(from the “de l’allemagne.”) (1867.)
neptune is still the monarch of the empire of the seas, and pluto (although metamorphosed into the devil) has retained the throne of tartarus. they have both been more lucky than their brother jupiter, who had to suffer specially the vicissitudes of fortune. this third son of saturn, who after the fall of his sire assumed the sovereignty of the heavens, reigned for a long series of years on the summit of olympus, surrounded by a jovial court of high and of most high gods and demigods, as well as on high and of most high goddesses and nymphs—their celestial ladies of the bedchamber and maids of honor, who all led a joyous life, replete with ambrosia and nectar, despising the clowns attached to the soil down here, and taking no thought of the morrow. alas, when the reign of the cross, the empire of suffering, was proclaimed, the supreme chronide emigrated and disappeared amidst the tumult of the barbarian tribes which invaded the roman world. all traces of the ex-god were lost, and i have questioned in vain old chronicles and old women; no one has been able to furnish me with any information as to his destiny. i have burrowed in many a library, where i made them bring me the most magnificent codex enriched with gold and jewels, veritable odalisques in the harem of science; and as is the custom, i here render my public thanks to the erudite eunuchs who, without too much grumbling and sometimes even with affability, have given me access to these luminous treasures confided to their care. i am now convinced that the middle ages have not bequeathed to us any traditions concerning the fate of jupiter after the fall of paganism. all that i have been able to discover in connection with this subject is the history told me long ago by my friend niels andersen.
i have just mentioned niels andersen, and this good figure, at once so droll and so lovable, emerges all riant in my memory. i must devote a few lines to him here. for the rest, i like to indicate my authorities and to show their good or bad qualities, in order that the reader may be in a position to judge himself how far these authorities deserve to be trusted.
niels andersen, born at drontheim, in norway, was one of the most skilful and intrepid whalers i have ever known. it is to him that i am indebted for what knowledge i have of the whale fishery. he taught me all the subtleties of the art; he made me acquainted with all the stratagems and dodges which the intelligent animal employs to baffle these subtle snares and make its escape. it was niels andersen who taught me the management of the harpoon; he showed me how you should fix the knee of the right leg against the gun-whale of the boat when launching the harpoon, and how with the left leg you launch a vigorous kick at the imbecile sailor who don’t pay out quickly enough the rope attached to the harpoon. to him i owe all, and if i have not become a famous whaler the fault rests neither with niels andersen nor with myself, but with my evil star, which has never allowed me in the course of my life to encounter any whale with which i might have engaged in honorable combat. i have only encountered vulgar stockfish and miserable herrings. of what use is the best harpoon when you have to deal with a herring? now that my limbs are paralysed i must renounce for ever the hope of pursuing whales. when at ritzebuttel, near cuxhaven, i made the acquaintance of niels andersen. he was scarcely more nimble himself, for off the coast of senegal a young shark, which no doubt took his right leg for a stick of barley sugar, had snapped it off with a snap of his teeth. since then poor niels andersen went limping upon an artificial leg manufactured from one of the firs of his country, and which he extolled as a masterpiece of norwegian carpentry. his greatest pleasure at this period was to perch himself on the top of a large empty barrel, on the belly of which he drummed away with his wooden leg. i often helped him to climb upon this barrel; but sometimes, when he wished to get down again, i would not give him my help except on the condition that he told me one of his curious traditions of the arctic sea.
as mahomet-ebn-mansour commences all his poems with a eulogy of the horse, so niels andersen prefaced all his narratives with a panegyrical enumeration of the qualities of the whale. he of course commenced with such a panegyric the legend we give here.
“the whale,” he said, “is not only the largest, but also the most magnificent of animals; the two jets of water leaping from his nostrils, placed at the top of his head, give him the appearance of a fountain, and produce a magical effect, above all at night, in the moonshine. moreover, this beast is sympathetic. he has a good character and much taste for conjugal life. it is a touching sight,” he added, “to see a family of whales grouped around its venerable patriarch, and couched upon an enormous mass of ice, basking in the sun. sometimes the young ones begin to frisk and romp, and at length all plunge into the sea to play at hide-and-seek among the immense ice-blocks. the purity of manners and the chastity of the whales should be attributed less to moral principles than to the iciness of the water wherein they continually sport. nor can it, unhappily, be denied,” went on niels anderson, “that they have not any pious sentiment, that they are totally devoid of religion....”
