couldn’t resolve, and he was destined not to escape this even greater misfortune. However, he wouldn’t have encountered this disaster if he had set out a little later or a little earlier. Or, if after picking up the child he had pedaled faster or slower, or if the woman at the kindergarten had spoken longer to him about his child, or if on the way a friend had stopped him to talk. It was unavoidable. He didn’t have some terminal illness but was just waiting to die. Death is inescapable for everyone, but premature death can be avoided. So if he hadn’t died in the accident, how would he have died? Traffic accidents in this city are inevitable, there are no cities free of traffic accidents. In every city there is inevitably this probability, even if the daily average is one in a million; and in a big city of this size there will always be someone encountering this sort of misfortune. He was one such unfortunate person. Didn’t he have a premonition before it happened? When he finally encountered this misfortune what did he think? Probably he didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to comprehend the great misfortune that was about to befall him. For him, there could be no greater misfortune than this. Even if he was that one in a million, like a grain of sand, before dying he had clearly thought of the child. Supposing it was his child, wasn’t it noble of him to sacrifice himself? Maybe it was not purely noble but to a certain extent instinctual, the instinct of being a father. People only talk about a mother’s instinct, but there are some mothers who abandon their babies. To have sacrificed himself for the child was indeed noble, but this sacrifice was entirely avoidable: if he had set out a little later or earlier, if at the time he had not been preoccupied, and if he were more resolute by nature, or even if he were more agile in his movements. The sum total of all these factors had hastened his death, so this misfortune was inevitable. I have been discussing philosophy again, but life is not philosophy, even if philosophy can derive from knowledge of life. And there is no need to turn life’s traffic accidents into statistics, because that’s a job for the traffic department or the public security department. Of course a traffic accident can serve as an item for a newspaper. And it can serve as the raw material for literature when it is supplemented by the imagination and written up as a moving narrative: this would then be creation. However, what is related here is simply the process of this traffic accident itself, a traffic accident that occurred at five o’clock, in the central section of Desheng Avenue in front of the radio repair shop. BUYING A FISHING ROD FOR MY GRANDFATHER. I walk past a new shop that sells fishing equipment. The different fishing rods on display make me think of my grandfather, and I want to buy him one. There’s a tenpiece fiberglass rod labeled “imported,” though it’s not clear if it’s the whole rod that’s imported or just the fiberglass, nor is it clear how being imported makes any of it better. All ten pieces overlap and probably retract into the last black tube, at the end of which is a handle like a pistol’s and a reel. It looks like an elongated revolver, like one of those Mausers that used to be in fashion. My grandfather certainly never saw a Mauser, and he never saw a fishing rod like this even in his dreams. His rods were bamboo, and he definitely wouldn’t have bought one. He’d find a length of bamboo and straighten it over a fire, cooking the sweat on his hands as he turned the bamboo brown with the smoke. It ended up looking like an old rod that had caught fish over many generations. My grandfather also made nets. A small net had about ten thousand knots, and day and night he would tie them nonstop. He’d move his lips while he knotted, as if cou

https://rumble.com/v406mdz-index-of-robert-heinlein-audiobooks..html Copyright © 1956, 1985 by Robert A. Heinlein, © 2003 by The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust Cover design by Passageway Pictures, Incorporated. This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Reformatted for Machine Speech, PukeOnAPlate 2023. For A. P. and Phyllis, Mick and Annette, Ailurophiles All. THE DOOR INTO SUMMER. Robert “A.” Heinlein. One. One winter shortly before the Six Weeks War my tomcat, Petronius the Arbiter, and I lived in an old farmhouse in Connecticut. I doubt if it is there any longer, as it was near the edge of the blast area of the Manhattan near-miss, and those old frame buildings burn like tissue paper. Even if it is still standing it would not be a desirable rental because of the fallout, but we liked it then, Pete and I. The lack of plumbing made the rent low and what had been the dining room had a good north light for my drafting board. The drawback was that the place had eleven doors to the outside. Twelve, if you counted Pete’s door. I always tried to arrange a door of his own for Pete, in this case a board fitted into a window in an unused bedroom and in which I had cut a cat strainer just wide enough for Pete’s whiskers. I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats, I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures. Pete usually used his own door except when he could bully me into opening a people door for him, which he preferred. But he would not use his door when there was snow on the ground. While still a kitten, all fluff and buzzes, Pete had worked out a simple philosophy. I was in charge of quarters, rations, and weather; he was in charge of everything else. But he held me especially responsible for weather. Connecticut winters are good only for Christmas cards; regularly that winter Pete would check his own door, refuse to go out it because of that unpleasant white stuff beyond it (he was no fool), then badger me to open a people door. He had a fixed conviction that at least one of them must lead into summer weather. Each time this meant that I had to go around with him to each of eleven doors, hold it open while he satisfied himself that it was winter out that way, too, then go on to the next door, while his criticisms of my mismanagement grew more bitter with each disappointment. Then he would stay indoors until hydraulic pressure utterly forced him outside. When he returned the ice in his pads would sound like little clogs on the wooden floor and he would glare at me and refuse to purr until he had chewed it all out, whereupon he would forgive me until the next time. But he never gave up his search for the Door into Summer. On 3 December 1970, I was looking for it too. My quest was about as hopeless as Pete’s had been in a Connecticut January. What little snow there was in southern California was kept on mountains for skiers, not in downtown Los Angeles, the stuff probably couldn’t have pushed through the smog anyway. But the winter weather was in my heart. I was not in bad health (aside from a cumulative hangover), I was still on the right side of thirty by a few days, and I was far from being broke. No police were looking for me, nor any husbands, nor any process servers; there was nothing wrong that a slight case of amnesia would not have cured. But there was winter in my heart and I was looking for the door to summer. If I sound like a man with an acute case of self-pity, you are correct. There must have been well over two billion people on this planet in worse shape than I was. Nevertheless, I was looking for the Door into Summer. Most of the ones I had checked lately had been swinging doors, like the pair in front of me then, the SANS SOUCI Bar Grill, the sign said. I went in, picked a booth halfway back, placed the overnight bag I was carrying carefully on the seat, slid in by it, and waited for the waiter. The overnight bag said, “Waarrrh?” I said, “Take it easy, Pete.” “Naaow!” “Nonsense, you just went. Pipe down, the waiter is coming.” Pete shut up. I looked up as the waiter leaned over the table, and said to him, “A double shot of your bar Scotch, a glass of plain water, and a split of ginger ale.” The waiter looked upset. “Ginger ale, sir? With Scotch?” “Do you have it or don’t you?” “Why, yes, of course. But.” “Then fetch it. I’m not going to drink it; I just want to sneer at it. And bring a saucer too.” “As you say, sir.” He polished the tabletop. “How about a small steak, sir? Or the scallops are very good today.” “Look, mate, I’ll tip you for the scallops if you’ll promise not to serve them. All I need is what I ordered, and don’t forget the saucer.” He shut up and went away. I told Pete again to take it easy, the Marines had landed. The waiter returned, his pride appeased by carrying the split of ginger ale on the saucer. I had him open it while I mixed the Scotch with the water. “Would you like another glass for the ginger ale, sir?” “I’m a real buckaroo; I drink it out of the bottle.” He shut up and let me pay him and tip him, not forgetting a tip for the scallops. When he had gone I poured ginger ale into the saucer and tapped on the top of the overnight bag. “Soup’s on, Pete.” It was unzipped; I never zipped it with him inside. He spread it with his paws, poked his head out, looked around quickly, then levitated his forequarters and placed his front feet on the edge of the table. I raised my glass and we looked at each other. “Here’s to the female race, Pete, find ’em and forget ’em!” He nodded; it matched his own philosophy perfectly. He bent his head daintily and started lapping up ginger ale. “If you can, that is,” I added, and took a deep swig. Pete did not answer. Forgetting a female was no effort to him; he was the natural-born bachelor type. Facing me through the window of the bar was a sign that kept changing. First it would read: WORK WHILE YOU SLEEP. Then it would say: AND DREAM YOUR TROUBLES AWAY. Then it would flash in letters twice as big: MUTUAL ASSURANCE COMPANY. I read all three several times without thinking about them. I knew as much and as little about suspended animation as everybody else did. I had read a popular article or so when it was first announced and two or three times a week I’d get an insurance-company ad about it in the morning mail; I usually chucked them without looking at them since they didn’t seem to apply to me any more than lipstick ads did. In the first place, until shortly before then, I could not have paid for cold sleep; it’s expensive. In the second place, why should a man who was enjoying his work, was making money, expected to make more, was in love and about to be married, commit semi-suicide? If a man had an incurable disease and expected to die anyhow but thought the doctors a generation later might be able to cure him, and he could afford to pay for suspended animation while medical science caught up with what was wrong with him, then cold sleep was a logical bet. Or if his ambition was to make a trip to Mars and he thought that clipping one generation out of his personal movie film would enable him to buy a ticket, I supposed that was logical too, there had been a news story about a café- society couple who got married and went right straight from city hall to the sleep sanctuary of Western World Insurance Company with an announcement that they had left instructions not to be called until they could spend their honeymoon on an interplanetary liner, although I had suspected that it was a publicity gag rigged by the insurance company and that they had ducked out the back door under assumed names. Spending your wedding night cold as a frozen mackerel does not have the ring of truth in it. And there was the usual straightforward financial appeal, the one the insurance companies bore down on: “Work while you sleep.” Just hold still and let whatever you have saved grow into a fortune. If you are fifty-five and your retirement fund pays you two hundred a month, why not sleep away the years, wake up still fifty-five, and have it pay you a thousand a month? To say nothing of waking up in a bright new world which would probably promise you a much longer and healthier old age in which to enjoy the thousand a month? That one they really went to town on, each company proving with incontrovertible figures that its selection of stocks for its trust fund made more money faster than any of the others. “Work while you sleep!” It had never appealed to me. I wasn’t fifty-five, I didn’t want to retire, and I hadn’t seen anything wrong with 1970. Until recently, that is to say. Now I was retired whether I liked it or not (I didn’t); instead of being on my honeymoon I was sitting in a second-rate bar drinking Scotch purely for anesthesia; instead of a wife I had one much-scarred tomcat with a neurotic taste for ginger ale; and as for liking right now, I would have swapped it for a case of gin and then busted every bottle. But I wasn’t broke. I reached into my coat and took out an envelope, opened it. It had two items in it. One was a certified check for more money than I had ever had before at one time; the other was a stock certificate in Hired Girl, Incorporated They were both getting a little mussed; I had been carrying them ever since they were handed to me. Why not? Why not duck out and sleep my troubles away? Pleasanter than joining the Foreign Legion, less messy than suicide, and it would divorce me completely from the events and the people who had made my life go sour. So why not? I wasn’t terribly interested in the chance to get rich. Oh, I had read H G Wells’ The Sleeper Awakes, not only when the insurance companies started giving away free copies, but before that, when it was just another classic novel; I knew what compound interest and stock appreciation could do. But I was not sure that I had enough money both to buy the Long Sleep and to set up a trust large enough to be worthwhile. The other argument appealed to me more: go beddy-bye and wake up in a different world. Maybe a lot better world, the way the insurance companies would have you believe, or maybe worse. But certainly different. I could make sure of one important difference: I could doze long enough to be certain that it was a world without Belle Darkin, or Miles Gentry, either, but Belle especially. If Belle was dead and buried I could forget her, forget what she had done to me, cancel her out, instead of gnawing my heart with the knowledge that she was only a few miles away. Let’s see, how long would that have to be? Belle was twenty-three, or claimed to be (I recalled that once she had seemed to let slip that she remembered Roosevelt as president). Well, in her twenties anyhow. If I slept seventy years, she’d be an obituary. Make it seventy-five and be safe. Then I remembered the strides they were making in geriatrics; they were talking about a hundred and twenty years as an attainable “normal” life span. Maybe I would have to sleep a hundred years. I wasn’t certain that any insurance company offered that much. Then I had a gently fiendish idea, inspired by the warm glow of Scotch. It wasn’t necessary to sleep until Belle was dead; it was enough, more than enough, and just the fitting revenge on a female to be young when she was old. Just enough younger to rub her nose in it, say about thirty years. I felt a paw, gentle as a snowflake, on my arm. “Mooorrre!” announced Pete. “Greedy gut,” I told him, and poured him another saucer of ginger ale. He thanked me with a polite wait, then started lapping it. But he had interrupted my pleasantly nasty chain of thought. What the devil could I do about Pete? You can’t give away a cat the way you can a dog; they won’t stand for it. Sometimes they go with the house, but not in Pete’s case; to him I had been the one stable thing in a changing world ever since he was taken from his mother nine years earlier, I had even managed to keep him near me in the Army and that takes real wangling. He was in good health and likely to stay that way even though he was held together with scar tissue. If he could just correct a tendency to lead with his right he would be winning battles and siring kittens for another five years at least. I could pay to have him kept in a kennel until he died (unthinkable!) or I could have him chloroformed (equally unthinkable), or I could abandon him. That is what it boils down to with a cat: You either carry out the Chinese obligation you have assumed, or you abandon the poor thing, let it go wild, destroy its faith in the eternal rightness. The way Belle had destroyed mine. So, Danny boy, you might as well forget it. Your own life may have gone as sour as dill pickles; that did not excuse you in the slightest from your obligation to carry out your contract to this super-spoiled cat. Just as I reached that philosophical truth Pete sneezed; the bubbles had gone up his nose. “Gesundheit,” I answered, “and quit trying to drink it so fast.” Pete ignored me. His table manners averaged better than mine and he knew it. Our waiter had been hanging around the cash register, talking with the cashier. It was the after-lunch slump and the only other customers were at the bar. The waiter looked up when I said “Gesundheit,” and spoke to the cashier. They both looked our way, then the cashier lifted the flap gate in the bar and headed toward us. I said quietly, “MPs, Pete.” He glanced around and ducked down into the bag; I pushed the top together. The cashier came over and leaned on my table, giving the seats on both sides of the booth a quick double-O. “Sorry, friend,” he said flatly, “but you’ll have to get that cat out of here.” “What cat?” “The one you were feeding out of that saucer.” “I don’t see any cat.” This time he bent down and looked under the table. “You’ve got him in that bag,” he accused. “Bag? Cat?” I said wonderingly. “My friend, I think you’ve come down with an acute figure of speech.” “Huh? Don’t give me any fancy language. You’ve got a cat in that bag. Open it up.” “Do you have a search warrant?” “What? Don’t be silly.” “You’re the one talking silly, demanding to see the inside of my bag without a search warrant. Fourth Amendment, and the war has been over for years. Now that we’ve settled that, please tell my waiter to make it the same all around, or fetch it yourself.” He looked pained. “Brother, this isn’t anything personal, but I’ve got a license to consider. No dogs, no cats, it says so right up there on the wall. We aim to run a sanitary establishment.” “Then your aim is poor.” I picked up my glass. “See the lipstick marks? You ought to be checking your dishwasher, not searching your customers.” “I don’t see no lipstick.” “I wiped most of it off. But let’s take it down to the Board of Health and get the bacteria count checked.” He sighed. “You got a badge?” “No!” “Then we’re even. I don’t search your bag and you don’t take me down to the Board of Health. Now if you want another drink, step up to the bar and have it, on the house. But not here.” He turned and headed up front. I shrugged. “We were just leaving anyhow.” As I started to pass the cashier’s desk on my way out he looked up. “No hard feelings?” “Nope. But I was planning to bring my horse in here for a drink later. Now I won’t.” “Suit yourself. The ordinance doesn’t say a word about horses. But just one more thing, does that cat really drink ginger ale?” “Fourth Amendment, remember?” “I don’t want to see the animal; I just want to know.” “Well,” I admitted, “he prefers it with a dash of bitters, but he’ll drink it straight if he has to.” “It’ll ruin his kidneys. Look here a moment, friend.” “At what?” “Lean back so that your head is close to where mine is. Now look up at the ceiling over each booth, the mirrors up in the decorations. I knew there was a cat there, because I saw it.” I leaned back and looked. The ceiling of the joint had a lot of junky decoration, including many mirrors; I saw now that a number of them, camouflaged by the design, were so angled as to permit the cashier to use them as periscopes without leaving his station. “We need that,” he said apologetically. “You’d be shocked at what goes on in those booths, if we didn’t keep an eye on ’em. It’s a sad world.” “Amen, brother.” I went on out. Once outside, I opened the bag and carried it by one handle; Pete stuck his head out. “You heard what the man said, Pete. It’s a sad world. Worse than sad when two friends can’t have a quiet drink together without being spied on. That settles it.” “Now?” asked Pete. “If you say so. If we’re going to do it, there’s no point in stalling.” “Now!” Pete answered emphatically. “Unanimous. It’s right across the street.” The receptionist at the Mutual Assurance Company was a fine example of the beauty of functional design. In spite of being streamlined for about Mach Four, she displayed frontal-mounted radar housings and everything else needed for her basic mission. I reminded myself that she would