The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872

Some persistent thought evidently haunted Felix's mind. Again he drove it off, and again it beset him.

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, after a last brief struggle, "I am alone, and out of sorts. I will amuse myself with a carnival freak, a mere theoretic and philosophic piece of nonsense. I have tried many worse ones. It wants a quarter to twelve. I give myself fifteen minutes to study my spells. Let me see, what mandarin shall I murder? I don't know any, and I have no peerage list of the Flowery Empire. Let me try the newspapers."

It was in the height of the English war with China. On the seventh column of the paper our hero found a proclamation signed by the imperial commissioners, Lin, Lou, Lun, and Li.

"Here goes for Li," he said to himself. "He is likely to be the youngest."

The clock began to strike, announcing the hour. Felix placed himself solemnly before the mirror, and said aloud, in a grave tone: "If the death of Mandarin Li will make me rich and powerful, whatever may come of it, I vote for the death of Mandarin Li." He lifted his finger—at that instant the porcelain figure rocked on its base, and fell in fragments at Felix's feet. The glass reflected his startled face. He thrilled for an instant with superstitious terror, but recollecting that his finger had touched the fragile figure, he accounted for it as an accident, and went to bed and to such repose as a debtor can enjoy with an execution hanging over his head.

Masks and dominos made the street merry under his window. The opera ball was unusually brilliant, experts said, and nothing made the Parisians aware that on the night of January 12th, 1840, Felix d'Aubremel had passed sentence of death on Chinaman Li, son of Mung, son of Tseu, a literate mandarin of the 114th class.

Nine months later Felix d'Aubremel was living in furnished lodgings in an alley off the Rue St. Pierre, and living by borrowing. The gentlemanly sceptic owed his landlady a good deal of money; his clothes were aged past wearing, and his tailor had long ago broken off all relations with him. The Marquis d'Aubremel was within a hairsbreadth of that utterly crushed state that ends in madness, or in suicide—which is only a variety of madness.

One morning while sitting in the glass cage that leads to the staircase of every lodging-house, waiting to beg another respite from his landlady, he took up a newspaper, and the following notice was lucky enough to catch his attention.

"Chiusang, 12th January, 1840. Hostilities have broken out between England and the Celestial Empire. The sudden and inexplicable death of Mandarin Li, the only member of the council who opposed the violent and warlike projects of Lin, led to unfortunate events. At the first attack the Chinese fled, with the basest want of pluck, but in their retreat they murdered several English merchants, and among them an old resident, Richard Maiden, who leaves an estate of half a million sterling. The heirs of the deceased are requested to communicate with William Harrison, Solicitor, Lincoln's Inn."

"My uncle!" cried Felix. "Alas, I have killed my uncle and Mandarin Li."

He had not a penny to pay for his traveling expenses to London; but, on producing his certificate of birth and the newspaper article, his landlady easily negotiated for him with an honest broker, who advanced him a thousand francs to arrange his affairs, without interest, upon his note for a trifle of eighteen hundred, payable in six weeks.

Eight days after reaching London, Felix, established in a fashionable hotel, was awaiting with nervous eagerness the first instalment of a million, the proceeds of a cargo of teas, sold under the direction of Mr. Harrison. He was too restless for thought, burning with impatience to take possession of his property, to handle his wealth, and, as it were, to verify his dream. Yet the fact was indisputable. Richard Malden's death, and his own relationship to the intestate had been legally proved and established. Felix d'Aubremel regularly and assuredly inherited a fortune, and he had no doubts nor scruples on that point.

A servant interrupted his reflections, announcing his solicitor's clerk. "Why does not Mr. Harrison come himself?" he was on the point of asking, but amazement at the clerk's appearance took away his breath. He was a shriveled little object, slight, bony, crooked and hideous, with a monstrous head and round eyes, a bald skull, a flat nose, a mouth from ear to ear, and a little jutting paunch that looked like a sack.

"I bring the Marquis d'Aubremel the monies he is expecting," said the man, and his voice, shrill and silvery, like a musical box or the bell of a clock, impressed Felix painfully. The voice grated on the nerves. "I have drawn a receipt in regular form," said Felix, extending his hand. But the solicitor's clerk leaned his back against the door, without stirring a step. "Well, sir," Felix exclaimed with a convulsive effort. The man approached slowly, scarcely moving his feet, as if sliding across the floor. His right hand was buried in his coat pocket; he held his head bent down, and his lips moved inaudibly. At last he pulled from his pocket a large bundle of banknotes, bills and papers, drew near the window, and began to count them carefully.

