ELEONORA
Sub conservatione formae specificae salva anima.
_ Raymond Lully_.
I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Menhave called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whethermadness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that isglorious--whether all that is profound--does not spring from diseaseof thought--from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the generalintellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things whichescape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtainglimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that theyhave been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learnsomething of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledgewhich is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compasslessinto the vast ocean of the ”light ineffable,” and again, like theadventures of the Nubian geographer, ”agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quidin eo esset exploraturi.”
We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there are twodistinct conditions of my mental existence--the condition of a lucidreason, not to be disputed, and belonging to the memory of eventsforming the first epoch of my life--and a condition of shadow and doubt,appertaining to the present, and to the recollection of what constitutesthe second great era of my being. Therefore, what I shall tell of theearlier period, believe; and to what I may relate of the later time,give only such credit as may seem due, or doubt it altogether, or, ifdoubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the Oedipus.
She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctlythese remembrances, was the sole daughter of the only sister of mymother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my cousin. We hadalways dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of theMany-Colored Grass. No unguided footstep ever came upon that vale; forit lay away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling aroundabout it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No pathwas trodden in its vicinity; and, to reach our happy home, there wasneed of putting back, with force, the foliage of many thousands offorest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions offragrant flowers. Thus it was that we lived all alone, knowing nothingof the world without the valley--I, and my cousin, and her mother.
From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of ourencircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter thanall save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazycourses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hillsstill dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the ”Riverof Silence”; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow.No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that thepearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom,stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own oldstation, shining on gloriously forever.
The margin of the river, and of the many dazzling rivulets that glidedthrough devious ways into its channel, as well as the spaces thatextended from the margins away down into the depths of the streams untilthey reached the bed of pebbles at the bottom,--these spots, not lessthan the whole surface of the valley, from the river to the mountainsthat girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick,short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkledthroughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purpleviolet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke toour hearts in loud tones, of the love and of the glory of God.
And, here and there, in groves about this grass, like wildernesses ofdreams, sprang up fantastic trees, whose tall slender stems stood notupright, but slanted gracefully toward the light that peered at noon-dayinto the centre of the valley. Their mark was speckled with the vividalternate splendor of ebony and silver, and was smoother than all savethe cheeks of Eleonora; so that, but for the brilliant green of the hugeleaves that spread from their summits in long, tremulous lines, dallyingwith the Zephyrs, one might have fancied them giant serpents of Syriadoing homage to their sovereign the Sun.
Hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I withEleonora before Love entered within our hearts. It was one evening atthe close of the third lustrum of her life, and of the fourth of my own,that we sat, locked in each other's embrace, beneath the serpent-liketrees, and looked down within the water of the River of Silence at ourimages therein. We spoke no words during the rest of that sweet day, andour words even upon the morrow were tremulous and few. We had drawn theGod Eros from that wave, and now we felt that he had enkindled within usthe fiery souls of our forefathers. The passions which had for centuriesdistinguished our race, came thronging with the fancies for which theyhad been equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss overthe Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. A change fell upon all things.Strange, brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burn out upon the treeswhere no flowers had been known before. The tints of the green carpetdeepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, theresprang up in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. Andlife arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen, withall gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. Thegolden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of whichissued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length, into alulling melody more divine than that of the harp of Aeolus-sweeter thanall save the voice of Eleonora. And now, too, a voluminous cloud, whichwe had long watched in the regions of Hesper, floated out thence, allgorgeous in crimson and gold, and settling in peace above us, sank, dayby day, lower and lower, until its edges rested upon the tops of themountains, turning all their dimness into magnificence, and shutting usup, as if forever, within a magic prison-house of grandeur and of glory.
The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she was amaiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among theflowers. No guile disguised the fervor of love which animated her heart,and she examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked togetherin the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, and discoursed of the mightychanges which had lately taken place therein.
At length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad changewhich must befall Humanity, she thenceforward dwelt only upon this onesorrowful theme, interweaving it into all our converse, as, in the songsof the bard of Schiraz, the same images are found occurring, again andagain, in every impressive variation of phrase.
