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                           THE SWEET MIRACLE



First Edition, September 1904
Second Edition, December 1904




                               THE SWEET
                                MIRACLE




                           BY EÇA DE QUEIROZ


                         DONE INTO ENGLISH BY
                            EDGAR PRESTAGE
                          OF THE LISBON ROYAL
                          ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
                          TRANSLATOR OF “THE
                        LETTERS OF A PORTUGUESE
                                 NUN”





                         LONDON -- DAVID NUTT
                    AT THE SIGN OF THE PHŒNIX 1904




                             TO MY MOTHER




 Et circuibat Jesus omnes civitates et castella, docens in synagogis
 eorum et praedicans evangelium regn et curans cranem languorera et
 omnem infirmitatem.

 Evangelium secundum Mattbaeum, caput IX.




PREFATORY NOTE


_EÇA DE QUEIROZ (born 1846, died 1900) was probably Portugal’s greatest
prose-writer of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He is
known to us mainly by that splendid romance, cousin basil, which has
appeared In English under the title of “Dragon’s Teeth,”_[1] _but the_
CORRESPONDENCE OF FRADIQUE MENDES _reveals a versatility of talent in
this satyrist, observer, and critic of life which even the foremost
novelists have lacked, and_ THE CITY AND THE MOUNTAINS _contains pages
of landscape-painting which are already classical. The prose-poem here
translated shows that his journey through Palestine had penetrated the
Master of Realism with the spirit of the East and calls to mind scenes
in another book of his,_ THE RELIC, _which sounds like an echo of
Flaubert. The frontispiece is a copy of a striking water-colour sketch
by the King of Portugal offered to the Count of Arnoso on the occasion
of the fifteenth representation of the tatter’s charming dramatised
version of “The Sweet Miracle.” His Majesty has graciously approved and
the Count has very kindly permitted its reproduction here._

_Other short stories of Eça de Queiroz will follow if the present one
continues to meet with a favourable reception._


FOOTNOTE:


[Footnote 1: _Boston, U.S.A., 1889._]




THE SWEET MIRACLE


IN those days Jesus had not yet departed from Galilee and the fair
luminous margins of the Lake of Tiberias; but the news of his miracles
had already penetrated as far as Enganim, a rich city of strong
battlements set among vineyards and olive-groves in the Country of
Issachar.

One afternoon there passed down the fresh valley a man of burning,
dazzled eyes, who announced that a new Prophet, a handsome Rabbi, was
traversing, the plains and villages of Galilee, foretelling the coming
of the Kingdom of God, and curing all human ills. And while he sat
and rested beside the Fountain of the Orchards, he went on to tell how
this Rabbi had healed the slave of a Roman Decurion of leprosy on the
Magdala Road, merely by spreading over him the shadow of his hands;
and how, another morning, he had crossed by boat to the Country of the
Gerasenes where the balsam-harvest was commencing, and had raised to
life the daughter of Jairus, a man of consideration and learning who
expounded the Sacred Books in the Synagogue. And when the husbandmen
and shepherds round about, and the dark women with water-pots on their
shoulders, inquired of him in their wonderment if this was in truth
the Messias of Judah, and whether the sword of fire shone before him,
and if the shadows of Gog and Magog, like the shadows of twin towers,
walked on either side of him--the man, without even a draught of
that thrice-cold water of which Joshua had drunk, took up his staff,
shook his hair, and made his way pensively beneath the aqueduct, and
straightway disappeared from sight in the mass of flowering almond
trees. But a hope, delightful as the dew in the month when the
grasshopper sings, refreshed these simple souls, and now, through all
the Plain that stretches its verdure to Ascalon, the plough seemed
easier to bury in the soil, and the stone of the winepress lighter
to move; the children, even while they plucked bunches of anemones,
watched, as they went, for a light to rise past the turn of the wall,
or under the sycamore, while the aged from their stone seats at the
city gate ran their fingers through the threads of their beards, and no
longer unfolded the old sayings with such wise certainty as of yore.

Now there lived then in Enganim an old man, named Obed, of a priestly
family of Samaria, who had offered sacrifices on the altars of Mount
Ebal, and was possessed of well-nourished flocks and richly bearing
vineyards, and a heart as full of pride as his cellar was full of
wheat. But a dry burnt wind, that wind of desolation, which, at the
Lord’s command, blows from the savage lands of Assur, had slain the
fattest beasts of his flocks, and, on the slopes where his vines twined
round the elms and stretched themselves on the graceful frames, it
had left nought round the bare trees and pillars save broken twigs,
shrunken stalks, and leaves eaten by curly blight. And Obed squatted
at the threshold of his gate with the end of his cloak over his face,
fingered the dust, lamented his old age, and ruminated complaints
against a cruel God.

