Tuesday's Serial: “Feelings Regarding the Grandeurs of Saint Joseph” by Jean-Jacques Olier (translated into English by Brandon P. Otto) - I

 Introduction

Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-1657) was a French priest and founder of the Sulpicians (Society of the Priests of Saint Sulpice). Though encouraged at a young age, by St. Francis to Sales, to become a priest, he lived for fashionable society; when he studied at the Sorbonne, he hoped for academic glory, striving to learn Hebrew in order to defend his thesis in that language, just for the thrill of it. When his eyesight began to fail, he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy House of Loreto, where he was cured and converted. Taught by St. Vincent de Paul and Charles de Condren, superior general of Pierre de Bérulle's Oratory of Jesus, he undertook both spiritual reform and works of charity. Eventually headquartered at the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, he founded a seminary and an order of priests, the Sulpicians, who continued Olier's dual aim, especially in following St. Vincent de Paul's lead in caring for the poor. (A pupil of the seminary, St. Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, later extended this care to the education of poor children.) Though he recovered from a first stroke in 1652, a second one in 1653 left him paralyzed and in great suffering for the remainder of his life.

Olier's greatest legacy is the Sulpicians themselves, but he also left behind a number of writings. Part of the French School of Spirituality, inaugurated by Pierre de Bérulle (whose influence comes to Olier both through St. Vincent de Paul, Bérulle's former roommate, and Charles de Condren, Bérulle's successor at the Oratory), Olier's main writings are devotional, such as the Introduction to the Christian Life and Virtues, the Catechism of the Interior Life (which is available in English), and the Explanation of the Ceremonies of the Mass. Recently, though, a number of his mystical writings, previously unknown and unedited, have been published in French: these include The Crystal Soul: On Divine Attributes in Us and From the Creation of the World to the Divine Life. The editor of the monumental Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca series, Jean-Paul Migne, also edited Olier's works (as well as Bérulle's).

The writing below is one Migne discovered just before his edition of Olier's works went to print: the book was already type-set, so he had to add this writing as a supplement appended to the end of the book. The short writing consists of one full chapter in two sections, an the beginning of a second chapter. Below is Chapter One, Section One.

 

CHAPTER I

Saint Joseph Considered Through Relation to the Eternal Father and to Jesus Christ His Son

The admirable Saint Joseph was given to earth in order to visibly express the adorable perfections of God the Father. In his single person, he bore His beauties, His purity, His love, His wisdom and His prudence, His mercy and His compassion. One single saint is destined to represent God the Father, while one needs an infinity of creatures, a multitude of saints, in order to represent Jesus Christ; for all the Church labors only to manifest to those outside the virtues and perfections of her adorable Head, and Saint Joseph alone represents the eternal Father! All the angels together are created to represent God and His perfections; a single man represents all His grandeurs.

So it is necessary to consider the august Saint Joseph as the grandest, most celebrated, most incomprehensible thing in the world, and, through proportion, like God the Father, hidden and invisible in his person, and incomprehensible in his being and in his perfections. And is there nothing to confound and frighten our ignorance and our misery, in seeing that the purer and holier he is, the less capable he is being understood by us? If Saint Joseph, from this point of view, seemed incomparable to us and placed in a class apart, it is because he, he alone, is the universal image of God the Father on earth; because of this, this saint being chosen to be His image on earth, He gives him, with Him, a resemblance to His invisible and hidden nature, and, in my view, this saint is outside of the state of being comprehended by the spirits of men. In such a way that faith must serve us as a supplement in order to adore in him what we cannot comprehend.

 

§I: How Much God the Father Honored the Great Saint Joseph

Saint Joseph being chosen to be the image of God the Father, it was an admirable thing to see the virtues and the perfections of this holy person. What wisdom! What force! What prudence! What simplicity! I don’t believe there ever was anything similar in the world; for it is easy to comprehend that, if God the Father took this saint to be the idea and the image of His perfections, if He rendered visible in Him what was hidden from all eternity in the bosom of His being, the excellence of this great man is incomparable…

1: He is the image of the beauties of the eternal Father.—Doubtless, there was a grave and modest exterior, there was an admirable composition, a beauty without parallel, because of Him Whose figure he was in the very eyes of the Son of God; for if the heavens, earth, the elements, in a word, all the composition of the world, is so beautiful, so rare, and so admirable, ordered with such weight, number, and measure (Wis 11:20), that it must serve us in admiring the perfections of God and that it represents His beauty to us; what ought to be that [beauty?] of this great saint whom God the Father forms expressly, by His hands, in order to figure Himself to His only-begotten Son, and to place, ceaselessly before His eyes, His true portrait and His image, as a compensation in time for His absence and a kind of solace during the years of His pilgrimage?

And what is even more considerable is that this world, so beautiful and so perfect, and which publishes, on all sides, the beauty of its Author, represents to men only the admirable grandeurs of God, considered as a sovereign being and a perfect essence, that is to say, as grand, good, wise, and infinite; but it does not figure Him with the attractions and charms of the Father, it only represents Him as sovereign and as first cause, while Saint Joseph, formed based on the eternal Father’s idea to represent Him to His Son, himself represents Him in the quality of Father and bears in himself all the lovable traits, all the charms and the sweetness, of the divine fatherhood.