Felix was then struck by a strange phenomenon that might well inspire undefined terror. Standing directly in front of the window, the clerk's figure cast no shadow, though the sun's rays fell full upon it, and through his human body, translucent as rock crystal, Felix plainly saw the houses across the street. Then his eyes seemed to be suddenly unsealed. The clerk's black coat took colors, blue, green, and scarlet; it lengthened out into the folds of a robe, and blazed with the dazzling image of the fire-dragon, the son of Buddha; a lock of stiff grayish hair sprouted like a short tuft out of his yellowish skull; his round tawny eyes rolled with frightful rapidity in their sockets.

Felix recognized Li, son of Mung, son of Tseu, the literate mandarin of the 114th class. The murderer had never seen his victim, but could not doubt his identity a moment, thanks to the marvelous resemblance between the solicitor's clerk and the china monster that dropped into bits at his feet the night of January 12th, 1840.

Meantime the man had done counting his package, and held it out to Felix, saying, in his grating, vibrating tones, "Monsieur le Marquis, here are forty thousand pounds sterling; please to give me your receipt." And Felix heard the voice say in a shriller under-key, "Felix, here is an instalment of the million, the price of your crime. Felix, my assassin, take this money from my hand."

"From my hand," echoed a thousand fine voices, quivering all through the air of the room.

"No, no," cried Felix, pushing the clerk away, "the money would burn me! Begone with you!"

He dropped exhausted into a chair, half suffocated, with drops of sweat rolling down his convulsed face. The man bowed to the floor, and slowly moved away backwards. With every gradual step Felix saw his natural shape return. The rays of the autumn sun ceased to light up that mysterious apparition, and only his attorney's humble clerk stood before Felix. With a rush overpowering his will, Felix dashed after the old man, already across the threshold, and overtook him on the staircase.

"My papers!" he shouted imperiously. "Here they are, sir," said the old fellow quietly.

Felix regained his room, bolted the door, and counted the immense sum contained in the pocket-book with excitement bordering on frenzy. Then he bathed his burning head with cold water, and threw an anxious look around the room.

"I must have had an attack of fever," he muttered.

"Mandarins don't rise from the dead, and a man can't kill another by simply lifting his finger. So my philosopher talked like one who knows nothing of moral experience. If the fancy of an unreal crime almost drove me mad, what must be the remorse of an actual criminal?"

The same evening Felix ordered post horses and set out for France.

Some months later, Monsieur Montmorot, chevalier of the legion of honor, gave a grand dinner to celebrate his daughter's betrothal with the Marquis Felix d'Aubremel, one of the noblest names in France, as he styled it. The contract settling a part of his fortune on his daughter Ernestine was signed at nine in the evening. The Monday following the pair presented themselves before the civil officials to solemnize their marriage by due legal ceremonies.

Felix, a prey to the strange hallucination that incessantly pursued him, saw a likeness between the official and the Chinese figure he had awkwardly thrown down and broken one night long ago. Presently his face darkened, and his eyes began to burn. Behind the magistrate's blue spectacles he caught the gleam and roll of the tawny eyes belonging to Mr. Harrison's clerk, to Li, son of Mung, son of Tseu.

When at length the magistrate put the formal question, "Felix Etienne d'Aubremel, do you take for your wife Ernestine Juliette Montmorot," Felix heard a shrill ringing voice say, "Felix, I give you your wife with my hand—my hand."

The official repeated the question more loudly. "With my hand—my hand," whispered a thousand mocking little voices.

"No!" Felix shouted rather than answered, and rushed away from the spot like a lunatic.

Once more at home, he shut out everyone and flung himself on his bed, in a state of stupor that weighed him down till night—a sort of dull torpor of brain, with utter exhaustion of physical strength—a misery of formless thought. Towards evening one persistent idea aroused him from this strange lethargy.

"I am a cowardly murderer," he groaned. "I wished for my fellow-being's death. God punishes me—I will execute his sentence." He stretched out his hand in the dark, groping for a dagger that hung from the wall. Then a mild brightness filtered through the curtains and irradiated the bed. Felix distinctly saw the grotesque figure of Mandarin Li standing a few steps away. The shadow of death darkened his face, and without seeming movement of his lips, Felix heard these words, uttered by that shrill ringing voice so hated, now mellowed into divine music.