Now as soon as lie heard tell of the new Rabbi of Galilee, who fed
the multitudes, scared demons, and repaired all misfortunes, Obed,
who was a man of books, and had travelled in Phenicia, conceived in
his mind that Jesus must be one of those soothsayers, well-known in
Palestine, like Apollonius, or Rabbi Ben-Dossa, or Simon the Subtle.
These men, even when the nights are dark, hold converse with the
stars, whose secrets to them are ever clear and simple; with a wand
they drive the gadflies, born in the mud of Egypt, from the standing
corn, and grasping in their fingers the shadows of trees, they draw
them like kindly screens over the threshing-floors at the hour of
rest. Of a surety Jesus of Galilee, a younger man with newer charms,
would, in return for a liberal largess, bring the mortality among his
flocks to an end, and make his vineyards green once more. Thereupon
Obed commanded his servants to set forth and search through all Galilee
for the new Rabbi, and bring him, with promises of money or goods, to
Enganim, in the Country of Issachar.

His slaves tightened their leather belts and swung out by the road of
the caravans that coasts the lake and stretches as far as Damascus.
One afternoon, over against the West, red as a fully ripe pomegranate,
they caught sight of the fine snows of Mount Hermon. Next, amid the
freshness of a soft morning, the Lake of Tiberias shone before them,
transparent, cloaked in silence, more blue than the heavens, with
its margins of flowery meadows, dense orchards, porphyry rocks, and
white terraces amid the palm groves, under the flight of the doves. A
fisherman, who was engaged in lazily untying his boat from a grassy
point shaded by oleanders, listened with a smile to the slaves. The
Rabbi of Nazareth? Oh! since the month of Ijar, the Rabbi with his
disciples had descended to the sides whither the Jordan bears its
waters. The slaves set out at a run along the margin of the stream
until they came in front of the ford where it rests, stretching out in
a great pool, and for a moment slumbers, motionless and green, beneath
the tamarinds’ shade. A man of the tribe of the Essenes, clothed from
head to foot in white linen, was slowly gathering health-giving herbs
by the water side with a white lambkin in his arms. The slaves humbly
saluted him, for the people love those men of honest, pure hearts, as
white as the vestures they wash morning by morning in the purified
tanks. And did he know of the passing of the new Rabbi of Galilee who,
like the Essenes, taught sweetness and cured men and cattle? The
Essene murmured that the Rabbi had crossed the Oasis of Engaddi, and
had passed further beyond. But where “beyond?” With a bunch of purple
flowers he had plucked, the Essene pointed to the country over Jordan,
the plain of Moab. The slaves forded the river and sought Jesus in
vain, toiling breathlessly up the rough tracks to the cliffs where the
sinister Citadel of Makaur raises its head. At Jacob’s Well they met a
great caravan at rest that was carrying into Egypt myrrh, spices, and
balm of Gilead, and the camel drivers, as they drew out the water in
their leather buckets, told the slaves of Obed how in Gadara, at the
new moon, a wonderful Rabbi, greater than David or Isaiah, had torn
seven devils from the breast of a weaver-woman, and how at his voice
a man, whose head had been cut off by the robber Barabbas, had risen
from the tomb, and gone back to his garden. The slaves, still hopeful,
straightway mounted in haste by the Pilgrim’s Way to Gadara, that city
of lofty towers, and further on still to the Springs of Amalha. But
that very morning, followed by a crowd singing and waving branches of
mimosa, Jesus had embarked on the lake in a fishing smack, and made his
way under sail towards Magdala. And the slaves of Obed, disheartened,
passed the ford again by the Bridge of the Daughters of Jacob. One day,
as they trod the country of Roman Judea, their sandals torn with the
long ways, they crossed a sombre Pharisee, mounted on a mule, who was
returning to Ephraim. With devout reverence they stopped the man of
the Law. Had he met, perchance, this new Prophet of Galilee who, like
a God walking the earth, sowed miracles as he went? The hooked face of
the Pharisee darkened in every furrow, and his wrath resounded like a
proud drum. “Oh! pagan slaves and blasphemers! Where have ye heard of
prophets or miracles out of Jerusalem? Only Jehovah in His Temple is
mighty. Ignorant men and impostors come out of Galilee!”

And as the slaves recoiled before his raised fist wrapped round with
sacred couplets, the furious doctor leapt from his mule and with
stones from the road pelted the slaves of Obed, howling Racca! Racca!
and all the ritual curses. The slaves fled to Enganim, and great was
the sorrow of Obed because his flocks were dying and his vineyards were
scorched, and all the time, radiant like the dawn behind the mountains,
the fame of Jesus of Galilee, consoling and full of Divine promises,
grew and increased.

