Concerning Letters
A Novelist’s Allegory

Once upon a time the Prince of Felicitas had occasion to set forth on a journey. It was a late autumn evening with few pale stars and a moon no larger than the paring of a finger-nail. And as he rode through the purlieus of his city, the white mane of his amber-coloured steed was all that he could clearly see in the dusk of the high streets. His way led through a quarter but little known to him, and he was surprised to find that his horse, instead of ambling forward with his customary gentle vigour, stepped carefully from side to side, stopping now and then to curve his neck and prick his ears — as though at some thing of fear unseen in the darkness; while on either hand creatures could be heard rustling and scuttling, and little cold draughts as of wings fanned the rider’s cheeks.

The Prince at last turned in his saddle, but so great was the darkness that he could not even see his escort.

“What is the name of this street?” he said.

“Sire, it is called the Vita Publica.”

“It is very dark.” Even as he spoke his horse staggered, but, recovering its foothold with an effort, stood trembling violently. Nor could all the incitements of its master induce the beast again to move forward.

“Is there no one with a lanthorn in this street?” asked the Prince.

His attendants began forthwith to call out loudly for any one who had a lanthorn. Now, it chanced that an old man sleeping in a hovel on a pallet of straw was, awakened by these cries. When he heard that it was the Prince of Felicitas himself, he came hastily, carrying his lanthorn, and stood trembling beside the Prince’s horse. It was so dark that the Prince could not see him.

“Light your lanthorn, old man,” he said.

The old man laboriously lit his lanthorn. Its pale rays fled out on either hand; beautiful but grim was the vision they disclosed. Tall houses, fair court-yards, and a palm grown garden; in front of the Prince’s horse a deep cesspool, on whose jagged edges the good beast’s hoofs were planted; and, as far as the glimmer of the lanthorn stretched, both ways down the rutted street, paving stones displaced, and smooth tesselated marble; pools of mud, the hanging fruit of an orange tree, and dark, scurrying shapes of monstrous rats bolting across from house to house. The old man held the lanthorn higher; and instantly bats flying against it would have beaten out the light but for the thin protection of its horn sides.

The Prince sat still upon his horse, looking first at the rutted space that he had traversed and then at the rutted space before him.

“Without a light,” he said, “this thoroughfare is dangerous. What is your name, old man?”

“My name is Cethru,” replied the aged churl.

“Cethru!” said the Prince. “Let it be your duty henceforth to walk with your lanthorn up and down this street all night and every night,”— and he looked at Cethru: “Do you understand, old man, what it is you have to do?”

The old man answered in a voice that trembled like a rusty flute:

“Aye, aye!— to walk up and down and hold my lanthorn so that folk can see where they be going.”

The Prince gathered up his reins; but the old man, lurching forward, touched his stirrup.

“How long be I to go on wi’ thiccy job?”

“Until you die!”

Cethru held up his lanthorn, and they could see his long, thin face, like a sandwich of dried leather, jerk and quiver, and his thin grey hairs flutter in the draught of the bats’ wings circling round the light.

“’Twill be main hard!” he groaned; “an’ my lanthorn’s nowt but a poor thing.”

With a high look, the Prince of Felicitas bent and touched the old man’s forehead.

“Until you die, old man,” he repeated; and bidding his followers to light torches from Cethru’s lanthorn, he rode on down the twisting street. The clatter of the horses’ hoofs died out in the night, and the scuttling and the rustling of the rats and the whispers of the bats’ wings were heard again.

Cethru, left alone in the dark thoroughfare, sighed heavily; then, spitting on his hands, he tightened the old girdle round his loins, and slinging the lanthorn on his staff, held it up to the level of his waist, and began to make his way along the street. His progress was but slow, for he had many times to stop and rekindle the flame within his lanthorn, which the bats’ wings, his own stumbles, and the jostlings of footpads or of revellers returning home, were for ever extinguishing. In traversing that long street he spent half the night, and half the night in traversing it back again. The saffron swan of dawn, slow swimming up the sky-river between the high roof-banks, bent her neck down through the dark air-water to look at him staggering below her, with his still smoking wick. No sooner did Cethru see that sunlit bird, than with a great sigh of joy he sat him down, and at once fell asleep.

