Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (645 page)

Is writ in Latin by severest pens,

Yet still they flit above the trodden grave

And find new bodies, animating them

In quaint and ghostly way with antique souls.

So Juan was a troubadour revived,

Freshening life’s dusty road with babbling rills

Of wit and song, living ‘mid harnessed men

With limbs ungalled by armour, ready so

To soothe them weary, and to cheer them sad.

Guest at the board, companion in the camp,

A crystal mirror to the life around,

Flashing the comment keen of simple fact

Defined in words ; lending brief lyric voice

To grief and sadness ; hardly taking note

Of difference betwixt his own and others’ ;

But rather singing as a listener

To the deep moans, the cries, the wild strong joys

Of universal Nature, old yet young.

Such Juan, the third talker, shimmering bright

As butterfly or bird with quickest life.

The silent ROLDAN has his brightness too,

But only in his spangles and rosettes.

His party-coloured vest, tight-fitting, and his hose,

Are dulled with old Valencian dust, his eyes

With straining fifty years at gilded balls

To catch them dancing, or with brazien looks

At men and women as he made his jests

Some thousand times and watched to count the pence

His wife was gathering. His olive face

Has an old writing in it, characters

Stamped deep by grins that had no merriment,

The soul’s rude mark proclaiming all its blank ;

As on some faces that have long grown old

In lifting tapers up to forms obscene.

On ancient walls and chuckling with false zest

To please my lord, who gives the larger fee

For that hard industry in apishness.

Roldan would gladly never laugh again ;

Pensioned, he would be grave as any ox,

And having beans and crumbs and oil secured

Would borrow no man’s jokes forevermore.

‘T is harder now because his wife is gone,

Who had quick feet, and danced to ravishment

Of every ring jewelled with Spanish eyes,

But died and left this boy, lame from his birth,

And sad and obstinate, though when he will

He sings God-taught such marrow-thrilling strains

As seem the very voice of dying Spring,

A flute-like wail that mourns the blossoms gone,

And sinks, and is not, like their fragrant breath,

With fine transition on the trembling air.

He sits as if imprisoned by some fear,

Motionless, with wide eyes that seem not made

For hungry glancing of a twelve-year’d boy

To mark the living thing that he could tease,

But for the gaze of some primeval sadness

Dark twin with light in the creative ray.

This little PABLO has his spangles too.

And large rosettes to hide his poor left foot

Rounded like any hoof (his mother thought

God willed it so to punish all her sins).

I said the souls were five, — besides the dog.

But there was still a sixth, with wrinkled face,

Grave and disgusted with all merriment

Not less than Roldan. It is ANNIBAL,

The experienced monkey who performs the tricks,

Jumps through the hoops, and carries round the hat.

Once full of sallies and. impromptu feats,

Now cautious not to light on aught that’s new,

Lest he be whipped to do it o’er again

From A to Z, and make the gentry laugh :

A misanthropic monkey, gray and grim,

Bearing a lot that has no remedy

For want of concert in the monkey tribe.

We see the company, above their heads

The braided matting, golden as ripe corn,

Stretched in a curving strip close by the grapes,

Elsewhere rolled back to greet the cooler sky ;

A fountain near, vase-shapen and broad-lipped.

Where timorous birds alight with tiny feet,

And hesitate and bend wise listening ears,

And fly away again with undipped beak.

On the stone floor the juggler’s heaped-up goods,

Carpet and hoops, viol and tambourine,

Where Annibal sits perched with brows severe,

A serious ape whom none take seriously,

Obliged in this fool’s world to earn his nuts

By hard buffoonery. We see them all,

And hear their talk, — the talk of Spanish men,

With Southern intonation, vowels turned

Caressingly between the consonants,

Persuasive, willing, with such intervals

As music borrows from the wooing birds,

That plead with subtly curving, sweet descent, —

And yet can quarrel, as these Spaniards can.

JUAN {near the doorway).

You hear the trumpet ? There’s old Ramon’s blast.

No bray but his can shake the air so well.

He takes his trumpeting as solemnly

As angel charged to wake the dead ; thinks war

Was made for trumpeters, and their great art

Made solely for themselves who understand it.

His features all have shaped themselves to blowing,

And when his trumpet’s bagged or left at home

He seems a chattel in a broker’s booth,

A spoutless watering-can, a promise to pay

No sum particular. O fine old Ramon !

The blasts get louder and the clattering hoofs ;

They crack the ear as well as heaven’s thunder

For owls that listen blinking. There’s the. banner.

HOST {joining him : the others follow to the door).

The Duke has finished reconnoitring, then?

We shall hear news. - They say he means sally, —

Would strike El Zagal’s Moors as they push home

Like ants with booty heavier than themselves ;

Then, joined by other nobles with their bands,

Lay siege to |Guadix. Juan, you’re a bird

That nest within the Castle. What say you?

JUAN.

Naught, I say naught. ‘T is but a toilsome game

To bet upon that feather Policy,

And guess where after twice a hundred puffs

‘T will catch another feather crossing it:

Guess how the cardinal will blow and how the king ;

What force my lady’s fan has ; how a cough

Seizing the Padre’s throat may raise a gust,

And how the queen may sigh the feather down.

Such catching at imaginary threads,

Such spinning twisted air, is not for me.

If I should want a game. I’ll rather bet

On racing snails, two large, slow, lingering snails, —

No spurring, equal weights, — a chance sublime,

Nothing to guess at, pure uncertainty.

Here comes the Duke. They give but- feeble shouts.

And some look sour.

HOST.

That spoils a fair occasion.

Civility brings no conclusions with it,

And cheerful Vivas make the moments glide

Instead of grating like a rusty wheel.

JUAN.

O they are dullards, kick because they’re stung,

And bruise a friend to show they hate a wasp.

HOST.

Best treat your wasp with delicate regard ;

When the right moment comes say, “By your leave,’

Use your heel — so ! and make an end of him.

That’s if we talked of wasps ; but our young Duke, —

Spain holds not a more gallant gentleman.

Live, live, Duke Silva! ‘T is a rare smile he has,

But seldom seen.

JUAN.

A true hidalgo’s smile,

That gives much favor, but beseeches none.

His smile is sweetened by his gravity :

It comes like dawn upon Sierra snows,

Seeming more generous for the coldness gone ;

Breaks from the calm — a sudden opening flower

On dark deep waters : one moment shrouded close,

A mystic shrine, the next a full-rayed star,

Thrilling, pulse-quickening as a living word.

I’ll make a song of that.

HOST.

Prithee, not now.

You’ll fall to staring like a wooden saint,