Part 2 (1/2)

These and similar doubts which, in many minds, have hardened into positive disbelief, are beginning to affect seriously the trade of the firm. But its interests are now so inextricably bound up with the interests of thousands and millions of well-to-do and respectable people, and on its solvency or apparent solvency depends that of so large a number of esteemed merchants, that we may expect the most desperate struggles to postpone its final bankruptcy. In the great Roman establishment the manager has been supported for many years by charitable contributions from every one whom he could persuade to give or lend, and now he wants to borrow much more. The superintendent of the shops in London is in these days begging for ten hundred thousand pounds to a.s.sist the poor firm in its difficulties.

It seems a good sum of money; but, bless you, it is but a drop in the sea compared with what the business has already absorbed, and is still absorbing. Scattered shops in the most distant countries have only been sustained for many years by alms from customers here. The barbarians won't eat the bread, but the bakers sent out must have their salaries. A million of pounds are being begged here; and people (who would prosecute a mendicant of halfpence) will give it no doubt! Yet, O worthy manager of the London Shops, one proved loaf of the real Bread would be infinitely more valuable, and would infinitely more benefit your firm!

The villainy of the agents was monstrous, generation after generation, the cost of that which was promised without money and without price was ruinous for centuries; but not all the villainy and extortion multiplied a hundredfold could drive away the poor hungry customers while they had faith in the genuineness of the bread. It was the emptiness and the wind on the stomach after much eating, which raised the fatal doubts as to the _bona fides_ of the whole concern. The great English managers had better ponder this; for at present they grope in the dark delusion that more and better bakers salaried with alms, and new shops opened with eleemosynary funds will bring customers to buy their bran cakes as wheaten loaves. A very dark delusion, indeed! If the pure promised bread cannot be supplied, no amount of money will keep the business going very long. Consider what millions on millions of pounds have been subscribed already, what royal revenues are pouring in still; all meant for investment in wholesome and nouris.h.i.+ng food, but nearly all realised in hunger and emptiness, heartburn and flatulence. The old Roman shrewdly calculated that the House of Olympus would prove miserably insolvent if its affairs were wound up, if it tried honestly to pay back all the deposits of its customers. As for this more modern firm, one suspects that, in like case, it would prove so insolvent that it could not pay a farthing in the pound. For Olympus was a house that dealt largely in common worldly goods, and of these things really did give a considerable quant.i.ty to its clients for their money; but the new firm professed to sell things infinitely more valuable, and of these it cannot prove the delivery of a single parcel during the eighteen hundred years it has been receiving purchase-money unlimited.

The humble compiler of this rapid and imperfect summary ought, perhaps, to give his own opinion of the firm and the partners, although he suffers under the disadvantage of caring very little for the business, and thinks that far too much time is wasted by both the friends and the enemies of the house in investigation of every line and figure in its books. He believes that Jah, the grand Jewish dealer, was a succession of several distinct personages; and will probably continue to believe thus until he learns that there was but one Pharaoh King of Egypt, but one Bourbon King of France, and that the House of Rothschild has always been one and the same man. He believes that the Son was by no means the child of the Father, that he was a much better character than the Father, that he was really and truly murdered, that his prospectus and business plans were very much more wise and honest and good than the prospectus as we have it now, and the system as it has actually been worked. He believes that the Comforter has really had a share in this as in every other business not wholly bad in the world, that he has never identified his interests with those of any firm, that specially he never committed himself to a partners.h.i.+p of unlimited liability with the Hebrew Jah, that he undoubtedly had extensive dealings with the Son, and placed implicit confidence in him while a living man, and that he will continue to deal profitably and bountifully with men long after the firm has become bankrupt and extinct. He believes that the corn of the true bread of life is sown and grown, reaped, ground, kneaded, baked and eaten on this side of the Black Sea. He believes that no firm or company whatever, with limited or unlimited liability, has the monopoly for the purveyance of this bread, that no charters can confer such monopoly, that the bread is only to be got pure by each individual for himself, and that no two individuals of judgment really like it prepared in exactly the same fas.h.i.+on, but that unfortunately (as his experience compels him to believe) the bulk of mankind will always in the future no less than in the past persist in endeavoring to procure it through great chartered companies, finally, he believes that the worthy chief baker in London with his million of money is extremely like the worthy Mrs.