be Whistler’s Mother by the time I was out and told her that I wanted to see a salesman. “Please be seated. I will see if one of our client executives is free.” Before I could sit down she added, “Our Mister Powell will see you. This way, please.” Our Mister Powell occupied an office which made me think that Mutual did pretty well for itself. He shook hands moistly, sat me down, offered me a cigarette, and attempted to take my bag. I hung onto it. “Now, sir, how can we serve you?” “I want the Long Sleep.” His eyebrows went up and his manner became more respectful. No doubt Mutual would write you a camera floater for seven bucks, but the Long Sleep let them get their patty-paws on all of a client’s assets. “A very wise decision,” he said reverently. “I wish I were free to take it myself. But, family responsibilities, you know.” He reached out and picked up a form. “Sleep clients are usually in a hurry. Let me save you time and bother by filling this out for you, and we’ll arrange for your physical examination at once.” “Just a moment.” “Eh?” “One question. Are you set up to arrange cold sleep for a cat?” He looked surprised, then pained. “You’re jesting.” I opened the top of the bag; Pete stuck his head out. “Meet my sidekick. Just answer the question, please. If the answer is no, I want to sashay up to Central Valley Liability. Their offices are in this same building, aren’t they?” This time he looked horrified. “Mister, Uh, I didn’t get your name?” “Dan Davis.” “Mister Davis, once a man enters our door he is under the benevolent protection of Mutual Assurance. I couldn’t let you go to Central Valley.” “How do you plan to stop me? Judo?” “Please!” He glanced around and looked upset. “Our company is an ethical company.” “Meaning that Central Valley is not?” “I didn’t say that; you did. Mister Davis, don’t let me sway you.” “You won’t.” “But get sample contracts from each company. Get a lawyer, better yet, get a licensed semanticist. Find out what we offer, and actually deliver, and compare it with what Central Valley claims to offer.” He glanced around again and leaned toward me. “I shouldn’t say this, and I do hope you won’t quote me, but they don’t even use the standard actuarial tables.” “Maybe they give the customer a break instead.” “What? My dear Mister Davis, we distribute every accrued benefit. Our charter requires it, while Central Valley is a stock company.” “Maybe I should buy some of their, Look, Mister Powell, we’re wasting time. Will Mutual accept my pal here? Or not? If not, I’ve been here too long already.” “You mean you want to pay to have that creature preserved alive in hypothermia?” “I mean I want both of us to take the Long Sleep. And don’t call him ‘that creature’; his name is Petronius.” “Sorry. I’ll rephrase my question. You are prepared to pay two custodial fees to have both of you, you and, uh, Petronius committed to our sanctuary?” “Yes. But not two standard fees. Something extra, of course, but you can stuff us both in the same coffin; you can’t honestly charge as much for Pete as you charge for a man.” “This is most unusual.” “Of course it is. But we’ll dicker over the price later, or I’ll dicker with Central Valley. Right now I want to find out if you can do it.” “Uh.” He drummed on his desktop. “Just a moment.” He picked up his phone and said, “Opal, get me Doctor Berquist.” I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, for he switched on the privacy guard. But after a while he put down the instrument and smiled as if a rich uncle had died. “Good news, sir! I had overlooked momentarily the fact that the first successful experiments were made on cats. The techniques and critical factors for cats are fully established. In fact there is a cat at the Naval Research Laboratory in Annapolis which is and has been for more than twenty years alive in hypothermia.” “I thought NRL was wiped out when they got Washington?” “Just the surface buildings, sir, not the deep vaults. Which is a tribute to the perfection of the technique; the animal was unattended save by automatic machinery for more than two years, yet it still lives, unchanged, unaged. As you will live, sir, for whatever period you elect to entrust yourself to Mutual.” I thought he was going to cross himself. “Okay, okay, now let’s get on with the dicker.” There were four factors involved: first, how to pay for our care while we were hibernating; second, how long I wanted us to sleep; third, how I wanted my money invested while I was in the freezer; and last, what happened if I conked out and never woke up. I finally settled on the year 2000, a nice round number and only thirty years away. I was afraid that if I made it any longer I would be completely out of touch. The changes in the last thirty years (my own lifetime) had been enough to bug a man’s eyes out, two big wars and a dozen little ones, the downfall of communism, the Great Panic, the artificial satellites, the change to atomic power, why, when I was a kid they didn’t even have multimorphs. I might find 2000 A.D. pretty confusing. But if I didn’t jump that far Belle would not have time to work up a fancy set of wrinkles. When it came to how to invest my dough I did not consider government bonds and other conservative investments; our fiscal system has inflation built into it. I decided to hang onto my Hired Girl stock and put the cash into other common stocks, with a special eye to some trends I thought would grow. Automation was bound to get bigger. I picked a San Francisco fertilizer firm too; it had been experimenting with yeasts and edible algae, there were more people every year and steak wasn’t going to get any cheaper. The balance of the money I told him to put into the company’s managed trust fund. But the real choice lay in what to do if I died in hibernation. The company claimed that the odds were better than seven out of ten that I would live through thirty years of cold sleep, and the company would take either end of the bet. The odds weren’t reciprocal and I didn’t expect them to be; in any honest gambling there is a breakage to the house. Only crooked gamblers claim to give the sucker the best of it, and insurance is legalized gambling. The oldest and most reputable insurance firm in the world, Lloyd’s of London, makes no bones about it, Lloyd’s associates will take either end of any bet. But don’t expect better-than-track odds; somebody has to pay for Our Mister Powell’s tailor-made suits. I chose to have every cent go to the company trust fund in case I died, which made Mister Powell want to kiss me and made me wonder just how optimistic those seven-out-of-ten odds were. But I stuck with it because it made me an heir (if I lived) of everyone else with the same option, if they died, Russian roulette with the survivors picking up the chips, and with the company, as usual, raking in the house percentage. I picked every alternative for the highest possible return and no hedging if I guessed wrong; Mister Powell loved me, the way a croupier loves a sucker who keeps playing the zero. By the time we had settled my estate he was anxious to be reasonable about Pete; we settled for 15 percent of the human fee to pay for Pete’s hibernation and drew up a separate contract for him. There remained consent of court and the physical examination. The physical I didn’t worry about; I had a hunch that, once I elected to have the company bet that I would die, they would accept me even in the last stages of the Black Death. But I thought that getting a judge to okay it might be lengthy. It had to be done, because a client in cold sleep was legally in chancery, alive but helpless. I needn’t have worried. Our Mister Powell had quadruplicate originals made of nineteen different papers. I signed till I got finger cramps, and a messenger rushed away with them while I went to my physical examination; I never even saw the judge. The physical was the usual tiresome routine except for one thing. Toward the end the examining physician looked me sternly in the eye and said, “Son, how long have you been on this binge?” “Binge?” “Binge.” “What makes you think that, Doctor? I’m as sober as you are. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled.” “Knock it off and answer me.” “Hum, I’d say about two weeks. A little over.” “Compulsive drinker? How many times have you pulled this stunt in the past?” “Well, as a matter of fact, I haven’t. You see,” I started to tell him what Belle and Miles had done to me, why I felt the way I did. He shoved a palm at me. “Please. I’ve got troubles of my own and I’m not a psychiatrist. Really, all I’m interested in is finding out whether or not your heart will stand up under the ordeal of putting you down to four degrees centigrade. Which it will. And I ordinarily don’t care why anyone is nutty enough to crawl into a hole and pull it in after him; I just figure it is one less damn fool underfoot. But some residual tinge of professional conscience prevents me from letting any man, no matter how sorry a specimen, climb into one of those coffins while his brain is sodden with alcohol. Turn around.” “Huh?” “Turn around; I’m going to inject you in your left buttock.” I did and he did. While I was rubbing it he went on, “Now drink this. In about twenty minutes you will be more sober than you’ve been in a month. Then, if you have any sense, which I doubt, you can review your position and decide whether to run away from your troubles, or stand up to them like a man.” I drank it. “That’s all; you can get dressed. I’m signing your papers, but I’m warning you that I can veto it right up to the last minute. No more alcohol for you at all, a light supper and no breakfast. Be here at noon tomorrow for final check.” He turned away and didn’t even say good-bye. I dressed and went out of there, sore as a boil. Powell had all my papers ready. When I picked them up he said, “You can leave them here if you wish and pick them up at noon tomorrow, the set that goes in the vault with you, that is.” “What happens to the others?” “We keep one set ourselves, then after you are committed we file one set with the court and one in the Carlsbad Archives. Uh, did the doctor caution you about diet?” “He certainly did.” I glanced at the papers to cover my annoyance. Powell reached for them. “I’ll keep them safe overnight.” I pulled them back. “I can keep them safe. I might want to change some of these stock selections.” “Uh, it’s rather late for that, my dear Mister Davis.” “Don’t rush me. If I do make any changes I’ll come in early.” I opened the overnight bag and stuck the papers down in a side flap beside Pete. I had kept valuable papers there before; while it might not be as safe as the public archives in the Carlsbad Caverns, they were safer than you might think. A sneak thief had tried to take something out of that flap on another occasion; he must still have the scars of Pete’s teeth and claws. Two. My car was parked under Pershing Square where I had left it earlier in the day. I dropped money into the parking attendant, set the bug on arterial-west, got Pete out and put him on the seat, and relaxed. Or tried to relax. Los Angeles traffic was too fast and too slashingly murderous for me to be really happy under automatic control; I wanted to redesign their whole installation, it was not a really modern “fail safe.” By the time we were west of Western Avenue and could go back on manual control I was edgy and wanted a drink. “There’s an oasis, Pete.” “Blurrrt?” “Right ahead.” But while I was looking for a place to park, Los Angeles was safe from invasion; the invaders wouldn’t find a place to park, I recalled the doctor’s order not to touch alcohol. So I told him emphatically what he could do with his orders. Then I wondered if he could tell, almost a day later, whether or not I had taken a drink. I seemed to recall some technical article, but it had not been in my line and I had just skimmed it. Damnation, he was quite capable of refusing to let me cold-sleep. I’d better play it cagey and lay off the stuff. “Now?” inquired Pete. “Later. We’re going to find a drive-in instead.” I suddenly realized that I didn’t really want a drink; I wanted food and a night’s sleep. Doc was correct; I was more sober and felt better than I had in weeks. Maybe that shot in the fanny had been nothing but B1; if so, it was jet-propelled. So we found a drive-in restaurant. I ordered chicken in the rough for me and a half pound of hamburger and some milk for Pete and took him out for a short walk while it was coming. Pete and I ate in drive-ins a lot because I didn’t have to sneak him in and out. A half hour later I let the car drift back out of the busy circle, stopped it, lit a cigarette, scratched Pete under the chin, and thought. Dan, my boy, the doc was right; you’ve been trying to dive down the neck of a bottle. That’s okay for your pointy head but it’s too narrow for your shoulders. Now you’re cold sober, you’ve got your belly crammed with food and it’s resting comfortably for the first time in days. You feel better. What else? Was the doc right about the rest of it? Are you a spoiled infant? Do you lack the guts to stand up to a setback? Why are you taking this step? Is it the spirit of adventure? Or are you simply hiding from yourself, like a Section Eight trying to crawl back into his mother’s womb? But I do want to do it, I told myself, the year 2000. Boy! Okay, so you want to. But do you have to run off without settling the beefs you have right here? All right, all right!, but how can I settle them? I don’t want Belle back, not after what she’s done. And what else can I do? Sue them? Don’t be silly, I’ve got no evidence, and anyhow, nobody ever wins a lawsuit but the lawyers. Pete said, “Well? Y’know!” I looked down at his waffle-scarred head. Pete wouldn’t sue anybody; if he didn’t like the cut of another cat’s whiskers, he simply invited him to come out and fight like a cat. “I believe you’re right, Pete. I’m going to look up Miles, tear his arm off, and beat him over the head with it until he talks. We can take the Long Sleep afterward. But we’ve got to know just what it was they did to us and who rigged it.” There was a phone booth back of the stand. I called Miles, found him at home, and told him to stay there; I’d be out. My old man named me Daniel Boone Davis, which was his way of declaring for personal liberty and self-reliance. I was born in 1940, a year when everybody was saying that the individual was on the skids and the future belonged to mass man. Dad refused to believe it; naming me was a note of defiance. He died under brainwashing in North Korea, trying to the last to prove his thesis. When the Six Weeks War came along I had a degree in mechanical engineering and was in the Army. I had not used my degree to try for a commission because the one thing Dad had left me was an overpowering yen to be on my own, giving no orders, taking no orders, keeping no schedules, I simply wanted to serve my hitch and get out. When the Cold War boiled over, I was a sergeant-technician at Sandia Weapons Center in New Mexico, stuffing atoms in atom bombs and planning what I would do when my time was up. The day Sandia disappeared I was down in Dallas drawing a fresh supply of Schrecklichkeit. The fallout on that was toward Oklahoma City, so I lived to draw my GI benefits. Pete lived through it for a similar reason. I had a buddy, Miles Gentry, a veteran called back to duty. He had married a widow with one daughter, but his wife had died about the time he was called back. He lived off post with a family in Albuquerque so as to have a home for his stepchild Frederica. Little Ricky (we never called her “Frederica”) took care of Pete for me. Thanks to the cat-goddess Bubastis, Miles and Ricky and Pete were away on a seventy-two that awful weekend, Ricky took Pete with them because I could not take him to Dallas. I was as surprised as anyone when it turned out we had divisions stashed away at Thule and other places that no one suspected. It had been known since the ’30s that the human body could be chilled until it slowed down to almost nothing. But it had been a laboratory trick, or a last-resort therapy, until the Six Weeks War. I’ll say this for military research: If money and men can do it, it gets results. Print another billion, hire another thousand scientists and engineers, then in some incredible, left-handed, inefficient fashion the answers come up. Stasis, cold sleep, hibernation, hypothermia, reduced metabolism, call it what you will, the logistics-medicine research teams had found a way to stack people like cordwood and use them when needed. First you drug the subject, then hypnotize him, then cool him down and hold him precisely at four degrees centigrade; that is to say, at the maximum density of water with no ice crystals. If you need him in a hurry he can be brought up by diathermy and posthypnotic command in ten minutes (they did it in seven at Nome), but such speed tends to age the tissues and may make him a little stupid from then on. If you aren’t in a hurry two hours minimum is better. The quick method is what professional soldiers call a “calculated risk.” The whole thing was a risk the enemy had not calculated, so when the war was over I was paid off instead of being liquidated or sent to a slave camp, and Miles and I went into business together about the time the insurance companies started selling cold sleep. We went to the Mojave Desert, set up a small factory in an Air Force surplus building, and started making Hired Girl, my engineering and Miles’ law and business experience. Yes, I invented Hired Girl and all her kinfolk, Window Willie and the rest, even though you won’t find my name on them. While I was in the service I had thought hard about what one engineer can do. Go to work for Standard, or du Pont, or General Motors? Thirty years later they give you a testimonial dinner and a pension. You haven’t missed any meals, you’ve had a lot of rides in company airplanes. But you are never your own boss. The other big market for engineers is civil service, good starting pay, good pensions, no worries, thirty days’ annual leave, liberal benefits. But I had just had a long government vacation and wanted to be my own boss. What was there small enough for one engineer and not requiring six million man-hours before the first model was on the market? Bicycle-shop engineering with peanuts for capital, the way Ford and the Wright brothers had started, people said those days were gone forever; I didn’t believe it. Automation was booming, chemical-engineering plants that required only two gauge-watchers and a guard, machines that printed tickets in one city and marked the space “sold” in six other cities, steel moles that mined coal while the UMW boys sat back and watched. So while I was on Uncle Sam’s payroll I soaked up all the electronics, linkages, and cybernetics that a “Q” clearance would permit. What was the last thing to go automatic? Answer: any housewife’s house. I didn’t attempt to figure out a sensible scientific house; women didn’t want one; they simply wanted a better-upholstered cave. But housewives were still complaining about the Servant Problem long after servants had gone the way of the mastodon. I had rarely met a housewife who did not have a touch of slaveholder in her; they seemed to think there really ought to be strapping peasant girls grateful for a chance to scrub floors fourteen hours a day and eat table scraps at wages a plumber’s helper would scorn. That’s why we called the monster Hired Girl, it brought back thoughts of the semi-slave immigrant girl whom Grandma used to bully. Basically it was just a better vacuum cleaner and we planned to market it at a price competitive with ordinary suck brooms. What Hired Girl would do (the first model, not the semi-intelligent robot I developed it into) was to clean floors, any floor, all day long and without supervision. And there never was a floor that didn’t need cleaning. It swept, or mopped, or vacuum-cleaned, or polished, consulting tapes in its idiot memory to decide which. Anything larger than a BB shot it picked up and placed in a tray on its upper surface, for someone brighter to decide whether to keep or throw away. It went quietly looking for dirt all day long, in search curves that could miss nothing, passing over clean floors in its endless search for dirty floors. It would get out of a room with people in it, like a well-trained maid, unless its mistress caught up with it and flipped a switch to tell the poor thing it was welcome. Around dinnertime it would go to its stall and soak up a quick charge, this was before we installed the everlasting power pack. There was not too much difference between Hired Girl, Mark One, and a vacuum cleaner. But the difference, that it would