She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom--that, like theephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die; butthe terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration which sherevealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the River ofSilence. She grieved to think that, having entombed her in the Valleyof the Many-Colored Grass, I would quit forever its happy recesses,transferring the love which now was so passionately her own to somemaiden of the outer and everyday world. And, then and there, I threwmyself hurriedly at the feet of Eleonora, and offered up a vow, toherself and to Heaven, that I would never bind myself in marriage to anydaughter of Earth--that I would in no manner prove recreant to her dearmemory, or to the memory of the devout affection with which she hadblessed me. And I called the Mighty Ruler of the Universe to witness thepious solemnity of my vow. And the curse which I invoked of Him andof her, a saint in Helusion should I prove traitorous to that promise,involved a penalty the exceeding great horror of which will not permitme to make record of it here. And the bright eyes of Eleonora grewbrighter at my words; and she sighed as if a deadly burthen had beentaken from her breast; and she trembled and very bitterly wept; but shemade acceptance of the vow, (for what was she but a child?) and it madeeasy to her the bed of her death. And she said to me, not many daysafterward, tranquilly dying, that, because of what I had done forthe comfort of her spirit she would watch over me in that spirit whendeparted, and, if so it were permitted her return to me visibly in thewatches of the night; but, if this thing were, indeed, beyond the powerof the souls in Paradise, that she would, at least, give me frequentindications of her presence, sighing upon me in the evening winds, orfilling the air which I breathed with perfume from the censers of theangels. And, with these words upon her lips, she yielded up her innocentlife, putting an end to the first epoch of my own.
Thus far I have faithfully said. But as I pass the barrier in Time'spath, formed by the death of my beloved, and proceed with the secondera of my existence, I feel that a shadow gathers over my brain, and Imistrust the perfect sanity of the record. But let me on.--Years draggedthemselves along heavily, and still I dwelled within the Valley of theMany-Colored Grass; but a second change had come upon all things. Thestar-shaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and appeared nomore. The tints of the green carpet faded; and, one by one, the ruby-redasphodels withered away; and there sprang up, in place of them, tenby ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were everencumbered with dew. And Life departed from our paths; for the tallflamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flewsadly from the vale into the hills, with all the gay glowing birds thathad arrived in his company. And the golden and silver fish swam downthrough the gorge at the lower end of our domain and bedecked the sweetriver never again. And the lulling melody that had been softer thanthe wind-harp of Aeolus, and more divine than all save the voice ofEleonora, it died little by little away, in murmurs growing lower andlower, until the stream returned, at length, utterly, into the solemnityof its original silence. And then, lastly, the voluminous cloud uprose,and, abandoning the tops of the mountains to the dimness of old, fellback into the regions of Hesper, and took away all its manifold goldenand gorgeous glories from the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.
Yet the promises of Eleonora were not forgotten; for I heard the soundsof the swinging of the censers of the angels; and streams of a holyperfume floated ever and ever about the valley; and at lone hours, whenmy heart beat heavily, the winds that bathed my brow came unto me ladenwith soft sighs; and indistinct murmurs filled often the night air, andonce--oh, but once only! I was awakened from a slumber, like the slumberof death, by the pressing of spiritual lips upon my own.
But the void within my heart refused, even thus, to be filled. I longedfor the love which had before filled it to overflowing. At length thevalley pained me through its memories of Eleonora, and I left it forever for the vanities and the turbulent triumphs of the world.
I found myself within a strange city, where all things might have servedto blot from recollection the sweet dreams I had dreamed so long in theValley of the Many-Colored Grass. The pomps and pageantries of a statelycourt, and the mad clangor of arms, and the radiant loveliness of women,bewildered and intoxicated my brain. But as yet my soul had proved trueto its vows, and the indications of the presence of Eleonora were stillgiven me in the silent hours of the night. Suddenly these manifestationsthey ceased, and the world grew dark before mine eyes, and I stoodaghast at the burning thoughts which possessed, at the terribletemptations which beset me; for there came from some far, far distantand unknown land, into the gay court of the king I served, a maiden towhose beauty my whole recreant heart yielded at once--at whose footstoolI bowed down without a struggle, in the most ardent, in the most abjectworship of love. What, indeed, was my passion for the young girl ofthe valley in comparison with the fervor, and the delirium, and thespirit-lifting ecstasy of adoration with which I poured out my wholesoul in tears at the feet of the ethereal Ermengarde?--Oh, brightwas the seraph Ermengarde! and in that knowledge I had room for noneother.--Oh, divine was the angel Ermengarde! and as I looked down intothe depths of her memorial eyes, I thought only of them--and of her.
I wedded;--nor dreaded the curse I had invoked; and its bitterness wasnot visited upon me. And once--but once again in the silence of thenight; there came through my lattice the soft sighs which had forsakenme; and they modelled themselves into familiar and sweet voice, saying:
”Sleep in peace!--for the Spirit of Love reigneth and ruleth, and, intaking to thy passionate heart her who is Ermengarde, thou art absolved,for reasons which shall be made known to thee in Heaven, of thy vowsunto Eleonora.”