the pearl of love

h.g. wells

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the pearl is lovelier than the most brilliant of crystalline stones, themoralist declares, because it is made through the suffering of a livingcreature. about that i can say nothing because i feel none of thefascination of pearls. their cloudy lustre moves me not at all. nor cani decide for myself upon that agelong dispute whether the pearl of loveis the cruellest of stories or only a gracious fable of the immortalityof beauty.

both the story and the controversy will be familiar to students ofmediaeval persian prose. the story is a short one, though the commentaryupon it is a respectable part of the literature of that period. theyhave treated it as a poetic invention and they have treated it as anallegory meaning this, that, or the other thing. theologians have hadtheir copious way with it, dealing with it particularly as concerningthe restoration of the body after death, and it has been greatly used asa parable by those who write about aesthetics. and many have held it tobe the statement of a fact, simply and baldly true.

the story is laid in north india, which is the most fruitful soil forsublime love stories of all the lands in the world. it was in a countryof sunshine and lakes and rich forests and hills and fertile valleys;and far away the great mountains hung in the sky, peaks, crests, andridges of inaccessible and eternal snow. there was a young prince, lordof all the land; and he found a maiden of indescribable beauty anddelightfulness and he made her his queen and laid his heart at her feet.

love was theirs, full of joys and sweetness, full of hope, exquisite,brave and marvellous love, beyond anything you have ever dreamt of love.

it was theirs for a year and a part of a year; and then suddenly,because of some venomous sting that came to her in a thicket, she died.

she died and for a while the prince was utterly prostrated. he wassilent and motionless with grief. they feared he might kill himself, andhe had neither sons nor brothers to succeed him. for two days and nightshe lay upon his face, fasting, across the foot of the couch which boreher calm and lovely body. then he arose and ate, and went about veryquietly like one who has taken a great resolution. he caused her body tobe put in a coffin of lead mixed with silver, and for that he had anouter coffin made of the most precious and scented woods wrought withgold, and about that there was to be a sarcophagus of alabaster, inlaidwith precious stones. and while these things were being done he spenthis time for the most part by the pools and in the garden-houses andpavilions and groves and in those chambers in the palace where they twohad been most together, brooding upon her loveliness. he did not rendhis garments nor defile himself with ashes and sackcloth as the customwas, for his love was too great for such extravagances. at last he cameforth again among his councillors and before the people, and told themwhat he had a mind to do.

he said he could never more touch woman, he could never more think ofthem, and so he would find a seemly youth to adopt for his heir andtrain him to his task, and that he would do his princely duties asbecame him; but that for the rest of it, he would give himself with allhis power and all his strength and all his wealth, all that he couldcommand, to make a monument worthy of his incomparable, dear, lostmistress. a building it should be of perfect grace and beauty, moremarvellous than any other building had ever been or could ever be, sothat to the end of time it should be a wonder, and men would treasure itand speak of it and desire to see it and come from all the lands of theearth to visit and recall the name and the memory of his queen. and thisbuilding he said was to be called the pearl of love.

and this his councillors and people permitted him to do, and so he did.

year followed year and all the years he devoted himself to building andadorning the pearl of love. a great foundation was hewn out of theliving rock in a place whence one seemed to be looking at the snowywilderness of the great mountain across the valley of the world.

villages and hills there were, a winding river, and very far away threegreat cities. here they put the sarcophagus of alabaster beneath apavilion of cunning workmanship; and about it there were set pillars ofstrange and lovely stone and wrought and fretted walls, and a greatcasket of masonry bearing a dome and pinnacles and cupolas, as exquisiteas a jewel. at first the design of the pearl of love was less bold andsubtle than it became later. at first it was smaller and more wroughtand encrusted; there were many pierced screens and delicate clusters ofrosy-hued pillars, and the sarcophagus lay like a child that sleepsamong flowers. the first dome was covered with green tiles, framed andheld together by silver, but this was taken away again because it seemedclose, because it did not soar grandly enough for the broadeningimagination of the prince.

for by this time he was no longer the graceful youth who had loved thegirl queen. he was now a man, grave and intent, wholly set upon thebuilding of the pearl of love. with every year of effort he had learntnew possibilities in arch and wall and buttress; he had acquired greaterpower over the material he had to use and he had learnt of a hundredstones and hues and effects that he could never have thought of in thebeginning. his sense of colour had grown finer and colder; he cared nomore for the enamelled gold-lined brightness that had pleased him first,the brightness of an illuminated missal; he sought now for bluecolourings like the sky and for the subtle hues of great distances, forrecondite shadows and sudden broad floods of purple opalescence and forgrandeur and space. he wearied altogether of carvings and pictures andinlaid ornamentation and all the little careful work of men. "those werepretty things," he said of his earlier decorations; and had them putaside into subordinate buildings where they would not hamper his maindesign. greater and greater grew his artistry. with awe and amazementpeople saw the pearl of love sweeping up from its first beginnings to asuperhuman breadth and height and magnificence. they did not knowclearly what they had expected, but never had they expected so sublime athing as this. "wonderful are the miracles," they whispered, "that lovecan do," and all the women in the world, whatever other loves they had,loved the prince for the splendour of his devotion.

through the middle of the building ran a great aisle, a vista, that theprince came to care for more and more. from the inner entrance of thebuilding he looked along the length of an immense pillared gallery andacross the central area from which the rose-hued columns had long sincevanished, over the top of the pavilion under which lay the sarcophagus,through a marvellously designed opening, to the snowy wildernesses ofthe great mountain, the lord of all mountains, two hundred miles away.

the pillars and arches and buttresses and galleries soared and floatedon either side, perfect yet unobtrusive, like great archangels waitingin the shadows about the presence of god. when men saw that austerebeauty for the first time they were exalted, and then they shivered andtheir hearts bowed down. very often would the prince come to stand thereand look at that vista, deeply moved and not yet fully satisfied. thepearl of love had still something for him to do, he felt, before histask was done. always he would order some little alteration to be madeor some recent alterations to be put back again. and one day he saidthat the sarcophagus would be clearer and simpler without the pavilion;and after regarding it very steadfastly for a long time, he had thepavilion dismantled and removed.

the next day he came and said nothing, and the next day and the next.

then for two days he stayed away altogether. then he returned, bringingwith him an architect and two master craftsmen and a small retinue.

all looked, standing together silently in a little group, amidst theserene vastness of their achievement. no trace of toil remained in itsperfection. it was as if the god of nature's beauty had taken over theiroffspring to himself.

only one thing there was to mar the absolute harmony. there was acertain disproportion about the sarcophagus. it had never been enlarged,and indeed how could it have been enlarged since the early days. itchallenged the eye; it nicked the streaming lines. in that sarcophaguswas the casket of lead and silver, and in the casket of lead and silverwas the queen, the dear immortal cause of all this beauty. but now thatsarcophagus seemed no more than a little dark oblong that layincongruously in the great vista of the pearl of love. it was as ifsomeone had dropped a small valise upon the crystal sea of heaven.

long the prince mused, but no one knew the thoughts that passed throughhis mind.

at last he spoke. he pointed.

"take that thing away," he said.

the end