clean without supervision, was enough; it sold. I swiped the basic prowl pattern from the “Electric Turtles” that were written up in Scientific American in the late forties, lifted a memory circuit out of the brain of a guided missile (that’s the nice thing about top-secret gimmicks; they don’t get patented), and I took the cleaning devices and linkages out of a dozen things, including a floor polisher used in army hospitals, a soft-drink dispenser, and those “hands” they use in atomics plants to handle anything “hot.” There wasn’t anything really new in it; it was just the way I put it together. The “spark of genius” required by our laws lay in getting a good patent lawyer. The real genius was in the production engineering; the whole thing could be built with standard parts ordered out of Sweet’s Catalogue, with the exception of two three-dimensional cams and one printed circuit. The circuit we subcontracted; the cams I made myself in the shed we called our “factory,” using war-surplus automated tools. At first Miles and I were the whole assembly line, bash to fit, file to hide, paint to cover. The pilot model cost $4,317.09; the first hundred cost just over $39 each, and we passed them on to a Los Angeles discount house at $60 and they sold them for $85. We had to let them go on consignment to unload them at all, since we could not afford sales promotion, and we darn near starved before receipts started coming in. Then Life ran a two-page on Hired Girl, and it was a case of having enough help to assemble the monster. Belle Darkin joined us soon after that. Miles and I had been pecking out letters on a 1908 Underwood; we hired her as a typewriter jockey and bookkeeper and rented an electric machine with executive typeface and carbon ribbon and I designed a letterhead. We were plowing it all back into the business and Pete and I were sleeping in the shop while Miles and Ricky had a nearby shack. We incorporated in self-defense. It takes three to incorporate; we gave Belle a share of stock and designated her secretary-treasurer. Miles was president and general manager; I was chief engineer and chairman of the board, with 51 percent of the stock. I want to make clear why I kept control. I wasn’t a hog; I simply wanted to be my own boss. Miles worked like a trouper, I give him credit. But better than 60 percent of the savings that got us started were mine and 100 percent of the inventiveness and engineering were mine. Miles could not possibly have built Hired Girl, whereas I could have built it with any of a dozen partners, or possibly without one, although I might have flopped in trying to make money out of it; Miles was a businessman while I am not. But I wanted to be certain that I retained control of the shop, and I granted Miles equal freedom in the business end, too much freedom, it turned out. Hired Girl, Mark One, was selling like beer at a ball game and I was kept busy for a while improving it and setting up a real assembly line and putting a shop master in charge, then I happily turned to thinking up more household gadgets. Amazingly little real thought had been given to housework, even though it is at least 50 percent of all work in the world. The women’s magazines talked about “labor saving in the home” and “functional kitchens,” but it was just prattle; their pretty pictures showed living-working arrangements essentially no better than those in Shakespeare’s day; the horse-to-jet-plane revolution had not reached the home. I stuck to my conviction that housewives were reactionaries. No “machines for living”, just gadgets to replace the extinct domestic servant, that is, for cleaning and cooking and baby tending. I got to thinking about dirty windows and that ring around the bathtub that is so hard to scrub, as you have to bend double to get at it. It turned out that an electrostatic device could make dirt go spung! off any polished silica surface, window glass, bathtubs, toilet bowls, anything of that sort. That was Window Willie and it’s a wonder that somebody hadn’t thought of him sooner. I held him back until I had him down to a price that people could not refuse. Do you know what window washing used to cost by the hour? I held Willie out of production much longer than suited Miles. He wanted to sell it as soon as it was cheap enough, but I insisted on one more thing: Willie had to be easy to repair. The great shortcoming of most household gadgets was that the better they were and the more they did, the more certain they were to get out of order when you needed them most, and then require an expert at five dollars an hour to make them move again. Then the same thing will happen the following week, if not to the dishwasher, then to the air conditioner, usually late Saturday night during a snowstorm. I wanted my gadgets to work and keep on working and not to cause ulcers in their owners. But gadgets do get out of order, even mine. Until that great day when all gadgets are designed with no moving parts, machinery will continue to go sour. If you stuff a house with gadgets some of them will always be out of order. But military research does get results and the military had licked this problem years earlier. You simply can’t lose a battle, lose thousands or millions of lives, maybe the war itself, just because some gadget the size of your thumb breaks down. For military purposes they used a lot of dodges, “fail safe,” stand-by circuits, “tell me three times,” and so forth. But one they used that made sense for household equipment was the plugin component principle. It is a moronically simple idea: don’t repair, replace. I wanted to make every part of Window Willie which could go wrong a plug-in unit, then include a set of replacements with each Willie. Some components would be thrown away, some would be sent out for repair, but Willie himself would never break down longer than necessary to plug in the replacement part. Miles and I had our first row. I said the decision as to when to go from pilot model to production was an engineering one; he claimed that it was a business decision. If I hadn’t retained control Willie would have gone on the market just as maddeningly subject to acute appendicitis as all other sickly, half-engineered “labor-saving” gadgets. Belle Darkin smoothed over the row. If she had turned on the pressure I might have let Miles start selling Willie before I thought it was ready, for I was as goofed up about Belle as is possible for a man to be. Belle was not only a perfect secretary and office manager, she also had personal specs which would have delighted Praxiteles and a fragrance which affected me the way catnip does Pete. With top-notch office girls as scarce as they were, when one of the best turns out to be willing to work for a shoestring company at a below-standard salary, one really ought to ask “why?”, but we didn’t even ask where she had worked last, so happy were we to have her dig us out of the flood of paperwork that marketing Hired Girl had caused. Later on I would have indignantly rejected any suggestion that we should have checked on Belle, for by then her bust measurement had seriously warped my judgment. She let me explain how lonely my life had been until she came along and she answered gently that she would have to know me better but that she was inclined to feel the same way. Shortly after she smoothed out the quarrel between Miles and myself she agreed to share my fortunes. “Dan darling, you have it in you to be a great man, and I have hopes that I am the sort of woman who can help you.” “You certainly are!” “Shush, darling. But I am not going to marry you right now and burden you with kids and worry you to death. I’m going to work with you and build up the business first. Then we’ll get married.” I objected, but she was firm. “No, darling. We are going a long way, you and I. Hired Girl will be as great a name as General Electric. But when we marry I want to forget business and just devote myself to making you happy. But first I must devote myself to your welfare and your future. Trust me, dear.” So I did. She wouldn’t let me buy her the expensive engagement ring I wanted to buy; instead I signed over to her some of my stock as a betrothal present. I went on voting it, of course. Thinking back, I’m not sure who thought of that present. I worked harder than ever after that, thinking about wastebaskets that would empty themselves and a linkage to put dishes away after the dishwasher was through. Everybody was happy, everybody but Pete and Ricky, that is. Pete ignored Belle, as he did anything he disapproved of but could not change, but Ricky was really unhappy. My fault. Ricky had been “my girl” since she was a six-year-old at Sandia, with hair ribbons and big solemn dark eyes. I was “going to marry her” when she grew up and we would both take care of Pete. I thought it was a game we were playing, and perhaps it was, with little Ricky serious only to the extent that it offered her eventual full custody of our cat. But how can you tell what goes on in a child’s mind? I am not sentimental about kids. Little monsters, most of them, who don’t civilize until they are grown and sometimes not then. But little Frederica reminded me of my own sister at that age, and besides, she liked Pete and treated him properly. I think she liked me because I never talked down (I had resented that myself as a child) and took her Brownie activities seriously. Ricky was okay; she had quiet dignity and was not a banger, not a squealer, not a lap climber. We were friends, sharing the responsibility for Pete, and, so far as I knew, her being “my girl” was just a sophisticated game we were playing. I quit playing it after my sister and mother got it the day they bombed us. No conscious decision, I just didn’t feel like joking and never went back to it. Ricky was seven then; she was ten by the time Belle joined us and possibly eleven when Belle and I became engaged. She hated Belle with an intensity that I think only I was aware of, since it was expressed only by reluctance to talk to her, Belle called it “shyness” and I think Miles thought it was too. But I knew better and tried to talk Ricky out of it. Did you ever try to discuss with a subadolescent something the child does not want to talk about? You’ll get more satisfaction shouting in Echo Canyon. I told myself it would wear off as Ricky learned how very lovable Belle was. Pete was another matter, and if I had not been in love I would have seen it as a clear sign that Belle and I would never understand each other. Belle “liked” my cat, oh, sure, sure! She adored cats and she loved my incipient bald spot and admired my choice in restaurants and she liked everything about me. But liking cats is hard to fake to a cat person. There are cat people and there are others, more than a majority probably, who “cannot abide a harmless, necessary cat.” If they try to pretend, out of politeness or any reason, it shows, because they don’t understand how to treat cats, and cat protocol is more rigid than that of diplomacy. It is based on self-respect and mutual respect and it has the same flavor as the dignidad de hombre of Latin America which you may offend only at risk to your life. Cats have no sense of humor, they have terribly inflated egos, and they are very touchy. If somebody asked me why it was worth anyone’s time to cater to them I would be forced to answer that there is no logical reason. I would rather explain to someone who detests sharp cheeses why he “ought to like” Limburger. Nevertheless, I fully sympathize with the mandarin who cut off a priceless embroidered sleeve because a kitten was sleeping on it. Belle tried to show that she “liked” Pete by treating him like a dog, so she got scratched. Then, being a sensible cat, he got out in a hurry and stayed out a long time, which was well, as I would have smacked him, and Pete has never been smacked, not by me. Hitting a cat is worse than useless; a cat can be disciplined only by patience, never by blows. So I put iodine on Belle’s scratches, then tried to explain what she had done wrong. “I’m sorry it happened, I’m terribly sorry! But it will happen again if you do that again.” “But I was just petting him!” “Uh, yes, but you weren’t cat-petting him; you were dog-petting him. You must never pat a cat, you stroke it. You must never make sudden movements in range of its claws. You must never touch it without giving it a chance to see that you are about to, and you must always watch to see that it likes it. If it doesn’t want to be petted, it will put up with a little out of politeness, cats are very polite, but you can tell if it is merely enduring it and stop before its patience is exhausted.” I hesitated. “You don’t like cats, do you?” “What? Why, how silly! Of course I like cats.” But she added, “I haven’t been around them much, I suppose. She’s pretty touchy, isn’t she?” “He. Pete is a he-male cat. No, actually he’s not touchy, since he’s always been well treated. But you do have to learn how to behave with cats. Uh, you must never laugh at them.” “What? Forevermore, why?” “Not because they aren’t funny; they’re extremely comical. But they have no sense of humor and it offends them. Oh, a cat won’t scratch you for laughing; he’ll simply stalk off and you’ll have trouble making friends with him. But it’s not too important. Knowing how to pick up a cat is much more important. When Pete comes back in I’ll show you how.” But Pete didn’t come back in, not then, and I never showed her. Belle didn’t touch him after that. She spoke to him and acted as if she liked him, but she kept her distance and he kept his. I put it out of my mind; I couldn’t let so trivial a thing make me doubt the woman who was more to me than anything in life. But the subject of Pete almost reached a crisis later. Belle and I were discussing where we were going to live. She still wouldn’t set the date, but we spent a lot of time on such details. I wanted a ranchette near the plant; she favored a flat in town until we could afford a Bel-Air estate. I said, “Darling, it’s not practical; I’ve got to be near the plant. Besides, did you ever try to take care of a tomcat in a city apartment?” “Oh, that! Look, darling, I’m glad you mentioned it. I’ve been studying up on cats, I really have. We’ll have him altered. Then he’ll be much gentler and perfectly happy in a flat.” I stared at her, unable to believe my ears. Make a eunuch of that old warrior? Change him into a fireside decoration? “Belle, you don’t know what you’re saying!” She tut-tutted me with the old familiar “Mother knows best,” giving the stock arguments of people who mistake cats for property, how it wouldn’t hurt him, that it was really for his own good, how she knew how much I valued him and she would never think of depriving me of him, how it was really very simple and quite safe and better for everybody. I cut in on her. “Why don’t you arrange it for both of us?” “What, dear?” “Me, too. I’d be much more docile and I’d stay home nights and I’d never argue with you. As you pointed out, it doesn’t hurt and I’d probably be a lot happier.” She turned red. “You’re being preposterous.” “So are you!” She never mentioned it again. Belle never let a difference of opinion degenerate into a row; she shut up and bided her time. But she never gave up, either. In some ways she had a lot of cat in her, which may have been why I couldn’t resist her. I was glad to drop the matter. I was up to here in Flexible Frank. Willie and Hired Girl were bound to make us lots of money, but I had a bee in my bonnet about the perfect, all-work household automaton, the general-purpose servant. All right, call it a robot, though that is a much- abused word and I had no notion of building a mechanical man. I wanted a gadget which could do anything inside the home, cleaning and cooking, of course, but also really hard jobs, like changing a baby’s diaper or replacing a typewriter ribbon. Instead of a stable of Hired Girls and Window Willies and Nursemaid Nans and Houseboy Harrys and Gardener Guses I wanted a man and wife to be able to buy one machine for, oh, say about the price of a good automobile, which would be the equal of the Chinese servant you read about but no one in my generation had ever seen. If I could do that it would be the Second Emancipation Proclamation, freeing women from their age-old slavery. I wanted to abolish the old saw about how “women’s work is never done.” Housekeeping is repetitious and unnecessary drudgery; as an engineer it offended me. For the problem to be within the scope of one engineer, almost all of Flexible Frank had to be standard parts and must not involve any new principles. Basic research is no job for one man alone; this had to be development from former art or I couldn’t do it. Fortunately there was an awful lot of former art in engineering and I had not wasted my time while under a “Q” clearance. What I wanted wasn’t as complicated as the things a guided missile was required to do. Just what did I want Flexible Frank to do? Answer: any work a human being does around a house. He didn’t have to play cards, make love, eat, or sleep, but he did have to clean up after the card game, cook, make beds, and tend babies, at least he had to keep track of a baby’s breathing and call someone if it changed. I decided he did not have to answer telephone calls, as ATandT was already renting a gadget for that. There was no need for him to answer the door either, as most new houses were being equipped with door answerers. But to do the multitude of things I wanted him to do, he had to have hands, eyes, ears, and a brain, a good enough brain. Hands I could order from the atomics-engineering equipment companies who supplied Hired Girl’s hands, only this time I would want the best, with wide-range servos and with the delicate feedback required for microanalysis manipulations and for weighing radioactive isotopes. The same companies could supply eyes, only they could be simpler, since Frank would not have to see and manipulate from behind yards of concrete shielding the way they do in a reactor plant. The ears I could buy from any of a dozen radio-TV houses, though I might have to do some circuit designing to have his hands controlled simultaneously by sight, sound, and touch feedback the way the human hand is controlled. But you can do an awful lot in a small space with transistors and printed circuits. Frank wouldn’t have to use stepladders. I would make his neck stretch like an ostrich and his arms extend like lazy tongs. Should I make him able to go up and down stairs? Well, there was a powered wheelchair that could. Maybe I should buy one and use it for the chassis, limiting the pilot model to a space no bigger than a wheelchair and no heavier than such a chair could carry, that would give me a set of parameters. I’d tie its power and steering into Frank’s brain. The brain was the real hitch. You can build a gadget linked like a man’s skeleton or even much better. You can give it a feedback-control system good enough to drive nails, scrub floors, crack eggs, or not crack eggs. But unless it has that stuff between the ears that a man has, it is not a man, it’s not even a corpse. Fortunately I didn’t need a human brain; I just wanted a docile moron, capable of largely repetitive household jobs. Here is where the Thorsen memory tubes came in. The intercontinental missiles we had struck back with “thought” with Thorsen tubes, and traffic control systems in places like Los Angeles used an idiot form of them. No need to go into theory of an electronic tube that even Bell Labs doesn’t understand too well, the point is that you can hook a Thorsen tube into a control circuit, direct the machine through an operation by manual control, and the tube will “remember” what was done and can direct the operation without a human supervisor a second time, or any number of times. For an automated machine tool this is enough; for guided missiles and for Flexible Frank you add side circuits that give the machine “judgment.” Actually it isn’t judgment, in my opinion a machine can never have judgment, the side circuit is a hunting circuit, the programming of which says “look for so-and-so within such-and-such limits; when you find it, carry out your basic instruction.” The basic instruction can be as complicated as you can crowd into one Thorsen memory tube, which is a very wide limit indeed!, and you can program so that your “judgment” circuits (moronic back-seat drivers, they are) can interrupt the basic instructions anytime the cycle does not match that originally impressed into the Thorsen tube. This meant that you need cause Flexible Frank to clear the table and scrape the dishes and load them into the dishwasher only once, and from then on he could cope with any dirty dishes