Vigor" is a romantic study, tragical and lugubrious enough, of a case of abnormal passion. Numa Numantius in Germany, Krafft Ebing in Austria, Havelock Ellis in England, Lombroso in Italy, aud Tamowsky in Russia, hate sufficiently analysed all the grave problems resulting from this idiosyncracy. It is not for us to discuss the subject here. The world's literature is crowded with examples of this passionate friendship between youths and men … such as existea between Alcibiades and Socrates, between Shakespeare and Lord Pembroke, between Michael Angela and Cavalieri. Should Balzac be condemned because he describes the shameful love of Vautrin for Lucien de Rubempri? Or because, in his Fille aux Yeux d'Or, he has laid bare the heart of women who love each other? Horace, he of Rome, sang in flaming verse the praises of his young slave; Virgil chaunts the feeling of the shepherd Corydon for the handsome Alexis, Plutarch paints the heroic prowesses of the Theban legion.
Are all these famous authors to be regarded as Artists, faithful cinematographs of the scenes depicted, or as Apostles, seeking to propagate the practices of their characters? Must their works be therefore destroyed and themselves for ever held in reprobation, the mock of little men without a hundredth part of their lordly genius?
Because Molière described Harpagon, was he himself a miser? Because Cervantes pourtrayed mad Don Quixote, is he himself to be considered mad? Because the Bard of Avon created Othello, was he a jealous maniac? Or, for the sake of Falstaff, a merry-Andrew? Or, because of the witches in "Macbeth," a benighted sorcerer?
The questions are absurd, we know: but Eekhoud was accused of "preaching pederasty"—(although the story is one of passional affection and in nowise physiological i. e. uranism, a vastly different thing)—because of "Escal Vigor." His enemies, it is true, were unable to produce passages from the book in support of their thesis, but the saying stands: "Throw mud and some of it is sure to stick."
It so chanced that none stuck—that the mud, in defiance of all known laws of physical science, recoiled on the throwers. The enemy wrested of course, from their proper and natural place in the book, every picturesque expression, the hardiest details, the most scabrous scenes for the dissecting table of the Court-room, and these things being deemed insufficient, they scrutinised the writer's intentions,tried to surprise the underlying thought,pursuing the idea behind its last entrenchments, across the folds of the author s brain, naïvely surmising what the heroes might have been doing when they were not on the stage!
Ye Gods! They would have a Star-Chamber over again! Men came forward to say Eekhoud, the author of "La Nouvelle Carthage," "Mes Communions," "Le Cycle Patibulaire," and half a score others, wherein may be read, ringing and vibrating, prose-poems of pagan love, page s of tumultuous sorrow, pages consolatory of all pains, sounding depths of profoundest passion, confessing men of all creeds, outsoaring all faiths, eclipsing all religions and shibboleths, could not be the monster represented.
Men of genius themselves, like Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Theo. Hannon, Sander-Perron, Julius Hoste, Octave Maus, Albert Giraud, Valère Gilley some of them Catholics like Iwan Gilkin, the author of "Promethée," George Virrès, Du Catillon! The élite of Flanders and Wallonie!
Great penmen sent forth word from the neighbouring land of France that they held Eekhoud and all his works in the highest esteem—José de Heredia, Maurice Barres, Anatole France, Emile Zola, Edmond Haraucourty Catulle Mendis, and a host more, attested that this fox-terrier like worrying of a classic, such as "Escal Vigor," was odious to their souls; that a work of art could not, and should not, be judged save by a jury of competent literary men.
On Friday the 26th of October, 1900, George Eekhoud was acquitted. He left the Court "without a stain upon his character." "Escal Vigor" was exculpated from the accusation of intentional pornography and its gifted author came little short of apotheosis on the spot.
Thus it ever is and must be!
Eekhoud counts now among the great writers not of Belgium alone, but of the wide world.
Like the river that flows irresistibly forward to the sea, like the light that breaks out of the darkness, so the man foreordained must come at last into his own.
That day, in the Court-house, the lamps alight—for the sun had withdrawn its rays—ashamed maybe longer to illumine such a scene—
"The heathen did mightily rage, And the people imagined a vain thing; The lyings of the earth set themselves And the rulers took counsel together."
But their wiles and ruses and arguments and serried strength
"Were dashed in pieces Broken like a potter's vessel."
Gauntlet.
PART THE FIRST
THE
DYKGRAVE'S RETURN
I.
On the first of June, Henry de Kehlmark, the young "Dykgrave" or Count of the Dike, the lord of the castle Escal-Vigor, entertained a numerous company, as a sort of Joyous Entry, to celebrate his home-coming to the cradle of his forefathers, at Smaragdis, the largest and richest island in one of those enchanting and heroic northern seas, the coasts of which the bays and fiords hollow out and cut up capriciously into multiform archipelagoes and deltas.
Smaragdis, or the Emerald Isle, was a dependency of the half-German, half-Celtic kingdom of Kerlingalande. At the very beginning of commercial enterprise in the west, a colony of Hanseatic merchants settled there. The Kehlmarks claimed descent from the Danish sea-kings, or Vikings. Bankers, who had in them a dash of pirates' blood, men both of knowledge and action, they followed Frederick Barbarossa in his Italian expeditions, and distinguished themselves by an inalterable devotion, the fidelity of thane to king, to the House of Hohenstaufen.
A Kehlmark had even been the favourite of Frederick II., the Sultan of Luceria, that voluptuous emperor, the most artistic of the romantic house of Swabia, who, in that brilliant southern land, lived a life energised by the deep and virile aspirations of the north. This Kehlmark perished at Beneventum with Manfred, the son of his illustrious friend.
At the date of our story, a large panel in the billiard room of Escal-Vigor still represented Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, in the act of embracing Frederick of Baden before mounting with him on to the scaffold.
In the Fifteenth century, there flourished at Antwerp a Kehlmark, money-lender to kings, like the Fuggers and the Salviati, and he figured among those haughty Hanseatic merchants, whose custom it was to wend them to the Cathedral, or to the Exchange, preceded by fife and violin players.
An historic and even legendary abode, suggesting at once a German castle and an Italian palace, the castle of Escal-Vigor is situated at the western extremity of the island, at the intersection of two very lofty dikes, from whence it commands a view of the whole country.
From time immemorial the Kehlmarks had been considered as the masters and protectors of Smaragdis. The duty of guarding and keeping in repair the monumental dikes had been their's for centuries. An ancestor of Henry was credited with the erection of those enormous ramparts, which had for ever preserved the country from those inundations and sometimes total submersions, that had overwhelmed several of the sister-isles.
Once only, about the year 1400, on a wild, tempestuous night, the sea had succeeded in breaking through a part of this chain of artificial hills, and had rolled its cataclysmal waves to the very heart of the island; when, so the tradition runs, the castle of Escal-Vigor proved sufficiently spacious and well-provisioned to serve as refuge and storehouse for the entire population.
The Dykgrave sheltered his people as long as the waters covered the country, and when the flood had abated he not only repaired the dike at his own expense, but also rebuilt the cottages of his vassals. In process of time these dikes, now almost five centuries old,