Partington with her mop against the Atlantic.

CHRISTMAS EVE IN THE UPPER CIRCLES

(1866.)

Poor dear G.o.d sat alone in his private chamber, moody, melancholy, miserable, sulky, sullen, weary, dejected, supenally hipped. It was the evening of Sunday, the 24th of December, 1865. Waters continually dripping wear away the hardest stone; year falling after year will at length overcome the strongest G.o.d: an oak-tree outlasts many generations of men; a mountain or a river outlasts many celestial dynasties. A cold like a thick fog in his head, rheum in his eyes, and rheumatism in his limbs and shoulders, his back bent, his chin peaked, his poll bald, his teeth decayed, his body all s.h.i.+vering, his brain all muddle, his heart all black care; no wonder the old gentleman looked poorly as he cowered there, dolefully sipping his Lachryma Christi. ”I wish the other party would lend me some of his fire,” he muttered, ”for it is horribly frigid up here.” The table was crowded and the floor littered with books and doc.u.ments, all most unreadable reading: missionary reports, controversial divinity, bishops' charges, religious periodicals, papal allocutions and encyclical letters, minutes of Exeter Hall meetings, ponderous blue books from the angelic bureaux-dreary as the humor of _Punch_, silly as the critiques of the _Times_, idiotic as the poetry of _All the Year Round_. When now and then he eyed them askance he shuddered more shockingly, and looked at his desk with loathing despair.

For he had gone through a hard day's work, with extra services appropriate to the sacred season; and for the ten-thousandth time he had been utterly knocked up and bewildered by the Athanasian Creed.

While he sat thus, came a formal tap at the door, and his son entered, looking sublimely good and respectable, pensive with a pensiveness on which one grows comfortably fat. ”Ah, my boy,” said the old gentleman, ”you seem to get on well enough in these sad times: come to ask my blessing for your birthday _fete_?” ”I fear that you are not well, my dear father; do not give way to dejection, there was once a man-

”O, dash your parables! keep them for your disciples; they are not too amusing. Alack for the good old times!” ”The wicked old times you mean, my father; the times when we were poor, and scorned, and oppressed; the times when heathenism and vain philosophy ruled everywhere in the world.

Now, all civilised realms are subject to us, and wors.h.i.+p us.” ”And disobey us. You are very wise, much wiser than your old worn-out father; yet perchance a truth or two comes to me in solitude, when it can't reach you through the press of your saints, and the noise of your everlasting preaching and singing and glorification. You know how I began life, the petty chief of a villainous tribe. But I was pa.s.sionate and ambitious, subtle and strong-willed, and, in spite of itself, I made my tribe a nation; and I fought desperately against all the surrounding chiefs, and with pith of arm and wile of brain I managed to keep my head above water. But I lived all alone, a stern and solitary existence. None other of the G.o.ds was so friendless as I; and it is hard to live alone when memory is a sea of blood. I hated and despised the Greek Zeus and his shameless court; yet I could not but envy him, for a joyous life the rogue led. So I, like an old fool, must have my amour; and a pretty intrigue I got into with the prim damsel Mary! Then a great thought arose in me: men cannot be loyal to utter aliens; their G.o.ds must be human on one side, divine on the other; my own people were always deserting me to pay homage to b.a.s.t.a.r.d deities. I would adopt you as my own son (between ourselves, I have never been sure of the paternity), and admit you to a share in the government. Those infernal Jews killed you, but the son of a G.o.d could not die; you came up hither to dwell with me; I the old absolute king, you the modern tribune of the people.

