Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts

a fashion you are right. I shall never laugh again as I used to laugh before Harry's death. The taste has gone out of that carelessness, and I turn

o its place in the scheme of things, and even aspires (poor mite!) to do its infinite

me more than ever deranged; but I assure you that it has been brought about, not by long strivi

tes swinging at our saddle-bows; how Harry challenged us to a gallop; and how, midway, the roan mare slipped down neck over crop on the frozen turf and hurled me clean against the face of a stone dyke. I had been thrown from horseback more than once before, but so

y's! - to nip, as it seemed out of mere blundering wantonness, a bud which had begun to open so generously: to sacrifice that youth and strength, that comeliness, that enthusiasm, and all for nothing! Had some campaign claimed him, had he been spent to gain a citadel or defend a flag, I had understood. But that he should be killed on a friendly mission; attacked in ignorance by those East Coast savages while bearing gifts to their king; deserted

the nightly moon and to the stars around her, I could well believe God wasteful of little things. Sirius flashing low, Orion's belt with the great nebula swinging like a pendant of diamonds; the ruby stars, Betelgueux and Aldebaran - my eyes went up beyond these to Perseus shepherding the Kids westward along the Milky way. From the right Andromeda flashed signals to him: and above sat Cassiopeia, her mother, resting her jewelled wrists on the arms of her throne. Low in the east Jupiter trailed his satellites in the old moon's path. As they all moved, silent, looking down on me out of the hollow spaces of the night,

skill to create them could blunder

in all innocent daily sights. Throughout my country walks I "saw blood." I heard the rabbit run squeaking before the weasel; I watched the butcher crow working steadily down the hedge. If I turned seaward I looked beneath the blue and saw the dog-fish gnawing on the whiting. I

e rude tents of the nomad shepherds, there rose city upon city of palaces built of jasper and porphyry, splendid and utterly corrupt; inhabited by men who called themselves gods and explored the subtleties of all sciences

e l'air, tous les

ou nage ou ramp

r plaisir des pl

ours composent le

discerned the very God of the uni

es jeux de leu

'homme est leur

il feroce a l'en

vant eux en immo

lutter, dans des

a brute et les h

ux de sang qui co

ons des membr

emi de leurs

laisir fremissent

rture est leur

s son oeil boit

his first attempt to fly, fell headlong beside the Emperor's couch and spattered him with blood and brains. For the Emperor, says Suetonius, perraro praesidere, ceterum accubans, parvis primum foraminibus

ng of January 4th. I had just finished another reading of the Tenth Vision and had tossed my book into the lap of an ar

d his death. There was a passage in this last letter describing a wonderful ride he had taken alone and by moonlight on the desert; a ride (he protested) which wanted nothing of perfect happiness but me, his friend, riding beside him to share his wonder. There was a sentence wh

over the deodars upon the white gravel. And there, before the front door, sat Harry on his sorrel mare Vivandiere, holding my own Grey Sultan ready bridled and sa

Harry in flesh and blood. I knew quite well all the while that Harry was dead and his body in his grave. But, soul or phantom - whatever relation to Harry this might bear - it had come to me, and the great joy of tha

ere could be no doubt, at any rate, that the grey was real horseflesh and blood, though he seemed unusually quiet afte

. I answered as well as I could, with trivial news of their health. His mother had borne the winter better than usual - to be sure, there had been as yet no cold weather to speak of; but she and Ethel intended, I believed, to start for the south of Fr

" I began, a

ight ahead between her ears; then, after a pause, "it has been a bad

"Harry, if only I had known why you

me with the old conf

g - our horses had fallen to a walk again - "It looks you in the face a moment: you put out

whom,

nd he shook Vivand

try around Sevenhays. We had left the beaten road for short turf - apparently of a copper-brown hue, but this may have been the effect of the moonlight. The ground rose steadily, but with an easy inclina

down. But in time the air, hitherto so exhilarating, began to oppress my lungs

s noise of w

moment it occurred to me that this sound of water, distant

of the arm that embraced the dim landsc

otamoio mega

ten sakeos pyka

silent

the Eighteenth Book together in our study at Clifton; I at the table, Harry lolling in the cane-seated armchai

rim of which this unseen water echoed. And the resemblance grew more startling when, a mile or so farther on our way, as the grey daw

k not unlike the Colosseum. A question shaped itself on my lips, but something in Harry's manner forbade it. His gaze was bent stead

t seemed, of plain worked stone, though I afterwards found it to be sculptured in low relief. The arches were cut in deep relief and backed with undressed stone. The lowest course of all, however, was quite plain, having neither arches nor frieze; but at intervals corresponding to the eight major points of the compass - so far as I who saw but one side of it could judge -

e long friezes in bas-relief represented men and women tortured and torturing with all conceivable variety of method and circumstance - flayed, racked, burned, torn asunder, loaded with weights, pinched with hot irons, and so on without end. And it added to the horror of these sculptures that while the limbs and even the dress of each figure were carved with elaborate care and nicety of detail, the faces of all - of those who applied the tor

leave Grey Sultan at the entrance, he led me through the long archway or tunnel

figures about the great archway yonder were diminished to the size of ants about a hole . . . For there were human figures busy in the arena, though not a soul sat in any of the granite tiers above. A million eyes had been less awful than those empty benches staring down in the cold dawn; bench after bench repeating the horror of the featurele

ed hill of which it was the apex; and from an open sluice immediately beneath the imperial throne a flood of water gushed with a force that carried it straight to this raised centre, over which it ran and rippled, and so drained back into the scuppers at the circumference. Before reaching the centre it broke and

y stepped forward into the ar

n, the fourth side, which faced the throne, lay open. And I saw - in the first cage, a man scourged with rods; in the second, a body twisted on the rack; in the third, a woman with a starving babe, and a fellow that held food to them and withdrew it quickly (the torturers wore masks on their faces, and whenever bloo

anopy. High over it the sun broke yellow on the climbing tiers of se

bent h

here?" I flung out my hand towards the purple throne, and finding myself close to a fellow who sca

you," he said. "Th

fa

perished. His was the face of

- men and women - had but one face: the same wrung brow, the same wistfu

God!" I fell on my knees in the

n and look!" sai

? He hides behi

he cur

es conti

sobs. Listen! Wh

e and about the floor.

lows hence down the hill, and

the eddies at my feet, for the

o suffering in the world but ultim

very gently led me away; but spoke again as we

ack: for a m

s beside it, and around, and away up to the sunlit crown of the amphitheatre, thronged with forms

rey Sultan stood outside, and as I moun

rey Sultan was trampling the gravel of our own drive. The morning sun slanted ov

he sufferings of my fellows still afflict me; but always, if I stand still and listen, in my own room, or in a crowded street, or in a waste spot among th