he ever encountered. Better still, he could have an electronically duplicated Thorsen tube stuck into his head and could handle dirty dishes the first time he ever encountered them, and never break a dish. Stick another “memorized” tube alongside the first one and he could change a wet baby first time, and never, never, never stick a pin in the baby. Frank’s square head could easily hold a hundred Thorsen tubes, each with an electronic “memory” of a different household task. Then throw a guard circuit around all the “judgment” circuits, a circuit which required him to hold still and squawl for help if he ran into something not covered by his instructions, that way you wouldn’t use up babies or dishes. So I did build Frank on the framework of a powered wheelchair. He looked like a hat rack making love to an octopus, but, boy, how he could polish silverware! MILES LOOKED OVER the first Frank, watched him mix a martini and serve it, then go around emptying and polishing ashtrays (never touching ones that were clean), open a window and fasten it open, then go to my bookcase and dust and tidy the books in it. Miles took a sip of his martini and said, “Too much vermouth.” “It’s the way I like them. But we can tell him to fix yours one way and mine another; he’s got plenty of blank tubes in him. Flexible.” Miles took another sip. “How soon can he be engineered for production?” “Uh, I’d like to fiddle with him for about ten years.” Before he could groan I added, “But we ought to be able to put a limited model into production in five.” “Nonsense! We’ll get you plenty of help and have a Model-T job ready in six months.” “The devil you will. This is my magnum opus. I’m not going to turn him loose until he is a work of art, about a third that size, everything plug-in replaceable but the Thorsens, and so all-out flexible that he’ll not only wind the cat and wash the baby, he’ll even play ping-pong if the buyer wants to pay for the extra programming.” I looked at him; Frank was quietly dusting my desk and putting every paper back exactly where he found it. “But ping-pong with him wouldn’t be much fun; he’d never miss. No, I suppose we could teach him to miss with a random-choice circuit. Hum, yes, we could. We will, it would make a nice selling demonstration.” “One year, Dan, and not a day over. I’m going to hire somebody away from Loewy to help you with the styling.” I said, “Miles, when are you going to learn that I boss the engineering? Once I turn him over to you, he’s yours, but not a split second before.” Miles answered, “It’s still too much vermouth.” I PIDDLED ALONG with the help of the shop mechanics until I had Frank looking less like a three-car crash and more like something you might want to brag about to the neighbors. In the meantime I smoothed a lot of bugs out of his control system. I even taught him to stroke Pete and scratch him under his chin in such a fashion that Pete liked it, and, believe me, that takes negative feedback as exact as anything used in atomics labs. Miles didn’t crowd me, although he came in from time to time and watched the progress. I did most of my work at night, coming back after dinner with Belle and taking her home. Then I would sleep most of the day, arrive late in the afternoon, sign whatever papers Belle had for me, see what the shop had done during the day, then take Belle out to dinner again. I didn’t try to do much before then, because creative work makes a man stink like a goat. After a hard night in the lab shop nobody could stand me but Pete. Just as we were finishing dinner one day Belle said to me, “Going back to the shop, dear?” “Sure. Why not?” “Good. Because Miles is going to meet us there.” “Huh?” “He wants a stockholders’ meeting.” “A stockholders’ meeting? Why?” “It won’t take long. Actually, dear, you haven’t been paying much attention to the firm’s business lately. Miles wants to gather up loose ends and settle some policies.” “I’ve been sticking close to the engineering. What else am I supposed to do for the firm?” “Nothing, dear. Miles says it won’t take long.” “What’s the trouble? Can’t Jake handle the assembly line?” “Please, dear. Miles didn’t tell me why. Finish your coffee.” Miles was waiting for us at the plant and shook hands as solemnly as if we had not met in a month. I said, “Miles, what’s this all about?” He turned to Belle. “Get the agenda, will you?” This alone should have told me that Belle had been lying when she claimed that Miles had not told her what he had in mind. But I did not think of it, hell, I trusted Belle!, and my attention was distracted by something else, for Belle went to the safe, spun the knob, and opened it. I said, “By the way, dear, I tried to open that last night and couldn’t. Have you changed the combination?” S

Rahan. Episode Fifty Six. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Andre Cheret. The eaters of men. Exhausted by the long chase that had led to the edge of the endless river, the Son of Crao had dozed off in the shade of an uprooted tree. He did not hear the approach of the man. And when the sound of footsteps alerted him, it was too late! His knife had disappeared! The thief is not far away. Rahan will catch him! On the sand of the shore, the tracks of the thief were easy to follow. Hum, Rahan will without doubt have trouble recovering his knife! Page Two. Brandishing the ivory weapon, the man rejoined his clan. Gaham has surprised an enemy! He brings this magical object back to Gurg! In these fierce times any unusual object was considered "Magic." Maybe this thing is bad for the clan! Why did Gaham not kill the enemy?! The men watched with some fear as Rahan approached them. But Gurg issued an order. Capture the enemy! He will have to give us the secret, the secret of this object! I am not an enemy! I am Rahan, the son of Crao! This cutlass is not magic, it is only a weapon for the hunter! Overcoming their anxiety, the whole clan rushed towards Rahan who, despite his vigor, could not resist this pack! Page Three. A moment later he was summarily tied to the trunk of a palm tree. Gurg wants to know if this thing brings good luck or misfortune. And if "Fire hair" refuses to reveal his secret, the clan will share his body and Gurg will eat his heart! Crao-the-wise sometimes spoke, in the past, of the existence of tribes feeding on human flesh. But it was the first time that Rahan found himself facing beings capable of such horror! Even the “Four Hands” don’t eat each other! Only monsters do it! Gurg is a monster! Gurg and his people no longer listened to their captive. Their anxious gazes fixed on the horizon of the "Great River" which was rapidly darkening. Page Four. Gurg knew that this "Thing" would bring misfortune! The arrival of “Fire hair” unleashed the wrath of the great river! The chief had thrown the ivory cutlass at Rahan's feet with repulsion. He joined his men who were fleeing towards the forest. And the son of Crao understood the reason for this sudden panic. The stormy ocean launched its enormous waves to attack the shore. If Rahan does not free himself, he will be eaten by the great river! The wind was now blowing with incredible violence. A fantastically high wave had formed in the distance and was rapidly approaching. Page Five. In a few seconds this mountain of water would crash onto the shore! No! Rahan does not want to join the "Shadow Territory"! The son of Crao had finally managed to cut his bonds. Ra-ha-ha! While he rushed towards the forest the wave continued its course, followed by another even more gigantic! Page Six. Rahan had often seen volcanoes erupt and earthquakes, but he had never before witnessed a tidal wave. The great river has gone crazy! It wants to devour the forest! The waves indeed break between the trees, uprooting the weakest! The roaring waves spread on all sides, swallowed up the copses, submerged the clearings. Rahan has only one hope left. They were chasing the son of Crao who was soon in water up to his knees. Rahan cannot run away anymore! The big river is faster than him! It is because this tree resists the fury of the great river! But the son of Crao was not the only one to have chosen this refuge. Page Seven. A growl alerted him. And he narrowly avoided the claws of the lynx lurking above him. A new attack from a paw almost threw him off balance. One of us is too many on this tree, “Chincha”! And Rahan prefers it to be you! Suddenly grabbing the lynx's tail, Rahan pulled with all his might. The beast that clung to the branch was pried loose! Ra-ha-ha! He disappeared, carried away by the rushing flood. But another danger already threatened the son of Crao. Page Eight. Carried by the flood, was a huge trunk heading straight towards his refuge! This tree will not be able to resist! Waboum! The shock was terrible. Uprooted by this blow, the tree fell, throwing Rahan into the swirls. Like the lynx a moment earlier, the son of Crao was carried away by the crashing waves. Swimming in these whirlpools and swirls was impossible. And yet, the time had not come for Rahan to join the “Territory of Shadows”! He managed to grab some vines from a tree which was not in danger of being uprooted, as he passed. Ra-ha-ha! Page Nine. Rahan hopes that the "Four Hands" will share their refuge with him! Frightened by the cataclysm, monkeys screamed in the foliage, but they were harmless. In the distance the ocean had stopped roaring. The anger of the Great River is appeased! But Rahan will have to take the path of the “Four Hands”! A moment later the son of Crao was flying, from branch to branch. Beneath him the flooded forest offered a strange spectacle. Gurg and his clan undoubtedly had time to take refuge on a mountain! Rahan suddenly saw a group of “Two-horned” antelopes fleeing before the flood. But it had lost its violence. Page Ten. The fury of the great river is over! It recalls his own waves! Indeed, the waters withdrew in their ebb the corpses of wild animals which had not had time to escape. Rahan has nothing left to do in this territory! The son of Crao had no desire to find Gurg and his clan. But fate would decide otherwise! Gurg! A curious spectacle, in fact, soon stopped him in his tracks! In a natural pit dug in the rock, he could see a few men. A thick portal of trunks obstructed this pit from which the Gurg clan returned. Page Eleven. When these men passed under the tree Rahan could not resist the Pleasure of manifesting himself. Hello man eaters! Is Gurg still hoping to eat Rahan's heart? A brief moment of astonishment froze the clan. How had “Fire hair”, tied up on the shore, been spared by the great river? We will kill you "Fire hair"! The men of Gurg were already throwing stones towards Rahan. Who dove towards another branch, escaping the projectiles! Ha-ha-ha! But he had assumed too much of his agility. Hands slid over the bark. And that was the fall! Page Twelve. His chest hit a branch, his neck almost burst on another. Ah! Stunned, he did not see the men rushing towards him, brandishing their flints. No! Do not finish him! “Fire hair” is a choice take! We will share his body at night when the full moon returns! And do not touch this magic thing! It was that which provoked the anger of the great river! The son of Crao was dragged to the pit, to this door which was maintained. Closed with a crude but indestructible bar. Page thirteen. When he regained consciousness, several men were leaning over him. Who are you brother? I, I am Rahan. The son of Crao. And you? Who are you? Why are you locked in this stone trap!? The anguish could be seen in the eyes of the captives. We belonged to the Green Marsh Clan. But one day. Gurg attacked us for no other reason than to provide human flesh for his clan of savages! Gurg captured as many hunters that day as our two hands have fingers. He locked us in this cursed pit. Page Fourteen. And today we are no more numerous than the fingers of one hand. The others were eaten! The son of Crao was torn between horror and indignation. Those who act like Gurg do not deserve the name of man! They are monsters! Our clan dries fish in the sun to store them. Gurg, he made this pit his reserve of human flesh! But why did you not try to run away!? Escaping from this pit is impossible! Rahan will understand quickly! Rahan never stayed in a trap for long! He will find a way to escape! And you with him! Page Fifteen. The son of Crao, all day long looking for this way to escape. But in vain. The high granite wall, polished by time, showed no rough spots! No vines were hanging, which would have allowed the climbing of this rock wall. And the largest of the trunks, forgotten in this pit, did not allow climbing either! Ten times he bruised his shoulders trying to force the door that was held by the trunk across it. Ra-ha-ha. This is all useless, brother! We might as well resign ourselves to our fate! Rahan never gives up!! And the Pyramid that Rahan made his companions make was no more fortunate. Rahan will find it! Rahan must figure out how to escape! Page Sixteen. As the night passed, the distant murmur of the ocean finally reached and calmed the captives. Those who walk upright are of the same race. From the same horde. They must not kill each other! They should not eat each other like monsters do! Gurg will not eat Rahan's heart! But he would need the strength of the great river to break down this door! Oh! The great river. The Trunk! The son of Crao saw again the trunk uprooting his tree he had taken refuge in. In his mind this vision faded to give way to another. Himself and the captives replaced the great river, and the tree collapsed under their blows! Page Seventeen. Is this how, in these wild times, the idea of the "Ram" was born in the mind of a man? Listen to Rahan Freres! He knows how to escape! A moment later, uniting their efforts, the captives attacked the impassable gate. But this one, shaken by the terrible shock, resisted! Courage brothers! We will succeed! It was at the fifth blow, more violent than the previous ones, that the traverse broke and the door was dislocated. Boom! Ra-ha-ha! But Rahan and his companions were not yet saved! Gurg and some men of his clan came running. You have undoubtedly come to choose the next victim of your vile feasts! But you will have to fight! Page Eighteen. Forward brothers! With this trunk! Those of the green marsh had understood Rahan's intention to keep the "Ram” before them. They rushed to meet the man-eaters! You are definitely a demon, “Fire hair”! Gurg will kill you with his own hands! Surprised by this strange assault, a few men were swept away by the trunk. The others fled. And the son of Crao found himself face to face with Gurg, who was foaming with rage. Before eating Rahan's heart, it will have to be ripped out! And Rahan knows how to defend his heart! Gurg rushed forward, clutching his formidable flint. But Rahan agilely dodged this first attack. Rahan hates killing “Those Who Walk Upright”. Page Nineteen. But maybe Gurg will force him to do it! The hand on his knife, Rahan moved back to. Parry the next attack. And suddenly, stumbling against the trunk, he fell backwards! Gurg rushed towards him, letting out a wild howl. Grao! The son of Crao did not have time to get up. Gurg, pinning him to the ground, brandished his flint. And came to impale himself on a branch driven from the trunk. Rahan rose without uttering the clamor with which he usually highlighted his victories. The wooden spike stole Gurg's life! Page Twenty. What a terrible end for a man! Rahan did not want it! No brother! Gurg was not a man! He was a monster. He does not deserve our pity! Thanks to you, “Those-who-walk-upright” will no longer fear the eaters of human flesh! The Green Swamp Clan will be grateful to you for saving us! Come with us, brother! Come, come! Rahan fingered his necklace, the claw symbolizing loyalty. Had he been loyal during this fight? Yes, he had been! Resolutely following in the footsteps of his new companions, he plunged into the forest. Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html

Reformatted for Machine Speech, 2023. RECORD ONE. An Announcement. The Wisest of Lines. A Poem. This is merely a copy, word for word, of what was published this morning in the State newspaper: "In another hundred and twenty days the building of the Integral will be completed. The great historic hour is near, when the first Integral will rise into the limitless space of the universe. One thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subjected the whole earth to the power of the United State. A still more glorious task is before you: the integration of the indefinite equation of the Cosmos by the use of the glass, electric, fire-breathing Integral. Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom. If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words. “In the name of the Well-Doer, the following is announced herewith to all Numbers of the United State: "Whoever feels capable must consider it his duty to write treatises, poems, manifestoes, odes, and other compositions on the greatness and the beauty of the United State. "This will be the first cargo which the Integral will carry. "Long live the United State! Long live the Numbers! Long live the Well-Doer!" I feel my cheeks burn as I write this. To integrate the colossal, universal equation! To unbend the wild curve, to straighten' it out to a tangent-to a straight line! For the United State is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines! I, D-503, the builder of the Integral, I am only one of the many mathematicians of the United State. My pen, which is accustomed to figures, is unable to express the march and rhythm of consonance; therefore I shall try to record only the things I see, the things I think, or, to be more exact, the things we think. Yes, "we"; that is exactly what I mean, and We, therefore, shall be the title of my records. But this, will only be a derivative of our life, of our mathematical, perfect life in the United State. If this be so, will not this derivative be a poem in itself, despite my limitations? It will. I believe it, I know it. "'My cheeks still burn as I write this. I feel something similar to what a woman probably feels when for the first time she senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being. It is I, and at the same time it is not I. And for many long months it will be necessary to feed it with my life, with my blood, and then with a pain at my heart, to tear it from myself and lay it at the feet of the. United State. Yet I am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is. I am ready. RECORD TWO. Ballet. Square Harmony. X. SPRING. From behind the Green Wall, from some unknown plains the wind brings to us the yellow honeyed pollen of Rowers. One's lips are dry from this sweet dust. Every moment one passes one's tongue over them. Probably all women whom I meet in the street (and certainly men also) have sweet lips today. This somewhat disturbs my logical thinking. But the sky! The sky is blue. Its limpidness is not marred by a single cloud. (How primitive was the taste of the ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless, formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of vapor!) I love, I am sure it will not be an error if I say too love, only such a sky-a sterile, faultless sky. On such days the whole universe seems to be moulded of the same eternal glass, like the Green Wall, and like all our buildings. On such days one sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. One sees these equations in everything, even in the most ordinary, everyday things. Here is an example: this morning I was on the dock where the Integral is being built, and I saw the lathes; blindly, with abandon, the balls of the regulators were rotating; the cranks were swinging from side to side with a glimmer; the working beam proudly swung its shoulder, and the mechanical chisels were dancing to the melody of unheard tarantellas. I suddenly perceived all the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, this mechanical ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. Then the thought came: why beautiful? Why is the dance beautiful? Answer: because it is an unfree movement. Because the deep meaning of the dance is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal non-freedom. If it is true that our ancestors would abandon themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), then it means only one thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only consciously. I was interrupted. The switchboard clicked. I raised my eyes-a-go, of course! In half a minute she will be here to take me for the walk. Dear O! She always seems to me to look like her name, O. She is approximately ten centimeters shorter than the