he whole land."

CHAPTER VII.

THE KING OF THE DEAD.

At first she was not much affected by promises like these. A lonely
hermitage without God, amidst the great monotonous breezes of the
West, amidst memories all the more ruthless for that mighty solitude,
of such heavy losses, such sharp affronts; a widowhood so hard and
sudden, away from the husband who had left her to her shame--all this
was enough to bow her down. Plaything of fate, she seemed like the
wretched weed upon the moor, having no root, but tossed to and fro,
lashed and cruelly cut by the north-east winds; or rather, perhaps,
like the grey, many-cornered coral, which only sticks fast to get more
easily broken. The children trampled on her; the people said, with a
laugh, "She is the bride of the winds."

Wildly she laughed at herself when she thought on the comparison. But,
from the depth of her dark cave, she heard,--

"Ignorant and witless, you know not what you say. The plant thus
tossing to and fro may well look down upon the rank and vulgar herbs.
If it tosses, it is, at least, all self-contained--itself both flower
and seed. Do thou be like it; be thine own root, and even in the
whirlwind thou wilt still bear thy blossom: our own flowers for
ourselves, as they come forth from the dust of tombs and the ashes of
volcanoes.

"To thee, first flower of Satan, do I this day grant the knowledge of
my former name, my olden power. I was, I am, the _King of the Dead_.
Ay, have I not been sadly slandered? 'Tis I who alone can make them
reappear; a boon untold, for which I surely deserved an altar."

* * * * *

To pierce the future and to call up the past, to forestal and to live
again the swift-flying moments, to enlarge the present with that which
has been and that which will be--these are the two things forbidden to
the Middle Ages; but forbidden in vain. Nature is invincible; nothing
can be gained in such a quarter. He who thus errs is _a man_. It is
not for him to be rooted to his furrow, with eyes cast down, looking
nowhere beyond the steps he takes behind his oxen. No: we will go
forward with head upraised, looking further and looking deeper! This
earth that we measure out with so much care, we kick our feet upon
withal, and keep ever saying to it, "What dost thou hold in thy
bowels? What secrets lie therein? Thou givest us back the grain we
entrust to thee; but not that human seed, those beloved dead, we h