Concerning Letters | Page 4

on a
journey. It was a late autumn evening with few pale stars and a moon

no larger than the paring of a finger-nail. And as he rode through the
purlieus of his city, the white mane of his amber- coloured steed was all
that he could clearly see in the dusk of the high streets. His way led
through a quarter but little known to him, and he was surprised to find
that his horse, instead of ambling forward with his customary gentle
vigour, stepped carefully from side to side, stopping now and then to
curve his neck and prick his ears- as though at some thing of fear
unseen in the darkness; while on either hand creatures could be heard
rustling and scuttling, and little cold draughts as of wings fanned the
rider's cheeks.
The Prince at last turned in his saddle, but so great was the darkness
that he could not even see his escort.
"What is the name of this street?" he said.
"Sire, it is called the Vita Publica."
"It is very dark." Even as he spoke his horse staggered, but, recovering
its foothold with an effort, stood trembling violently. Nor could all the
incitements of its master induce the beast again to move forward.
"Is there no one with a lanthorn in this street?" asked the Prince.
His attendants began forthwith to call out loudly for any one who had a
lanthorn. Now, it chanced that an old man sleeping in a hovel on a
pallet of straw was, awakened by these cries. When he heard that it was
the Prince of Felicitas himself, he came hastily, carrying his lanthorn,
and stood trembling beside the Prince's horse. It was so dark that the
Prince could not see him.
"Light your lanthorn, old man," he said.
The old man laboriously lit his lanthorn. Its pale rays fled out on either
hand; beautiful but grim was the vision they disclosed. Tall houses, fair
court-yards, and a palm grown garden; in front of the Prince's horse a
deep cesspool, on whose jagged edges the good beast's hoofs were
planted; and, as far as the glimmer of the lanthorn stretched, both ways
down the rutted street, paving stones displaced, and smooth tesselated
marble; pools of mud, the hanging fruit of an orange tree, and dark,
scurrying shapes of monstrous rats bolting across from house to house.
The old man held the lanthorn higher; and instantly bats flying against
it would have beaten out the light but for the thin protection of its horn
sides.
The Prince sat still upon his horse, looking first at the rutted space that

he had traversed and then at the rutted space before him.
"Without a light," he said, "this thoroughfare is dangerous. What is
your name, old man?"
"My name is Cethru," replied the aged churl.
"Cethru!" said the Prince. "Let it be your duty henceforth to walk with
your lanthorn up and down this street all night and every night,"--and
he looked at Cethru: "Do you understand, old man, what it is you have
to do?"
The old man answered in a voice that trembled like a rusty flute:
"Aye, aye!--to walk up and down and hold my lanthorn so that folk can
see where they be going."
The Prince gathered up his reins; but the old man, lurching forward,
touched his stirrup.
"How long be I to go on wi' thiccy job?"
"Until you die!"
Cethru held up his lanthorn, and they could see his long, thin face, like
a sandwich of dried leather, jerk and quiver, and his thin grey hairs
flutter in the draught of the bats' wings circling round the light.
"'Twill be main hard!" he groaned; "an' my lanthorn's nowt but a poor
thing."
With a high look, the Prince of Felicitas bent and touched the old man's
forehead.
"Until you die, old man," he repeated; and bidding his followers to light
torches from Cethru's lanthorn, he rode on down the twisting street.
The clatter of the horses' hoofs died out in the night, and the scuttling
and the rustling of the rats and the whispers of the bats' wings were
heard again.
Cethru, left alone in the dark thoroughfare, sighed heavily; then,
spitting on his hands, he tightened the old girdle round his loins, and
slinging the lanthorn on his staff, held it up to the level of his waist, and
began to make his way along the street. His progress was but slow, for
he had many times to stop and rekindle the flame within his lanthorn,
which the bats' wings, his own stumbles, and the jostlings of footpads
or of revellers returning home, were for ever extinguishing. In
traversing that long street he spent half the night, and half the night in
traversing it back