2: He is the image of the holiness of the eternal Father.—How great is the holiness of Saint Joseph, chosen to be the image of God the Father! This great saint lives in a perfect holiness, separated from all the goods of earth and from all creatures, and the Gospel represents him to us to contemplate as full of this incomparable holiness., in saying: Cum esset justus, “when he was just” (Mt 1:19), that is to say, holy. He is, furthermore, established with this unique characteristic of holiness, that he is destined to be the guardian of the holiest and most precious creature of the world. In effect, Our Lord chooses a saint, and one of the grandest saints of the world, to be the guardian of the most holy Virgin after His death, a saint who will be like one and the same person with Him, finally, a virgin man, to be the protector of His Mother. Here, God the Father chooses a man whom He makes the image of His holiness, so that he would be the surety and the protection, not only of the Virgin, but also of His Son, Whom He eternally engendered, in sanctitate et justitia coram ipso [in holiness and justice before him] (Lk 1:75).

3: He is the character and the image of the fruitfulness of the eternal Father.—The Church offers us Saint Joseph to honor for eight days before the holy mystery of the Incarnation, so that, in Saint Joseph, we would adore God the Father, preparing and bearing, in His womb, the adorable design of the holy mystery of His Son; this mystery being hidden in the ages, the adorable bosom of the Father is given us to venerate in Saint Joseph; this is why this same saint is represented to us bearing, in his arms and upon his breast, Our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Father engendered Him in Himself from all eternity. The angels, who are not a characteristic of the fruitfulness of God, are not called “fathers” by one another; but Saint Joseph, image of this divine fruitfulness, is the father of Jesus Christ: he was like a sacrament of the eternal Father, under which God has borne, engendered His incarnate Word in Mary, and under which He inspired the divine substance. In this great Saint, God the Father appeared in His fruitfulness and yet separated from the flesh and blood, which in no way enter into the generation of the Father: qui non ex sanguinibus, neque ex voluntate carnis, neque ex voluntate viri, sed ex Deo natus est [who is born, not from bloods, nor from the will of the flesh, nor from the will of man, but from God] (Jn 1:13).

4: He is the image of the love of the eternal Father for His Son.—God the Father, in choosing Saint Joseph to make him His image with regard to His Son, lived in the bosom of Saint Joseph, where He loved His Son with an infinite love, and continually saying of this only-begotten Son: Hic est Filius Meus dilectus in quo mihi bene complacui [This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well-pleased] (Mt 17:5). The Father in Himself loves His Son as His eternal Word, and, in Saint Joseph, He loves this same Son as the incarnate Word. He resided in the soul of this great saint and rendered it a participant, no only in His virtues, but also in His life and in His father’s love; this is why the divine Saint Joseph entered into the love of the eternal Father for His Son and loved Him in the extent and ardor, the purity and holiness, of that love.

5: Saint Joseph is the exterior character of the compassion and of the tenderness of the eternal Father for the miseries of men.—The eternal Father, having chosen Saint Joseph to make Him the image of His fatherhood, took, in him, a spirit of compassion and of tenderness for the miseries of men, and became, in him, the Father of mercies. Before His Incarnation, the Word was full of rigor: Vox tonitrui in rota, vox confringentis cedros [the voice of thunder in wheel, the voice shattering cedars] (Ps 77:18, 29:5). But since He became man, He is rendered sensible to our ills; He is full of sweetness and of tenderness: Mitis et humilis corde [Meek and humble of heart] (Mt 11:29). He is full of compassion for our miseries. And it is thus that the eternal Father made His image, in communicating Himself to the great Saint Joseph. From all eternity, God the Father was separated from the flesh, elevated in holiness, infinitely above our state; at that time, He was insensible to our ills and full of severity for men; but, from the moment that He was dressed in the person of Saint Joseph and that He veiled Himself under the humanity of this great saint, He became merciful, full of tenderness and of sensibility for human miseries. In him, He is Father of mercies; this is why Saint Paul, after having said God be blessed, Benedictus Deus, adds, Father of Jesus Christ, Father of mercies (Eph 1:3), that is to say, that, in rendering Himself the Father of Jesus Christ in Saint Joseph, He becomes Father of mercies, while, before, He was in His state of God, just and insensible.

