her with an infernal wind, they brew in her storms and tempests, play with her as the whim seizes them, drive her to wickedness, to despair.
And not ourselves only, but all nature, alas! becomes demoniac. If there is a devil in the flower, how much more in the gloomy forest! The light we think so pure teems with children of the night. The heavens themselves—O blasphemy!—are full of hell. That divine morning star, whose glorious beams not seldom lightened a Socrates, an Archimedes, a Plato, what is it now become? A devil, the archfiend Lucifer. In the eventime again it is the devil Venus who draws me into temptation by her light so soft and mild.
That such a society should wax wroth and terrible is not surprising. Indignant at feeling itself so weak against devils, it persecutes them everywhere, in the temples, at the altars once of the ancient worship, then of the heathen martyrs. Let there be more feasts?—they will likely be so many gatherings of idolaters. The Family itself becomes suspected: for custom might bring it together round the ancient Lares. And why should there be a family?—the empire is an empire of monks.
But the individual man himself, thus dumb and isolated though he be, still watches the sky, still honours his ancient gods whom he finds anew in the stars. “This is he,” said the Emperor Theodosius, “who causes famines and all the plagues of the empire.” Those terrible words turned the blind rage of the people loose upon the harmless Pagan. Blindly the law unchained all its furies against the law.
Ye gods of Eld, depart into your tombs! Get ye extinguished, gods of Love, of Life, of Light! Put on the monk’s cowl. Maidens, become nuns. Wives, forsake your husbands; or, if ye will look after the house, be unto them but cold sisters.
But is all this possible? What man’s breath shall be strong enough to put out at one effort the burning lamp of God? These rash endeavours of an impious piety may evoke miracles strange and monstrous. Tremble, guilty that ye are!
Often in the Middle Ages will recur the mournful tale of the Bride of Corinth. Told at a happy moment by Phlegon, Adrian’s freedman, it meets us again in the twelfth, and yet again in the sixteenth century, as the deep reproof, the invincible protest of nature herself.
“A young man of Athens went to Corinth, to the house of one who had promised him his daughter. Himself being still a heathen, he knew not that the family which he thought to enter had just turned Christian. It is very late when he arrives. They are all gone to rest, except the mother, who serves up for him the hospitable repast and then leaves him to sleep. Dead tired, he drops down. Scarce was he fallen asleep, when a figure entered the room: ’tis a girl all clothed and veiled in white; on her forehead a fillet of black and gold. She sees him. In amazement she lifts her white hand: ‘Am I, then, such a stranger in the house already? Alas, poor recluse! … But I am ashamed, and withdraw. Sleep on.’
“ ‘Stay, fair maiden! Here are Bacchus, Ceres, and with thee comes Love. Fear not, look not so pale!’
“ ‘Ah! Away from me, young man! I have nothing more to do with happiness. By a vow my mother made in her sickness my youth and my life are bound for ever. The gods have fled, and human victims now are our only sacrifices.’
“ ‘Ha! can it be thou, thou, my darling betrothed, who wast given me from my childhood? The oath of our fathers bound us for evermore under the blessing of heaven. Maiden, be mine!’
“ ‘No, my friend, not I. Thou shalt have my younger sister. If I moan in my chilly dungeon, do thou in her arms think of me, of me wasting away and thinking only of thee; of me whom the earth is about to cover again.’
“ ‘Nay, I swear by this flame, the torch of Hymen, thou shalt come home with me to my father. Rest thee, my own beloved.’
“As a wedding-gift he offers her a cup of gold. She gives him her chain, but instead of the cup desires a curl of his hair.
“It is the hour of spirits; her pale lip drinks up the dark blood-red wine. He too drinks greedily after her. He calls on the god of Love. She still resisted, though her poor heart was dying thereat. But he grows desperate, and falls weeping on the couch. Anon she throws herself by his side.
“ ‘Oh! how ill thy sorrow makes me! Yet, if thou wast to touch me—— Oh, horror!—white as the snow, and cold as ice, such, ah me! is thy bride.’
“ ‘I will warm thee again: come to me, wert thou come from the very grave.’
“Sighs and kisses many do they exchange.
“ ‘Dost thou feel how warm I am?’
“Love twines and holds them fast. Tears mingle with their joy. She changes with the fire she drinks from his mouth: her icy blood is aglow with passion; but the heart in her bosom will not beat.
“But the mother was there listening. Soft vows, cries of wailing and of pleasure.
“ ‘Hush, the cock is crowing: to-morrow night!’ Then with kiss on kiss they say farewell.
“In wrath the mother enters; sees what? Her daughter. He would have hidden her, covered her up. But freeing herself from him, she grew from the couch up to the roof.
“ ‘O mother, mother, you grudge me a pleasant night; you would drive me from this cosy spot! Was it not enough to have wrapped me in my winding-sheet and borne me to the grave? A greater power has lifted up the stone. In vain did your priests drone over the trench they dug for me. Of what use are salt and water, where burns the fire of youth? The earth cannot freeze up love. You made a promise; I have just reclaimed my own.
“ ‘Alas, dear friend, thou must die: thou wouldst but pine and dry up here. I have thy hair; it will be white to-morrow. … Mother, one last prayer! Open my dark dungeon, set up a stake, and let the loving one find rest in the flames. Let the sparks fly upward and the ashes redden. We will go to our olden gods.’ ”[7]
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See Mansi, Baluze; Council of Arles, 442; of Tours, 567; of Leptines, 743; the Capitularies, &c., and even Gerson, about 1400.
[6] See the Lives of the Desert Fathers, and the authors quoted by A. Maurie, Magie, 317. In the fourth century, the Messalians, thinking themselves full of devils, spat and blew their noses without ceasing; made incredible efforts to spit them forth.
[7] Here I have suppressed a shocking phrase. Goethe, so noble in the form, is not so in the spirit of his poem. He spoils the marvel of the legend by sullying the Greek conception with a horrible Slavish idea. As they are weeping, he turns the maiden into a vampire. She comes because she thirsts for blood, that she may suck the blood from his heart. And he makes her coldly say this impious and unclean thing: “When I have done with him, I will pass on to others: the young blood shall fall a prey to my fury.”
In the Middle Ages this story put on a grotesque garb, by way of frightening us with the Devil Venus. On the finger of her statue a young man imprudently places a ring, which she clasps tight, guarding it like a bride, and going in the night to his couch,
