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At a small inn kept by a blacksmith I was able to get a meal and the rest that was now needed. The blacksmith's wife, a pleasant young woman; who seemed much amused at the sight of a being from the outer and, to her, half-fabulous world, drew part of a duck out of the grease in which it had been preserved, and gave me this with rice for my lunch.
A motley host, only needing their Chaucer to figure as a looking-glass of life, type against type, they brought with them, on the one hand, the very presence and perfume of Paris, the centre of courtly propriety and fashion; on the other hand, with faces which seemed to belong to another age, curiosities of existence from remote provinces of France, or Europe, from distant, half-fabulous lands, remoter still.
In early life, with our friends all around us, hearing their voices, cheered by their smiles, death and the spiritual world are to us remote, misty, and half-fabulous; but as we advance in our journey, and voice after voice is hushed, and form after form vanishes from our side, and our shadow falls almost solitary on the hillside of life, the soul, by a necessity of its being, tends to the unseen and spiritual, and pursues in another life those it seeks in vain in this.
I had heard of it through Michaux, but more modern botanists, so far as I know, have not treated it as of any peculiar importance. Thus it was a half-fabulous tree to me. I contemplated a pilgrimage to the "Glades," a portion of Pennsylvania where it was said to grow to perfection.
He was a patron of art, having brought back ivories and bronzes from Italy, pictures and china from the Low Countries, and enamels from France. He was a student, and collected the many rare and handsome leather-bound volumes telling of curious arts, obscure speculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages, and adventures, which still constitute the almost unique value of the Brockhurst library.
Before his singular career can be presented, attention must be directed to the country over which he reigned, and which will be noticed in connection with Denmark; these two countries forming a greater part of the ancient Scandinavia, from which our Teutonic ancestors migrated, the land of Odin, and Frea, and Thor, those half-fabulous deities, concerning whom there are still divided opinions; some supposing that they were heroes, and others, impersonations of virtues, or elements and wonders of nature.
Each mind seemed to foresee the future, perhaps too in every mind another thought was dimly present, how that in the future, when the heroic age of France should have taken the half-fabulous color with which it is tinged for us to-day, men's imaginations would more than once seek to retrace the picture of the pageant which they were assembled to behold.
Their perspective is rude and crazy, but it is perspective; it is not the decorative flatness of orientalism. In a word, their world, like a child's, is full of foreshortening, as of a short cut to fairyland. Their maps are more provocative than pictures. Their half-fabulous animals are monsters, and yet are pets.
A great warrior he was, a viking of the vikings, and southern Europe felt his heavy hand. A famous story of barbarian life is that of Gorm, which well deserves to be told. He was the son of a fierce pagan of Norway, Hardegon, who was of royal blood, being a grandson of the half-fabulous Ragnar Lodbrok.
Holland was conquered by France in the winter of 1794-95, and to this day the illustrated school-books recall to every child of the French Republic the half-fabulous tale of how a Dutch fleet was captured by French hussars.
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