6: Saint Joseph, image of the wisdom and of the prudence of the eternal Father.—Since God the Father willed to appear in the person of Saint Joseph, He made him an abundant communication of His spirit of Father, a quo omnia paternitas [from Whom all fatherhood] (Eph 3:15), and, in order to guide eternal Wisdom, He gave to him himself an admirable light and wisdom. For if God commits most powerful angels, and even the first of these grand and sublime intelligences to the guidance and protection of kingdoms, if He even deputes these pure spirits to guide the heavenly spheres and those immense bodies, what ought to be the grandeur of that saint to whom God commits the guidance of His Son, more precious than a hundred thousand worlds and than a hundred thousand million kingdoms! What light to guide and direct, in all things, this Son Whose movements and all of Whose steps were so precious and so dear! Ah! It is said that the holy Virgin had the perpetual vision of God and, sometimes, even the beatific vision, because of her Son; it is certain that her divine Son had this clear and distinct vision of the Divinity, so that, among other things, He does, at every moment, what His Father willed, quæ placita sunt ei facio semper [what is pleasing to Him I always do] (Jn 8:29), and so that He continually does what He saw Him do, facio quæ video Patrem facientem [I do what I see the Father doing] (Jn 5:19); be it in order not to ever disobey Him and to satisfy the adorable designs which God the Father had for all His steps and all His movements; be it, also, because of their importance for the human race. Now, the same motive obliges us to believe that the great Saint Joseph, charged with the guidance of Jesus, Whom he was to bring to the accomplishment of the adorable designs of God His Father, designs of so great a consequence for the salvation of men, was himself enlightened by that divine light, in order to do everything according to the spirit of God; further, I want to say something that comes to my spirit and to which I do not dare respond, since it seemed strange to me.

It is that the light of Saint Joseph, which had been given him for the guidance of the Son of God, was of the nature of that of the most holy Virgin, which the holy doctors said had been glorious, God having given her all the graces that His omnipotence could accord to a pure creature. If, then, the light of Saint Joseph is a light of glory, it had to have been always infallible, for guiding the Son of God, Who did not know how to fail; for, otherwise, one would expose the Son of God, obeying Saint Joseph, either to failing in the designs of God and in His duty, or to disobeying him who held the place of His Father and of whom it is expressly said that He follows all his wills: Et erat subditus illis [And He was subject to them] (Lk 2:51). Having been given by God to all men as the model of obedience, if He had disobeyed Saint Joseph, everyone would have found, in His disobedience, a pretext to excuse their own and to say that one could fail by obeying, and that superiors do not have all that is necessary for guiding with assurance; would this not make a God failing in His promises and in His providence, if H refused to superiors the spirit which is necessary for us, to direct us? No, one is never deceived in obeying, God Himself rendering Himself the guarantee of persons who guide others.

Jesus Christ Our Lord would thus be in a worse condition than the rest of men, who cannot fail in obeying. Jesus Christ would be in a worse condition than the inferior angels; they are submitted to their superiors with an entire confidence, and they receive from them assured, certain, and infallible lights in all their guidance, although it is not as important as that of the Son of God. Now, if the angels, because they are glorious, have superiors who are endowed with a light of glory, what ought to be the light of Saint Joseph, destined by God the Father to guide Jesus Christ as his inferior, and to govern the most holy Virgin, His Mother! And what shame to expose the Son of God to arguing against His Father and against him who is filled with the very spirit of God! Ah, what! Would God the Father have wanted to expose Our Lord to this unseemliness, in refusing our saint a grace so befitting and so necessary to his condition? Our great saint is, then, filled with an admirable wisdom, since God permits him the guidance of wisdom itself, Christum Dei sapientiam [Christ, God’s wisdom] (1 Cor 1:24), and, if He has the custom of giving graces proportioned to the eminence of the employments that He confides to us, what, then, will have been that light, that wisdom, to which Wisdom Himself was submitted? Saint Joseph was, for Jesus Christ, what Moses had once been for the people of God: as that people, figure of the Savior, was drawn out of Egypt by Moses, so Our Lord was likewise drawn out by Saint Joseph; for we see, in that passage of Saint Matthew drawn from Hosea, Ex Ægypto vocavi filium meum [Out of Egypt I called My son] (Hos 11:1, Mt 2:15), that the people of Israel in Egypt is called “son of God,” since it was the figure of Jesus Christ. Saint Joseph is, in effect, the protector of Jesus Christ in His flight into Egypt, protector Salvatoris Christi sui, and holds Him in his safekeeping during the course of His life.

O eternal Wisdom! If Moses had had so intimate a communication with You, that He saw You face to face (Ex 33:11), what, then, would He have with Saint Joseph? The first, who was to guide the figure of Your Son, sees You face to face, and the second, Who will guide Your Son Himself, will it not be full of Your favors? If he who bore the law of death was so much in glory during this life that the children of Israel could not suffer the splendor of his face (Ex 34:29-35), what will it be, adds Saint Paul (2 Cor 3:7-11), for him who will bear the law of life and spirit in his arms? Doubtless, he enjoyed an adorable contemplation and a glorious vision of God.

I report this though, and I draw consequences like these from my spirit, clarified, however, it seems to me, by the light of faith, not feeling here any activity, any labor of my intelligence, in producing these things. I leave it to my director to judge them.

 You can read the original source here. 

Monday's Illustrated Word: "Blood Lust" by unknown writer (in English)

art by Marty Elkin - Horrific #12 - Comic Media, July 1954.

 

 

Saturday's Good Reading: “Pangur Bán” by unknown writer (translated from the Old Irish into English by Robin Flower.)

