Part 35 (1/2)

Whether they be right or wrong, is what you, and such as you, have to find out at this day.'

Silent and thoughtful, Lancelot walked on by his side.

'What is become of your friend Tregarva? I met him this morning after he parted from you, and had some talk with him. I was sorely minded to enlist him. Perhaps I shall; in the meantime, I shall busy myself with you.'

'In what way,' asked Lancelot, 'most strange sir, of whose name, much less of whose occupation, I can gain no tidings.'

'My name for the time being is Barnakill. And as for business, as it is your English fas.h.i.+on to call new things obstinately by old names, careless whether they apply or not, you may consider me as a recruiting-sergeant; which trade, indeed, I follow, though I am no more like the popular red-coated ones than your present ”glorious const.i.tution” is like William the Third's, or Overbeck's high art like Fra Angelico's. Farewell! When I want you, which will be most likely when you want me, I shall find you again.'

The evening was pa.s.sed, as Claude had promised, in a truly Horatian manner. Sabina was most piquante, and Claude interspersed his genial and enthusiastic eloquence with various wise saws of 'the prophet.'

'But why on earth,' quoth Lancelot, at last, 'do you call him a prophet?'

'Because he is one; it's his business, his calling. He gets his living thereby, as the showman did by his elephant.'

'But what does he foretell?'

'Oh, son of the earth! And you went to Cambridge--are reported to have gone in for the thing, or phantom, called the tripos, and taken a first cla.s.s! . . . Did you ever look out the word ”prophetes” in Liddell and Scott?'

'Why, what do you know about Liddell and Scott?'

'Nothing, thank goodness; I never had time to waste over the crooked letters. But I have heard say that prophetes means, not a foreteller, but an out-teller--one who declares the will of a deity, and interprets his oracles. Is it not so?'

'Undeniably.'

'And that he became a foreteller among heathens at least--as I consider, among all peoples whatsoever--because knowing the real bearing of what had happened, and what was happening, he could discern the signs of the times, and so had what the world calls a shrewd guess--what I, like a Pantheist as I am denominated, should call a divine and inspired foresight--of what was going to happen.'

'A new notion, and a pleasant one, for it looks something like a law.'

'I am no scollard, as they would say in Whitford, you know; but it has often struck me, that if folks would but believe that the Apostles talked not such very bad Greek, and had some slight notion of the received meaning of the words they used, and of the absurdity of using the same term to express nineteen different things, the New Testament would be found to be a much simpler and more severely philosophic book than ”Theologians” (”Anthropo-sophists” I call them) fancy.'

'Where on earth did you get all this wisdom, or foolishness?'

'From the prophet, a fortnight ago.'

'Who is this prophet? I will know.'

'Then you will know more than I do. Sabina--light my meerschaum, there's a darling; it will taste the sweeter after your lips.' And Claude laid his delicate woman-like limbs upon the sofa, and looked the very picture of luxurious nonchalance.

'What is he, you pitiless wretch?'

'Fairest Hebe, fill our Prometheus Vinctus another gla.s.s of Burgundy, and find your guitar, to silence him.'

'It was the ocean nymphs who came to comfort Prometheus--and unsandalled, too, if I recollect right,' said Lancelot, smiling at Sabina. 'Come, now, if he will not tell me, perhaps you will?'

Sabina only blushed, and laughed mysteriously.

'You surely are intimate with him, Claude? When and where did you meet him first?'

'Seventeen years ago, on the barricades of the three days, in the charming little pandemonium called Paris, he picked me out of a gutter, a boy of fifteen, with a musket-ball through my body; mended me, and sent me to a painter's studio. . . . The next sejour I had with him began in sight of the Demawend. Sabina, perhaps you might like to relate to Mr. Smith that interview, and the circ.u.mstances under which you made your first sketch of that magnificent and little-known volcano?'