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Updated: May 20, 2025
The poet Schiller, in one of his pieces called the Ideal and Life, illustrates the contrast between the practical and the imaginative in some beautiful stanzas, of which the last two may be thus translated: "Deep degraded to a coward's slave, Endless contests bore Alcides brave, Through the thorny path of suffering led; Slew the Hydra, crushed the lion's might, Threw himself, to bring his friend to light, Living, in the skiff that bears the dead.
The French soldiers were transformed into friends and companions of Alcides, etc., all of which was cutting the ground from under the feet of the singers of the future. The fete of Lyons ended in a ball which lasted until daylight, at which the First Consul remained two hours, which he spent in conversation with the magistrates of the city.
I merely waved my hat and strode on. At the garden gate I met the mulatto boy Alcides, who was just bringing the breakfast rolls in an open basket from the main house of the institution, across the street. I stopped him and asked why he was again carrying the bread in an open basket, instead of throwing a napkin over it, as he was supposed to do.
Wherefore scowl if they fondle a quail or a dove, Or inscribe on a myrtle, the names that they love? Does Alcides not teach us how valour is mild? Lo, at rest from his labours he plays with a child. When the slayer of Python has put down his bow, By his lute and his lovelocks Apollo we know.
Should anybody be induced to go, great and innumerable are the discoveries yet to be made in those remote wilds; and should he succeed in bringing home even a head alone, with features as perfect as those of that which I have brought, far from being envious of him, I should consider him a modern Alcides, fully entitled to register a thirteenth labour.
It was all very well for Samson to allow his hair to be cut off, and for Alcides to handle the distaff at the bidding of his mistress; but Delilah would not have dared to touch one hair of my head, and Omphale should have pulled off my boots for me at the least sign of revolt I would have given her worse to do: cleaning the skin of the Nemaean lion, for instance, when I brought it home all fresh and bleeding, just as I had torn it from the quivering carcass.
He was habited like Alcides; his enormous limbs, furrowed with veins as thick as whipcord, were covered with a close-fitting flesh-colored garment, to which a pair of red drawers formed a strong contrast. "Why do you rush in like a storm, Goliath?" said Morok. "There's a pretty storm in the house; they are beginning to get impatient, and are calling out like madmen. But if that were all!"
I hated it, and hid it away as a caricature. But now those pale, vanishing tints bring the very presence before me; and before the remembrance can become equally obscure in my own mind, let me record for others the years that I spent with my young Alcides as he now stands before me in memory. Our family history is a strange one.
When Alcides, having gone through all the fatigues of life, took a bride in Olympus, he ought to have selected Minerva, but he chose Hebe. Will Darrell find his Hebe in Flora Vyvyan? Alban Morley became more and more alarmed by the apprehension. He was shrewd enough to recognise in her the girl of all others formed to glad the eye and plague the heart of a grave and reverend seigneur.
Thus, like the new-born god, Alcides, taking leave of the terrestrial battle-ground, he mounts into heaven, while the nightmare of the earthly life 'sinks and sinks and sinks'. All this may seem, at first blush, to attach excessive importance to the attainment of inward peace and harmony, as if one's private comfort were the greatest thing in life.
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