 

I and Pangur Bán my cat,

'Tis a like task we are at:

Hunting mice is his delight,

Hunting words I sit all night.

 

Better far than praise of men

'Tis to sit with book and pen;

Pangur bears me no ill-will,

He too plies his simple skill.

 

'Tis a merry task to see

At our tasks how glad are we,

When at home we sit and find

Entertainment to our mind.

 

Oftentimes a mouse will stray

In the hero Pangur's way;

Oftentimes my keen thought set

Takes a meaning in its net.

 

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye

Full and fierce and sharp and sly;

'Gainst the wall of knowledge I

All my little wisdom try.

 

When a mouse darts from its den,

O how glad is Pangur then!

O what gladness do I prove

When I solve the doubts I love!

 

So in peace our task we ply,

Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;

In our arts we find our bliss,

I have mine and he has his.

 

Practice every day has made

Pangur perfect in his trade;

I get wisdom day and night

Turning darkness into light.

Friday's Sung Word: "Zíngaro" by Georges Moran (in Portuguese)

Sempre quando uma saudade
O meu triste estado invade
O meu peito vibra esta canção
Que recorda uma cidade
Onde a minha mocidade
Foi feliz e cheia de emoção

Toca ó zíngaro, repete essa canção
Vamos ó zíngaro, alegra um coração
Quero sonhar com o tempo que passei
Quero lembrar alguém que tanto amei
Toca ó zíngaro, acalma enfim esta paixão

 

You can listen "Zíngaro" sung by Prlando Silva here.

Thursday's Serial: “The Centaur” by Algernon Blackwood (in English) - X

 

CHAPTER XXIV

Stahl, he remembers, had been talking for a long time. The general sense of what he said reached him, perhaps, but certainly not many of the words. The doctor, it was clear, wished to coax from him the most intimate description possible of his experience. He put things crudely in order to challenge criticism, and thus to make his companion's reason sit in judgment on his heart. If this visionary Celt would let his intellect pass soberly and dissectingly upon these flaming states of wider consciousness he had touched, the doctor would have data of real value for his own purposes.

But this discriminating analysis was precisely what the Irishman found impossible. His soul was too "dispersed" to concentrate upon modern terms and phrases. These in any case dealt only with the fragments of Self that manifested through brain and body. The rest could be felt only, never truly described. Since the beginning of the world such transcendental experiences had never been translatable in the language of "common" sense; and today, even, when a few daring minds sought a laborious classification, straining the resources of psychology, the results were little better than a rather enticing and suggestive confusion.

In his written account, indeed, he gives no proper report of what Stahl tried to say. A gaping hiatus appears in the manuscript, with only asterisks and numbers that referred to pages of his tumbled notebooks. Following these indications I came across the skeletons of ideas which perhaps were the raw material, so to say, of these crude and speculative statements that the German poured out at him across that cabin--blocks of exaggeration he flung at him, in the hope of winning some critical and intelligible response. Like the structure of some giant fairy-tale they read--some toppling scaffolding that needed reduction in scale before it could be focused for normal human sight.

"Nature" was really alive for those who believed--and worshipped; for worship was that state of consciousness which opens the sense and provides the channel for this singular interior realization. In very desolate and lonely places, unsmothered and unstained by men as they exist today, such expressions of the Earth's stupendous, central vitality were still possible.... The "Russian" himself was some such fragment, some such cosmic being, strayed down among men in a form outwardly human, and the Irishman had in his own wild, untamed heart those same very tender and primitive possibilities which enabled him to know and feel it.

In the body, however, he was fenced off--without. Only by the disentanglement of his primitive self from the modern development which caged it, could he recover this strange lost Eden and taste in its fullness the mother-life of the planetary consciousness which called him back. This dissociation might be experienced temporarily as a subliminal adventure; or permanently--in death.

Here, it seemed, was a version of the profound mystical idea that a man must lose his life to find it, and that the personal self must be merged in a larger one to know peace--the incessant, burning nostalgia that dwells in the heart of every religion known to men: escape from the endless pain of futile personal ambitions and desires for external things that are unquenchable because never possible of satisfaction. It had never occurred to him before in so literal and simple a form. It explained his sense of kinship with the earth and nature rather than with men....

There followed, then, another note which the Irishman had also omitted from his complete story as I found it--in this MS. that lay among the dust and dinginess of the Paddington back-room like some flaming gem in a refuse heap. It was brief but pregnant--the block of another idea, Fechner's apparently, hurled at him by the little doctor.

That, just as the body takes up the fact of the bruised lung into its own general consciousness, lifting it thereby from the submerged, unrealized state; and just as our human consciousness can be caught up again as a part of the earth's; so, in turn, the Planet's own vast personality is included in the collective consciousness of the entire Universe--all steps and stages of advance to that final and august Consciousnss of which they are fragments, projections, manifestations in Time--GOD.

