heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret | winter of 1844-5 within the bed-chamber of the rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and hiero- Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not glyphics written on the tablets of the brain. They wheeled in mazes; I spelled the steps. They telegraphed from afar; I read the signals. They conspired together; and on the mirrors of darkness my eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols; mine are the words. less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the power of the keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides a ghostly intruder into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, from Ganges to Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let us honour with the title of What is it the sisters are? What is it that they do? Let me describe their form, and their presence: if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline, or presence it were that for ever"Madonna!'' advanced to the front, or for ever receded amongst shades. The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation,-Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet were stiffened for ever, which, heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven. The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum -Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops for ever, for ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her sister, Madonna, is oftentimes stormy and frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that be Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I knew by child-longs to the hopeless. Murmur she may, but it ish memories that she could go abroad upon the is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to winds, when she heard the sobbing of litanies or herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at the thundering of organs, and when she beheld times, but it is in solitary places that are desothe mustering of summer clouds. This sister, late as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the eldest, it is that carries keys more than the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister papal5 at her girdle, which open every cottage is the visitor of the Pariah,7 of the Jew, of the and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sat bondsman to the oar in the Mediterranean galall last summer by the bedside of the blind beg- leys; and of the English criminal in Norfolk gar, him that so often and so gladly I talked Island,s blotted out from the books of rememwith, whose pious daughter, eight years old, brance in sweet far-off England; of the baffled with the sunny countenance, resisted the temp- penitent reverting his eyes for ever upon a solitations of play and village mirth to travel all tary grave, which to him seems the altar overday long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. thrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on For this did God send her a great reward. In which altar no oblations can now be availing, the spring-time of the year, and whilst yet her whether towards pardon that he might implore, own spring was budding, He recalled her to him- or towards reparation that he might attempt. self. But her blind father mourns for ever over Every slave that at noonday looks up to the her; still he dreams at midnight that the little tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points guiding hand is locked within his own; and with one hand to the earth, our general mother, still he wakens to a darkness that is now within but for him a stepmother, as he points with a second and a deeper darkness. This Mater the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, Lachrymarum also has been sitting all this but against him sealed and sequestered ;—every woman sitting in darkness, without love to shel 3 The word was formerly used of various methods of signalling, as by beacon-fires. 6 Nicholas I., whose daughter Alexandra had late- 4 Jeremiah, xxxi, 15; Matthew, ii, 16-18. 8 A penal colony in the south Pacific. 1825-1845. ter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, | cious Ladies (so called by antiquity in shudbecause the heaven-born instincts kindling in dering propitiation), of my Oxford dreams. her nature germs of holy affections which God Madonna spoke. She spoke by her mysterious implanted in her womanly bosom, having been hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to Our stifled by social necessities, now burn sullenly Lady of Sighs; and what she spoke, translated to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the an- out of the signs which (except in dreams) no cients; every nun defrauded of her unreturning man reads, was this:May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will judge; every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace,—all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem,9 and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads. But the third sister, who is also the youngest ! Hush, whisper whilst we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele,10 rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden by distance; but, being what they are, they cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crape which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles, and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum-Our Lady of Darkness. These were the Semnai Theai, or Sublime Goddesses, these were the Eumenides,11 or Gra 9 Son of Noah, reputed ancestor of the Semitic 10 See note on Childe Harold, IV, 2. "Lo! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee, dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And thou,'-turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she said,-"wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from her. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountains of tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished12 in the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies, and so shall our commission be accomplished which from God we had,-to plague his heart until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit." SAVANNAH-LA-MAR* God smote Savannah-la-mar, and in one night, by earthquake, removed her, with all her towers standing and population sleeping, from the steadfast foundations of the shore to the coral floors of ocean. And God said,-"Pompeii did I bury and conceal from men through seventeen centuries: this city I will bury, but not conceal. She shall be a monument to men of my mysterious anger, set in azure light through generations to come; for I will enshrine her in a crystal dome of my tropic seas." This city, therefore, like a mighty galleon with all her apparel mounted, streamers flying, and tackling perfect, seems floating along the noiseless depths 12 perfected. * "Plain (of) the Sea"-a fanciful name adopted by De Quincey for this vision of a sunken city. The "Dark Interpreter" mentioned here gives name to another of the Suspiria papers. of ocean; and oftentimes in glassy calms, | into a lower series of similar