At that time a Roman Centurion, named Publius Septimus, had command
of the fort which dominates the valley of Cesarea as far as the city
and the sea. A rough man and a veteran of Tiberius’ campaign against
the Parthians, Publius had grown rich with prizes and plunder during
the revolt of Samaria. He owned mines in Attica, and enjoyed, as a
supreme favour of the Gods, the friendship of Flaccus, the Imperial
Legate in Syria. But a sorrow gnawed his boundless prosperity, even
as a worm gnaws a very succulent fruit. His only daughter, dearer to
him than life and fortune, was pining away with a slow subtle malady
which escaped even the wisdom of the doctors and magicians whom he
sent to consult at Tyre and Sidon. White and sad like the moon in a
cemetery, uncomplaining, with pallid smiles for her father, she grew
weaker and more frail as she sat on the high esplanade of the fort
under an awning, and stretched her sad dark eyes with longing regret
over the blue of the Tyrian Sea by which she had sailed from Italy
in a rich galley. Now and then, at her side, a legionary between
the battlements aimed an arrow carelessly aloft and pierced a great
eagle as it flew with serene wing in the rutilant sky. The daughter
of Septimus followed the bird for a moment as it turned over and over
until it crashed dead on the rocks, then with a sigh, sadder and more
pale, began once more to gaze at the sea. Now Septimus, having heard
the merchants of Chorazim tell of this wonderful Rabbi whose power
over the Spirits was such that he cured the dark troubles of the soul,
despatched three decuria of soldiers with orders to search for him
through Galilee and in all the cities of Decapolis as far as the coast
and up to Ascalon. The soldiers put up their shields in the canvas
bags, fixed boughs of the olive tree in their helmets, and hurriedly
departed, their iron-shod sandals resounding on the basalt slabs of the
Roman road which cuts the whole Tetrarchate of Herod from Cesarea to
the Lake. At night their arms shone out on the tops of the hills amid
the waving flames of the torches they bore aloft. By day they invaded
the homesteads, searched through the thickest apple orchards, and drove
the points of their lances into the haystacks, and the frightened
women, to appease them, hastened in with cakes of honey, new figs, and
bowls full of wine, which they drank at one draught as they sat in the
shade of the sycamores. In this way they traversed Lower Galilee--but
of the Rabbi all they found was his bright track in the hearts of the
people. Wearied with futile marching, and suspecting that the Jews were
concealing their wonder-worker lest the Romans should avail themselves
of his superior magic, they let loose a tumult of anger as they passed
through the pious subject-land. At the entrance to bridges they stopped
the Pilgrims, shouting the name of the Rabbi, tearing the veils from
the virgins’ faces, and, at the hour when pitchers are filled at the
cisterns, they invaded the narrow streets of towns, penetrated into
the Synagogues and beat sacrilegiously with their sword hilts on the
Thebahs--the holy Arks of cedar which enclosed the Sacred Books. In the
environs of Hebron they dragged the Hermits by the beard from their
caves to draw from them the name of the desert or palm grove where
the Rabbi was hid, and two Phœnician merchants who were coming from
Joppa with a cargo of malobatrum, and who had never heard the name of
Jesus, paid one hundred drachmas for this crime to each Decurion. And
now the peasantry, and even the wild shepherds of Idumea who bring in
the white beasts for the Temple, fled in terror to the mountains as
soon as they saw the arms of the violent band glittering at some turn
of the road; while from the edge of the terraces the old women shook
the ends of their dishevelled hair like bags, and flung ill-luck at
them, invoking the vengeance of Elias. In this tumult they wandered
as far as Ascalon, but failed to find Jesus, and returning along the
coast they buried their sandals in the burning sands. One morning near
Cesarea, as they were marching in a valley, they caught sight of a
dark green grove of laurels on a hill, among which the elegant bright
portico of a temple shone white in its retirement. An old man of long
white beard, crowned with laurel leaves, clothed in a saffron tunic and
holding a short three-stringed lyre, was gravely awaiting the rising of
the sun on the marble steps. Down below, the soldiers waved a branch
of olive and shouted to the priest. Did he know a new Prophet who had
arisen in Galilee and who was so clever in miracles that he raised the
dead to life, and changed water into wine? Quietly extending his arms,
the serene old man cried out over the dewy verdure of the valley--“Ye
Romans, believe ye that prophets appear working miracles in Galilee
or Judea? How can a barbarian alter the order established by Zeus?
Magicians and soothsayers are pedlars who murmur empty words to snatch
an alms from simple folk. Without the permission of the Immortals, not
a withered branch can fall from the tree, not a dry leaf be shaken.
There are no prophets, no miracles.... The Delphic Apollo alone knoweth
the secret of things!”