required Maternal Norm. Therefore she appears round all over; the rose-colored O of her lips is open to meet every word of mine. She has a round soft dimple on her wrist. Children have such dimples. As she came in, the logical flywheel was still buzzing in my head, and following its inertia, I began to tell her about my new formula which embraced the machines and the dancers and all of us. "Wonderful, isn't it?" I asked. "Yes, wonderful. Spring!" she replied, with a rosy smile. You see? Spring! She talks about Spring! Females! I became silent. We were down in the street. The avenue was crowded. On days when the weather is so beautiful, the afternoon personal hour is usually the hour of the supplementary walk. As always, the big Musical Tower was playing the March of the United State with all its pipes. The Numbers, hundreds, thousands of Numbers in light blue unifs, probably a derivative of the ancient uniform, with golden badges on the chest-the State number of each one, male or female-the Numbers were walking slowly, four abreast, exaltedly keeping step. I, we four, were but one of the innumerable waves of a powerful torrent: to my left, O-90 (if one of my long-haired ancestors were writing this a thousand years ago he would probably call her by that funny word, mine); to my right, two unknown Numbers, a she-Number and a he-Number. Blue sky, tiny baby suns in each one of our badges; our faces are unclouded by the insanity of thoughts. Rays. Do you picture it? Everything seems to be made of a kind of smiling, a ray-like matter. And the brass measures: Tra-ta-ta-tam, Tra-ta-ta-tafil. Stamping on the brassy steps that sparkle in the sun, with every step you rise higher and higher into the dizzy blue heights. Then, as this morning on the dock, again I saw, as if for the first time in my life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the pavement, the divine parallelepipeds of the transparent dwellings, the square harmony of the grayish-blue rows of Numbers. And it seemed to me that not past generations, but I myself, had won a victory over the old god and the old life, that I myself had created all this. I felt like a tower: I was afraid to move my elbow, lest the walls, the cupola, and the machines should fall to pieces. Then without warning-a jump through centuries: I remembered (apparently through an association by contrast) a picture in the museum, a picture of an avenue of the twentieth century, a thundering, many-colored confusion of men, wheels, animals, billboards, trees, colors, and birds. They say all this once actually existed! It seemed to me so incredible, so absurd, that I lost control of myself and laughed aloud. A laugh, as if an echo of mine, reached my ear from the right. I turned. I saw white, very white, sharp teeth, and an unfamiliar, female face. "I beg your pardon," she said, "but you looked about you like an inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation. You look as though you are sure that I, too, was created by you, by no one but you. It is very flattering." All this without a smile, even with a certain degree of respect (she may know that I am the builder of the Integral). In her eyes, nevertheless, and on her brows, there was a strange irritating X, and I was unable to grasp it, to find an arithmetical expression for it. Somehow I was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, I tried logically to explain my laughter. "It was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss, between the things of today and of years ago." "But why impassable?" (What bright, sharp teeth!) "One might throw a bridge over that abyss. Please imagine: a drum battalion, rows-all this existed before and consequently." "Oh, yes, it is clear," I exclaimed. It was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. She said almost in the same words the things I had written down before the walk! Do you understand? Even the thoughts! It is because nobody is one, but one of. We are all so much alike. "Are you sure?" I noticed her brows that rose to the temples in an acute angle-like the sharp corners of an X. Again I was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. To my right-she, slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, I-330 (I saw her number now). To my left, 0, totally different, all made of circles with a childlike dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our rowan unknown he-Number, double-curved like the letter S. We were all so different from one another. The one to my right, I-330, apparently caught the confusion in my eye, for she said with a sigh, "Yes, alas!" I don't deny that this exclamation was quite in place, but again there was something in her face or in her voice. With an abruptness unusual for me, I said, "Why, alas? Science is developing and if not now, then within fifty or one hundred years." "Even the noses will." "Yes, noses!" This time I almost shouted, "Since there is still a reason, no matter what, for envy. Since my nose is button-like and someone else's is." "Well, your nose is rather classic, as they would have said in ancient days, although your hands. No, no, show me your hands!" I hate to have anyone look at my hands; they are covered with long hair-a stupid atavism. I stretched out my hand and said as indifferently as I could, "Apelike." She glanced at my hand, then at my face. "No, a very curious harmony." She weighed me with her eyes as though with scales. The little horns again appeared at the corners of her brows. "He is registered in my name," exclaimed O-90 with a rosy smile. I made a grimace. Strictly speaking, she was out of order. This dear O, how shall I say it? The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts-at any rate not the reverse. At the end of the avenue the big bell of the Accumulating Tower resounded seventeen. The personal hour was at an end. I-330 was leaving us with that S-like he-Number. He has such a respectable, and I noticed then, such a familiar, face. I must have met him somewhere, but where I could not remember. Upon leaving me I-330 said with the same X-like smile: "Drop in day after tomorrow at auditorium 112.” I shrugged my shoulders: "If I am assigned to the auditorium you just named." She, with a peculiar, incomprehensible certainty: “You will be." The woman had a disagreeable effect upon me, like an irrational component of an equation which you cannot eliminate. I was glad to remain alone with dear O, at least for a short while. Hand in hand with her, I passed four lines of avenues; at the next corner she went to the right, I to the left. O timidly raised her round blue crystalline eyes. “I would like so much to come to you today and pulldown the curtains, especially today, right now." How funny she is. But what could I say to her? She was with me only yesterday and she knows as well as I that our next sexual day is day after tomorrow. It is merely another case in which her thoughts are too far ahead. It sometimes happens that the spark comes too early to the motor. At parting I kissed her twice-no, I shall be exact, three times, on her wonderful blue eyes, such clear, unclouded eyes. RECORD THREE. A Coat. A Wall. The Tables. I looked over all that I wrote down yesterday and I find that my descriptions are not sufficiently clear. That is, everything would undoubtedly be clear to one of us, but who knows to whom my Integral will someday bring these records? Perhaps you, like our ancestors, have read the great book of civilization only up to the page of nine hundred years ago. Perhaps you don't know even such elementary things as the Hour Tables, Personal Hours, Maternal Norm, Green Wall, Well-Doer. It seems droll to me, and at the same time it is very difficult to explain these things. It is as though, let us say, a writer of the twentieth century should start to explain in his novel such words as coat, apartment, wife. Yet if his novel had been translated for primitive races, how could he have avoided explaining what a coat meant? I am sure that the primitive man would look at a coat and think, "What is this for? It is only a burden, an unnecessary burden." I am sure that you will feel the same, if I tell you that not one of us has ever stepped beyond the Green Wall since the Two Hundred Years' War. But, dear readers, you must think, at least a little. It helps. It is clear that the history of mankind, as far as our knowledge goes, is a history of the transition from nomadic forms to more sedentary ones. Does it not follow that the most sedentary form of life (ours) is at the same time the most perfect one? There was a time when people rushed from one end of the earth to another, but this was the prehistoric time when such things as nations, wars, commerce, different discoveries of different Americas still existed. Who has need of these things now? I admit that humanity acquired this habit of a sedentary form of life not without difficulty and not all at once. When the Two Hundred Years' War had destroyed all the roads, which later were overgrown with grass, it was probably very difficult at first. It must have seemed uncomfortable to live in cities which were cut off from each other by green debris. But what of it? Man soon after he lost his tail probably did not learn at once how to chase away flies without its help. I am almost sure that at first he was even lonesome without his tail; but now, can you imagine yourself with a tail? Or can you imagine yourself walking in the street naked, without clothes? (It is possible you go without clothes still.) Here we have the same case. I cannot imagine a city which is not surrounded by a Green Wall. I cannot imagine a life which is not surrounded by the figures of our Tables. Tables. Now even, purple figures look at me austerely yet kindly from the golden background of the wall. Involuntarily I am reminded of the thing which was called by the ancients "Sainted Image," and I feel a desire to compose verses, or prayers, which are the same. Oh, why am I not a poet, so as to be able to glorify the Tables properly, the heart and pulse of the United State! All of us and perhaps all of you read in childhood, while in school, that greatest of all monuments of ancient literature, the Official Railroad Guide. But if you compare this with the Tables, you will see side by side graphite and diamonds. Both are the same, carbon. But how eternal, transparent, how shining the diamond! Who does not lose his breath when he runs through the pages of the Guide? The Tables transformed each one of us, actually, into a six-wheeled steel hero of a great poem. Every morning, with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour, at the same minute, we wake up, millions of us at once. At the very same hour, millions like one, we begin our work, and millions like one, we finish it. United into a single body with a million hands, at the very same second, designated by the Tables, we carry the spoons to our mouths; at the same second we all go out to walk, go to the auditorium, to the halls for the Taylor exercises, and then to bed. I shall be quite frank: even we have not attained the absolute, exact solution of the problem of happiness. Twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen o'clock and from twenty-one to twenty-two, our powerful united organism dissolves into separate cells; these are the personal hours designated by the Tables. During these hours you would see the curtains discreetly drawn in the rooms of some; others march slowly over the pavement of the main avenue or sit at their desks as I sit now. But I firmly believe, let them call me an idealist and a dreamer, I believe that sooner or later we shall somehow find a place in the general formula even for these hours. Somehow, all of the 86,400 seconds will be incorporated in the Tables of Hours. I have had opportunity to read and hear many improbable things about those times when human beings still lived in the state of freedom, that is, in an unorganized primitive state. One thing has always seemed to me most improbable: how could a government, even a primitive government, permit people to live without anything like our Tables-without compulsory walks, without precise regulation of the time to eat, for instance? They would get up and go to bed whenever they liked. Some historians even say that in those days the streets were lighted all night, and all night people went about the streets. That I cannot understand. True, their minds were rather limited in those days. Yet they should have understood, should they not, that such a life was actually wholesale murder, although slow murder, day after day? The State (humanitarianism) forbade in those days the murder of one person, but it did not forbid the killing of millions slowly and by inches. To kill one person, that is, to reduce the individual span of human life by fifty years, was considered criminal, but to reduce the general sum of human life by fifty million years was not considered criminal! Isn't it droll? Today this simple mathematical moral problem could easily be solved in half a minute's time by any ten year-old Number, yet they couldn't do it! All their Immanuel Kants together couldn't do it! It didn't enter the heads of all their Kants to build a system of scientific ethics, that is, ethics based on adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Further, is it not absurd that their State (they called it State!) left sexual life absolutely without control? On the contrary, whenever and as much as they wanted, absolutely unscientific, like beasts! And like beasts they blindly gave birth to children! Is it not strange to understand gardening, chicken farming, fishery (we have definite knowledge that they were familiar with all these things), and not to be able to reach the last step in this logical scale, namely, production of children not to be able to discover such things as Maternal and Paternal Norms? It is so droll, so improbable, that while I write this I am afraid lest you, my unknown future readers, should think I am merely a poor jester. I feel almost as if you may think I want simply to mock you and with a very serious face try to relate absolute nonsense to you. But first I am incapable of jesting, for in every joke a lie has its hidden function. And second, the science of the United State contends that the life of the ancients was exactly what I am describing, and the science of the United State does not make mistakes! Yet how could they have State logic, since they lived in a condition of freedom like beasts, like apes, like herds? What could one expect of them, since even in our day one hears from time to time, coming from the bottom, the primitive depths, the echo of the apes? Fortunately it happens only from time to time, very seldom. Happily, it is only a case of small parts breaking; these may easily be repaired without stopping the eternal great march of the whole machine. And in order to eliminate a broken peg we have the skillful heavy hand of the Well-Doer, we have the experienced eyes of the Guardians. By the way, I just thought of that Number whom I met yesterday, the double-curved one like the letter S; I think I have seen him several times coming out of the Bureau of Guardians. Now I understand why I felt such an instinctive respect for him and a kind of awkwardness when I saw that strange I-330 at his side. I must confess that, that I, they ring the bell, time to sleep, it is twenty-two thirty. Till tomorrow, then. RECORD FOUR. The Wild Man with a Barometer. Epilepsy. If. Until today everything in life seemed to me clear, that is why, I think, I always had a sort of partiality toward the word "clear", but today, I don’t understand. First, I really was assigned to auditorium 112, as she said, although the probability was 500 to 10,000,000 or I to 20,000. Five hundred is the number of auditoriums and there are 10,000,000 Numbers. And second. But let me relate things in proper order. The auditorium: an enormous half-globe of glass with the sun piercing through. The circular rows of noble, globelike, closely shaven heads. With joy in my heart I looked around. I believe I was looking in the hope of seeing the rose-colored scythe, the dear lips of O somewhere among the blue waves of the unifs. Then I saw extraordinarily white, sharp teeth like the. But no! Tonight at twenty-one o’clock O was to come to me; therefore my desire to see her was quite natural. The bell. We stood up, sang the Hymn of the United State, and our clever phono-Iecturer appeared on the platform with-a sparkling golden loud-speaker. "Respected Numbers, not so long ago our archaeologists dug up a book written in the twentieth century. In this book the ironical author tells about a Wild Man and a barometer. The Wild Man noticed that every time the barometer's hand stopped on the word rain, it actually rained. And as the Wild Man craved rain, he let out as much mercury as was necessary to put it at the level of the word rain on the screen a Wild Man with feathers, letting out the mercury. Laughter. "You are laughing at him, but don't you think the European of that age deserves more to be laughed at? He, like the Wild Man, wanted rain-rain with a little 'r,' an algebraic rain; but he remained standing before the barometer like a wet hen. The Wild Man at least had more courage and energy and logic, although primitive logic. The Wild Man showed the ability to establish a connection between cause and effect: by letting out the mercury he made the first step on the path which." Here, I repeat, I am not concealing anything, I am setting down everything, I suddenly became impermeable to the quickening currents coming from the loud-speaker. I suddenly felt I had come here in vain (why in vain and how could I not have come here, since I was assigned to come here?). Everything seemed to me empty like a shell. I succeeded with difficulty in tuning my attention in again when the phono-Iecturer came to the main theme of the evening-to our music as a mathematical composition, mathematics is the cause, music the effect. The phono-lecturer began the description of the recently invented musicometer. “By merely rotating this handle anyone is enabled to produce about three sonatas per hour. What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to attacks of inspiration, an extinct form of epilepsy. Here you have an amusing illustration of their achievements: the music of Scriabin, twentieth century. This black box," a curtain patted on the platform, and we saw an ancient instrument, "this box they called the Royal Grand. They attached to this idea of regality, which also goes to prove how their music.” And I don't remember anything further. Very possibly because, I'll tell you frankly, because she, I-330, came to the "Royal” box. Probably I was simply startled by her unexpected appearance on the platform. She was dressed in a fantastic dress of the ancient time, a black dress closely fitting the body, sharply delimiting the white of her shoulders and breasts, and that warm shadow waving with her breath between. And the dazzling, almost angry teeth. A smile, a bite, directed downward. She took her seat; she began to play something wild, convulsive, loud like all their life then-not a shadow of rational mechanism. Of course all those around me were right; they were laughing. Only a few. But why is it that I, too, I? Yes, epilepsy, a mental disease, a pain. A slow, sweet pain, bite, and it goes deeper and becomes sharper. And then, slowly, sunshine-not our sunshine, not crystalline, bluish, and soft, coming through the glass bricks. No, a wild sunshine, rushing and burning, tearing everything into small bits. The Number at my left glanced at me and chuckled. I don't know why but I remember exactly how a microscopic saliva bubble appeared on his lips and burst. That bubble brought me back to myself. I was again I. Like all the other Numbers I heard now only the senseless, disorderly crackling of the chords. I laughed; I felt so light and simple. The gifted phono-Iecturer represented to us only too well that wild epoch. And that was all. With what a joy I listened afterward to our contemporary music. It was demonstrated to us at the end of the lecture for the sake of contrast. Crystalline, chromatic scales converging and diverging into endless series; and synthetic harmony of the formulae of Taylor and McLauren, wholesome, square, and massive like the "trousers of Pythagoras." Sad melodies dying away in waving movements. The beautiful texture of the spectrum of planets, dissected by Frauenhofer lines, what magnificent, what perfect regularity! How pitiful the willful music of the ancients, not limited except by the scope of their wild imaginations! As usual, in good order, four abreast, all of us left the