The Best Horrors by F. Marion Crawford. Francis Marion Crawford

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      "It is Caesar," said Augustus, under his breath, as he rose to greet the new-comer.

      "Yes, I am Caesar," answered the calm voice of the dead conqueror. He came forward and stood in the midst of the party, so that the lamplight fell upon his grand face. " You spoke of me and I was near and heard you. You are not afraid to take a dead man's hand ? No — why should you be ? "

      The hand he held out was long and nervous and white, looking as though the fingers possessed the elastic strength of steel.

      "Are we in a dream ?" asked Diana in low tones, turning to Heine. The poet sighed.

      "You are but a dream to us," he said, softly. " We are the reality — the sleepless reality of death."

      "Yes we are very real," said Caesar, seating himself in a huge carved chair that might have served for an imperial throne, and looking slowly around upon the assembled party. "You were speaking of my life. You were saying that I was not a romantic character. Do not smile at my using the word. In nineteen centuries of wandering I have learned to speak of romantists and realists. I was not romantic. Could Homer himself have made an epic poem about my life ? I think not. Homer had traditions to help him, and Virgil had both Homer and the traditions. The purpose of my life was to overthrow tradition and to found a new era for the world. I was a modern. I was a source of realism. There was nothing mythical about me. Romance grew out of the decay of what I founded. I do not think that the romantic sense existed in men of my day, though the popular respect for the ancients was even then immense, and Rome was full of traditions. It is only by extending the term that anything can be called romantic which happened earlier than ten centuries after my death."

      Too much awed to speak as yet by the strange presence, the living members of the party held their breath while Caesar was speaking, and the smooth inflexions of his calm voice filled the quiet air. A few moments of silence followed his speech and it seemed as though no one would answer him; but at last Chopin lifted his delicate face and spoke.

      "Nineteen centuries!" he exclaimed. " Ah, Caesar, why could you not have lived on through all those years ? Poland would still have been free and the Poles would still have been a people."

      "The world would have been free," rejoined the dead conqueror, sadly. " I believed in unity, not in partition. I meant to build, not to destroy. My heart sinks when I see the world divided into nations, of which I would have made one nation."

      "Every individual man is himself a world,' " said Heine. "'A world that is born with him and dies with him, and under every gravestone lies the history of a world.' "

      "That is true," answered Chopin, " and my world was Poland and is Poland still."

      "Mine is the whole world of living beings," returned the poet.

      "Yes," replied Chopin, with a fine smile. "I know it. But the world according to Saint-Simon would not resemble the world according to Julius Caesar."

      "And yet," said Caesar, "I watched the development of Saint-Simon's doctrines with interest. They failed as all socialist movements have failed and always must fail, to the end of time, until they proceed upon a different basis."

      "Why?" asked Lady Brenda, taking courage.

      "The usual mistake. The followers of Saint Simon, or the stronger part of them, tried to abolish marriage and they tried to invent a religion. Religions are not easily invented which can be imposed upon any considerable body of mankind, and no considerable body of civilised mankind has ever shown itself disposed to dispense with the institution of matrimony. The desire to obtain wealth without labour, the negation of religion and the degradation of women have ruined all socialistic systems which have ever been tried, and have undermined many powerful nations. It is impossible to govern men except by defending the security of property, upholding the existing form of religion and exacting a rigorous respect for the institution of marriage."

      "That is true," said Heine, thoughtfully. " The object of the Saint-Simonists was to create a common property, to be shared equally for ever, and to inculcate a form of religion which they had invented. They might have succeeded in that. But Enfantin had the unlucky idea that free love was a good thing, and that ruined the whole institution just when it was at the point of success."

      "It could never have succeeded," answered Caesar, " even if he had let marriage exist, because the perpetual division of property is an impossibility. But the abolition of marriage would alone have been enough to ruin the scheme. I see in the modern world many nations, and each nation has its own very distinct form of government. Apply as a test to each the question of the stability of property, of religion and of marriage, and you will have at once the measure of its prosperity. I see in Europe a new empire, vast, strong and successful. The government protects wealth, marriage and religion; but religion is the least stable of the three, and there is no country in the world where there are so many who deny religion as there are in Germany. Look closer. You will see that there is no country in the world where there are so many anarchists, and these anarchists are perpetually sapping the sources of the nation's wealth and trying to undermine the institution of marriage. They are doing their work well. Unless there is a religious revival in Germany, she will soon cease to preponderate in Europe."

      "That is a novel idea," said Augustus Chard.

      " I think not," answered Caesar, with a quiet smile. " I think it is as old as I am at least. But look at Europe again. Of all European nations, which is the most prosperous? England. In spite of many political mistakes, in spite of many foolish and expensive wars, in spite of the many incompetent statesmen and dissolute monarchs by whom she has been often governed, in spite of civil wars which have overturned her government and religious wars which have changed her dynasties, in spite of the narrowness of her original territory, the inclemencies of her climate, the barrenness of her Scotch mountains and the indolent misery of her Irish peasants—in spite of all these, England is the most prosperous country in modern Europe. Apply my test. Is there any country in Europe where property is better protected, where religion is a more established fact, where the marriage-contract is so scrupulously observed? Certainly not. Look at her neighbours—even at France. Why did France grow prosperous under Napoleon the Third? Because he protected religion, fostered the growth of commerce, and never so much as thought of attacking marriage. Now the existing government is opposed to religion of any kind and has introduced divorce, which in France is a very different matter from divorce in England. France is less prosperous than she was. Italy comes next with her cry of freedom. Religion is tolerated, marriage is respected, but the property of the individual is eaten up to pay the debts of the government. The country is not prosperous. Italy as a nation is a failure, not by her own fault, perhaps, but by force of circumstances. How can a man be healthy whose head is buried in ice while his feet are plunged in hot water ? You must cool his feet and warm his head, but you must not apply leeches to every part of his body at once. When a man needs blood you must not bleed him in order to show him that his veins are not yet quite empty."

      "Nations suffer at first when any great change is made, even when it is a change for the good," remarked Heine.

      "That is a maxim which has been made an excuse for much harm," replied Caesar. " I do not think it is always true. A nation certainly ought not to suffer for twenty years because it has been unified. In twenty years a new generation of men grows up, and if the change has been for good, these young men should find themselves in better circumstances at twenty than their fathers were before them. I have watched the world for nearly two thousand years, and I think the history of that period shows that whenever a change for the better has taken place in a nation's government it has been followed almost immediately by a great increase of prosperity. Within a very few years after my death the empire of my nephew had eclipsed everything which had preceded it and in some ways, also, everything which СКАЧАТЬ