82 LITERATURE. 



War soon appeared in all his blazing glory, and went direct to his lovely little Atah. 



" Hail to thee ! Sweet and divine joy of mine. I stand overpowered by the sight of 

 thy beauty. Hail to thee ! " 



" Thou art so very kind to have come back so soon," and Atah's eyes, covered with the 

 velvety opacity of rapture, drank at the fountain of his beauty. 



" I would that I had been able to come sooner, dearest, but I could not do so. I wanted 

 to have news for thee and to have fulfilled thy desire. Since I left thee I have suffered terrible 

 pangs ; I have had once more to learn that the Gods themselves have to bend imder the yoke 

 of fatality, and that whatever be its stature and the exalted summit it has been called upon 

 to occupy, every creature is, after all, nothing but a pitiable and insignificant force when it 

 has to do with inexorable and blind fate." 



" I have visited the little globe where lies the land in which thou hast taken so much 

 interest, on which thou hast bestowed thy tender pity, I have visited it," said War, " and 

 my heart has bled. Alas ! Alas ! I was struck with remorse, terror, and sadness. Is it 

 not awful to think that every action, however noble, just, and pure be its motive, carries 

 always in its train lamentation and misery? that in the hosannah of every blessing is heard 

 the poisoned yell of malediction. Well, Atah mine, I have tried to atone for the crime 

 I have unwittingly committed, and I shall not stop until I shall have succeeded in erasing 

 completely the very last trace of it. If the past cannot be recalled, if a fault which has been, 

 is, and shall be forever, yet it is the duty of everyone, and particularly of a God, to do all 

 in his power, ceaselessly and unremittingly, to redeem it in fighting out to the very last the 

 consequences of an evil deed." 



" I have learned," continued War pensively, " two things which sadden me : the first 

 is, that the land has been so scorched from one end of the continent to the other, that the 

 inhabitants are all black, and will not be able to survive the accursed scourge, and it will be 

 inhabited by a different race who, I hope, will deal generously to the small remnant of the 

 first one. The second is that the thrice accursed gold which ran in mighty rivers from the 

 heart of Paouri and sank into the bowels of the earth will be dug out one day and will be the 

 chief cause of numberless and indescribable crimes, the atonement for which will take 

 centuries of repentance before the long wished for dawn shall at last appear on the horizon. 

 As for the worm of hypocrisy which was born from the putrefaction of Paouri's limbs, I 

 shall give men wisdom to fight it out, and that same wisdom shall also teach them to dig in 

 the earth and reach the stored sheets of water, which, brought to the surface, will transform 

 the parched land into the paradise which it was before, into a land of happiness, joy, and 

 plenty. Oh, my sweet Atah ! I shall have such solicitude for that poor land of thine ; I 

 shall bestow so much care on it, that it will one day be the most lovely of all, the centre to 

 which all the inhabitants of the earth will look with admiration, the focus from which shall 

 radiate on all the light of the grandest of all civilisations." 



" Oh, War ! How godly is thy heart, how sweet thy love, how beneficent thy sublime 

 intelligence, how limitless thy power ! I am filled with gratitude, I sink into nothingness 

 when listening to thy sublime work of redemption." 



" Thou art a divine woman, my beloved, but I have not yet finished," said War. "Listen ! 

 As I was looking at the little globe, scrutinising everything, trying to measure in my mind 

 the extent of evil, there rose towards me the most awful, the dreariest of all the plaints I have 

 ever heard. The land was moaning, the rugged rocks frowning, the tree trunks and branches 

 twisting themselves as in agony, and the breeze was carrying their lamentation upwards in 

 a prolonged wail which sounded terrible, accompanied by the lugubrious voice of a bird 

 which seemed to cry : ' Cur-lew . . . cur-lew . . .' in such a mournful, pitiful 

 tone, such a long sad cr3^ that I felt a shudder ; men and beasts, mountains, and plants, 

 helpless, speechless, groaning, weeping, gasping, dying. Oh, what a spectacle ! It will 

 never be erased from my mind, but will rise to my remembrance every time I shall hear of 

 my omnipotence. I was there, listening powerless, unable to cope at once with the evil. 