auditorium. The familiar double-curved figure passed swiftly by. I respectfully bowed. Dear O was to come in an hour. I felt agitated, agreeably and usefully. Home at last! I rushed to the house office, handed over to the controller on duty my pink ticket, and received a certificate permitting the use of the curtains. This right exists in our State only for the sexual days. Normally we live surrounded by transparent walls which seem to be knitted of sparkling air; we live beneath the eyes of everyone, always bathed in light. We have nothing to conceal from one another; besides, this mode of living makes the difficult and exalted task of the Guardians much easier. Without it many bad things might happen. It is possible that the strange opaque dwellings of the ancients were responsible for their pitiful cellish psychology. “My (sic!) home is my fortress!" How did they manage to think such things? At twenty-two o'clock I lowered the curtain and at the same second O came in smiling, slightly out of breath. She extended to me her rosy lips and her pink ticket. I tore off the stub but I could not tear myself away from the rosy lips up to the last moment, twenty-two-fifteen. Then I showed her my diary and I talked; I think I talked very well on the beauty of a square, a cube, a straight line. At first she listened so charmingly, she was so rosy; then suddenly a tear appeared in her blue eyes, then another, and a third fell straight on the open page (page 7). The ink blurred; well, I shall have to copy it again. "My dear O, if only you, if." "What if? If what?" Again the old lament about a child or perhaps something new regarding, regarding, the other one? Although it seems as though some. But that would be too absurd! RECORD FIVE. The Square. The Rulers of the World. An Agreeable and Useful Function. Again with you, my unknown reader; I talk to you as though you were, let us say, my old comrade, R-13, the poet with the lips of a Negro-well, everyone knows him. Yet you are somewhere on the moon, or on Venus, or on Mars. Who knows you? Where and who are you? Imagine a square, a living, beautiful square. Imagine that this square is obliged to tell you about itself, about its life. You realize that this square would hardly think it necessary to mention the fact that all its four angles are equal. It knows this too well. This is such an ordinary, obvious thing. I am in exactly the same square position. Take the pink checks, for instance, and all that goes with them: for me they are as natural as the equality of the four angles of the square. But for you they are perhaps more mysterious and hard to understand than Newton's binomial theorem. Let me explain: an ancient sage once said a clever thing, accidentally, beyond doubt. He said, “Love and Hunger rule the world." Consequently, to dominate the world, man had to win a victory over hunger after paying a very high price. I refer to the great Two Hundred Years' War, the war between the city and the land. Probably on account of religious prejudices, the primitive peasants stubbornly held on to their “bread.” This word came down to us for use only as a poetic form, for the chemical constitution of this substance is unknown to us. In the thirty-fifth year before the foundation of the United State our contemporary petroleum food was invented. True, only about two tenths of the population of the globe did not die out. But how beautifully shining the face of the earth became when it was cleared of its impurities! Accordingly the 0.2 which survived have enjoyed the greatest happiness in the bosom of the United State. But is it not clear that supreme bliss and envy are only the numerator and the denominator, respectively, of the same fraction, happiness? What sense would the innumerable sacrifices of the Two Hundred Years' War have for us if a reason were left in our life for jealousy? Yet such a reason persisted because there remained button like noses and classical noses, cf our conversation during the promenade. For there were some whose love was sought by everyone, and others whose love was sought by no one. Naturally, having conquered hunger, that is, algebraically speaking, having achieved the total of bodily welfare, the United State directed its attack against the second ruler of the world, against love. At last this element also was conquered, that is, organized and put into a mathematical formula. It is already three hundred years since our great historic Lex Sexualis was promulgated: "A Number may obtain a license to use any other Number as a sexual product." The rest is only a matter of technique. You are carefully examined in the laboratory of the Sexual Department where they find the content of the sexual hormones in your blood, and they accordingly make out for you a Table of sexual days. Then you file an application to enjoy the services of Number so and so, or Numbers so and so. You get for that purpose a checkbook (pink). That is all. It is clear that under such circumstances there is no reason for envy or jealousy. The denominator of the fraction of happiness is reduced to zero and the whole fraction is thus converted into a magnificent infiniteness. The thing which, was for the ancients a source of innumerable stupid tragedies has been converted in our time into a harmonious, agreeable, and useful function of, the organism, a function like sleep, physical labor, the taking of food, digestion, etc., etc. Hence you see how the great power of logic purifies everything it happens to touch. Oh, if only you unknown readers can conceive this divine power! If you will only learn to follow it to the end! It is very strange. While I was Writing today of the loftiest Summit of human history, all the while I breathed the purest mountain air of thought, but within me it was and remains cloudy, cobwebby, and there is a kind of cross-like, four-pawed X. Or perhaps it is my paws and I feel like that only because they are always before my eyes, my hairy paws. I don't like to talk about them, I dislike them. They are a trace of a primitive epoch, is it possible that there is in me? I wanted to strike out all this because it trespasses on the limits of my synopsis. But then I decided: no, I shall not! Let this diary give the curve of the most imperceptible vibrations of my brain, like a precise seismograph, for at times such vibrations serve as fore warnings. Certainly this is absurd! This certainly should be stricken out; we have conquered all the elements; catastrophes are not possible any more, Now everything is clear to me, The peculiar feeling inside is a result of that very same square situation of which I spoke in the beginning. There is no X in me. There can be none. I am simply afraid lest some X will be left in you; my unknown readers. I believe you will understand that it is harder for me to write than it ever was for any author throughout human history, Some of them wrote for contemporaries, some for future generations, but none of them ever wrote for their ancestors, or for beings' like their primitive, distant ancestors. RECORD SIX. An Accident. The Cursed "It's Clear." Twenty-four Hours. I must repeat, I have made it my duty to write concealing nothing. Therefore I must point out now that, sad as it may be, the process of the hardening and crystallization of life has evidently not been completed even here in our State. A few steps more and we will be within reach of our ideal. The ideal (it's clear) is to be found where nothing happens, but here. I will give you an example: in the State paper I read that in two days the holiday of Justice will be celebrated on the Plaza of the Cube. This means that again some Number has impeded the smooth running of the great State machine. Again something that was not foreseen, or fore-calculated, happened. Besides, something happened to me. True, it occurred during the personal hour, that is during the time specifically assigned to unforeseen circumstances, yet. At about sixteen (to be exact, ten minutes to sixteen), I was at home. Suddenly the telephone: "D-503?" A woman's voice. "Yes." "Are you free?' "Yes." "It is I, I-330. I shall run over to you immediately. We shall go together to the Ancient House. Agreed?" I-330! This I irritates me, repels me. She almost frightens me; but just because of that I answered, "Yes." In five minutes we were in an aero. Blue sky of May. The bright sun in its own golden aero buzzed behind us without catching up and without lagging behind. Ahead of us a white cataract of a cloud. Yes, a white cataract of a cloud, nonsensically Huffy like the cheeks of an ancient cupid. That cloud was disturbing. The front window was open; it was windy; lips were dry. Against one's will one passed the tongue constantly over them and thought about lips. Already we saw in the distance the hazy green spots on the other side of the Wall. Then a slight involuntary sinking of the heart, down-down-down, as if from a steep mountain, and we were at the Ancient House. That strange, delicate, blind establishment is covered all around with a glass shell, otherwise it would undoubtedly have fallen to pieces long ago. At the glass door we found an old woman all wrinkles, especially her mouth, which was all made up of folds and pleats. Her lips had disappeared, having folded inward; her mouth seemed grown together. It seemed incredible that she should be able to talk, and yet she did. "Well, dear, come again to see my little house?" Her wrinkles shone, that is, her wrinkles diverged like rays, which created the impression of shining. ""Yes, Grandmother," answered I-330. The wrinkles continued to shine. "And the sun, eh, do you see it, you rogue, you! I know, I know. It's all right. Go all by yourselves, I shall remain here in the sunshine." Hum. Apparently my companion was a frequent guest here. Something disturbed me; probably that unpleasant optical impression, the cloud on the smooth blue surface of the sky. While we were ascending the wide, dark stairs, I-330 said, "I love her, that old woman." "Why?" "I don't know. Perhaps for her mouth-or perhaps for nothing, just so." I shrugged my shoulders. She continued walking upstairs with a faint smile, or perhaps without a smile at all. I felt very guilty. It is clear that there must not be "love, just so," but "love because of." For all elements of nature should be. “It's clear." I began, but I stopped at that word and cast a furtive look at I-330. Did she notice it or not? She looked somewhere, down; her eyes were closed like curtains. It struck me suddenly: evening about twenty-two; you walk on the avenue and among the brightly lighted, transparent, cubic cells are dark spaces, lowered curtains, and there behind the curtains. What has she behind her curtains? Why did she phone me today? Why did she bring me here? and all this. She opened a heavy, squeaking, opaque door and we found ourselves in a somber disorderly space (they called it an "apartment"). The same strange "royal" musical instrument and a wild, unorganized, crazy loudness of colors and forms like their ancient music. A white plane above, dark blue walls, red, green, orange bindings of ancient books, yellow bronze candelabra, a statue of Buddha, furniture with lines distorted by epilepsy, impossible to reduce to any clear equation. I could hardly bear that chaos. But my companion apparently possessed a stronger constitution. "This is my most beloved," she suddenly caught herself, again a smile, bite, and white sharp teeth,"to be more exact, the most nonsensical of all apartments." "Or, to be most exact, of all the States. Thousands of microscopic States, fighting eternal wars, pitiless like." "Oh, yes, it's clear," said I-330 with apparent sincerity. We passed through a room where we found a few small children's beds (children in those days were also private property). Then more rooms, glimmering mirrors, somber closets, unbearably loud-colored divans, an enormous "fireplace," a large mahogany bed. Our contemporary beautiful, transparent, eternal glass was represented here only by pitiful, delicate, tiny squares of windows. "And to think; here there was love just so; they burned and tortured themselves." Again the curtain of the eyes was lowered. "What a stupid, uneconomical spending of human energy. Am I not right?" She spoke as though reading my thoughts, but in her smile there remained always that irritating X. There behind the curtains something was going on, I don't know what, but something that made me lose my patience. I wanted to quarrel with her, to scream at her (exactly, to scream), but I had to agree. It was impossible not to agree, we stopped in front of a mirror, At that moment I saw only her eyes. An idea came to me: human beings are built as nonsensically as these stupid "apartments," human heads are opaque, and there are only two very small windows that lead inside, the eyes. She seemed to have guessed my thoughts; she turned around: "Well, here they are, my eyes. Well" (this suddenly, then silence). There in front of me were two gloomy, dark windows and behind them, inside, such strange hidden life. I saw there only fire, burning like a peculiar "fireplace," and unknown figures resembling. All this was certainly very natural; I saw in her eyes the reflection of my own face. But my feelings were unnatural and not like me. Evidently the depressing influence of the surroundings was beginning to tell on me. I definitely felt fear. I felt as if I were trapped in a strange cage. I felt that I was caught in the wild hurricane of ancient life, "Do you know." said I-330. "Step for a moment into the next room." Her voice came from there, from inside, from behind the dark window eyes, where the fireplace was blazing. I went in, sat down. From a shelf on the wall there looked straight into my face, somewhat smiling, the snub nosed, asymmetrical physiognomy of one of the ancient poets; I think it was Pushkin. "Why do I sit here enduring this smile with such resignation, and what is this all about? Why am I here? And why all these strange sensations, this irritating, repellent female, this strange game?" The door of the closet slammed; there was the rustle of silk. I felt it difficult to restrain myself from getting up and, and, I don't remember exactly; probably I wanted to tell her a number of disagreeable things. But she had already appeared. She was dressed in a short, bright-yellowish dress, black hat, black stockings. The dress was of light silk. I saw clearly very long black stockings above the knees, an uncovered neck, and the shadow between. ''It's clear that you want to seem original. But is it passible that you?" "It is clear," interrupted I-330, "that to be original means to stand out among others; consequently, to be original means to violate the law of equality. What was called in the language of the ancients to be common is with us only the fulfilling of one's duty. For." "Yes, yes, exactly," I interrupted impatiently, "and there is no use, no use." She came near the bust of the snub-nosed poet, lowered the curtain on the wild fire of her eyes, and said, this time I think she was really in earnest, or perhaps she merely wanted to soften my impatience with her, but she said a very reasonable thing: "Don't you think it surprising that once people could stand types like this? Not only stand them, but worship them? What a slavish spirit, don't you think so?" “It's clear, that is!" I wanted, damn that cursed "it's clear!" “Oh, yes, I understand. But in fact these poets were stronger rulers than the crowned ones. Why were they not isolated and exterminated? In our State." "Oh, yes, in our State." I began. But suddenly she laughed. I saw the laughter in her eyes. I saw the resounding sharp curve of that laughter, flexible, tense like a whip. I remember my whole body shivered. I thought of grasping her and I don't know what. I had to do something, it mattered little what, automatically I looked at my golden badge, glanced at my watch-ten minutes to seventeen! "Don't you think it is time to go?" I said in as polite a tone as possible. "And if I should ask you to stay here with me?" "What? Do you realize what you are saying? In ten minutes I must be in the auditorium." "And Call the Numbers must take the prescribed courses in art and science," said I-330 with my voice. Then she lifted the curtain, opened her eyes-through the dark windows the fire was blazing. "I have a physician in the Medical Bureau; he is registered to me; if I ask him, he will give you a certificate declaring that you are ill. All right?" Understood! At last I understood where this game was leading. "Ah, so! But you know that every honest Number as a matter of course must immediately go to the office of the Guardians and." "And as a matter not of course?" (Sharp smile-bite.) "I am very curious to know: will you or will you not go to the Guardians?" "Are you going to remain here?" I grasped the knob of the door. It was a brass knob, a cold, brass knob, and I heard, cold like brass, her voice: "Just a minute, may I?" She went to the telephone, called a Number, I was so upset it escaped me, and spoke loudly: "I shall be waiting for you in the Ancient House. Yes, yes, alone." I turned the cold brass knob. “May I take the aero?" "Oh, yes, certainly, please!" In the sunshine at the gate the old woman was dozing like a plant. Again I was surprised to see her grown-together mouth open, and to hear her say: "And your lady, did she remain alone?" "Alone." The mouth of the old woman grew together again; she shook her head; apparently even her weakening brain understood the stupidity and the danger of that woman's behavior. At seventeen o’clock exactly I was at the lecture. There I suddenly realized that I did not tell the whole truth to the old woman. I-330 was not there alone now. Possibly this fact, that I involuntarily told the old woman a lie, was torturing me now and distracting my attention. Yes, not alone-that was the point. After twenty-one-thirty o'clock I had a free hour; I could therefore have gone to the office of the Guardians to make my report. But after that stupid adventure I was so tired; besides, the law provides two days. I shall have time tomorrow; I have another twenty-four hours. RECORD SEVEN. An Eyelash. Taylor. Henbane and Lily of the Valley. Night. Green, orange, blue. The red royal instrument. The yellow dress. Then a brass Buddha. Suddenly it lifted the brass eyelids and sap began to How from it, from Buddha. Sap also from the yellow dress. Even in the mirror, drops of sap, and from the large bed and from the children's bed and soon from myself. It is horror, mortally sweet horror! I woke up. Soft blue light, the glass of the walls, of the chairs, of the table was glimmering. This calmed me. My heart stopped palpitating. Sap! Buddha! How absurd! I am sick, it is clear; I never saw dreams before. They say that to see dreams was a common normal thing with the ancients. Yes, after all, their life was a whirling carousel: green, orange, Buddha, sap. But we, people of today, we know all too well that dreaming is a serious mental disease. I, Is it possible that my brain, this precise, clean, glittering mechanism, like a chronometer without a speck of dust on it, is? Yes, it is, now. I really feel there in the brain some foreign body like an eyelash in the eye. One does not feel one's whole body, but this eye with a hair in it; one cannot forget it for a second. The cheerful, crystalline sound of the bell at my head. Seven o'clock. Time to get up. To the right and to the left as in mirrors, to the right and to the left through the glass walls I see others like myself, other rooms like my own, other clothes like my own, movements like mine, duplicated thousands of times. This invigorates me; I see myself as a part of an enormous, vigorous, united body; and what precise beauty! Not a single superfluous gesture, or bow, or tum. Yes, this Taylor was undoubtedly the greatest genius of the ancients. True, he did not come to the idea of applying his method to the whole life, to every step throughout the twenty-four hours of the day; he was unable to integrate his system from one o'clock to twenty four. I cannot understand the ancients. How could they write whole libraries about some Kant and take only slight notice of Taylor, of this prophet who saw ten centuries ahead? Breakfast was over. The hymn of the United State had been harmoniously sung; rhythmically, four abreast we walked to the elevators, the motors buzzed faintly, and swiftly we went down, down, down, the heart sinking slightly. Again that stupid dream, or some unknown function of that dream. Oh, yes! Yesterday in the aero, then down, down! Well, it is all over, anyhow. Period. It is very fortunate that I was so firm and brusque with her. The car of the underground