Slowly then, with heads cast down as after a defeat, the soldiers
returned to the fortress of Cesarea, and great was the despair of
Septimus because his daughter was dying, and no complaint did she
utter, but gazed as she lay there at the Tyrian Sea, and all the while
the fame of Jesus, the healer of lingering maladies, grew ever fresher
and more consoling, like the afternoon breeze that blows from Hermon
and revives and lifts the drooping lilies in the gardens.

Now between Enganim and Cesarea, in a wretched hut sunk in the cleft
of a hillock, there lived at this time a widow, the most miserable of
all the women in Israel. Her only son, a little boy crippled in every
part, had passed from the lean breasts at which she had suckled him
to the rags of a rotting mattress, where he had lain starving and
groaning now seven years. And her, too, sickness had shrivelled within
her never-changed rags until she was darker and more contorted than
an uprooted vine. And, over the twain, misery had grown thick as the
mould over broken potsherds lost in a desert. Even the oil in their
red clay lamp had long since dried up, and neither seed nor crust was
left in the painted chest. In the summer, their goat had died for lack
of pasture; next, the fig-tree in the garden ceased to bear. So far
were they from an inhabited place that no alms of bread or honey ever
entered their door. Herbs plucked in the fissures of the rocks and
cooked without salt were all that nourished those creatures of God in
the Chosen Land where even birds of ill omen had enough and to spare!

One day a beggar entered the hut and shared his wallet with the
sorrowing mother, and as he sat for a moment at the hearthstone and
scratched the wounds in his legs, he told of the great hope of the
afflicted, this Rabbi who had appeared in Galilee and of one loaf in
a basket made seven, and how he loved all little children and dried
all tears, and promised the poor a great and luminous kingdom of more
abundance than the Court of Solomon. The woman listened with famished
eyes. And this sweet Rabbi, this hope of the sorrowful, where was he to
be found? The beggar sighed. Ah, this sweet Rabbi! How many had longed
for him and been disappointed! His fame was going over all Judea like
the sun that leaves not even a stretch of old wall without its blessed
rays, yet only those fortunate ones chosen of his will could gain a
sight of his fair countenance.

Obed, the rich, had sent his slaves throughout all Galilee to search
for Jesus and bring him with promises to Enganim: Septimus, the
powerful, had despatched his soldiers as far as the sea coast to find
Jesus and conduct him by his orders to Cesarea. As he wandered and
begged his bread on many a road, he had met the slaves of Obed and then
the legionaries of Septimus. And all had returned like beaten men,
their sandals torn, without having discovered the wood or city, hovel
or palace, where Jesus lay hid.

The evening was falling. The beggar took up his staff and descended
by the hard track between the heather and the rocks, while the mother
returned to her corner more cast down and desolate than before. And
then in a murmur, weaker than the brush of a wing, her little son
begged his mother to bring him this Rabbi who loved even the poorest
little children and healed even the longest sicknesses. The mother
clasped his tangled head and said:

“Oh, my son! How canst thou ask me to leave thee and set out on the
road in search of the Rabbi of Galilee? Obed is rich and hath slaves,
and in vain they sought Jesus over hills, and through sandy plains
from Chorazim to the Country of Moab. Septimus is mighty and hath
soldiers, yet in vain they hunted for Jesus from Hebron to the sea!
How canst thou ask me to leave thee? Jesus is afar off, and our grief
abideth with us within these walls and imprisons us between them. And
were I to meet with him, how should I persuade this longed-for Rabbi,
for whom the rich and mighty sigh, to come down from city to city as
far as this solitude in order to cure such a poor little impotent on
such a ragged mattress!”

But the child, with two long tears on its thin little face, murmured:
“Mother, Jesus loveth all the little ones. And I am still so small
and have such a heavy sickness and should so like to be cured!” To
which the mother sobbing: “child of mine how can I leave thee? The
roads of Galilee are long, and the pity of men is short. So ragged, so
limping, so sorrowful am I, that even the dogs would bark at me from
the homestead doors. None would give ear to my message, none would show
me the dwelling-place of the sweet Rabbi. And, my child! perhaps Jesus
is dead, for not even the rich or the mighty meet with him. Heaven
sent him. Heaven hath taken him away. And with him the hopes of the
sorrowful have died for ever.” The child raised his trembling little
hands from out of his dark rags and murmured: “Mother, I want to see
Jesus.”

And immediately, opening the door slowly and smiling, Jesus said to the
Child: “I am here.”




BALLANTYNE PRESS




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