Now when the dwellers in the houses of the Vita Publica first gained knowledge that this old man passed every night with his lanthorn up and down their street, and when they marked those pallid gleams gliding over the motley prospect of cesspools and garden gates, over the sightless hovels and the rich-carved frontages of their palaces; or saw them stay their journey and remain suspended like a handful of daffodils held up against the black stuffs of secrecy — they said:

“It is good that the old man should pass like this — we shall see better where we’re going; and if the Watch have any job on hand, or want to put the pavements in order, his lanthorn will serve their purpose well enough.” And they would call out of their doors and windows to him passing:

“Hola! old man Cethru! All’s well with our house, and with the street before it?”

But, for answer, the old man only held his lanthorn up, so that in the ring of its pale light they saw some sight or other in the street. And his silence troubled them, one by one, for each had expected that he would reply:

“Aye, aye! All’s well with your house, Sirs, and with the street before it!”

Thus they grew irritated with this old man who did not seem able to do anything but just hold his lanthorn up. And gradually they began to dislike his passing by their doors with his pale light, by which they could not fail to see, not only the rich-carved frontages and scrolled gates of courtyards and fair gardens, but things that were not pleasing to the eye. And they murmured amongst themselves: “What is the good of this old man and his silly lanthorn? We can see all we want to see without him; in fact, we got on very well before he came.”

So, as he passed, rich folk who were supping would pelt him with orange-peel and empty the dregs of their wine over his head; and poor folk, sleeping in their hutches, turned over, as the rays of the lanthorn fell on them, and cursed him for that disturbance. Nor did revellers or footpads treat the old man, civilly, but tied him to the wall, where he was constrained to stay till a kind passerby released him. And ever the bats darkened his lanthorn with their wings and tried to beat the flame out. And the old man thought: “This be a terrible hard job; I don’t seem to please nobody.” But because the Prince of Felicitas had so commanded him, he continued nightly to pass with his lanthorn up and down the street; and every morning as the saffron swan came swimming overhead, to fall asleep. But his sleep did not last long, for he was compelled to pass many hours each day in gathering rushes and melting down tallow for his lanthorn; so that his lean face grew more than ever like a sandwich of dried leather.

Now it came to pass that the Town Watch having had certain complaints made to them that persons had been bitten in the Vita Publica by rats, doubted of their duty to destroy these ferocious creatures; and they held investigation, summoning the persons bitten and inquiring of them how it was that in so dark a street they could tell that the animals which had bitten them were indeed rats. Howbeit for some time no one could be found who could say more than what he had been told, and since this was not evidence, the Town Watch had good hopes that they would not after all be forced to undertake this tedious enterprise. But presently there came before them one who said that he had himself seen the rat which had bitten him, by the light of an old man’s lanthorn. When the Town Watch heard this they were vexed, for they knew that if this were true they would now be forced to prosecute the arduous undertaking, and they said:

“Bring in this old man!”

Cethru was brought before them trembling.

“What is this we hear, old man, about your lanthorn and the rat? And in the first place, what were you doing in the Vita Publica at that time of night?”

Cethru answered: “I were just passin’ with my lanthorn!”

“Tell us — did you see the rat?”

Cethru shook his head: “My lanthorn seed the rat, maybe!” he muttered.

“Old owl!” said the Captain of the Watch: “Be careful what you say! If you saw the rat, why did you then not aid this unhappy citizen who was bitten by it — first, to avoid that rodent, and subsequently to slay it, thereby relieving the public of a pestilential danger?”

Cethru looked at him, and for some seconds did not reply; then he said slowly: “I were just passin’ with my lanthorn.”

“That you have already told us,” said the Captain of the Watch; “it is no answer.”

Cethru’s leathern cheeks became wine-coloured, so desirous was he to speak, and so unable. And the Watch sneered and laughed, saying:

“This is a fine witness.”

But of a sudden Cethru spoke:

“What would I be duin’— killin’ rats; tidden my business to kill rats.”

The Captain of the Watch caressed his beard, and looking at the old man with contempt, said:

“It seems to me, brothers, that this is an idle old vagabond, who does no good to any one. We should be well advised, I think, to prosecute him for vagrancy. But that is not at this moment the matter in hand. Owing to the accident — scarcely fortunate — of this old man’s passing with his lanthorn, it would certainly appear that citizens have been bitten by rodents. It is then, I fear, our duty to institute proceedings against those poisonous and violent animals.”

And amidst the sighing of the Watch, it was so resolved.

Cethru was glad to shuffle away, unnoticed, from the Court, and sitting down under a camel-date tree outside the City Wall, he thus reflected:

“They were rough w............