And the immense conception, at any rate, gave him a curious, flashing clue to that passionate inclusion which a higher form of consciousness may feel for the countless lesser manifestations below it; and so to that love for humanity as a whole that saviors feel....

Yet, out of all this deep flood of ideas and suggestions that somehow poured about him from the mind of this self-contradictory German, alternately scientist and mystic, O'Malley emerged with his own smaller and vivid personal delight that he would presently himself--escape: escape under the guidance of the big Russian into some remote corner of his own extended Being, where he would enjoy a quasi-merging with the Earth-life, and know subjectively at least the fruition of all his yearnings.

The doctor had phrased it once that a part of him fluid, etheric or astral, malleable by desire, would escape and attain to this result. But, after all, the separation of one portion of himself from the main personality could only mean being conscious it: another part of it--in a division usually submerged.

As Stahl so crudely put it, the Earth had bruised him. He would know in some little measure the tides of her own huge life, his longings, loneliness, and nostalgia explained and satisfied. He would find that fair old Garden. He might even know the lesser gods.

That afternoon at Smyrna the matter was officially reported, and so officially done with. It caused little enough comment on the steamer. The majority of the passengers had hardly noticed the boy at all, much less his disappearance; and while many of them landed there for Ephesus, still more left the ship next day at Constantinople.

The big Russian, though he kept mostly to his own cabin, was closely watched by the ship's officers, and O'Malley, too, realized that he was under observation. But nothing happened; the emptied steamer pursued her quiet way, and the Earth, unrealized by her teeming freight so busy with their tiny personal aims, rushed forwards upon her glorious journey through space.

O'Malley alone realized her presence, aware that he rushed with her amid a living universe. But he kept his new sensations to himself. The remainder of the voyage, indeed, across the Black Sea via Samsoun and Trebizond, is hazy in his mind so far as practical details are concerned, for he found himself in a dreamy state of deep peace and would sometimes sit for hours in reverie, only reminded of the present by certain pricks of annoyance from the outer world. He had returned, of course, to his own stateroom, yet felt in such close sympathy with his companion that no outward expression by way of confidence or explanation was necessary. In their Subconsciousness they were together and at one.

The pricks of annoyance came, as may be expected, chiefly from Dr. Stahl, and took the form of variations of "I told you so." The man was in a state of almost anger, caused half by disappointment, half by unsatisfied curiosity. His cargo of oil and water would not mix, yet he knew not which to throw overboard; here was another instance where facts refused to tally with the beliefs dictated by sane reason; where the dazzling speculations he played with threatened to win the day and destroy the compromise his soul loved.

The Irishman, however, did not resent his curiosity, though he made no attempt to satisfy it. He allowed him to become authoritative and professional, to treat him somewhat as a patient. What could it matter to him, who in a few hours would land at Batoum and go off with his guide and comrade to some place where--? The thought he could never see completed in words, for he only knew that the fulfillment of the adventure would take place--somewhere, somehow, somewhen--in that space within the soul of which external space is but an image and a figure. What takes place in the mind and heart are alone the true events; their outward expression in the shifting and impermanent shapes of matter is the least real thing in all the world. For him the experience would be true, real, authoritative--fact in the deepest sense of the word. Already he saw it "whole."

Faith asks no travelers' questions--exact height of mountains, length of rivers, distance from the sea, precise spelling of names, and so forth. He felt--the quaint and striking simile is in the written account--like a man hunting for a pillar-box in a strange city--absurdly difficult to find, as though purposely concealed by the authorities amid details of street and houses to which the eye is unaccustomed, yet really close at hand all the time....

But at Trebizond, a few hours before Batoum, Dr. Stahl in his zealous attentions went too far; for that evening he gave his "patient" a sleeping-draught in his coffee that caused him to lie for twelve hours on the cabin sofa, and when at length he woke toward noon, the Customs officers had been aboard since nine o'clock, and most of the passengers had already landed.

Among them, leaving no message, the big Russian had also gone ashore. And, though Stahl may have been actuated by the wisest and kindest motives, he was not quite prepared for the novel experience with which it provided him--namely, of hearing an angry Irishman saying rapidly what he thought of him in a stream of eloquent language that lasted nearly a quarter of an hour without a break!

 

 

CHAPTER XXV

Although Batoum is a small place, and the trains that leave it during the day are few enough, O'Malley knew that to search for his friend by the methods of the ordinary detective was useless. It would have been also wrong. The man had gone deliberately, without attempting to say good-bye--because, having come together in the real and inner sense, real separation was not possible. The vital portion of their beings, thought, feeling, and desire, were close and always would be. Their bodies, busy at different points of the map among the casual realities of external life, could make no change in that. And at the right moment they would assuredly meet again to begin the promised journey.

Thus, at least, in some fashion peculiarly his own, was the way the Irishman felt; and this was why, after the first anger with his German friend, he resigned himself patiently to the practical business he had in hand.