Here you have been ever since; and I don't mind telling you that you were a much more loveable character below there as the man Jesus than you have proved above here as the Lord Christ. As some one was needed on earth to superintend the executive, we created the Comforter, prince royal and plenipotentiary; and behold us a divine triumvirate! The new blood was, I must own, beneficial. We lost Jerusalem, but we won Rome; Jove, Neptune, Apollo, Bacchus, and the rest, were conquered and slain; our leader of the opposition ejected Pluto and Pan. Only I did not bargain that my mistress should more than succeed to Juno, who was, at any rate, a lawful wife. You announced that our empire was peace; you announced likewise that it was war; both have served us. Our power extended, our glory rose; the chief of a miserable tribe has become emperor of Europe. But our empire was to be the whole world; yet instead of signs of more dominion, I see signs that what we have is falling to pieces. From my youth up I have been a man of war; and now that I am old and weary and wealthy, and want peace, peace flies from me. Have we not shed enough blood? Have we not caused enough tears? Have we not kindled enough fires? And in my empire what am I? Yourself and my mistress share all the power between you; I am but a name at the head of our proclamations. I have been a man of war, I am setting old and worn out, evil days are at hand, and I have never enjoyed life; therefore is my soul vexed within me. And my own subjects are as strangers. Your darling saints I cannot bear. The whimpering, simpering, canting, chanting blockheads! You were always happy in a pious miserableness, and you do not foresee the end. Do you know that in spite of our vast possessions we are as near bankruptcy as Spain or Austria? Do you know that our innumerable armies are a Chinese rabble of cowards and traitors? Do you know that our legitimacy (even if yours were certain) will soon avail us as little as that of the Bourbons has availed them? Of these things you are ignorant: you are so deafened with shouts and songs in your own praise that you never catch a whisper of doom. I would not quail if I had youth to cope with circ.u.mstance; none can say honestly that I ever feared a foe; but I am so weak that often I could not walk without leaning on you. Why did I draw out my life to this ignominious end? Why did I not fall fighting like the enemies I overcame? Why the devil did you get born at all, and then murdered by those rascally Jews, that I who was a warrior should turn into a snivelling saint? The heroes of Asgard have sunk into a deeper twilight than they foresaw; but their sunset, fervent and crimson with blood and with wine, made splendid that dawnless gloaming. The joyous Olympians have perished, but they all had lived and loved. For me, I have subsisted and hated. What of time is left to me I will spend in another fas.h.i.+on. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” And he swallowed hastily a b.u.mper of the wine, which threw him into convulsions of coughing.

Serene and superior the son had let the old man run on. ”Do not, I entreat you, take to drink in your old age, dear father. You say that our enemies lived and loved; but think how unworthy of divine rulers was their mode of life, how immoral, how imprudent, how disreputable, how savage, how l.u.s.tful, how un-Chris-tian! What a bad example for poor human souls!” ”Human souls be blessed! Are they so much improved now?...

Would that at least I had conserved Jove's barmaid; the prettiest, pleasantest girl they say (we know you are a Joseph, though you always had three or four women dangling about you); fair-ankled was the wench, bright-limbed; she might be unto me even as was Abis.h.a.g, the Shunammite, unto my old friend David.” ”Let us speak seriously, my father, of the great celebration to-morrow.” ”And suppose I _am_ speaking very seriously, you solemn prig; not a drop of my blood is there in you.”

Here came a hurried knocking at the door, and the angelic ministers of state crawled in, with super-elaborate oriental cringings, to deliver their daily reports. ”Messages from Brahma, Ormuzd, etc., to congratulate on the son's birthday.” ”The infidels! the mockers!”

