The torments of martyrdoms are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.
When you will have thoroughly mastered perspective and have learnt by heart the parts and forms of objects, strive when you go about to observe. Note and consider the circumstances and the actions or men, as they talk, dispute, laugh or fight together, and not only the behaviour of the men themselves, but that of the bystanders who separate them or look on at these things; and make a note of them, in this way, with slight marks in your little note-book. And you should always carry this note-book with you, and it should be of coloured paper, so that what you {109} write may not be rubbed out; but (when it is used up) change the old for a new one, since these things should not be rubbed out, but preserved with great care, because such is the infinity of the forms and circumstances of objects, that the memory is incapable of retaining them; wherefore keep these sketches as your guides and masters.
What is involved in such [close] relationships is a form of emotional chemistry, so far unexplained by any school of psychiatry I am aware of, that conditions nothing so simple as a choice between the poles of attraction and repulsion. You can meet some people thirty, forty times down the years, and they remain amiable bystanders, like the shore lights of towns that a sailor passes at stated times but never calls at on the regular run. Conversely, all considerations of sex aside, you can meet some other people once or twice and they remain permanent influences on your life. Everyone is aware of this discrepancy between the acquaintance seen as familiar wallpaper or instant friend. The chemical action it entails is less worth analyzing than enjoying. At any rate, these six pieces are about men with whom I felt an immediate sympat - to use a coining of Max Beerbohm's more satisfactory to me than the opaque vogue word "empathy". -- Alistair Cooke, "Six Men"
Poor Queequeg! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should have stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where, stripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about amid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom of a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor pagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill of the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few long-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. And like circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe that cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of this waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly wondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell. So that--let us say it again--no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you saw creeping over the face of poor Queequeg, as he quietly lay in his swaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his final rest, and the ocean's invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and higher towards his destined heaven.
He strode straight up to Enjolras, the insurgents withdrawing before him with a religious fear; he tore the flag from Enjolras, who recoiled in amazement and then, since no one dared to stop or to assist him, this old man of eighty, with shaking head but firm foot, began slowly to ascend the staircase of paving-stones arranged in the barricade. This was so melancholy and so grand that all around him cried: "Off with your hats!" At every step that he mounted, it was a frightful spectacle; his white locks, his decrepit face, his lofty, bald, and wrinkled brow, his amazed and open mouth, his aged arm upholding the red banner, rose through the gloom and were enlarged in the bloody light of the torch, and the bystanders thought that they beheld the spectre of '93 emerging from the earth, with the flag of terror in his hand.
We were running too fast to admit of more being said, and we made no stop until we got into our kitchen. It was full of people; the whole village was there, or in the yard; and there was a surgeon, and there was Joe, and there were a group of women, all on the floor in the midst of the kitchen. The unemployed bystanders drew back when they saw me, and so I became aware of my sister,--lying without sense or movement on the bare boards where she had been knocked down by a tremendous blow on the back of the head, dealt by some unknown hand when her face was turned towards the fire,--destined never to be on the Rampage again, while she was the wife of Joe.
