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

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СКАЧАТЬ in your presence could I be so long," rejoined the old artist, with a smile. " But I was not cynical in my time. I am cynical in yours. Save for such company as these gentlewomen, I would not choose to be alive to-day."

      Caesar sighed and looked away from the rest, his nervous white hand tightening upon the carved arm of his deep-seated chair. It was a long, deep breath, drawn in with sudden and overwhelming thought of returning vitality and possibility, swelling the breast with the old imperial courage, the mighty grandeur of heart which had ruled the world; then relinquished and breathed out again in despair, deep, inconsolable and heart-rending, in the despair which the dead man whose deeds are all done and whose life-book is closed for ever feels when he gazes on the living whose race is not yet begun.

      " Yes," said Lionardo, looking kindly at the conqueror's averted face, "you are right — for yourself. We are not all such as Caius. If I were to live again I should waste more time in disproving theories today than I ever wasted in trying to prove them four hundred years ago. We were all for progress under Ludovico Sforza. Borgia understood progress in his own way — but it was progress, too, for all that. He could have given lessons in more than one thing to many of your moderns. Even Pope Leo understood what progress meant, in spite of his ideas about my methods of painting. But nowadays everything goes backwards. A bag of money is paraded through the world bound on an ass's back, and everybody worships the ass, and men lie down and let him walk over them, thinking perchance that the beast may stumble, and the sack burst open, and that haply they may scrape up some of the coin in the filth of the road. We were more simple than the moderns. We had less money, but we knew better how to spend it."

      "Is it true, I wonder," put in Augustus, " that the amount of money in circulation indicates progress while the way in which men spend it indicates civilisation?"

      "No," said Caesar, answering for the rest. " The nation which has the greater wealth may not have progressed further than others, save in power. Power is not progress — it depends on other things. It is the result of a combination of strength and discipline under an intelligent leader. The highest power is generally reached by a people when the spirit of organisation has attained its greatest development in military matters but has not yet spread to the civil professions. The army is then held in the highest esteem and is the favourite profession. When the passion for order has extended to mercantile affairs, the nation's actual power as compared with other nations begins to decline. Interests of all kinds become vested in the maintenance of peace, and the warlike element falls into disrepute. It becomes the nation's business to lend money to other nations who are still in the military stage, herself meanwhile giving and receiving guarantees of peace. But though a people may be rich by commerce they may not have progressed; and again whole nations may be made fabulously wealthy by seizing the wealth of others. We Romans did that. We did not pretend to the culture of the Greeks; we certainly did not possess their skill in making money—but we possessed them and their country, and gold flowed in our streets. It did us very little good. We got it without progress, by force, and we spent it recklessly in paying men to tear each other to pieces. No — a large amount of money in circulation does not indicate progress, though it may be the result of it."

      "Money is very uninteresting," said Gwendoline. "It always seems to me that the world would be much nicer without it."

      "When you are as old as I am, you will appreciate your advantages, my dear," said Lady Brenda. " It is good to be rich, and I fancy it must be very disagreeable to be poor."

      "But I know quite well how it feels to have money," objected Gwendoline. "I would like to know how it feels to have power — power such as you had," she added, looking at Caesar.

      "Not many have known what it is," he answered, with a curious smile. " Each one who has possessed it has probably felt it in a different way. For my part, though I was accused of not being serious in my youth, like Lionardo here, I think I grew more than serious under the responsibility. Perhaps, however, it made less difference to me than it has to others. I was born to wealth, if not to power, and I resolved to make the most of my money. I made use of it by spending it all and then borrowing largely on the security of what I had squandered. They said I was not serious — but they made me leave the country nevertheless."

      "I imagine," said Gwendoline, "that to have boundless power suddenly put into one's hands must make one feel as though one were to live for ever."

      "Living for ever is a sad pastime without it," returned Caesar. "I am not of Lionardo's mind. I would live again."

      "To die again as you died ?" asked Diana in a low voice.

      " Yes," answered the dead conqueror, " to die again as I died, if need be, but to have power once 'more. And I know what I say—you cannot know. For death was horrible to me. Not the physical pain of it, though they were clumsy fellows; they were long in killing me — I thought it would never end. I could have done it better myself, and indeed I was more merciful to them than they to me. Not one of them died a natural death, for I pursued them one by one when I was dead. I have never seen them since ; they are not here. But none of them suffered as I did. I knew that my hour was come when I got that first wound in the throat, and as I struggled, the horror of it overcame me. Visions rose before my eyes of the things I had not yet accomplished, but of which the accomplishment was certain if I lived. It was such a disappointment — more that than anything else. Such a heart-rending despair at being cut down before my work was half finished, before the world was half civilised. People forget that I invented civilisation — I, the dead man who am speaking to you. But it is true. And in that moment I felt that I was young without having realised in practice the theory, which was to change the world. That handful of low assassins cost the world fifteen centuries of darkness, and I knew it even then. Had I lived, I would have kneaded the earth as a baker kneads dough, and the leaven I had put into it would not have rotted and fermented for lack of stirring. As I felt one wound after another, I felt that my murderers were not only killing Caesar, they were killing civilisation; every thrust was struck at the heart of the world, making deep wounds in the future of man kind and letting out the breath of life from the body of law. That was my worst suffering, worse even than the death of my ambition. I had done enough already to be remembered, and I knew it. I was satisfied for myself to die. But I had conceived great thoughts which had grown to be a new self apart from the old, vain, ambitious Caesar, having a separate and better life — and that they slew also. Augustus did much, but he could not do what I would and could have done."

      "No," said Lionardo, thoughtfully, " you were the greatest man who ever lived."

      "That is saying too much," answered Caesar in quiet tones. " I meant to be. That is all. My fortune deserted me too soon. The greatest men, after all, are poets. They are also the most justly judged, for what they leave is their own. They leave themselves to mankind in their own words. We statesmen and soldiers are at the mercy of historians. I meant to have written the history of my whole life in the form of annual reports such as I made upon my wars in Gaul."

      "Could you not do it now ? " asked Lady Brenda. " We know so little of the history of your youth, and I am sure it must have been most interesting."

      Caesar smiled. "If I were able to write at all," he said, " I would not choose my youth as a subject upon which to make a report. My youth was a trifle over-full of movement, besides being very ostentatious. My first object in life was to become popular, for I knew that popularity was the surest way to power. I led the popular party for eighteen years before I ever attempted to lead an army, and when I turned soldier I was already a finished statesman. That is the reason why I knew what to do so soon as I had got the whole power into my hands. I had conquered the most important part of my world by art before I found it necessary to subdue the remainder by force. I was beginning to amalgamate a new world out of my two conquests when I was murdered."

      "Do the dead forgive ? " The words were spoken by Gwendoline in a low tone and as though no response СКАЧАТЬ