muttered the son. ”Good words,” said the father; ”they belong to older families than ours, my lad, and were once much more powerful. You are always trying to win over the parvenus.” ”A riot in the holy city. The black angels organised to look after the souls of converted negroes having a free fight with some of the white ones. My poor lambs!” sighed the son. ”Black sheep,” growled the father; ”what is the row?” ”They have plumed themselves brighter than peac.o.c.ks, and scream louder than parrots; claim precedence over the angels of the mean whites; insist on having some of their own hymns and tunes in the programme of to-morrow's concert.” ”Lock'em all up, white and black, especially the black, till Tuesday morning; they can fight it out then-it's Boxing Day. Well have quite enough noise to-morrow without 'em. Never understood the n.i.g.g.e.r question, for my part: was a slave-holder myself, and cursed Ham as much as pork.” ”New saints grumbling about lack of civilised accommodation: want underground railways, steamers for the crystal sea, telegraph wires to every mansion, morning and evening newspapers, etc., etc,; have had a public meeting with a Yankee saint in the chair, and resolved that heaven is altogether behind the age.” ”Confound it, my son, have I not charged you again and again to get some saints of ability up here? For years past every batch has been full of good-for-nothing noodles. Have we no engineers, no editors at all.” ”One or two engineers, we believe, sire, but we can't find a single editor.” ”Give one of the _Record_ fellows the measles, and an old _l'Univers_ hand the cholera, and bring them up into glory at once, and we'll have two daily papers. And while you are about it, see whether you can discover three or four pious engineers-not m.u.f.fs, mind-and blow them up hither with their own boilers, or in any other handy way. Haste, haste, post haste!”

”Deplorable catastrophe in the temple of the New Jerusalem: a large part of the foundation given way, main wall fallen, several hundred workmen bruised.” ”Stop that fellow who just left; countermand the measles, the cholera will be enough; we will only have one journal, and that must be strictly official. If we have two, one will be opposition. Hush up the accident. It is strange that Pandemonium was built so much better and more quickly than our New Jerusalem!” ”All our best architects and other artists have deserted into Elysium, my lord; so fond of the company of the old Greeks.”

When these and many other sad reports had been heard, and the various ministers and secretaries savagely dismissed, the father turned to the son and said: ”Did I not tell you of the evil state we are in?” ”By hope and faith and charity, and the sublime doctrine of self-renunciation, all will yet come right, my father.” ”Humph! let hope fill my treasury, and faith finish the New Jerusalem, and charity give us peace and quietness, and self-renunciation lead three-quarters of your new-fangled saints out of heaven; and then I shall look to have a little comfort.”

”Will you settle to-morrow's programme, sire? or shall I do my best to spare you the trouble?” ”You do your best to spare me the trouble of reigning altogether, I think. What programme can there be but the old rehearsal for the eternal life (I wish you may get it)? O, that horrible slippery sea of gla.s.s, that bedevilled throne vomiting thunders and lightning, those stupid senile elders in white nightgowns, those four hideous beasts full of eyes, that impossible lamb with seven horns and one eye to each horn! O, the terrific shoutings and harpings and stifling incense! A pretty set-out for my time of life I And to think that you hope some time or other to begin this sort of thing as a daily amus.e.m.e.nt, and to carry it on for ever and ever! Not much appearance of its beginning soon, thank goodness-that is to say,, thank badness. Why can't you have a play of Aristophanes, or Shakespeare, or Moliere? Why should I meddle with the programme? I had nothing to do with first framing it. Besides, it is all in your honor, not in mine. You like playing the part of the Lamb; I'm much more like an old wolf. You are ravished when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks; as for me, I am utterly sick of them. Behold what I will do; I must countenance the affair, but I can do so without disturbing myself. I'll not go thundering and roaring in my state-carriage of the whirlwind; I'll slip there in a quiet cloud. You can't do without my glory, but it really is too heavy for my aged shoulders; you may lay it upon the throne; it will look just as well. As for my speech, here it is all ready written out; let Mercury, I mean Raphael or Uriel, read it; I can't speak plainly since I lost so many teeth. And now I consider the matter, what need is there for my actual presence at all? Have me there in effigy; a n.o.ble and handsome dummy can wear the glory with grace* Mind you have a handsome one; I wish all the artists had not deserted us. Your pious fellows make sad work of us, my son. But then their usual models are so ugly; your saints have good reason to speak of their vile bodies. How is it that all the pretty girls slip away to the other place, poor darlings? By the bye, who are going on this occasion to represent the twelve times twelve thousand of the tribes of Israel? Is the boy Mortara dead yet? He will make one real Jew.” ”We are converting them, sire.”

”Not the whole gross of thousands yet, I trust? Faugh! what a greasy stench there would be-what a blazing of Jew jewelry!

”Hand me the latest bluebook, with the reports....

