Tancred - Benjamin Disraeli (little readers txt) 📗

is but natural, since Asia is the only portion of the world which the Creator of that world has deigned to visit, and in which he has ever conferred with man, is unhappily losing its faith in those ideas and convictions that hitherto have governed the human race. We think, therefore, the time has arrived when Asia should make one of its periodical and appointed efforts to reassert that supremacy. But though we are acting, as we believe, under a divine impulse, it is our duty to select the most fitting human agents to accomplish a celestial mission. We have thought, therefore, that it should devolve on Syria and Arabia, countries in which our God has even dwelt, and with which he has been from the earliest days in direct and regular communication, to undertake the solemn task. Two races of men, alike free, one inhabiting the desert, the other the mountains, untainted by any of the vices of the plains, and the virgin vigour of their intelligence not dwarfed by the conventional superstitions of towns and cities, one prepared at once to supply an unrivalled cavalry, the other an army ready equipped of intrepid foot-soldiers, appear to us to be indicated as the natural and united conquerors of the world. We wish to conquer that world, with angels at our head, in order that we may establish the happiness of man by a divine dominion, and crushing the political atheism that is now desolating existence, utterly extinguish the grovelling tyranny of self-government.'

The Queen of the Ansarey listened with deep and agitated attention to Tancred. When he had concluded, she said, after a moment's pause, 'I believe also in the necessity of the spiritual supremacy of our Asia. And since it has ceased, it seems not to me that man and man's life have been either as great or as beautiful as heretofore. What you have said assures me that it is well that you have come hither. But when you speak of Arabia, of what God is it you speak?'

'I speak of the only God, the Creator of all things, the God who spoke on the Arabian Mount Sinai, and expiated our sins upon the Syrian Mount Calvary.'

'There is also Mount Olympus,' said the Queen, 'which is in Anatolia. Once the gods dwelt there.'--'The gods of poets,' said Tancred. 'No; the gods of the people; who loved the people, and whom the people loved.'

There was a pause, broken by the Queen, who, looking at her minister, said, 'Noble Keferinis, the thoughts of these princes are divine, and in every respect becoming celestial things. Is it not well that the gates of the beautiful and the sacred should not be closed?'

'In every sense, irresistible Queen, it is well that the gates of the beautiful and the sacred should not be closed.'

'Then let them bring garlands. Princes,' the Queen continued, 'what the eye of no stranger has looked upon, you shall now behold. This also is Asian and divine.'

Immediately the chamber again filled. The Queen, looking at the two princes and bowing, rose from her seat. They instantly followed her example. One came forward, offering to the Queen, and then to each of them, a garland. Garlands were also taken by Keferinis and a few others. Cypros and her companions walked first, then Keferinis and one who had stood near the royal divan; the Queen, between her two guests, followed, and after her a small and ordered band.

They stopped before a lofty portal of bronze, evidently of ancient art.' This opened into a covered and excavated way, in some respects similar to that which had led them directly to the castle of Gin-darics; but, although obscure, not requiring artificial light, yet it was of no inconsiderable length. It emerged upon a platform cut out of the natural rock; on all sides were steep cliffs, above them the bright blue sky. The ravine appeared to be closed on every side.

The opposite cliff, at the distance of several hundred yards, reached by a winding path, presented, at first, the appearance of the front of an ancient temple; and Tancred, as he approached it, perceived that the hand of art had assisted the development of an imitation of nature: a pediment, a deep portico, supported by Ionic columns, and a flight of steps, were carved out of the cliff, and led into vast caverns, which art also had converted into lofty and magnificent chambers. When they had mounted the steps, the Queen and her companions lifted their garlands to the skies, and joined in a chorus, solemn and melodious, but which did not sound as the language of Syria. Passing through the portico, Tancred found himself apparently in a vast apartment, where he beheld a strange spectacle.

At the first glance it seemed that, ranged on blocks of the surrounding mountains, were a variety of sculptured figures of costly materials and exquisite beauty; forms of heroic majesty and ideal grace; and, themselves serene and unimpassioned, filling the minds of the beholders with awe and veneration. It was not until his eye was accustomed to the atmosphere, and his mind had in some degree recovered from the first strange surprise, that Tancred gradually recognised the fair and famous images over which his youth had so long and so early pondered. Stole over his spirit the countenance august, with the flowing beard and the lordly locks, sublime on his ivory throne, in one hand the ready thunderbolt, in the other the cypress sceptre; at his feet the watchful eagle with expanded wings: stole over the spirit of the gazing pilgrim, each shape of that refined and elegant hierarchy made for the worship of clear skies and sunny lands; goddess and god, genius and nymph, and faun, all that the wit and heart of man can devise and create, to represent his genius and his passion, all that the myriad developments of a beautiful nature can require for their personification. A beautiful and sometimes flickering light played over the sacred groups and figures, softening the ravages of time, and occasionally investing them with, as it were, a celestial movement.