"Felix d'Aubremel, God does not will that you should die, and I, his servant, am sent to tell you his decree. You have been cruel and covetous—you have wished an innocent man's death, and his death caused that of a multitude of victims to the barbarous passions of a great western nation. Man's life must be sacred for every man. God only can take what he gave. Live, then, if you would not add a great crime to a great error. And if forgiveness from one dead can restore in part your strength and courage to endure, Felix, I forgive you."

The vision vanished.

Felix religiously obeyed the instructions of Li, and consecrated his life by a vow to the relief of human misery wherever he found it. He devoted Richard Malden's vast fortune to founding charitable establishments. Ernestine Montmorot would never consent to see him again.

Two years ago, yielding to an impulse easy to understand, he requested the English consul at Chiusang to make inquiries as to the family of Li, who might perhaps be suffering in poverty. Nothing more could be discovered than that the gracious sovereign of the Middle Kingdom had confiscated the property of Li's family, that his wife had died of sorrow, in misery, and that his son, Li, having taken the liberty to complain of the glorious emperor's severity, suffered death by the bowstring, as is proper and reasonable in all well-governed states.

MOTHER IS HERE!—A little fawn in the clutches of a fox bleats loudly for help. The mother appears quickly on the scene, and Renard retires, foiled and chagrined at the loss of his dinner. He stays not upon the order of his going, but goes at once. The artist Deiker is a well-known German painter, whose success with these pictures of animal life ranks him with such men as Beckmann and Hammer, whose names are familiar to the friends of THE ALDINE.

A TROPIC FORESTTrees lifted to the skies their stately heads,Tufted with verdure, like depending plumage,O'er stems unknotted, waving to the wind:Of these in graceful form, and simple beauty,The fruitful cocoa and the fragrant palmExcelled the wilding daughters of the wood,That stretched unwieldly their enormous arms,Clad with luxuriant foliage, from the trunk,Like the old eagle feathered to the heel;While every fibre, from the lowest rootTo the last leaf upon the topmost twig,Was held by common sympathy, diffusingThrough all the complex frame unconscious life.—Montgomery's Pelican Island.

What makes us like new acquaintances is not so much any weariness of our old ones, or the pleasure of change, as disgust at not being sufficiently admired by those who know us too well, and the hope of being more so by those who do not know so much of us.—La Rochefoucauld.

AMONG THE DAISIES

"Laud the first spring daisies—Chant aloud their praises."—Ed. Youl."When daisies pied and violets blue,    And lady-smocks all silver white—And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,    Do paint the meadows with delight."—Shakspeare.

"Belle et douce Marguerite, aimable soeur du roi Kingcup," enthusiastically exclaims genial Leigh Hunt, "we would tilt for thee with a hundred pens against the stoutest poet that did not find perfection in thy cheek." And yet, who would have the heart to slander the daisy, or cause a blush of shame to tint its whiteness? Tastes vary, and poets may value the flower differently; but a rash, deliberate condemnation of the daisy is as likely to become realized as is a harsh condemnation of the innocence and simplicity of childhood. So the chivalric Hunt need not fear being invoked from the silence of the grave to take part in a lively tournament for "belle et douce Marguerite."

Subjectively, the daisy is a theme upon which we love to linger. In our natural state, when flesh and spirit are both models of meekness, two objects are wont to throw us into a kind of ecstasy: a row of nicely painted white railings, and a bunch of fresh daisies. These waft us back along a vista of years, peopled with scenes the most entrancing, and fancies the most pleasing. They call up at once the old country home: the honeysuckle clasping the thatched cottage, contrasting so prettily with the white fence in front: the sloping fields of green painted with daisies, through which, unshackled, the buoyant breeze swept so peacefully. It was an invariable rule, in those days, to troop through the meadows at early morn and, like a young knight-errant, bear home in triumph "Marguerite," the peerless daisy, rescued from the clutches of unmentionable dragons, and now to beam brightly on us for the rest of the day from a neighboring mantel-piece. And it was with great reluctance that we refrained from decapitating the whole field of daisies at one fell sweep, when we were once allowed to touch their upturned faces. A contract was then made on the spot: we were permitted to pluck the daisies on condition that we plucked but one every day. The field was not large, and long before the blasts of autumn had hushed the voices of the flowers, not a single daisy remained. Advancing spring threw lavish handfuls once more on the grass, and on these we sported anew with all the ardor of boyhood.