“i believe this is an error,” i cried, interrupting my friend. “i have lately read the report of a dutch missionary, wherein he describes the magnificence of the creation, which, according to him, reveals itself even in the polar regions at the hour of sunrise, and when the teams of day, transfiguring the gigantic rocks of ice, make them resemble those castles of diamonds we read of in fairy tales. all this beauty of the creation, in the judgment of the good dominie, is a proof of the power of god which influences every living creature, so that not only man, but likewise a great brute of a fish, ravished by this spectacle, adores the creator and addresses to him its prayers. the dominie assures us that he has seen with his own eyes a whale which held itself erect against the wall of a block of ice, and swayed the upper part of its body as men do in prayer.”
niels andersen admitted that he had himself seen whales which, propping themselves against a cliff of ice, indulged in movements very similar to those we remark in the oratories of the various religious sects, but he maintained that devotion has nothing to do with this ph?nomenon. he explained it on physiological grounds; he called my attention to the fact that the whale, this chimborazo of animals, has beneath its skin strata of fat of a depth so prodigious that a single whale often furnishes a hundred to a hundred and fifty barrels of tallow and oil. these layers of fat are so thick that while the colossus sleeps, stretched at its full length upon an icefield, hundreds of water rats can come and settle in it. these convives immensely larger and more voracious than the rats of the mainland, lead joyous life under the skin of the whale, where day and night they gorge themselves with the most delicious fat without being obliged to quit their holes. these banquets of vermin at length trouble their involuntary host and even cause him excessive sufferings. not having hands as we have, who, god be thanked, can scratch ourselves when we feel an itching, the whale tries to mitigate his pangs by placing himself against the protruding and sharp angles of a rock of ice, and by there rasping his back with a real fervor and with vigorous movements up and down, as we see the dogs rasping their skin against a bed-post when the fleas bite them overmuch. now in these movements the good dominie thought he saw the edifying act of prayer, and he attributed to devotion the jerkings occasioned by the orgies of the rats. enormous as is the quantity of oil in the whale, it has not the least religious sentiment. it is only among animals of mediocre stature that we find any religion; the very great, the creatures gigantic like the whale are not endowed with it. what can be the reason? is it that they cannot find a church sufficiently spacious to afford them entrance into its pale? nor have the whales any taste for the prophets, and the one which swallowed jonah was not able to digest that great preacher; seized with nausea, it vomited him after three days. most certainly that proves the absence of all religious sentiment in these monsters. the whale, therefore, would never choose an ice-block for prayer-cushion, and sway itself in attitudes of devotion. it adores as little the true god who resides above there in heaven, as the false pagan god who dwells near the arctic pole, in the isle of the rabbits, where the dear beast goes sometimes to pay him a visit.
“what is this isle of rabbits?” i asked niels andersen. drumming on the barrel with his wooden leg, he answered, “it is exactly in this isle that the events took place of which i am going to tell you. i am not able to give you its precise geographical position. since its first discovery no one has been able to visit it again; the enormous mountains of ice accumulated around it bar the approach. once only has it been visited, by the crew of a russian whaler driven by-tempests into those northern latitudes, and that was more than a hundred years ago. when these sailors, reached it with their ship they found it deserted and uncultivated. sickly stalks of broom swayed sadly upon the quicksands; here and there were scattered some dwarf shrubs and stunted firs crouching on the sterile soil. rabbits ran about everywhere in great numbers; and this is the reason the sailors call the islet the isle of rabbits. a cabin, the only one they discovered, announced the presence of a human being. when the mariners had entered the hut they saw an old man, arrived at the most extreme decrepitude and miserably muffled in rabbit skins. he was seated upon a stone settle, and warmed his thin hands and trembling knees at the grate where some brushwood was burning. at his right hand stood a monstrously large bird, which seemed to be an eagle; but the moulting of time had so cruelly stripped it that only the great stiff main-plumes of its wings were left, so that the aspect of this naked animal was at once ludicrous and horribly ugly. on the left of the old man was couched upon the ground an aged bald-skinned she-got, yet with a gentle look, and which, in spite of its great age, had the dugs swollen with milk and the teats fresh and rosy.
“among the sailors who had landed on the isle of rabbits there were some greeks, and one of these, thinking that the man of the hut could not understand his tongue, said to his comrades in greek, ‘this queer old fellow must be either a ghost or an evil spirit.’ at these words the old man trembled and rose suddenly from his seat, and the sailors, to their great astonishment, saw a lofty and imposing figure, which, with imperious and even majestic dignity, held itself erect in spite of the weight of years, so that the head reached the rafters of the roof. his lineaments, though worn and ravaged, conserved traces of beauty; they were noble and perfectly regular. thin locks of silver hair fell upon the forehead wrinkled by pride and by age; his eyes, though glazed and lustreless, darted keen regards, and his finely-curved lips pronounced in the greek language, mingled with many archaisms, these words resonant and harmonious:—‘you are mistaken, young man, i am neither a spectre nor an evil spirit; i am an unfortunate who has seen better days. but you—what are you.’
“at this demand the seamen acquainted their host with the accident which had driven them out of their course, and they begged him to tell them all about the isle. but the old man could give them but scant information. he told them that from immemorial times he had dwelt in this isle, of which the ramparts of ice offered him a sure refuge against his implacable enemies, who had usurped his legitimate rights; that his main subsistence was derived from the rabbits with which the isle abounded; that every year, at the season when the floating ice-blocks formed a compact mass, troops of savages in sledges visited him, who, in exchange for his rabbit skins, gave him all sorts of articles most necessary to life. the whales, he said, which now and then approached his isle, were his favorite society. nevertheless, he added that he felt much pleasure at this moment in speaking his native language, being greek by birth. he begged his compatriots to inform him as to the then state of greece. he learnt with a malicious joy, badly dissimulated, that the cross once surmounting the towers of the hellenic cities had been shattered; he showed less satisfaction when they told him that this christian symbol had been replaced by the crescent. the most singular thing was that none of the seamen knew the names of the towns concerning which he questioned them, and which, according to him, had been flourishing cities in his time. on the other hand, the names by which the seamen designated the towns and villages of modern greece were completely unknown to him; and the old man shook his head often, as if quite overwhelmed, and the sailors looked at each other with wonder. they saw well that he knew perfectly the localities of the country, even to the minutest details; for he described clearly and exactly the gulfs, the peninsulas, the capes, often even, the most insignificant hills and isolated groups of rocks. his ignorance of the commonest typographical names, therefore astonished them all the more.