railway carried me swiftly to the place where the motionless, beautiful body of the Integral, not yet spiritualized by fire, was glittering in the docks in the sunshine. With closed eyes I dreamed in formulae. Again I calculated in my mind what was the initial velocity required to tear the Integral away from the earth. Every second the mass of the Integral would change because of the expenditure of the explosive fuel. The equation was very complex, with transcendent figures. As in a dream I felt, right here in the firm calculated world, how someone sat down at my side, barely touching me and saying, "Pardon." I opened my eyes. At first, apparently because of an association with the Integral, I saw something impetuously flying into the distance-a head; I saw pink wing ears sticking out on the sides of it, then the curve of the overhanging back of the head, the double-curved letter S. Through the glass walls of my algebraic world again I felt the eyelash in my eye. I felt something disagreeable, I felt that today I must. "Certainly, please." I smiled at my neighbor and bowed. I saw Number 8-4711 glittering on his golden badge, that is why I associated him with the letter S from the very first moment: an optical impression which remained unregistered by consciousness. His eyes sparkled, two sharp little drills; they were revolving swiftly, drilling in deeper and deeper. It seemed that in a moment they would drill in to the bottom and would see something that I do not even dare to confess to myself. That bothersome eyelash became wholly clear tome. S was one of them, one of the Guardians, and it would be the simplest thing immediately, without deferring, to tell him everything! "I went yesterday to the Ancient House." My voice was strange, husky, flat, I tried to cough. "That is good. It must have given you material for some instructive deductions." “Yes, but. You see, I was not alone; I was in the company of I-330, and then." "I-330? You are fortunate. She is a very interesting, gifted woman; she has a host of admirers." But he, too-then during the promenade. Perhaps he is even assigned as her he-Number! No, it is impossible to tell him, unthinkable. This was perfectly clear. “Yes, yes, certainly, very.” I smiled, more and more broadly, more stupidly, and felt as if my smile made me look foolish, naked. The drills reached the bottom; revolving continually they screwed themselves back into his eyes. S smiled double-curvedly, nodded, and slid to the exit. I covered my face with the newspaper. I felt as if everybody were looking at me, and soon I forgot about the eyelash, about the little drills, about everything, I was so upset by what I read in the paper: "According to authentic information, traces of an organization, which still remains out of reach, have again been discovered. This organization aims at liberation from the beneficial yoke of the State." Liberation! It is remarkable how persistent human criminal instincts are! I use deliberately the word "criminal," for freedom and crime are as closely related as-well, as the movement of an aero and its speed: if the speed of an aero equals zero, the aero is motionless; if human liberty is equal to zero, man does not commit any crime. That is clear. The way to rid man of criminality is to rid him of freedom. No sooner did we rid ourselves of freedom, in the cosmic sense centuries are only a "no sooner," than suddenly some unknown pitiful degenerates. No, I cannot understand why I did not go immediately yesterday to the Bureau of Guardians. Today, after sixteen o'clock, I shall go without fail. At sixteen-ten I was in the street; at once I noticed O-90 at the corner; she was all rosy with delight at the encounter. She has a simple, round mind. A timely meeting, she would understand and lend me support. Or, no, I did not need any support; my decision was firm. The pipes of the Musical Tower thundered out harmoniously the March-the same daily March. How wonderful the charm of this dailiness, of this constant repetition and mirror-like smoothness! "Out for a walk?" Her round blue eyes opened toward me widely, blue windows leading inside; I penetrate there unhindered; there is nothing in there, I mean nothing foreign, nothing superfluous. "No, not for a walk. I must got I told her where. And to my astonishment I saw her rosy round mouth form a crescent with the horns downward as if she tasted something sour. This angered me. "You she-Numbers seem to be incurably eaten up by prejudices. You are absolutely unable to think abstractly. Forgive me the word, but this I call bluntness of mind." "You? To the spies? How ugly! And I went to the Botanical Garden and brought you a branch of lily of the valley." "Why and I? Why this and? Just like a woman!" Angrily, this I must confess, I snatched the flowers. "Here they are, your lilies of the valley. Well, smell them! Good? Yes? Why not use a little bit of logic? The lilies of the valley smell good; all right! But you cannot say about an odor, about the conception of an odor, that it is good or bad, can you? You can't, can you? There is the smell of lilies of the valley, and there is the disagreeable smell of henbane. Both are odors. The ancient States had their spies; we have ours, yes, spies! I am not afraid of words. But is it not clear to you that there the spies were henbane, here they are lilies of the valley? Yes, lilies of the valley. Yes!" The rosy crescent quivered. Now I understand that it was only my impression, but at that moment I was certain she was going to laugh. I shouted still louder: "Yes, lilies of the valley! And there is nothing funny about it, nothing funny!” The smooth round globes of heads passing by were turning toward us. O-90 gently took my hand. "You are so strange today are you ill?" My dream. Yellow color Buddha. It was at once borne clearly upon me that I must go to the Medical Bureau. "Yes, you are right, I am sick," I said with joy, that seems to me an inexplicable contradiction; there was nothing to be joyful about. "You must go at once to the doctor. You understand that; you are obliged to be healthy; it seems strange to have to prove it to you." "My dear O, of course you are right. Absolutely right.” I did not go to the Bureau of Guardians; I could not; I had to go to the Medical Bureau; they kept me there until seventeen o'clock. In the evening, incidentally, the Bureau of Guardians is closed evenings, in the evening O came to see me. The curtains were not lowered. We busied ourselves with the arithmetical problems of an ancient textbook. This occupation always calms and purifies our thoughts. 0sat over her notebook, her head slightly inclined to the left; she was so assiduous that she poked out her left cheek with the tongue from within. She looked so childlike, so charming. I felt everything in me was pleasant, precise, and simple. She left. I remained alone. I breathed deeply two times, it is very good exercise before retiring for the night. Suddenly-an unexpected odor reminiscent of something very disagreeable! I soon found out what was the matter, a branch of lily of the valley was hidden in my bed. Immediately everything was aroused again, came up from the bottom. Decidedly, it was tactless on her part to put these lilies of the valley there surreptitiously. Well, true I did not go; I didn't, but was it my fault that I had felt indisposed? RECORD EIGHT. An Irrational Root. R-13. The Triangle. It was long ago, during my school days, when I first encountered the square root of minus one. I remember it all very clearly: a bright globe like class hall, about a hundred round heads of children, and Plappa our mathematician. We nicknamed him Plappa; it was a very much used-up mathematician, loosely screwed together; as the member of the class who was on duty that day would put the plug into the socket behind, we would hear at first from the loud-speaker, "Plap-plap-plap-plaptshshsh." Only then the lesson would follow. One day Plappa told us about irrational numbers, and I remember I wept and banged the table with my fist and cried, “I do not want that square root of minus one; take that square root of minus one away!" This irrational root grew into me as something strange, foreign, terrible; it tortured me; it could not be thought out. It could not be defeated because it was beyond reason. Now, that square root of minus one is here again. I read over what I have written and I see clearly that I was insincere with myself, that I lied to myself in order to avoid seeing that square root of minus one. My sickness is all nonsense! I could go there. I feel sure that if such a thing had happened a week ago I should have gone with out hesitating. Why, then, am I unable to go now? Why? Today, for instance, at exactly sixteen-ten I stood before the glittering Glass Wall. Above was the shining, golden, sun-like sign: "Bureau of Guardians." Inside, a long queue of bluish-gray unifs awaiting their turns, faces shining like the oil lamps in an ancient temple. They had come to accomplish a great thing: they had come to put on the altar of the United State their beloved ones, their friends, their own selves. My whole being craved to join them, yet. I could not; my feet were as though melted into the glass plates of the sidewalk. I simply stood there looking foolish. "Hey, mathematician! Dreaming?" I shivered. Black eyes varnished with laughter looked at me-thick Negro lips! It was my old friend the poet, R-13, and with him rosy O. I turned around angrily. I still believe that if they had not appeared I should have entered the Bureau and have torn the square root of minus one out of my flesh. "Not dreaming at all. If you will, standing in adoration," I retorted quite brusquely. "Oh, certainly, certainly! You, my friend, should never have become a mathematician; you should have become a poet, a great poet! Yes, come over to our trade, to the poets. Eh? If you will, I can arrange it in a jiffy. Eh?" R-13 usually talks very fast. His words run in torrents, his thick lips sprinkle. Every "p" is a fountain, every "poets" a fountain. "So far I have served knowledge, and I shall continue to serve knowledge." I frowned. I do not like, I do not understand jokes, and R-13 has the bad habit of joking. "Oh, to the deuce with knowledge. Your much-heralded knowledge is but a form of cowardice. It is a fact! Yes, you want to encircle the infinite with a wall, and you fear to cast a glance behind the wall Yes, sir! And if ever you should glance beyond the wall, you would be dazzled and close your eyes-yes." "Walls are the foundation of every human," I began. R-13 sprinkled his fountain. O laughed rosily and roundly. I waved my hand. "Well, you may laugh, I don't care." I was busy with something else. I had to find a way of eating up, of crashing down, that square root of minus one. “Suppose," I offered,” we go to my place and do some arithmetical problems." The quiet hour of yesterday afternoon came to my memory; perhaps today also. O glanced at R, then serenely and roundly at me; the soft, endearing color of our pink checks came to her cheeks. “But today I am, I have a check to him today." A glance at R, “And tonight he is busy, so." The moist, varnished lips whispered good-naturedly: "Half an hour is plenty for us, is it not, O? I am not a great lover of your problems; let us simply go over to my place and chat." I was afraid to remain alone with myself or, to be more correct, with that strange new self who by some curious coincidence bore my number, D-503. So I went with R. True, he is not precise, not rhythmic, his logic is jocular and turned inside out, yet we are. Three years ago we both chose our dear, rosy O. This tied our friendship more firmly together than our school days did. In R's room everything seems like mine: the Tables, the glass of the chairs, the table, the closet, the bed. But as we entered, R moved one chair out of place, then another-the room became confused, everything lost the established order and seemed to violate every rule of Euclid's geometry. R remained the same as always; in Taylor and in mathematics he always lagged at the tail of the class. We recalled Plappa, how we boys used to paste the whole surface of his glass legs with paper notes expressing our thanks, we all loved Plappa. We recalled our priest, it goes without saying that we were not taught the "law" of ancient religion but the law of the United State. Our priest had a very powerful voice; a real hurricane would come out of the loud-speaker. And we children would yell the prescribed texts after him with all our lung power. We recalled how our scapegrace, R-13, used to stuff the priest with chewed paper; every word was thus accompanied by a paper wad shot out. Naturally, R was punished, for what he did was undoubtedly wrong, but now we laughed heartily-by we I mean our triangle, R, O, and I. I must confess, I, too. "And what if he had been a living one? Like the ancient ones, eh? We'd have b, b,” a fountain running from the fat bubbling lips. The sun was shining through the ceiling, the sun above, the sun from the sides, its reflection from below. O on R-13's lap and minute drops of sunlight in O’s blue eyes. Somehow my heart warmed up. The square' root of minus one became silent and motionless. "Well, how is your Integral? Will you soon hop off to enlighten the inhabitants of the planets? You'd better hurry up, my boy, or we poets will have produced such a devilish lot that even your Integral will be unable to lift the cargo. Every day from eight to eleven," R wagged his head and scratched the back of it. The back of his head is square; it looks like a little valise, I recalled for some reason an ancient painting "In the Cab". I felt more lively. "You, too, are writing for the Integral? Tell me about it. What are you writing about? What did you write today, for instance?" "Today I did not write; today I was busy with something else." "B-b-busy" sprinkled straight into my face. "What else?" R frowned. What? What? "Well, if you insist I'll tell you. I was busy with the Death Sentence. I was putting the Death Sentence into verse. An idiot-and to be frank, one of our poets. For two years we all lived side by side with him and nothing seemed wrong. Suddenly he went crazy. I, said he, am a genius! and I am above the law. All that sort of nonsense. But it is not a thing to talk about." The fat lips hung down. The varnish disappeared from the eyes. He jumped up, turned around, and stared through the wall. I looked at his tightly closed little "valise" and thought, "What is he handling in his little valise now?" A moment of awkward, asymmetric silence. I could not see clearly what was the matter, but I was certain there was something, to "Fortunately the antediluvian time of those Shakespeares and Dostoevskys, or what were their names? is past," I said in a voice deliberately loud. R turned his face to me. Words sprinkled and bubbled out of him as before, but I thought I noticed there was no more joyful varnish to his eyes. "Yes, dear mathematician, fortunately, fortunately. We are the happy arithmetical mean. As you would put it, the integration from zero to infinity, from imbeciles to Shakespeare. Do I put it right?" I do not know why, it seemed to me absolutely uncalled for, I recalled suddenly the other one, her tone. A thin, invisible thread stretched between her and R, what thread? The square root of minus one began to bother me again. I glanced at my badge; sixteen-twenty five o'clock! They had only thirty-five minutes for the use of the pink check. "Well, I must go." I kissed O, shook hands with R, and went to the elevator. As I crossed the avenue I turned around. Here and there in the huge mass of glass penetrated by sunshine there were grayish-blue squares, the opaque squares of lowered curtains, the squares of rhythmic, Taylorized happiness. On the seventh floor I found R-13's square. The curtains were already lowered. Dear O. Dear R. He also has, I do not know why I write this "also," but I write as it comes from my pen, he, too, has something which is not entirely clear in him. Yet I, he, and O, we are a triangle; I confess, not an isosceles triangle, but a triangle nevertheless. We, to speak in the language o

Index: https://rumble.com/v3486cm-rahan-index-of-episodes-by-roger-lecureux..html Rahan. Episode Fifty-five. Drawn by Andre Cheret, text by Roger Lecureux. The one who makes clouds. Rahan will not eat today! The “Birds-that-swim” are faster than him! The panicked ducks once again escaped the son of Crao. Disappointed, he returned to the bank. Rats hunt better than Rahan! They only left the bones and feathers! The carcass, still feathered, was dried out. A long time ago, no doubt, water rats had devoured the entrails of this great duck. Page Two. The “Birds-that-swim” will not always taunt Rahan! Reproaching himself for not having had this idea sooner, the son of Crao let himself slide under the water. Swimming gently at the bottom of the river, he was soon under the ducks. Up above, the webbed feet beat the surface. He propelled himself with a vigorous kick of his heel and. Ra-ha-ha! Rahan hunts as well as rats! Shortly after, in the shade of the palm trees, he lit a fire. He was still unaware that all his actions were being observed! A light breeze rose. While the duck roasted, the son of Crao watched the plumes of smoke rise. Oh! And suddenly! Page Three. Blown down by the wind, large palm fronds sometimes stopped the rise of these volutes. And small clouds rose in the sky. Amused by this curious phenomenon, Rahan ate cheerfully. The foliage cuts the smoke into pieces, like Rahan has cut the bird that swims. Cries both worried and threatening suddenly alerted him. A solid spear stuck into the heart of his fire. Schlong. On the other bank, a hunter was screaming. A woman and a child stood behind him. Arrak does not fear demons! If you enter our territory, he will kill you! The son of Crao only heard a few words, but he understood their meaning. Why do they want to prevent Rahan from crossing to the other side of the waterway? Page Four. Over there, in concert, the trio monitored the river without ceasing. What do they say? Rahan would like to know! But they will not let him near them! Oh! The gutted and dried carcass of the duck inspired him with a ruse. A rush slid into the neck restored the appearance of life to this carcass. Through these holes, Rahan will be able to see without being seen! The hunter and his companions, on the other bank, did not notice the reeds that were parting. Nor do they pay attention to this “Bird-who-swims” which, a moment later, was innocently crossing the river! Page Five. Two tigers emerged from the rushes, and gathered together to pounce. Rahan should not have thrown the spears into the water! You could have resisted the “Striped Skin”! Rahan hopes he can atone for his mistake! Gripping his ivory knife, the son of Crao attacked. He felt capable of triumphing over the feline who had just knocked him down. But the other? What would these unfortunate people do, disarmed in the face of the other beast? As he dealt a fatal blow to the "Striped Skin", he responded with a victorious clamor. Ra-ha-ha! Arakk had just broken the neck of the great tigress! Crack! Rahan has met few hunters who dare to confront a “striped skin” with their hands alone! Page Six. Exhausted by the effort the man panted Araak had to save his wife. And his son! Araak is brave! He could be Rahan's friend! No! You make clouds! And the clouds are bad for the clan! Rahan knows how to make fire, it is true! He knows how to make smoke, it is true! And what you saw was not clouds, but smoke! The hunter, troubled, looked gravely at the son of Crao. Rahan says strange things! The clan will never believe them! Rahan will tell your brothers that he is not lying! Do you want to take him to yours? A little later. Usually, women and children do not accompany hunters. Why are they with you? Page Seven. To find game we often have to walk for days and many of our hunters have never found the way back to the village! They died in the jungle without even seeing those they loved again! This is why, for a few moons our clan has decided. That men would go hunting with their families! So, if death strikes, they join the “Territory of Shadows” together! Araak affectionately hugged his wife and son. The new clan law is: “Live together or die together”! It was a long and difficult walk. Araak often stopped, looking for a landmark to orient himself Rahan understands better why so many hunters go astray! Page Eight. The trees looked similar. The thickets looked the same. The bushes looked the same. Everything was so similar that Rahan was amazed. To suddenly emerge into a sunny clearing. Mine have the face of bad days! A new misfortune