By degrees I grew to look for his presence, and to miss him
when he was away, as was sometimes the case, and so a friendship sprang
up between us. His immense range of learning was placed freely at my
service; he would often astonish me by the way in which he would sketch
out in a few minutes the bibliography of a given subject, and before
long I had confided to him my ambitions. "Ah," he said, "you should have been a German. I was like that myself
when I was a boy. It is a wonderful resolve, an infinite career. 'I will
know all things;' yes, it is a device indeed. But it means this--a life
of labor without end, and a desire unsatisfied at last. The scholar has
to die, and die saying, 'I know very little.'" Gradually, by speeches such as these, Lipsius seduced me: he would
praise the career, and at the same time hint that it was as hopeless as
the search for the philosopher's stone, and so by artful suggestions,
insinuated with infinite address, he by degrees succeeded in undermining
all my principles. "After all," he used to say, "the greatest of all
sciences, the key to all knowledge, is the science and art of pleasure. Rabelais was perhaps the greatest of all the encyclopædic scholars; and
he, as you know, wrote the most remarkable book that has ever been
written. And what does he teach men in this book? Surely, the joy of
living. I need not remind you of the words, suppressed in most of the
editions, the key of all the Rabelaisian mythology, of all the enigmas
of his grand philosophy, _Vivez joyeux_. There you have all his
learning; his work is the institutes of pleasure as the fine art; the
finest art there is; the art of all arts. Rabelais had all science, but
he had all life too. And we have gone a long way since his time. You are
enlightened, I think; you do not consider all the petty rules and
by-laws that a corrupt society has made for its own selfish convenience
as the immutable decrees of the eternal." Such were the doctrines that he preached; and it was by such insidious
arguments, line upon line, here a little and there a little, that he at
last succeeded in making me a man at war with the whole social system. I
used to long for some opportunity to break the chains and to live a free
life, to be my own rule and measure. I viewed existence with the eyes of
a pagan, and Lipsius understood to perfection the art of stimulating the
natural inclinations of a young man hitherto a hermit. As I gazed up at
the great dome I saw it flushed with the flames and colors of a world of
enticement, unknown to me, my imagination played me a thousand wanton
tricks, and the forbidden drew me as surely as a loadstone draws on
iron. At last my resolution was taken, and I boldly asked Lipsius to be
my guide. He told me to leave the Museum at my usual hour, half past four, to walk
slowly along the northern pavement of Great Russell Street, and to wait
at the corner of the street till I was addressed, and then to obey in
all things the instructions of the person who came up to me. I carried
out these directions, and stood at the corner looking about me
anxiously, my heart beating fast, and my breath coming in gasps. I
waited there for some time, and had begun to fear I had been made the
object of a joke, when I suddenly became conscious of a gentleman who
was looking at me with evident amusement from the opposite pavement of
Tottenham Court Road. He came over, and raising his hat, politely begged
me to follow him, and I did so without a word, wondering where we were
going, and what was to happen. I was taken to a house of quiet and
respectable aspect in a street lying to the north of Oxford Street, and
my guide rang the bell, and a servant showed us into a large room,
quietly furnished, on the ground floor. We sat there in silence for some
time, and I noticed that the furniture, though unpretending, was
extremely valuable. There were large oak-presses, two book-cases of
extreme elegance, and in one corner a carved chest which must have been
mediæval. Presently Dr. Lipsius came in and welcomed me with his usual
manner, and after some desultory conversation, my guide left the room. Then an elderly man dropped in and began talking to Lipsius; and from
their conversation I understood that my friend was a dealer in antiques;
they spoke of the Hittite seal, and of the prospects of further
discoveries, and later, when two or three more persons had joined us,
there was an argument as to the possibility of a systematic exploration
of the pre-celtic monuments in England I was; in fact, present at an
archæological reception of an informal kind; and at nine o'clock, when
the antiquaries were gone, I stared at Lipsius in a manner that showed I
was puzzled, and sought an explanation. "Now," he said, "we will go upstairs." As we passed up the stairs, Lipsius lighting the way with a hand-lamp, I
heard the sound of a jarring lock and bolts and bars shot on at the
front door. My guide drew back a baize door, and we went down a passage,
and I began to hear odd sounds, a noise of curious mirth, and then he
pushed me through a second door, and my initiation began. I cannot write
down what I witnessed that night; I cannot bear to recall what went on
in those secret rooms fast shuttered and curtained so that no light
should escape into the quiet street; they gave me red wine to drink, and
a woman told me as I sipped it that it was wine of the Red Jar that
Avallaunius had made. Another asked me how I liked the Wine of the
Fauns, and I heard a dozen fantastic names, while the stuff boiled in my
veins, and stirred, I think, something that had slept within me from the
moment I was born. It seemed as if my self-consciousness deserted me; I
was no longer a thinking agent, but at once subject and object. I
mingled in the horrible sport and watched the mystery of the Greek
groves and fountains enacted before me, saw the reeling dance, and heard
the music calling as I sat beside my mate, and yet I was outside it all,
and viewed my own part an idle spectator. Thus with strange rites they
made me drink the cup, and when I woke up in the morning I was one of
them, and had sworn to be faithful. At first I was shown the enticing
side of things. I was bidden to enjoy myself and care for nothing but
pleasure, and Lipsius himself indicated to me as the acutest enjoyment
the spectacle of the terrors of the unfortunate persons who were from
time to time decoyed into the evil house. But after a time it was
pointed out to me that I must take my share in the work, and so I found
myself compelled to be in my turn a seducer; and thus it is on my
conscience that I have led many to the depths of the pit. One day Lipsius summoned me to his private room, and told me that he had
a difficult task to give me. He unlocked a drawer, and gave me a sheet
of type-written paper, and had me read it.