“the old man asked, with the most lively interest, and even with a certain anxiety, about an ancient temple, which, he said, had been of old the grandest in all greece. none of his hearers recognised the name,, which he pronounced with tender emotion. at last,, when he had minutely described the place where this, monument stood, a young seaman suddenly recognised the spot. ‘the village where i was born,’ he exclaimed, ‘is situated precisely there. during my childhood i have long watched there the pigs of my father. on this site there are, in fact, the ruins of very ancient constructions, which must have been incredibly magnificent. here and there you see some columns still erect; they are isolated or connected by fragments of roofing, whence hang tendrils of honeysuckle and red bind-weeds. other columns, some of them red marble, lie fractured on the grass. the ivy has invaded their superb capitals, formed of flowers and foliage delicately chiselled. great slabs of marble, squared fragments of wall and triangular pieces of roofing, are scattered about, half-buried in the earth. i have often, continued the young man, ‘passed hours at a time in examining the combats and the games, the dances and the processions, the beautiful and ludicrous figures which are sculptured there. unfortunately these sculptures are much injured by time, and are covered with moss and creepers. my father, whom i once asked what these ruins were, told me that they were the remnants of an ancient temple, of old inhabited by a pagan god, who not only indulged in the most gross debaucheries, but who was, moreover, guilty of incest and other infamous vices; that in their blindness the idolators had, nevertheless, immolated oxen, often by hundreds, at the foot of his altar. my father assured me that we still saw the marble basin wherein they had gathered the blood of the victims, and that it was precisely the trough to which i frequently led my swine to drink the rain-water, and in which i also preserved the refuse which my animals devoured with so much appetite.’
“when the young sailor had thus spoken, the old man gave a deep sigh of the most bitter anguish; he sank nerveless upon the stone seat, and hiding his visage in his hands, wept like a child. the bird at his side emitted terrible cries, spread its enormous wings, and menaced the strangers with talons and beak. the she-goat moaned and licked the hands of her master, whose sorrows she seemed trying to comfort by her humble caresses. at this sight a strange trouble swelled in the hearts of the seamen; they hastily quitted the hut, and did not feel at ease until they could no more hear the sobbings of the old man, the croakings of the hideous bird, and the bleatings of the goat. when they got on board their vessel again they related their adventures. among the crew there chanced to be a scholar, who declared that it was an event of the highest importance. applying with a sagacious air his right forefinger to his nose, he assured the seamen that the old man of the isle of rabbits was beyond all doubt the ancient god jupiter, son of saturn and rhea, once sovereign lord of the gods; that the bird which they had seen at his side was evidently the famous eagle which used to bear the thunderbolts in its talons; and that, in all probability, the goat was the old nurse amalthea, which had of old suckled the god in the isle of crete, and which now continued to nourish him with its milk in the isle of rabbits.”
such was the history of niels andersen, and it made my heart bleed. i will not dissemble; already his revelations concerning the secret sufferings of the whale had profoundly saddened me. poor animal! against this vile mob of rats, which house themselves in your body and gnaw you incessantly, no remedy avails, and you carry them about with you to the end of your days; rush as you will to the north and to the south, rasp yourself against the ice-rocks of the two poles, you can never get rid of these villainous rats? but pained as i had been by the outrage wreaked upon the poor whales, my soul was infinitely more troubled by the tragical fate of this old man who, according to the mythological theory of the learned russian, was the heretofore king of the gods, jupiter the chronide. yes, he, even he, was subject to the fatality of destiny, from which not the immortals themselves can escape; and the spectacle of such calamities horrifies us, in filling us with pity and indignation. be jupiter, be the sovereign lord of the world, the frown of whose brows made tremble the universe! be chanted by homer, and sculptured by phidias in gold and ivory; be adored by a hundred nations during long centuries; be the lover of semele, of danae, of europa, of alcmena, of io, of leda, of calisto! and after all, nothing will remain at the end but a decrepit old man, who to gain his miserable livelihood has to turn dealer in rabbit skins, like any poor savoyard. such a spectacle will no doubt give pleasure to the vile multitude, which insults to-day that which it adored yesterday. perhaps among these worthy people are to be found some of the descendants of those unlucky bulls which were of old immolated in hecatombs upon the altar of jupiter; let such rejoice in his fall, and mock him at their ease, in revenge for the blood of their ancestors, victims of idolatry; as for me, my soul is singularly moved, and i am seized with dolorous commiseration at the view of this august misfortune.