The little incident was characteristically revealing, and shows how firmly rooted in his imaginative temperament was the belief, the unalterable conviction rather, that his life operated upon an outer and an inner plane simultaneously, the one ever reacting upon the other. It was as if he were aware of two separate sets of faculties, subtly linked, one carrying on the affairs of the physical man in the "practical" world, the other dealing with the spiritual economy in the subconscious. To attend to the latter alone was to be a useless dreamer among men, unpractical, unbalanced; to neglect it wholly for the former was to be crassly limited, but half alive; to combine the two in effective co-operation was to achieve that high level of a successful personality, which some perhaps term genius, some prophet, and others, saint. It meant, at any rate, to have sources of inspiration within oneself.

Thus he spent the day completing what was necessary for his simple outfit, and put up for the night at one of the little hotels that spread their tables invitingly upon the pavement, so that dinner may be enjoyed in full view of one of the most picturesque streams of traffic it is possible to see.

The sultry, enervating heat of the day had passed and a cool breeze came shorewards over the Black Sea. With a box of thin Russian cigarettes before him he lingered over the golden Kakhetian wine and watched the crowded street. Knowing enough of the language to bargain smartly for his room, his pillows, sheets, and samovar, he yet could scarcely compass conversation with the strangers about him. Of Russian proper, besides, he heard little; there was a Babel of many tongues, Armenian, Turkish, Georgian, explosive phrases of Swanetian, soft gliding Persian words, and the sharp or guttural exclamations of the big-voiced, giant fellows, all heavily armed, who belonged to the bewildering tribes that dwelt among the mountains beyond. Occasionally came a broken bit of French or German; but they strayed in, lost and bizarre, as fragments from some distant or forgotten world.

Down the pavement, jostling his elbows, strode the constant, gorgeous procession of curious, wild, barbaric faces, bearded, with hooked noses, flashing eyes, burkas flowing; cartridge-belts of silver and ivory gleaming across chests in the glare of the electric light; bashliks of white, black, and yellow wool upon the head, increasing the stature; evil-looking Black Sea knives stuck in most belts, rifles swung across great supple shoulders, long swords trailing; Turkish gypsies, dark and furtive-eyed, walking softly in leather slippers--of endless and fascinating variety, many colored and splendid, it all was. From time to time a droschky with two horses, or a private carriage with three, rattled noisily over the cobbles at a reckless pace, stopping with the abruptness of a practiced skater; and officers with narrow belted waists like those of women, their full-skirted cloaks reaching half-way down high boots of shining leather, sprang out to pay the driver and take a vacant table at his side; and once or twice a body of soldiers, several hundred strong, singing the national songs with a full-throated vigor, hoarse, wild, somehow half terrible, passed at a swinging gait away into the darkness at the end of the street, the roar of their barbaric singing dying away in the distance by the sea where the boom of waves just caught it.

And O'Malley loved it all, and "thrilled" as he watched and listened. From his hidden self within something passed out and joined it. He felt the wild pulse of energetic life that drove along with the tumult of it. The savage, untamed soul in him leaped as he saw; the blood ran faster. Sitting thus upon the bank of the hurrying stream, he knew himself akin to the main body of the invisible current further out; it drew him with it, and he experienced a quickening of all his impulses toward some wild freedom that was mighty--clean--simple.

Civilian dress was rare, and noticeable when it came. The shipping agents wore black alpaca coats, white trousers, and modern hats of straw. A few ship's officers in blue, with official caps gold-braided, passed in and out like men without a wedding garment, as distressingly out of the picture as tourists in check knickerbockers and nailed boots moving through some dim cathedral aisle. O'Malley recognized one or two from his own steamer, and turned his head the other way. It hurt. He caught himself thinking, as he saw them, of Stock Exchanges, two-penny-tubes, Belgravia dinner parties, private views, "small and earlies," musical comedy, and all the rest of the dismal and meager program. These harmless little modern uniforms were worse than ludicrous, for they formed links with the glare and noise of the civilization he had left behind, the smeared vulgarity of the big cities where men and women live in their possessions, wasting life in that worship of external detail they call "progress"...

A well-known German voice crashed through his dream.

"Already at the wine! These Caucasian vintages are good; they really taste of grapes and earth and flowers. Yes, thanks, I'll join you for a moment if I may. We only lie three days in port and are glad to get ashore."

O'Malley called for a second glass, and passed the cigarettes.

"I prefer my black cigars, thank you," was the reply, lighting one. "You push on tomorrow, I suppose? Kars, Tiflis, Erzerum, or somewhere a little wilder in the mountains, eh?"

"Toward the mountains, yes," the Irishman said. Dr. Stahl was the only person he could possibly have allowed to sit next him at such a time. He had quite forgiven him now, and though at first he felt no positive welcome, the strange link between the two men quickly asserted itself and welded them together in that odd harmony they knew in spite of all differences. They could be silent together, too, without distress or awkwardness, sure test that at least some portion of their personalities fused.