fractions, and the through the translucid atmosphere of water actual present which you arrest measures now that now stretches like an air-woven awning but the thirty-sixth-millionth of an hour; and above the silent encampment, mariners from so by infinite declensions the true and very every clime look down into her courts and ter- present, in which only we live and enjoy, will races, count her gates, and number the spires of vanish into a mote of a mote, distinguishable her churches. She is one ample cemetery, and nly by a heavenly vision. Therefore the present, has been for many a year; but, in the mighty which only man possesses, offers less capacity calms that brood for weeks over tropic latitudes, for his footing than the slenderest film that she fascinates the eye with a Fata-Morgana ever spider twisted from her womb. Therefore, revelation, as of human life still subsisting in also, even this incalculable shadow from the narsubmarine asylums sacred from the storms that rowest pencil of moonlight is more transitory torment our upper air. than geometry can measure, or thought of angel can overtake. The time which is contracts into a mathematic point; and even that point perishes a thousand times before we can utter its birth. All is finite in the present; and even that finite is infinite in its velocity of flight towards death. But in God there is nothing finite; but in God there is nothing transitory; but in God there can be nothing that tends to death. Therefore, it follows, that for God there can be no present. The future is the present of God, and to the future it is that he sacrifices the human present. Therefore it is that he works by earthquake. Therefore it is that he works by grief. O, deep is the ploughing of earthquake! O, deep'-(and his voice swelled like a sanctus rising from the choir of a cathedral)—“O, deep is the ploughing of grief. But oftentimes less would not suffice for the agriculture of God. Upon a night of earthquake he builds a thousand years of pleasant habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an infant he raises oftentimes from human intellects glorious vintages that could not else have been. Less than these fierce ploughshares would not have stirred the stubborn soil. The one is needed for Earth, our planet,-for Earth itself as the dwelling-place of man; but the other is needed yet oftener for God's mightiest instrument,yes" (and he looked solemnly at myself), "is needed for the mysterious children of the Earth!"' Thither, lured by the loveliness of cerulean depths, by the peace of human dwellings privileged from molestation, by the gleam of marble altars sleeping in everlasting sanctity, oftentimes in dreams did I and the Dark Interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided us from her streets. We looked into the belfries, where the pendulous bells were waiting in vain for the summons which should awaken their marriage peals; together we touched the mighty organkeys, that sang no jubilates1 for the ear of heaven, that sang no requiems for the ear of human sorrow; together we searched the silent nurseries, where the children were all asleep, and had been asleep through five generations. "They are waiting for the heavenly dawn," whispered the Interpreter to himself: "and, | when that comes, the bells and organs will utter a jubilate repeated by the echoes of Paradise." Then, turning to me, he said,—“This is sad, this is piteous; but less would not have sufficed for the purpose of God. Look here. Put into a Roman clepsydra2 one hundred drops of water; let these run out as the sands in an hour-glass, every drop measuring the hundredth part of a second, so that each shall represent but the three-hundred-and-sixty-thousandth part of an hour. Now, count the drops as they race along; and, when the fiftieth of the hundred is Issing, behold! forty-nine are not, because already they have perished, and fifty are not, because they are yet to come. You see, therefore, how narrow, how incalculably narrow, is the true and actual present. Of that time which we call the present, hardly a hundredth part but belongs either to a past which has fled, or to a future which is still on the wing. It has perished, or it is not born. It was, or it is not. Yet even this approximation to the truth is infinitely false. For again subdivide that solitary drop, which only was found to represent the present, 1 hymns of rejoicing (specifically the 100th Psalm) 2 water-clock † Here "mirage-like"; from the fata morgana of the Sicilian coast-a phenomenon attributed to Morgan le Fay, or Morgana the Fairy. FROM JOAN OF ARC* What is to be thought of her? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that—like the Hebrew 3 The anthem "Holy, Holy, Holy." De Quincey's venture into this particular field of history, which is so obscure and so acrimoniously debated, was inspired by Michelet's Histoire de France, then (1847) appearing, and his avowed object was to do justice to the maligned Maid, defending her even against her own countrymen. The body of his article, which is narrative and argumentative, is here omitted, only the introduction and conclusion being given. See Eng. Lit., p. 274. shepherd boy from the hills and forests of and the sleep which is in the grave is long; let Judea-rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, those heavenly dreams destined to comfort the rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station sleep which is so long! This pure creaturein the van of armies, and to the more perilous pure from every suspicion of even a visionary station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, obvious-never once did this holy child, as reby a victorious act, such as no man could deny.1 garded herself, relax from her belief in the But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her darkness that was travelling to meet her. She story as it was read by those who saw her might not prefigure the very manner of her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the death; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aërial boy as no pretender; but so they did to the altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who without end, on every road, pouring into Rouen® saw them from a station of good will, both were as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleyfound true and loyal to any promises involved ing flames, the hostile faces all around, 'the pityin their first acts. Enemies it was that made ing eye that lurked but here and there, until the difference between their subsequent fortunes. nature and imperishable truth broke loose from The boy rose to a splendour and a noonday pros-artificial restraints—these might not be apparent perity, both personal and public, that rang through the mists of the hurrying future. But through the records of his people, and became a the voice that called her to death, that she heard byword among his posterity for a thousand forever. years, until the sceptre was departing from Great was the throne of France, even in those Judah.2 The poor forsaken girl, on the con- days, and great was he that sat upon it; but