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

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СКАЧАТЬ question. But there were those present who could answer it. Lionardo da Vinci turned his soft eyes upon the questioner.

      "Yes," he said, "we do forgive, and very freely too."

      "Yes — and no," said Caesar.

      "Both ? " asked the artist. " How can we both forgive and not forgive, illustrious friend? There must be caprice in that — there must be an uncertain vacillation between two thoughts. You never vacillated, nor stood long choosing between two paths, nor, having chosen, looked back and regretted."

      "The sum of man's works," replied the greater spirit, " is composed of his intentions taken together with his deeds in such a way as the Greek geometer would have expressed it. The sum of his life is largest when the deeds are as great as the intentions which prompted them, for of four-sided figures the square, with equal lines, encloses the greatest space. But if the intentions be ever so great and the deeds few, the figure is long indeed, but narrow and of small area; and again if the deeds are numerous though the intentions small, then the deeds are the result of accident and must not all be imputed to man for good. My intentions were my own. I forgive them that said they were unworthy, or little or bad, for I know what they were. But my deeds were the world's, and those I left undone should have been the world's also. Wherefore I forgive not those men who cut them short, who clipped the sum of my life and made my square smaller than it should have been. For my life was the world's health, and though my nephew was a cunning physician, all his medicines could not cure the gangrene in the wounds my slayers made in the world's skin, nor could all his cleansing arrest the deepening darkness of the stain that spread from my blood over the body of the nation I sought to make clean and great. For my life was not sacrificed boldly for good in a great cause. I did not fall in the front of the fight at Pharsalus. I did not sink when the skiff overturned at Alexandria; I was not caught by the enemy in Germany when I slipped through their lines in a Gallic dress; I did not lose heart when my soldiers lost their way in the trenches at Dyrrachium, though I lost the place itself. I risked my life often enough to have deserved to lose it finally in some nobler way than by the hands of such butchers as made an end of me — fellows who knew not where to strike to kill—who in three and twenty thrusts could strike but one mortal blow. I stabbed Cassius in the arm with my writing point, but what could I do against so many ? I saw a sea of faces around me, cowardly pale faces of men who got courage cheaply from their numbers. I saw myself hemmed in by a hedge of steel knives and I knew that my hour was come. I saw their faces, but I would not let them see mine in death. I covered my head and my body with my garments and I died decently, since there was nothing left but to die. But I saw each one of those faces once more and in the instant of death, within three years, and I heard the lips of each dying man curse the hour in which he had slain Caesar. Even then I could not forgive them, for the sake of the world that might have been. I can pardon them for murdering me as a man. I will never pardon them for murdering my unborn deeds. Therefore I say we dead men both forgive and forgive not."

      The conqueror's calm voice ceased and his dark, thoughtful eyes fixed themselves as though staring back through the mist of nineteen centuries to that morning when he had entered the curia, laughing at Spurinna's prophecies and unconsciously grasping in his hand the unread note which might have saved him from his fate. The look was sad, but the sadness had long passed from the stage of present despair to regret for the past, and again to a melancholy curiosity to see what should yet become of the world.

      The gentle Lionardo bowed his head gravely, as though admitting his companion spirit to be right.

      " I understand that," he said. " We should not forget that you, the dictator, have not only to pardon the injuries done you in your person, but you have to forgive also the injuries done in your person to the world, or as we should say, to history. In my little way, had I been foully murdered I could more easily have forgiven my murderers than I could forgive one who should wantonly destroy my painting of the Last Supper. It is but an artist's vanity — that is to say, it is the satisfaction of the artist in his work. I cannot say what I might have felt had I been violently prevented from finishing that picture. It is unfinished still — it would be so had I lived until to-day. I think it is a part of the temperament of some artists not to finish, though they work for ever. They search after that which never was nor ever can be; or, at all events, we searched in our day. I think it was better. We pursued the ideal. Modern painters pursue the real. I was not a realist because I painted grinning peasants for a study, and modelled ' heads of laughing women for my pleasure. We did not know what realism meant in those days, though people call us the founders of the realist school. We sought to represent nature's meaning; men now try to copy what nature is. You, Caesar, tried to make of men what heaven meant them to be, orderly, happy, prosperous within reasonable limits. Napoleon, like Alexander, ruined himself in attempting to create an unlimited empire out of unreasoning and often unwilling elements, believing that to command men's bodies was to command men's souls. You succeeded in spite of failure, for though you were killed at the most critical moment of your existence your work survived you; Napoleon failed in spite of success and survived to see the destruction of the greater part of his work, which followed almost immediately after he was conquered and taken prisoner."

      "It was not his fault," said Caesar. " Any more than my poor young general Gains Curio was to blame when he was defeated by Juba. Napoleon's plans were admirably laid. He did not admire me. I admire him. If his work did not survive long, that is due to the fact that he was brought up as a soldier and had a soldier's instincts. I was trained as a statesman and attached more importance to the stability of the State than to extending its boundaries. I am called a conqueror; had I lived I should have been called a civiliser, and I would have earned the name. People do not reflect that Napoleon conquered a great extent of territory and rose to be emperor, with what at first were very inadequate means, and from the humblest beginnings. Charlemagne's conquests were more extended than mine, far wider than Napoleon's, and yet he is not called a conqueror. He is called the Great. He accomplished his work, which on the whole was a work of civilisation, and much of it remains to this day; at least his influence remains. The resuscitation of the German Empire is largely due to the imperial traditions which he founded; but the invention of a French Empire was not due to his influence. It was the spontaneous invention of an astounding individuality, tremendous in its immediate effects, formidable so long as a personality could be found worthy to be invested with the halo and attributes of Bonaparte, and bearing his name; but, on the whole it was not a circumstance in the world's history to which any great mass of popular or national tradition will ever be attached, for the Napoleonic supremacy was the impression of an individual upon nations; it was never the expression of the nations by the individual. The title, German Emperor, was sometimes in the Middle Ages a very empty word as regards the man who so designated himself. I have sometimes laughed to think that a dignity expressed by my own name should degenerate to such a mockery. But the thing meant by Caesarism — Imperialism— was never to be despised. There was always present in the minds of the chief nations a consciousness of the force of a mighty tradition and of a mass of traditions which they sought to embody in the person of a leader, chosen for his qualities and invested with the supreme power in virtue of them. If he failed to make good his rights he was despised, but it was long before the belief was extinguished that at any moment, if he so chose and so laboured and fought, the German Emperor might again rule the world, even as Charlemagne had done. There was nothing dynastic in my conception of the Imperator, but the circumstances of the times made the institution a military one. I never meant that it should be that. I would not submit to a council of generals or a mob of guards, though when I could not persuade the people I was willing to submit to them. The empire which my nephew founded began to go to pieces when the soldiers outgrew the people in strength, and outranked them in social consequence — it fell because it was a military institution. The empire of the Germans — the Holy Roman Empire — was shattered on the death of Charlemagne, because it was intended to be dynastic, and his sons tore each other to pieces. It revived temporarily when some strong individuality rose to the surface; it alternately decayed and revived with the decadence of each old imperial family and the investiture of each new one. My empire — I never used the word in the modern sense — my command, was intended to be that of a democratic monarch, an expression СКАЧАТЬ