And for a long time they remained silent, watching the surge and movement of the old, old types about them. They sipped the yellow wine and smoked. The stars came out; the carriages grew less; from far away floated a deep sonorous echo now and then of the soldiers singing by their barracks. Sometimes a steamer hooted. Cossacks swung by. Often some wild cry rang out from a side street. There were heavy, unfamiliar perfumes in the air. Presently Stahl began talking about the Revolution of a few years before and the scenes of violence he had witnessed in these little streets, the shooting, barricades, bombs thrown into passing carriages, Cossacks charging down the pavements with swords drawn, shouting and howling. O'Malley listened with a part of his mind at any rate. The rest of him was much further away.... He was up among the mountain fastnesses. Already, it seemed, he knew the secret places of the mist, the lair of every running wind....

Two tall mountain tribesmen swaggered past close to their table; the thick grey burkas almost swept their glasses. They walked magnificently with easy, flowing stride, straight from the hips.

"The earth here," said O'Malley, taking advantage of a pause in the other's chatter, "produces some splendid types. Look at those two; they make one think of trees walking--blown along bodily before a wind." He watched them with admiration as they swung off and disappeared among the crowd.

Dr. Stahl, glancing keenly at him, laughed a little.

"Yes," he said; "brave, generous fellows too as a rule, who will shoot you for a pistol that excites their envy, yet give their life to save one of their savage dogs. They're still--natural," he added after a moment's hesitation; "still unspoiled. They live close to Nature with a vengeance. Up among the Ossetians on the high saddles you'll find true Pagans who worship trees, sacrifice blood, and offer bread and salt to the nature-deities."

"Still?" asked O'Malley, sipping his wine.

"Still," replied Stahl, following his example.

Over the glasses' rims their eyes met. Both smiled, though neither quite knew why. The Irishman, perhaps, was thinking of the little city clerks he knew at home, pigeon-breasted, pale-faced, under-sized. One of these big men, so full of rushing, vigorous life, would eat a dozen at a sitting.

"There's something here the rest of the world has lost," he murmured to himself. But the doctor heard him.

"You feel it?" he asked quickly, his eyes brightening. "The awful, primitive beauty--?"

"I feel--something, certainly," was the cautious answer. He could not possibly have said more just then; yet it seemed as though he heard far echoes of that voice that had been first borne to his ears across the blue Ægean. In the gorges of these terrible mountains it surely sounded still. These men must know it too.

"The spell of this strange land will never leave you once you've felt it," pursued the other quietly, his voice deepening. "Even in the towns here--Tiflis, Kutais--I have felt it. Hereabouts is the cradle of the human race, they say, and the people have not changed for thousands of years. Some of them you'll find"--he hunted for a word, then said with a curious, shrugging gesture, "terrific."

"Ah--" said the Irishman, lighting a fresh cigarette from the dying stump so clumsily that the trembling of the hand was noticeable.

"And akin most likely," said Stahl, thrusting his face across the table with a whispering tone, "to that--man--who--tempted you."

O'Malley did not answer. He drank the liquid golden sunshine in his glass; his eyes lifted to the stars that watched above the sea; between the surge of human figures came a little wind from the grim, mysterious Caucasus beyond. He turned all tender as a child, receiving as with a shock of sudden strength and sweetness a thousand intimate messages from the splendid mood of old Mother-Earth who here expressed herself in such a potent breed of men and mountains.

He heard the doctor's voice still speaking, as from a distance though:--

"For here they all grow with her. They do not fight her and resist. She pours freely through them; there is no opposition. The channels still lie open; ... and they share her life and power."

"That beauty which the modern world has lost," repeated the other to himself, lingering over the words, and wondering why they expressed so little of what he really meant.

"But which will never--can never come again," Stahl completed the sentence. There was a wistful, genuine sadness in his voice and eyes, and the sympathy touched the inflammable Celt with fire. It was ever thus with him. The little man opposite, with the ragged beard, and the bald, domed head gleaming in the electric light, had laid a card upon the table, showing a bit of his burning heart. The generous Irishman responded like a child, laying himself bare. So hungry was he for comprehension.

"Men have everywhere else clothed her fair body with their smothering, ugly clothing and their herded cities," he burst out, so loud that the Armenian waiter sidled up, thinking he called for wine. "But here she lies naked and unashamed, sweet in divinity made simple. By Jove! I tell you, doctor, it burns and sweeps me with a kind of splendid passion that drowns my little shame-faced personality of the twentieth century. I could run out and worship--fall down and kiss the grass and soil and sea--!"

He drew back suddenly like a wounded animal; his face turned scarlet, as though he knew himself convicted of an hysterical outburst. Stahl's eyes had changed even as he spoke the flaming words that struggled so awkwardly to seize his mood of rapture--a thought the Earth poured through him for a moment. The bitter, half-mocking smile lay in them, and on the lips the cold and critical expression of the other Stahl, skeptic and science-man. A revulsion of feeling caught them both. But to O'Malley came the thought that once again he had been drawn--was being coaxed for examination beneath the microscope.

"The material here," Stahl said presently, with the calm tones of a dispassionate diagnosis, "is magnificent as you say, uncivilized without being merely savage, untamed, yet far from crude barbarism. When the progress of the age gets into this land the transformation will be grand. When Russia lets in culture, when modern improvements have developed her resources and trained the wild human forces into useful channels...."