The raising of Lazarus, in appearance a massive, definitely localized historical fact, requires a similar interpretation, unless we would, in favour of the direct historicity of a story peculiar to a profoundly allegorical treatise, ruin the historical trustworthiness of the largely historical Synoptists in precisely their most complete and verisimilar part. For especially in Mark, the passing through Jericho, the entry into Jerusalem, the Temple-cleansing and its immediate effect upon the hierarchs, their next day's interrogatory, "By what authority doest thou these things?" i.e. the cleansing (x. 46-xi. 33), are all closely interdependent and lead at once to His discussions with His Jerusalem opponents (xii. xiii.), and to the anointing, last supper, and passion (xiv. xv). John's last and greatest symbolic sign replaces those historic motives, since here it is the raising of Lazarus which determines the hierarchs to kill Jesus (xi. 46-52), and occasions the crowds which accompany and meet Him on His entry (xii. 9-19). The intrinsic improbabilities of the narrative, if taken as direct history, are also great: Jesus' deliberate delay of two days to secure His friend's dying, and His rejoicing at the death, since thus He can revivify His friend and bring His disciples to believe in Himself as the Life; His deliberate weeping over the death which He has thus let happen, yet His anger at the similar tears of Lazarus's other friends; and His praying, as He tells the Father in the prayer itself, simply to edify the bystanders: all point to a doctrinal allegory. Indeed the climax of the whole account is already reached in Jesus' great saying: "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me ... shall not die for ever," and in Martha's answer: "I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, who hast come into the world" (xi. 26, 27); the sign which follows is but the pictorial representation of this abiding truth. The materials for the allegory will have been certain Old Testament narratives, but especially the Synoptic accounts of Jesus' raisings of Jairus's daughter and of the widow's son (Mark v.; Luke vii.). Mary and Martha are admittedly identical with the sisters in Luke x. 38-42; and already some Greek fathers connect the Lazarus of this allegory with the Lazarus of the parable (Luke xvi. 19-31). In the parable Lazarus returns not to earth, since Abraham foresees that the rich man's brethren would disbelieve even if one rose from the dead; in the corresponding allegory, Lazarus does actually return to life, and the Jews believe so little as to determine upon killing the very Life Himself. Entry: 2
ÉCARTÉ (Fr. for "separated," "discarded"), a game at cards, of modern origin, probably first played in the Paris _salons_ in the first quarter of the 19th century. It is a development of a very old card game called _la triomphe_ or _French-ruff_. Écarté is generally played by two persons, but a pool of three may be formed, the player who is out taking the place of the loser, and the winner of two consecutive games winning the pool. At French écarté (but not at English) bystanders who are betting may advise the players, but only by pointing to the cards they desire them to play, and the loser of the game goes out, one of the _rentrants_ taking his place, unless the loser is playing _la chouette_, i.e. playing single-handed against two, and taking all bets. Entry: ÉCARTÉ
Another legend is that contained in the preface to the Register or Black Book of the order, compiled in the reign of Henry VIII., by what authority supported is unknown, that Richard I., while his forces were employed against Cyprus and Acre, had been inspired through the instrumentality of St George with renewed courage and the means of animating his fatigued soldiers by the device of tying about the legs of a chosen number of knights a leathern thong or garter, to the end that being thereby reminded of the honour of their enterprise they might be encouraged to redoubled efforts for victory. This was supposed to have been in the mind of Edward III. when he fixed on the garter as the emblem of the order, and it was stated so to have been by Taylor, master of the rolls, in his address to Francis I. of France on his investiture in 1527.[47] According to Ashmole the true account of the matter is that "King Edward having given forth his own garter as the signal for a battle which sped fortunately (which with Du Chesne we conceive to be that of Crécy), the victory, we say, being happily gained, he thence took occasion to institute this order, and gave the garter (assumed by him for the symbol of unity and society) preeminence among the ensigns of it." But, as Sir Harris Nicolas points out--although Ashmole is not open to the correction--this hypothesis rests for its plausibility on the assumption that the order was established before the invasion of France in 1346. And he further observes that "a great variety of devices and mottoes were used by Edward III.; they were chosen from the most trivial causes and were of an amorous rather than of a military character. Nothing," he adds, "is more likely than that in a crowded assembly a lady should accidentally have dropped her garter; that the circumstance should have caused a smile in the bystanders; and that on its being taken up by Edward he should have reproved the levity of his courtiers by so happy and chivalrous an exclamation, placing the garter at the same time on his own knee, as 'Dishonoured be he who thinks ill of it.' Such a circumstance occurring at a time of general festivity, when devices, mottoes and conceits of all kinds were adopted as ornaments or badges of the habits worn at jousts and tournaments, would naturally have been commemorated as other royal expressions seem to have been by its conversion into a device and motto for the dresses at an approaching hastilude."