has struck the clan! Hostile groups approached. “Body of Stone” Did not come back from the hunt! And you, Araak, you bring back a stranger! Would you have realized that food is rare, and. Your tongue will speak differently when you have heard Araak! Araak recounted his meeting with the son of Crao and the fight with the "Striped Skins". He spoke of fire and "Clouds". But as the hunters remained incredulous. You do not believe Araak? Well, Rahan is going to show you these things you have never seen! Page Nine. Very often, Rahan had amazed clans by making fire spring from the “stones that throw the stars”. This time again he provoked astonishment and then enthusiasm. But the fear returned when the palm fronds he was swinging formed volutes. You are an evil spirit! You make the clouds that bring the storm! These are not clouds! Would the clan be afraid of simple tufts of smoke!? Look! The swirls quickly dissipated into the azure. “Fire Hair” is right! Real clouds do not disappear like this! Can you do other miracles? Eh? Eh! Rahan does not perform miracles! But he knows many things that he will teach his brothers. When he finds the one you call "Stone Body!" Page Ten. “Stone Body” Is our leader. He had to pursue game and went too deep into the forest. Did you look for him? No! Clan law forbids it! In the past, we tried to find those who got lost. But we were losing more hunters than those we hoped to save! Rahan does not belong to the clan! He does not have to obey this law! He will bring back "Body of Stone"! A murmur of admiration arose. Araak will accompany “Hair of Fire”! "Stone body" went to the side of "red teeth". We will go there! Rahan and Araak, shortly after, plunged into the thick jungle. You said your people still hunt as a family? Our leader has neither wife nor children. He always leaves alone! Page Eleven. When the two men reached the "Red Teeth", the sunset fires brightened the pink granite of the rocks. Look! These are not the tracks of a hunter, Araak. But those of a great “Four Hands” Night interrupted their search. Only “Body of Stone” Knows this territory! If we don't find him alive, we are lost too!! He is alive, Araak! Listen! Among the thousand cries of birds which greeted the near return of daylight, Rahan's trained ear had just distinguished distant calls. It is the echo of the ravine that brings us these cries! The son of Crao and his companion followed the steep-sided fault for a long time. Over there! It is "Body of Stone"! He is hurt! The man had seen them. He was waving one arm, but the other seemed dead. It is the good sense of the hunters who sent you, Araak! With only one hand "Body of Stone" would not be safe from this trap! Page Twelve. Body-of-stone was surprised by a "Four-hands” which knocked him unconscious and threw him into the ravine. He could have reached the territory of shadows but only his arm was broken! The son of Crao was already tying strong vines. A moment later. Hmm, Rahan now understands why you are calling your chief the “Body of Stone”! Rahan and Araak had to make terrible efforts. To hoist the colossus which could only use his feet, and was still in the void. When furious growls came from behind the two men. Smashing the branches, a large male gorilla was about to charge them!! Page thirteen. If they let go of the line to face the danger, "Body of Stone” would crash to the bottom of the ravine! And Araak's spear was stuck twenty paces away! If Araak runs towards his spear, Rahan will not be able to hold back "Stone Body"! He must! Araak! He must! Araak and the great ape rushed towards the weapon at the same time. With incredible energy, the son of Crao tied the vine around his waist. He saw the "Four-hands" throw his companion to the ground and he himself, dragged down by the weight of the colossus, lost his balance! As the gorilla angrily broke the spear, Araak rushed. Greek! Courage “Fire Hair”! Courage brother! Finding no hold to hold on to, Rahan slipped towards the abyss! Page Fourteen. Everything had happened very quickly. What followed was even more so! While Araak, braced against the line, relieved Rahan, the latter drew his cutlass. And the gorilla charged again! A melee was unthinkable. Rahan had to kill from afar! If Rahan misses the "Four Hands", we will no longer have a weapon! The three of us will all join the “Territory of Shadows”! The knife flew towards the black chest of the monster. Save Rahan knife! Save him once again! Ra-ha-ha! Chtok! The large ivory blade disappeared into the flesh. The gorilla remained motionless for a moment, as if struck by amazement. Then, feeling death creeping into him, he leapt towards the thickets, towards his domain. Let us get the “body of stone” back up! Quick! Quick! Quick! Page Fifteen. It was only when his leader was safe that Araak understood the haste of the son of Crao. If Rahan loses track of the “Four Hands”, he will never find his knife! Trampled bushes. Crushed herbs. The trail was easy to follow. But anxiety choked Rahan's throat. Perhaps the "Four Hands" had rid itself of the weapon? Perhaps it was already buried in this inextricable mess? This knife and the necklace of claws that Crao-the-wise had once left him were his only possessions! Deprived of one or the other he no longer felt quite himself. That was why he screamed with joy when he finally discovered the great ape. The ivory weapon had done its work! Ra-ha-ha! Page Sixteen. But his joy was soon to be over! Rahan has taken too many detours! He cannot even find his own tracks! Oh! Chance had led him to “Body of stone”, they too were lost! It is the evil spirit that brings us together, "Fire Hair"! It wants us to die together! We will wander for days and days in the jungle. And we will end up being torn to pieces by the wild beasts, like so many others! No! We will find your clan! Rahan, agile, climbed into a tree. What is the point, "Fire Hair"! “Stone body” has often tried to locate the village this way! It is impossible! Even from the top of the biggest tree you cannot see the "Red Teeth"! A moment later the son of Crao dominated the ocean of greenery. Up to the horizon it was just a mass of trees. Where did the “Red Teeth” stand? On which side was the village located? Nothing was left to him but guessing! Page Seventeen. With bitterness in his heart, he was going to abandon the summit. And suddenly there was a miracle. Ra-ha-ha! Rahan knows where the clan is! The hunters imitated Rahan! All the way over there, tiny clouds escaped from the foliage, signaling the location of the village that no one could have discerned! A little later. We will be near yours before sunset! The “Clouds” will guide our steps! Under cover, there was a great risk of getting lost again. But the son of Crao often re-orientated himself. And the village was in sight in the evening. Never again will hunters get lost in the jungle! Unaware that they had allowed their return, the clan cheered the three men. We did like Rahan! We made fire spring from the “Stones-that-threw-stars”. We made clouds! Page Eighteen. And thanks to these "Clouds”, lost hunters will always find their way back to the village! Maybe even talk from afar. Like this. A few clouds will say that things are "going well". Many clouds will say that they are going badly. It will be enough to agree on a language! We owe you a lot! But what are you doing? "Stone body” will soon be able to brandish a spear! Rahan carefully ligated the broken limb, as Crao had instructed him. And Araak believed, on the river, that you were a demon! Araak was stupid! Will you forgive him? Rahan smiled brotherly. He always forgave the ignorance of "Those-who-walk-upright", when they recognized it loyally.

Rahan. Episode Fifty Four. By Roger Lecureux, drawn by Andre Cheret. The mother of mothers. As the entwined skeletons were still clutching axes, the son of Crao understood that the two hunters had killed each other at the bottom of this gorge. And together they joined the “Territory of Shadows”! Which one was right? Which one was wrong? Why did they waste their lives? Rahan will never know! As he climbed the cliff he heard strange rumors. Long moans punctuated by angry screams. Page Two. But they rose from the forest and he only saw the large shimmering lake at the foot of the hill. Oh! Why were these unfortunate people abandoned to the “Wood skins”? A large skiff ran aground in the rushes in the middle of the lake. A man and a woman were restrained there! The “Wood skins” will soon pour out on this raft, and devour them! The son of Crao was already hurtling down the slope, jumping the trees felled by lightning. Ah! As he fell on a trunk it rolled, throwing him off balance. Other trunks, suddenly loosened, rolled in their turn. And he was carried by the wave of wood to a large rock. Page Three. Against which this wave suddenly broke up! A huge trunk was coming towards him. Oh! Rahan will be crushed! He only had time to dive behind the rock. Ra-ha-ha! Bong! Avoiding the blasted trees that littered the slope, the son of Crao descended towards the bank. Rahan will have to be more careful! Between him and the skiff, numerous and worrying saurians were swimming. The "Wood skins" would kill Rahan before he reached that raft! Page Four. He thought about making a lasso but gave up because the skiff offered no grip on the loop. Oh! Rahan knows how to bring back the raft! Rahan risks reaching these unfortunate people. But this is the only chance to save them! The ivory knife was firmly tied into the bamboo. Thrown with as much force as precision, the javelin flew towards the skiff. Ra-ha-ha! Bang! And stuck deep in a tree trunk, right between the two inert bodies! Bringing the skiff back to shore was now easy. Rahan hopes life has not yet fled their bodies! Page Five. A moment later. They live! These beatings in their chest say that they have not crossed the border of the “territory of shadows”! The son of Crao knew how to find the "Sun Fruits" whose benefits he knew. What? Who are you? What do you want from us? Rahan saved you from the "Wooden Skins". Still dazed, the man observed the lake where countless crocodiles floated like stumps. Saved? So you have not seen Ohana's color!? Yes, but Rahan is not surprised, he has already lived among black-skinned hunters. These words stunned the man. In our territory, whites and blacks hate each other and fight each other! You don't seem to hate Ohana though! Rahan, mischievous, pointed to the young woman who had recovered her spirits. Page Six. Garakk Loves Ohana! But mine claim that black-skinned hunters are not men but beasts! Because Ohana and Garakk love each other, they wanted to punish us! A slow death! Said the wizard. Mine are crazy to believe that because they have light skin, they are the only sons of the mother of mothers! And they delivered us to the lake. To the “Wood skins”! And we remained attached to the raft as many days as the hand has fingers! Intrigued, the son of Crao asked many questions. He learned that Garakk’s clan, since the death of its leader, was terrorizing that of Ohana. Page Seven. Any black man captured becomes a slave to my clan. Baha-the-witch commissions him to bring the great mother of mothers back to the village. The great “mother of mothers”? Rahan also learned that clan of Garakk had discovered in the mountain an enormous rock whose shape evoked the mother of mothers. In these fierce times, the “Mother of mothers” was the symbol, the representation of life. And the sorcerer demanded that this rock, of fantastic weight, be brought back to the village and erected in front of his hut! A superhuman task imposed on black slaves! Every day one of my brothers succumbs. Baha be damned! All white men be damned! Garakk Also? Do not let yourself be blinded by anger, Ohana! There are good white men. Garakk is proof! Attention Rahan! Hunters approach! Page Eight. If they are mine, Ohana will die! If it is Ohana's brothers, we will die! Give me your weapon, Rahan, I want to defend Ohana-the-sweet. Ah! Thrown from the thickets, a club struck Garakk. The son of Crao narrowly avoided the one that was destined for him. And caught a glimpse of the two hunters who were clearing the bushes. And rushed towards him. Leave this man, brothers! He is not an enemy! He saved Ohana from the “Wood skins”! Ohana betrayed our clan! Her place is no longer among us! One of the hunters was going to pick up the club. Page Nine. He did not have time! Rahan hates fighting with "Those Who Walk Upright", whether they are white or black! But he must defend himself! Schak! Raised by the knee, the man immediately collapsed under the punch that followed. Ra-ha-ha! Attention Rahan! A second hunter, was going to deliver a terrifying blow. He was torn from the ground and rolled off Rahan’s shoulder. Then fluttered several steps. “Fire hair” is the strongest! What is he going to do? Kill us on the spot or make us die slowly by bringing the mother of mothers back to the white wizard! Page Ten. Garakk had come to his senses. They attacked me! You have the right to kill them! Rahan leaves this right to wild beasts! These are not wild animals, but men! One day they will understand that Rahan is a friend! The hunters were amazed. And they were even more so when Rahan returned their clubs to them. Go back and tell your people that not all white people are like Baha! Tell them that black and white hunters can live together. Like Ohana and Garakk decided to do! The two men disappeared into the thickets. Thank you for my brothers, Rahan! And thank you for mine! Let your wise words be heard! Page Eleven. We will first have to get them admitted by Baha-the-sorcerer! Rahan was thoughtful, but his resolution was made. He would not leave this territory without having brought back harmony between “Those-who-walk-upright”! However, a hundred stone throws from them. I saw him as I see you, Baha! This fiery-haired hunter has delivered the black girl and Garakk-the-traitor! Bring back that hunter! Baha wants to see alive the fool who had the audacity to oppose his orders! A few men went into the forest. They showed no enthusiasm. Since Baha replaced Tanguy the clan has not been doing good things! Baha is no longer satisfied with black slaves. He wants us to capture a white hunter. Soon he will demand that we fight among ourselves! Page Twelve. During this time. My people will not listen to Rahan-the-wise! But if you do not give up on this idea, Garakk will lead you to them! An Ohana? Ohana promised to never leave Garakk! She will go with you! You will conduct Rahan to the outskirts of the village and then flee! We will not make it to the village! Look! Brandishing their long spears, five men emerged from the forest. Do not resist, fire hair! We have orders to bring you back alive! Rahan wanted to join your clan. He could not hope to find better guides. Page thirteen. And Garakk? And the black girl? Baha only talked about "Fire Hair". He does not need to know that we found these two! Our clan has already tormented them enough. Let them go and live in peace in another territory! The men exchanged knowing glances. And Rahan understood that these white hunters could still have good sentiment. Farewell, Garakk! Farewell, Ohana! Rahan wishes you lots of happiness! The sun was still high, when escorted by men, he left the forest. If you do not oppose Baha-the sorcerer, he will perhaps spare you! Down below, on the rocky slope, dozens of black men were busy around an enormous rock. They pulled, braced themselves, and their groans underlined their superhuman efforts. Page Fourteen. This explained the complaints that had intrigued Rahan as he climbed the cliff. And these unfortunate people have no chance of escaping! Indeed, from place to place, hunters armed with bows monitored the slaves. How many seasons will pass before the mother of mothers stands in the village? The rock is so heavy that the slaves could not advance more than a spear length each day! Baha-the-sorcerer must be crazy to impose such suffering! The men did not respond, but Rahan guessed their approval. Baha approached. This then is the one who opposed my will! Why did all of you not disarm him? He agreed to follow us without resistance, Baha! I believe he is a loyal hunter! Page Fifteen. He delivered Garakk-the-traitor! He will be punished! Garakk did not betray his people! He has the right to love a black-skinned woman! A woman!? Black skins are beasts! And must be treated as such! And since you too betray your race, you will suffer the fate of these! And if tomorrow, at sunset, the Mother of Mothers has not arrived at this bush, it is you who will be put to death! The son of Crao was pushed among the slaves. Do not rebel, hair of fire, otherwise Baha will kill you with his own hands as he has killed so many of us! Your life depends on our efforts! His knife had been left with Rahan but the archers did not take their eyes off him. These unfortunate people are exhausting themselves to save Rahan! Page Sixteen. The vines hurt the hands. The gravel bruises the shoulders. And the rock only moved imperceptibly. As night fell, the torture ended. The slaves were herded under a tree. Tomorrow, everything will start again and it has been like this for years! Every day, Baha designates the place to which we must pull the mother of mothers. If we do not get there, he'll kill one of us at random. The son of Crao did not sleep. He thought of the vanity and cruelty of Baha who wanted the immense mother of mothers to stand before his hut. He thought of the archers who prevented any escape. But he thought, that night, of something else. Page Seventeen. The day was breaking when his cries woke the sorcerer. Rahan wants to speak, Baha! No, Baha! Rahan offers you a trade! The “Mother of mothers” will rise here in two days if you promise to free your captives! Two days! When I had planned two seasons? Ha-ha-ha! If you are capable of this miracle, you have my word! We will need axes! Your people might watch us but will let us do as we please. Understood! But if you fail, you will be skinned alive! The son of Crao had no trouble convincing his unfortunate companions. That morning there reigned on the rocky slope, an unusual activity. They brought trunks. And they dug the ground in front of the loose rock. Page Eighteen. Since the trees have carried away Rahan, they will carry away the mother of mothers. The carpet of trunks was finally ready. The sorcerer, stunned, witnessed the “Miracle”! The rock, like a granite monster, was crawling on this carpet! As soon as it was no longer supported by a trunk, that trunk was placed back in front of her. And what took days of effort required only a moment! Was Rahan at the origin of this prodigious invention that is the “Wheel”? Who knows? Fire hair has more power than Baha! He is sent from the gods. Let us drive out Baha from the clan. Just one day is enough to accomplish the impossible. The same evening, whites and blacks set up the idol in the village. Page Nineteen. The mother of mothers never made a distinction between her sons! She will watch over you all! A clamor of joy arose. Answered by that of the “black skins” emerging from all sides. Garakk was among them. We were coming to deliver the slaves but Rahan beat us to it! They will search in vain for Baha. Knowing he would forever be discredited, the sorcerer fled to another territory. This is the first night of peace since our leader, supported by Baha, challenged the leader of the "Black skins". The two leaders must have killed each other in the forest because no one ever saw them again! Page Twenty. Rahan found their bodies at the bottom of a ravine. He will take you there! You will see how similar “Those-who-walk-upright” are when they have joined the kingdom of shadows! The next day, led by the son of Crao, the two clans discovered the entwined skeletons. Who had been the white leader? Who had been the black leader? No one knew how to say it. If men are alike in death, they are also alike in life, whatever the color of their skin! You will now live in peace, brothers! Like Ohana and Garakk, you will know happiness! In the protective shadow of the mother of mothers, Garakk embraced his companion. This couple, tomorrow, would symbolize the reconciliation of the hunters. It was because he was certain of it that the son of Crao felt so happy! 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I Am a Strange Loop. 2007, Douglas Hofstadter, A Puke (TM) Audiobook A successor to GEB, Godel, Escher, Bach. https://rumble.com/v3t4yzj-index-of-science.-music-by-dan-vasc.html https://rumble.com/v39y44y-goedel-escher-bach-part-i.-1979-book-by-douglas-hofstadter..html https://rumble.com/v3a6wlu-gdel-escher-bach-an-eternal-golden-braid-part-two.-by-douglas-hofstadter..html