Nine Short Essays | Page 7

at dusk, if strange things did not go on
here at night, with this crowd of effigies of persons historical and more
or less mythological, in this garden peopled with the representatives of
the dead, and no doubt by the shades of kings and queens and courtiers,
'intrigantes' and panders, priests and soldiers, who live once in this old
pile--real shades, which are always invisible in the sunlight. They have
local attachments, I suppose. Can science tell when they depart forever
from the scenes of their objective intrusion into the affairs of this world,
or how long they are permitted to revisit them? Is it true that in certain
spiritual states, say of isolation or intense nervous alertness, we can see
them as they can see each other? There was I-- the I catalogued in the
police description--present in that garden, yet so earnestly longing to be
somewhere else that would it be wonderful if my 'eidolon' was
somewhere else and could be seen?--though not by a policeman, for
policemen have no spiritual vision.
There were no policemen in the garden, that I was certain of; but a little
after half-past one I saw a Man, not a man I had ever seen before, clad
in doublet and hose, with a short cloak and a felt cap with a white
plume, come out of the Pavillon de Flore and turn down the quay

towards the house I had seen that afternoon where it stood--of the
beautiful Gabrielle d'Estrees. I might have been mistaken but for the
fact that, just at this moment, a window opened in the wing of the same
pavilion, and an effeminate, boyish face, weak and cruel, with a crown
on its head, appeared and looked down into the shadow of the building
as if its owner saw what I had seen. And there was nothing remarkable
in this, except that nowadays kings do not wear crowns at night. It
occurred to me that there was a masquerade going on in the Tuileries,
though I heard no music, except the tinkle of, it might be, a harp, or
"the lascivious pleasing of a lute," and I walked along down towards
the central pavilion. I was just in time to see two ladies emerge from it
and disappear, whispering together, in the shrubbery; the one old, tall,
and dark, with the Italian complexion, in a black robe, and the other
young, petite, extraordinarily handsome, and clad in light and bridal
stuffs, yet both with the same wily look that set me thinking on poisons,
and with a grace and a subtle carriage of deceit that could be common
only to mother and daughter. I didn't choose to walk any farther in the
part of the garden they had chosen for a night promenade, and turned
off abruptly.
What?
There, on the bench of the marble hemicycle in the north grove, sat a
row of graybeards, old men in the costume of the first Revolution, a
sort of serene and benignant Areopagus. In the cleared space before
them were a crowd of youths and maidens, spectators and participants
in the Floral Games which were about to commence; behind the old
men stood attendants who bore chaplets of flowers, the prizes in the
games. The young men wore short red tunics with copper belts,
formerly worn by Roman lads at the ludi, and the girls tunics of white
with loosened girdles, leaving their limbs unrestrained for dancing,
leaping, or running; their hair was confined only by a fillet about the
head. The pipers began to play and the dancers to move in rhythmic
measures, with the slow and languid grace of those full of sweet wine
and the new joy of the Spring, according to the habits of the Golden
Age, which had come again by decree in Paris. This was the beginning
of the classic sports, but it is not possible for a modern pen to describe
particularly the Floral Games. I remember that the Convention ordered
the placing of these hemicycles in the garden, and they were executed

from Robespierre's designs; but I suppose I am the only person who
ever saw the games played that were expected to be played before them.
It was a curious coincidence that the little livid-green man was also
there, leaning against a tree and looking on with a half sneer. It seemed
to me an odd classic revival, but then Paris has spasms of that, at the
old Theatre Francais and elsewhere.
Pipes in the garden, lutes in the palace, paganism, Revolution--the
situation was becoming mixed, and I should not have been surprised at
a ghostly procession from the Place de la Concorde, through the
western gates, of the thousands of headless nobility, victims of the axe
and the basket; but, thank Heaven,