[48] Moreover, Sir Harris Nicolas contends that the order had no loftier immediate origin than a joust or tournament. It consisted of the king and the Black Prince, and 24 knights divided into two bands of 12 like the tilters in a hastilude----at the head of the one being the first, and of the other the second; and to the companions belonging to each, when the order had superseded the Round Table and had become a permanent institution, were assigned stalls either on the sovereign's or the prince's side of St George's Chapel. That Sir Harris Nicolas is accurate in this conjecture seems probable from the selection which was made of the "founder knights." As Beltz observes, the fame of Sir Reginald Cobham, Sir Walter Manny and the earls of Northampton, Hereford and Suffolk was already established by their warlike exploits, and they would certainly have been among the original companions had the order been then regarded as the reward of military merit only. But, although these eminent warriors were subsequently elected as vacancies occurred, their admission was postponed to that of several very young and in actual warfare comparatively unknown knights, whose claims to the honour may be most rationally explained on the assumption that they had excelled in the particular feats of arms which preceded the institution of the order. The original companionship had consisted of the sovereign and 25 knights, and no change was made in this respect until 1786, when the sons of George III. and his successors were made eligible notwithstanding that the chapter might be complete. In 1805 another alteration was effected by the provision that the lineal descendants of George II. should be eligible in the same manner, except the Prince of Wales for the time being, who was declared to be "a constituent part of the original institution"; and again in 1831 it was further ordained that the privilege accorded to the lineal descendants of George II. should extend to the lineal descendants of George I. Although, as Sir Harris Nicolas observes, nothing is now known of the form of admitting ladies into the order, the description applied to them in the records during the 14th and 15th centuries leaves no doubt that they were regularly received into it. The queen consort, the wives and daughters of knights, and some other women of exalted position, were designated "Dames de la Fraternité de St George," and entries of the delivery of robes and garters to them are found at intervals in the Wardrobe Accounts from the 50th Edward III. (1376) to the 10th of Henry VII. (1495), the first being Isabel, countess of Bedford, the daughter of the one king, and the last being Margaret and Elizabeth, the daughters of the other king. The effigies of Margaret Byron, wife of Sir Robert Harcourt, K.G., at Stanton Harcourt, and of Alice Chaucer, wife of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, K.G., at Ewelme, which date from the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV., have garters on their left arms. (See further under "Orders of Knighthood" below.) Entry: THE
The task with which Botticelli was charged at Rome was to take part with other leading artists of the time (Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Perugino and Pinturicchio) in the decoration of Sixtus IV.'s chapel at the Vatican, the ceiling of which was afterwards destined to be the field of Michelangelo's noblest labours. Internal evidence shows that Sandro and his assistants bore a chief share in the series of papal portraits which decorate the niches between the windows. His share in the decoration of the walls with subjects from the Old and the New Testament consists of three frescoes, one illustrating the history of Moses (several episodes of his early life arranged in a single composition); another the destruction of Korah, Dathan and Abiram; a third the temptation of Christ by Satan (in this case the main theme is relegated to the background, while the foreground is filled with an animated scene representing the ritual for the purification of a leper). On these three frescoes Botticelli laboured for about a year and a half at the height of his powers, and they may be taken as the central and most important productions of his career, though they are far from being the best-known, and from their situation on the dimmed and stained walls of the chapel are by no means easy of inspection. Skill in the interlinking of complicated groups; in the principal actors energy of dramatic action and expression not yet overstrained, as it came to be in the artist's later work; an incisive vigour of portraiture in the personages of the male bystanders; in the faces and figures of the women an equally vital grasp of the model, combined with that peculiar strain of haunting and melancholy grace which is this artist's own; the most expressive care and skill in linear draughtsmanship, the richest and most inventive charm in fanciful costume and decorative colouring, all combine to distinguish them. During this time of his stay in Rome (1481-1482) Botticelli is recorded also to have painted another "Adoration of the Magi," his fifth or sixth embodiment of the same subject; this has been identified, no doubt rightly, with a picture now in the Hermitage gallery at St Petersburg. Entry: A