'The gods of the Greeks!' exclaimed Tancred.

'The gods of the Ansarey,' said the Queen; 'the gods of my fathers!'

'I am filled with a sweet amazement,' murmured Tancred. 'Life is stranger than I deemed. My soul is, as it were, unsphered.'

'Yet you know them to be gods,' said the Queen; 'and the Emir of the Lebanon does not know them to be gods?'

'I feel that they are such,' said Fakredeen.

'How is this, then?' said the Queen. 'How is it that you, the child of a northern isle----'

'Should recognise the Olympian Jove,' said Tancred. 'It seems strange; but from my earliest youth I learnt these things.'

'Ah, then,' murmured the Queen to herself, and with an expression of the greatest satisfaction, 'Dar-kush was rightly informed; he is one of us.'

'I behold then, at last, the gods of the Ansarey,' said Fakredeen.

'All that remains of Antioch, noble Emir; of Anti-och the superb, with its hundred towers, and its sacred groves and fanes of flashing beauty.'

'Unhappy Asia!' exclaimed the Emir; 'thou hast indeed fallen!'

'When all was over,' said the Queen; 'when the people refused to sacrifice, and the gods, indignant, quitted earth, I hope not for ever, the faithful few fled to these mountains with the sacred images, and we have cherished them. I told you we had beautiful and consoling thoughts, and more than thoughts. All else is lost, our wealth, our arts, our luxury, our invention, all have vanished. The niggard earth scarcely yields us a subsistence; we dress like Kurds, feed hardly as well; but if we were to quit these mountains, and wander like them on the plains with our ample flocks, we should lose our sacred images, all the traditions that we yet cherish in our souls, that in spite of our hard lives preserve us from being barbarians; a sense of the beautiful and the lofty, and the divine hope that, when the rapidly consummating degradation of Asia has been fulfilled, mankind will return again to those gods who made the earth beautiful and happy; and that they, in their celestial mercy, may revisit that world which, without them, has become a howling wilderness.'

'Lady,' said Tancred, with much emotion, 'we must, with your permission, speak of these things. My heart is at present too full.'

'Come hither,' said the Queen, in a voice of great softness; and she led Tancred away.

They entered a chamber of much smaller dimensions, which might be looked upon as a chapel annexed to the cathedral or Pantheon which they had quitted. At each end of it was a statue. They paused before one. It was not larger than life, of ivory and gold; the colour purer than could possibly have been imagined, highly polished, and so little injured, that at a distance the general effect was not in the least impaired.

'Do you know that?' asked the Queen, as she looked at the statue, and then she looked at Tancred.

'I recognise the god of poetry and light,' said Tancred; 'Phoebus Apollo.'

'Our god: the god of Antioch, the god of the sacred grove! Who could look upon him, and doubt his deity!'

'Is this indeed the figure,' murmured Tancred, 'before which a hundred steers have bled? before which libations of honeyed wine were poured from golden goblets? that lived in a heaven of incense?'

'Ah! you know all.'

'Angels watch over us!' said Tancred, 'or my brain will turn. And who is this?'

'One before whom the pilgrims of the world once kneeled. This is the Syrian goddess; the Venus of our land, but called among us by a name which, by her favour, I also bear, Astarte.'


CHAPTER LIII.


Fakredeen's Plots


AND when did men cease from worshipping them?' asked Fakredeen of Tancred; 'before the Prophet?' 'When truth descended from Heaven in the person of Christ Jesus.'

'But truth had descended from Heaven before Jesus,' replied Fakredeen; 'since, as you tell me, God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, and since then to many of the prophets and the princes of Israel.'

'Of whom Jesus was one,' said Tancred; 'the descendant of King David as well as the Son of God. But through this last and greatest of their princes it was ordained that the inspired Hebrew mind should mould and govern the world. Through Jesus God spoke to the Gentiles, and not to the tribes of Israel only. That is the great worldly difference between Jesus and his inspired predecessors. Christianity is Judaism for the multitude, but still it is Judaism, and its development was the death-blow of the Pagan idolatry.'

'Gentiles,' murmured Fakredeen; 'Gentiles! you are a Gentile, Tancred?'

'Alas! I am,' he answered, 'sprung from a horde of Baltic pirates, who never were heard of during the greater annals of the world, a descent which I have been educated to believe was the greatest of honours. What we should have become, had not the Syro-Arabian creeds formed our minds, I dare not contemplate. Probably we should have perished in mutual destruction. However, though rude and modern Gentiles, unknown to the Apostles, we also were in time touched with the sacred symbol, and originally endowed with an organisation of a high class, for our ancestors wandered from Caucasus; we have become kings and princes.'

'What a droll thing is history,' said Fakredeen. 'Ah! if I were only acquainted with it, my education would be complete. Should you call me a Gentile?'

'I have great doubts whether such an appellation could be extended