Our enthusiasm for the daisy then is only equaled by the gratitude it now awakens. Too soon does the busy world, with unwarrantable liberty, allure us from boyish scenes. Too soon are the buoyant fancies of youth succeeded by the feverish anxieties of age, happy innocence by the consciousness of evil, confidence by doubt, faith by despair. We must chill our demonstrativeness, restrain our affections, blunt our sensibilities. We must cultivate conscience until we have too much of it, and become monkish, savage and misanthropic. The asceticism of manhood is apparent from the studied air with which everybody is on his guard against his neighbor. In a crowded car, men instinctively clutch their pockets, and fancy a pickpocket in a benevolent-looking old gentleman opposite. When we see men so distrustful, we shun them. They then call us selfish when we feel only solitary. We protest against such manhood as would lower golden ideals of youth to its own contemptible Avernus. And now as our daisy, which is blooming before us, sagely nods its white crest as it is swayed by the passing breeze, it seems to bring back of itself decades gone forever. We never intend to become a man. We keep our boy's heart ever fresh and ever warm. We don't care if the whole human race, from the Ascidians to Darwin himself, assail us and fiercely thrust us once more into short jackets and knickerbockers, provided they allow an indefinite vacation in a daisy field. The joy of childhood is said to be vague. It was all satisfying to us once, and we do not intend to allow it to waste in unconscious effervescence among the gaudier though less gratifying delights of manhood.

It is, however, of daisies among the poets we would speak at more length. In fact, to the imaginative mind, the daisy in poetry is as suggestive as the daisy in nature. Philosophically, they are identical; in the absence of the one you can commune with the other. Thus unconsciously the daisy undergoes a metempsychosis; its soul is transferred at will from meadow to book and from book to meadow, without losing a particle of its vitality.

To premise with the daisy historically: Among the Romans it was called Bellis, or "pretty one;" in modern Greece, it is star-flower. In France, Spain, and Italy, it was named "Marguerita," or pearl, a term which, being of Greek origin, doubtless was brought from Constantinople by the Franks. From the word "Marguerita," poems in praise of the daisy were termed "Bargerets." Warton calls them "Bergerets," or "songs du Berger," that is, shepherd songs. These were pastorals, lauding fair mistresses and maidens of the day under the familiar title of the daisy. Froissart has written a characteristic Bargeret; and Chaucer, in his "Flower and the Leaf," sings:

"And, at the last, there began, anone,A lady for to sing right womanly,A bargaret in praising the daisie;For as methought among her notes sweet,She said, 'Si douce est la Margarite."

Speght supposes that Chaucer here intends to pay a compliment to Lady Margaret, King Edward's daughter, Countess of Pembroke, one of his patronesses. But Warton hesitates to express a decided opinion as to the reference. Chaucer shows his love for the daisy in other places. In his "Prologue to the Legend of Good Women," alluding to the power with which the flowers drive him from his books, he says that

                "all the floures in the mede,Than love I most these floures white and rede,Soch that men callen daisies in our tounTo hem I have so great affectioun,As I sayd erst, whan comen is the May,That in my bedde there daweth me no day,That I nam up and walking in the mede,To seen this floure agenst the Sunne sprede."

To see it early in the morn, the poet continues:

"That blissfull sight softeneth all my sorow,So glad am I, whan that I have presenceOf it, to done it all reverenceAs she that is of all floures the floure."

Chaucer says that to him it is ever fresh, that he will cherish it till his heart dies; and then he describes himself resting on the grass, gazing on the daisy:

"Adowne full softly I gan to sink,And leaning on my elbow and my side,The long day I shope me for to abide,For nothing els, and I shall nat lie,But for to looke upon the daisie,That well by reason men it call mayThe daisie, or els the eye of day."

Chaucer gives us the true etymology of the word in the last line. Ben Jonson, to confirm it, writes with more force than elegance,

"Days-eyes, and the lippes of cows;"

that is, cowslips; a "disentanglement of compounds,"—Leigh Hunt says, in the style of the parodists:

"Puddings of the plumAnd fingers of the lady."

The poets abound in allusions to the daisy. It serves both for a moral and for an epithet. The morality is adduced more by our later poets, who have written whole poems in its honor. The earlier poets content themselves generally with the daisy in description, and leave the daisy in ethics to such a philosophico-poetical Titan as Wordsworth. Douglas (1471), in his description of the month of May, writes:

"The dasy did on crede (unbraid) hir crownet smale."

And Lyndesay (1496), in the prologue to his "Dreme," describes June

"Weill bordowrit with dasyis of delyte."