A remarkable feature of the subjects on black-figured vases is that a stereotyped form of composition is invariably adopted at least for the principal figures, but minor variations are generally to be found, as, for instance, in the number of bystanders; and it is almost an impossibility to find any two vase-paintings which are exact duplicates. The form of the composition, was partly determined by the field available for the design; when this took the form of a long frieze the space was filled up with a series of spectators or the repetition of typical groups, but when the design is on a framed panel or confined by ornamental borders the method of treatment is adapted from that of a sculptured metope, and the figures limited to two or three. In many cases it is difficult to decide, in the absence of inscriptions, whether or no a scene has mythological signification; the mythological types are over and over again adopted for scenes of ordinary life, even to the divine attributes or poses of certain figures. Entry: A
Knowing well the unpopularity of the directors, Fouché lent himself to the schemes of Bonaparte and Sieyès for their overthrow. His activity in furthering the _coup d'état_ of Brumaire 18-19 (November 9-10), 1799, procured him the favour of Bonaparte, who kept him in office (v. Napoleon I.). In the ensuing period of the Consulate (1799-1804) Fouché behaved with the utmost adroitness. While curbing the royalists and extreme Jacobins who at first alone opposed Bonaparte, Fouché was careful to temper as far as possible the arbitrary actions of the new master of France. In this difficult task he acquitted himself with so much skill as to earn at times the gratitude even of the royalists. Thus, while countermining a foolish intrigue of theirs in which the duchesse de Guiche was the chief agent, Fouché took care that she should escape. Equally skilful was his action in the affair of the so-called Aréna-Ceracchi plot, in which the _agents provocateurs_ of the police were believed to have played a sinister part. The chief "conspirators" were easily ensnared and were executed when the affair of Nivôse (December 1800) enabled Bonaparte to act with rigour. This far more serious attempt (in which royalist conspirators exploded a bomb near the First Consul's carriage with results disastrous to the bystanders) was soon seen by Fouché to be the work of royalists; and when the First Consul, eager to entrap the still formidable Jacobins, sought to fasten the blame on them, Fouché firmly declared that he would not only assert but would prove that the outrage was the work of royalists. All his efforts, however, failed to avert the punishment which Bonaparte was resolved to inflict on the leading Jacobins. In other matters (especially in that known as the Plot of the Placards in the spring of 1802) Fouché was thought to have secured the Jacobins concerned from the vengeance of the First Consul. In any case the latter resolved to rid himself of a man who had too much power and too much skill in intrigue to be desirable as a subordinate. On the proclamation of Bonaparte as First Consul for life (August 1, 1802) Fouché was deprived of his office; but the blow was softened by the suppression of the ministry of police and by the attribution of most of its duties to an extended ministry of justice. Fouché also became a senator and received half of the reserve funds of the police which had accumulated during his tenure of office. He continued, however, to intrigue through his spies, whose information was so superior to that of the new minister of police as to render great services to Napoleon at the time of the Cadoudal-Pichegru conspiracy (February-March 1804). Entry: FOUCHÉ
(b) One of the primary meanings of [Greek: daimôn] is that of genius or familiar, tutelary spirit; according to Hesiod the men of the golden race became after death guardians or watchers over mortals. The idea is found among the Romans also; they attributed to every man a genius who accompanied him through life. A Norse belief found in Iceland is that the _fylgia_, a genius in animal form, attends human beings; and these animal guardians may sometimes be seen fighting; in the same way the Siberian shamans send their animal familiars to do battle instead of deciding their quarrels in person. The animal guardian reappears in the _nagual_ of Central America (see article TOTEMISM), the _yunbeai_ of some Australian tribes, the _manitou_ of the Red Indian and the bush soul of some West African tribes; among the latter the link between animal and human being is said to be established by the ceremony of the blood bond. Corresponding to the animal guardian of the ordinary man, we have the familiar of the witch or wizard. All the world over it is held that such people can assume the form of animals; sometimes the power of the shaman is held to depend on his being able to summon his familiar; among the Ostiaks the shaman's coat was covered with representations of birds and beasts; two bear's claws were on his hands; his wand was covered with mouse-skin; when he wished to divine he beat his drum till a black bird appeared and perched on his hut; then the shaman swooned, the bird vanished, and the divination could begin. Similarly the Greenland _angekok_ is said to summon his _torngak_ (which may be an ancestral ghost or an animal) by drumming; he is heard by the bystanders to carry on a conversation and obtain advice as to how to treat diseases, the prospects of good weather and other matters of importance. The familiar, who is sometimes replaced by the devil, commonly figured in witchcraft trials; and a statute of James I. enacted that all persons invoking an evil spirit or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding or rewarding any evil spirit should be guilty of felony and suffer death. In modern spiritualism the familiar is represented by the "guide," corresponding to which we have the theosophical "guru." Entry: DEMONOLOGY