He went on calmly by the yard, till it was all the Irishman could do not to dash the wine-glass in his face.

"Remember my words when you are up in the lonely mountains," he concluded at length, smiling his queer sardonic smile, "and keep yourself in hand. Put on the brakes when possible. Your experience will thus have far more value."

"And you," replied O'Malley bluntly, so bluntly it was almost rudeness, "go back to Fechner, and try to save your compromising soul before it is too late--"

"Still following those lights that do mislead the morn," Stahl added gently, breaking into English for a phrase he apparently loved. They laughed and raised their glasses.

A long pause came which neither cared to break. The streets were growing empty, the personality of the mysterious little Black Sea port folding away into the darkness. The wilder element had withdrawn behind the shuttered windows. There came a murmur of the waves, but the soldiers no longer sang. The droschkys ceased to rattle past. The night flowed down more thickly from the mountains, and the air, moist with that malarial miasma which makes the climate of this reclaimed marsh whereon Batoum is built so unhealthy, closed unpleasantly about them. The stars died in it.

"Another glass?" suggested Stahl. "A drink to the gods of the Future, and till we meet again, on your return journey, eh?"

"I'll walk with you to the steamer," was the reply. "I never care for much wine. And the gods of the Future will prefer my usual offering, I think--imaginative faith."

The doctor did not ask him to explain. They walked down the middle of the narrow streets. No one was about, nor were there lights in many windows. Once or twice from an upper story came the faint twanging of a balalaika against the drone of voices, and occasionally they passed a little garden where figures outlined themselves among the trees, with the clink of glasses, laughter of men and girls, and the glowing tips of cigarettes.

They turned down toward the harbor where the spars and funnels of the big steamers were just visible against the sky, and opposite the unshuttered window of a shop--one of those modern shops that oddly mar the town with assorted German tinware, Paris hats, and oleographs indiscriminately mingled--Stahl stopped a moment and pointed. They moved up idly and looked in. From the shadows of the other side, well hidden, an armed patrol eyed them suspiciously, though they were not aware of it.

"It was before a window like this," remarked Stahl, apparently casually, "that I once in Tiflis overheard two mountain Georgians talking together as they examined a reproduction of a modern picture--Böcklin's 'Centaur.' They spoke in half whispers, but I caught the trend of what they said. You know the picture, perhaps?"

"I've seen it somewhere, yes," was the short reply. "But what were they saying?" He strove to keep his voice commonplace and casual like his companion's.

"Oh, just discussing it together, but with a curious stretched interest," Stahl went on. "One asked, 'What does it say?' and pointed to the inscription underneath. They could not read. For a long time they stared in silence, their faces grave and half afraid. 'What is it?' repeated the first one, and the other, a much older man, heavily bearded and of giant build, replied low, 'It's what I told you about'; there was awe in his tone and manner; 'they still live in the big valley of the rhododendrons beyond--' mentioning some lonely uninhabited region toward Daghestan; 'they come in the spring, and are very swift and roaring....You must always hide. To see them is to die. But they cannot die; they are of the mountains. They are older, older than the stones. And the dogs will warn you, or the horses, or sometimes a great sudden wind, though you must never shoot.' They stood gazing in solemn wonder for minutes...till at last, realizing that their silence was final, I moved away. There were manifestations of life in the mountains, you see, that they had seen and knew about--old forms akin to that picture apparently."

The patrol came out of his shadows, and Stahl quickly drew his companion along the pavement.

"You have your passport with you?" he asked, noticing the man behind them.

"It went to the police this afternoon. I haven't got it back yet." O'Malley spoke thickly, in a voice he hardly recognized as his own. How much he welcomed that casual interruption of the practical world he could never explain or tell. For the moment he had felt like wax in the other's hands. He had dreaded searching questions, and felt unspeakably relieved. A minute more and he would have burst into confession.

"You should never be without it," the doctor added. "The police here are perfect fiends, and can cause you endless inconvenience."

O'Malley knew it all, but gladly seized the talk and spun it out, asking innocent questions while scarcely listening to the answers. They distanced the patrol and neared the quays and shipping. In the darkness of the sky a great line showed where the spurs of the Lesser Caucasus gloomed huge and solemn to the East and West. At the gangway of the steamer they said good-bye. Stahl held the Irishman's hand a moment in his own.

"Remember, when you know temptation strong," he said gravely, though a smile was in the eyes, "the passwords that I now give you: Humanity and Civilization."

"I'll try."

They shook hands warmly enough.

"Come home by this steamer if you can," he called down from the deck. "And keep to the middle of the road on your way back to the hotel. It's safer in a town like this." O'Malley divined the twinkle in his eyes as he said it. "Forgive my many sins," he heard finally, "and when we meet again, tell me your own...." The darkness took the sentence. But the word the Irishman took home with him to the little hotel was the single one--Civilization: and this, owing to the peculiar significance of intonation and accent with which this bewildering and self-contradictory being had uttered it.