The eccentric Skelton, who wrote about the close of the 15th century, in a sonnet, says:

"Your colowreIs lyke the daisy flowreAfter the April showre."

Thomas Westwood, in an agreeable little madrigal, pictures the daisies:

"All their white and pinky facesStarring over the green places."

Thomas Nash (1592), in another of similar quality, exclaims:

"The fields breathe sweet,The daisies kiss our feet."

Suckling, in his famous "Wedding," in his description of the bride, confesses:

"Her cheeks so rare a white was onNo daisy makes comparison."

Spenser, in his "Prothalamion," alludes to

"The little dazie that at evening closes."

George Wither speaks of the power of his imagination:

"By a daisy, whose leaves spreadShut when Titan goes to bed;Or a shady bush or tree,She could more infuse in meThan all Nature's beauties canIn some other wiser man."

Poor Chatterton, in his "Tragedy of Ella," refers to the daisy in the line:

"In daiseyed mantells is the mountayne dyghte."

Hervey, in his "May," describes

"The daisy singing in the grassAs thro' the cloud the star."

And Hood, in his fanciful "Midsummer Fairies," sings of

"Daisy stars whose firmament is green."

Burns, whose "Ode to a Mountain Daisy" is so universally admired, gives, besides, a few brief notices of the daisy:

"The lowly daisy sweetly blows—""The daisy's for simplicity and unaffected air."

Tennyson has made the daisy a subject of one of his most unsatisfactory poems. In "Maud," he writes:

"Her feet have touched the meadowsAnd left the daisies rosy."

To Wordsworth, the poet of nature, the daisy seems perfectly intelligible. Scattered throughout the lowly places, with meekness it seems to shed beauty over its surroundings, and compensate for gaudy vesture by cheerful contentment. Wordsworth calls the daisy "the poet's darling," "a nun demure," "a little Cyclops," "an unassuming commonplace of nature," and sums up its excellences in a verse which may fitly conclude our attempt to pluck a bouquet of fresh daisies from the poets:

"Sweet flower! for by that name at last,When all my reveries are past,I call thee, and to that cleave fast;    Sweet silent creature!That breath'st with me in sun and air,Do thou, as thou art wont, repairMy heart with gladness, and a share    Of thy meek nature!"—A.S. Isaacs.

COLERIDGE AS A PLAGIARIST

SOMETHING CHILDISH BUT VERY NATURALWritten in Germany 1798-99If I had but two little wings,    And were a little feathery bird,        To you I'd fly, my dear!But thoughts like these are idle things,            And I stay here.But in my sleep to you I fly:    I'm always with you in my sleep!        The world is all one's own.But then one wakes, and where am I?            All, all alone.Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids,    So I love to wake ere break of day:        For though my sleep be gone,Yet, while tis dark, one shuts one's lids,            And still dreams on.

Thus much for Coleridge. Now for his original:

"Were I a little bird,Had I two wings of mine,I'd fly to my dear;But that can never be,So I stay here."Though I am far from thee,Sleeping I'm near to thee,Talk with my dear;When I awake again,I am alone."Scarce there's an hour in the nightWhen sleep does not take its flight,And I think of thee,How many thousand timesThou gav'st thy heart to me."

"This," says Mr. Bayard Taylor, in the Notes to his translation of Faust, "this is an old song of the people of Germany. Herder published it in his Volkslieder, in 1779, but it was no doubt familiar to Goethe in his childhood. The original melody, to which it is still sung, is as simple and sweet as the words."

AMONG THE PERUVIANS

The extremes of civilization and barbarism are nearer together in those countries which the Spaniards have wrested from their native inhabitants, than in any other portion of the globe. Before other European races, aboriginal tribes, even the fiercest, gradually disappear. They hold their own before the descendants of the conquistadores, who conquered the New World only to be conquered by it. Out of Spain the Spaniard deteriorates, and nowhere so much as in South America. Of course he is superior there to the best of the Indian tribes with which he is thrown in contact; but we doubt whether he is superior to the intelligent, but forgotten, races which peopled the regions around him centuries before Pizzaro set foot therein, and which built enormous cities whose ruins have long been overgrown by forests. To compare the Spaniard of to-day, in Peru, with its ancient Incas is to do him no honor. To be sure, he is a good Catholic, which the Incas were not, but he is indolent, enervated, and enslaved by his own passions. His religion has not done much for him—at least in this world, whatever it may do in the next. It has done still less, if that be possible, for the aboriginal Peruvians.