Page:All the Year Round - Series 1 - Volume 9.djvu/237

Charles Dickens.] THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. [May 2,186] 229 vices by which he guarded them. In the mean while, the sultan sought far and wide for his child, without success; and he was amazed and sorrowful. Some time having been passed by the princess very pleasantly in the society of Virgilius, she requested permission to return home. The enchanter accordingly transported the lady across his magic bridge into her father's palace, and left her lying on the bed in her own chamber, where she was found sleeping. The sultan demanded an explanation of the mystery. "Father," said she, "a fair man of a strange land carried me through the air to his palace and orchard; but I know not what land it is, for I have spoken to no one but him." The sultan then charged her, when next she was taken away by her unknown visitor, to bring back some of the fruit of the orchard, that he might discover what country she was carried to. At the first opportunity, she possessed herself of some walnuts and other fruit; on beholding which, the sultan exclaimed, "I see it is on this side of France that he hath so often borne you away." Then he told his daughter to give her lover, when he came again, a certain drink, which would have the effect of easting him into a deep slumber, and, as soon as this was accomplished, to let him know. The princess did as she was directed, and Virgilius, having drunk the potion, was overcome with sleep, and so was taken. On recovering his senses, he was brought before the sultan, who told him that for what he had done he should suffer a shameful death. The lady said she would die with him, and her father replied that they should be burned together. But Virgilius resorted to his enchantments, and so wrought upon the sultan and his lords that they fancied themselves engulfed by the great river of Babylon. Suddenly the magician and the princess were seen high overhead on the bridge of air, passing across the sea into the distant land. The sultan was now delivered from his illusion about the river, but his daughter was beyond his grasp, and he never saw her again.

The castle of the enchanter was surrounded by a stream, and guarded at the only entrance by twelve iron men on each side, smiting dreadfully with iron flails, so that no one could enter without having his brains dashed out, unless the flails were stopped, which could only be done by Virgilius himself. One day it occurred to him that he could make himself young again; he therefore instructed his man in the method by which the flails could be stilled, and, taking him into a cellar, where there was a lamp burning perpetually, and a barrel, said: "You must slay me, cut me into small pieces, salt them, and place them in the barrel; putting the head at the bottom, and the heart in the middle. Then set the barrel under the lamp, that night and day it may leak and drop into the same; and once a day for nine days you must fill the lamp, and fail not. And when this is done, I shall be renewed and made young again, and live many winters more." The man, after divers protestations, fulfilled his master's wishes, and day by day went to the castle to replenish the lamp, always taking care when he left to set the iron flails going, so that the place might not be entered. The emperor, however, having missed Virgilius for seven days, summoned the man before him, and asked what had become of his master. The servant at first equivocated, but at length, under a threat of death, said that he had left him in his own abode. The emperor and the man then departed for the castle, which stood a little without the city walls, and the monarch commanded that the flails might be made to cease from smiting. The man said that he knew not the way; but another menace of instant death induced him to still those dreadful engines, and both entered the castle, and searched high and low for the magician, but found him not. At last they came to the cellar, and the emperor, seeing the remains of Virgilius in the barrel, and divining that his man had slain him, at once despatched the latter with his sword. Immediately afterwards, a naked child was seen to rise from the barrel, and to run three times round about it, exclaiming, "Cursed be the time that ever you came here!" Then the child vanished like smoke, and was never again seen; and Virgilius remained in the barrel, dead, his hopes of renewed youth being frustrated by the impatience of the monarch.

is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this subject.

When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one great extremity, sea-sickness—who was a mere bilious torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach—who had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I know where it is before-hand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways, and I know—and I can bear—its worst behaviour.

Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach; sneaking Calais, prone behind its, bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit, and you think you are there—roll, roar, wash!—Calais