”Ah, I see; great success! Power of the Lord Christ! (always you, of course). Society flouris.h.i.+ng. Eighty-two thousand pounds four s.h.i.+llings and twopence three-farthings last year from Christians aroused to the claims of the lost sheep of the House of Israel. (Very good.) Five conversions!! Three others have already been persuaded to eat pork sausages. (Better and better.) One, who drank most fervently of the communion wine suffered himself to be treated to an oyster supper.

Another, being greatly moved, was heard to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, 'O, Christ!'...

Hum, who are the five? Moses Isaacs: wasn't he a Christian ten years ago in Italy, and afterwards a Mahommedan in Salonica, and afterwards a Jew in Ma.r.s.eilles? This Mussulman is your oyster-man, I presume? You will soon get the one hundred and forty-four thousand at this rate, my son!

and cheap too!”

He chuckled, and poured out another gla.s.s of Lachryma Christi; drank it, made a wry face, and then began coughing furiously. ”Poor drink this for a G.o.d in his old age. Odin and Jupiter fared better. Though decent for a human tipple, for a divinity it is but _ambrosie stygiale_, as my dear old favorite chaplain would call it. I have his devotional works under lock and key there in my desk. _Apropos_, where is he? Left us again for a scurry through the more jovial regions? I have not seen him for a long time.” ”My father! really, the words he used, the life he led; so corrupting for the young saints! We were forced to invite him to travel a little for the benefit of his health. The court _must_ be kept pure, you know.” ”Send for him instantly, sir. He is out of favor because he likes the old man and laughs at your saints, because he can't cant and loves to humbug the humbugs. Many a fit of the blues has he cured for me, while you only make them bluer. Have him fetched at once. O, I know you never liked him; you always thought him laughing at your sweet pale face and woebegone airs, laughing '_en horrible sarcasm et sanglante derision_' (what a style the rogue has! what makes that of your favorite parsons and holy ones so flaccid and flabby and hectic?) 'Physician, heal thyself!' So, in plain words, you have banished him; the only jolly soul left amongst us, my pearl and diamond and red ruby of Chaplains, abstracter of the quintessence of pantagruelism! The words he used! I musn't speak freely myself now, and the old books I wrote are a great deal too coa.r.s.e for you Michael and Gabriel told me the other day that they had just been severely lectured on the earnestness of life by one of your new _proteges_; they had to kick him howling into limbo. A fine set of solemn prigs we are getting!” ”My father, the holiness of sorrow, the infiniteness of suffering!” ”Yes, yes, I know all about it. That long-winded poet of yours (he does an ode for you to-morrow?) began to sermonise me thereon. By Jupiter, he wanted to arouse me to a sense of my inner being and responsibilities and so forth. I very soon packed him off to the infant school where he teaches the alphabet and catechism to the babies and sucklings. Have you sent for my jovial, joyous, jolly Cure of Meudon?” ”I have; but I deeply regret that your Majesty thinks it fitting to be intimate with such a free-liver, such a glutton and wine-bibber and mocker and buffoon.” ”Bah! you patronised the publicans and sinners yourself in your younger and better days. The strict ones blamed you for going about eating and drinking so much. I hear that some of your newest favorites object to the wine in your last supper, and are going to insist on vinegar-and-water in future.”

Whereupon entered a man of a n.o.ble and courtly presence, lively-eyed and golden bearded, ruddy complexioned, clear-browed, thoughtful, yet joyous, serene and unabashed. ”Welcome, thrice welcome, my beloved Alcofribas!” cried the old monarch; ”very long is it since last I saw you.” ”I have been exiled since then, your Majesty.” ”And I knew nothing of it!” ”And thought nothing of it or of me until you wanted me. No one expects the King to have knowledge of what is pa.s.sing under his eyes.”

”And how did you manage to exist in exile, my poor chaplain?” ”Much better than here at court, sire. If your Majesty wants a little pleasure, I advise you to get banished yourself. Your parasites and sycophants and courtiers are a most morose, miserable, ugly, detestable, intolerable swarm of blind beetles and wasps; the devils are beyond comparison better company.” ”What! you have been mixing with traitors?”