trary, drank not herself from that cup of rest well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he which she had secured for France. She never that sat upon it, was for her; but, on the consang together with the songs that rose in her trary, that she was for them; not she by them, native Domrémy as echoes to the departing but they by her, should rise from the dust. steps of invaders. She mingled not in the Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for festal dances at Vaucouleurs3 which celebrated centuries had the privilege to spread their in rapture the redemption of France. No! for beauty over land and sea, until, in another cenher voice was then silent; no! for her feet were tury, the wrath of God and man combined to dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! whom, wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full Domrémy she had read that bitter truth, that of truth and self-sacrifice, this was among the the lilies of France would decorate no garland strongest pledges for thy truth, that never once for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, -no, not for a moment of weakness-didst thou would ever bloom for her! revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man. Coronets for thee! Oh, no! Honours, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domrémy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, king of France, but she will not hear thee. Cite her by the apparitors to come and receive a robe of honour, but she will be found en contumace.5 When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen,† shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life, that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; Bishop of Beauvais !s thy victim died in fire upon a scaffold-thou upon a down bed. But, for the departing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl-when the pavilions of life were closing up their shadowy curtains about you-let us try, through the gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your separate visions. The shepherd girl that had delivered France -she, from her dungeon, she, from her baiting 6 The place of Joan's martyrdom. 7 The royal device of the fleur-de-lis. 8 The presiding judge at Joan's trial. He had played traitor to the French and abetted the English in this execution. at the stake, she, from her duel with fire, as she | Oh, mercy! what a groan was that which the entered her last dream-saw Domrémy, saw the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at fountain of Domrémy, saw the pomp of forests his bedside, heard from his labouring heart, as in which her childhood had wandered. That at this moment he turned away from the founEaster festival which man had denied to her tain and the woman, seeking rest in the forests languishing heart-that resurrection of spring- afar off. Yet not so to escape the woman, time, which the darkness of dungeons had inter- whom once again he must behold before he dies. cepted from her, hungering after the glorious In the forests to which he prays for pity, will liberty of forests were by God given back into he find a respite? What a tumult, what a her hands as jewels that had been stolen from gathering of feet is there! In glades where her by robbers. With those, perhaps (for the only wild deer should run, armies and nations minutes of dreams can stretch into ages), was are assembling; towering in the fluctuating given back to her by God the bliss of childhood. crowd are phantoms that belong to departed By special privilege for her might be created, hours. There is the great English Prince, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, inno- Regent of France. There is my Lord of Wincent as the first; but not, like that, sad with the chester, the princely cardinal, that died and gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. This made no sign.9 There is the Bishop of Beauvais, mission had now been fulfilled. The storm was clinging to the shelter of thickets. What buildweathered; the skirts even of that mighty ing is that which hands so rapidly are raising? storm were drawing off. The blood that she Is it a martyr's scaffold? Will they burn the was to reckon for had been exacted; the tears child of Domrémy a second time? No; it is a that she was to shed in secret had been paid to tribunal that rises to the clouds; and two nathe last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had tions stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall been faced steadily, had been suffered, had been my Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the survived. And in her last fight upon the scaf- judgment-seat, and again number the hours for fold she had triumphed gloriously; victoriously the innocent? Ah, no! he is the prisoner at she had tasted the stings of death. For all, the bar. Already all is waiting: the mighty except this comfort from her farewell dream, audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying to she had died—died amid the tears of ten thou- their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumsand enemies died amid the drums and trumpets are sounding, the judge is taking his place. pets of armies-died amid peals redoubling upon Oh, but this is sudden! My Lord, have you no peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting counsel? "Counsel I have none; in heaven clarions of martyrs. above, or on earth beneath, counsellor there is Bishop of Beauvais! because the guilt-bur- none now that would take a brief from me: dened man is in dreams haunted and waylaid by all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this? the most frightful of his crimes, and because Alas! the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, upon that fluctuating mirror-rising (like the the crowd stretches away into infinity; but yet mocking mirrors of mirage in Arabian deserts) I will search in it for somebody to take your from the fens of death-most of all are re-brief; I know of somebody that will be your flected the sweet countenances which the man counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domhas laid in ruins; therefore I know, bishop, rémy? Who is she in bloody coronation robes that you also, entering your final dream, saw from Rheims ?10 Who is she that cometh with Domrémy. That fountain, of which the wit-blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of nesses spoke so much, showed itself to your eyes Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor in pure morning dews; but neither dews, nor that had none for herself, whom I choose, bishop, the holy dawn, could cleanse away the bright for yours. She it is, I engage, that shall take spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By my lord's brief. She it is, bishop, that would the fountain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, plead for you; yes, bishop, she-when heaven that hid her face. But, as you draw near, the and earth are silent. woman raises her wasted features. Would Domrémy know them again for the features of her child? Ah, but you know them, bishop, well! 9 See Shakespeare's II Henry VI., III, iii. |