"Dunsany, Lord - Exiles Club, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

The Exiles Club

by Lord Dunsany




It was an evening party; and something someone had said to
me had started me talking about a subject that to me is full
of fascination, the subject of old religions, forsaken
gods. The truth (for all religions have some of it), the
wisdom, the beauty, of the religions of countries to which I
travel have not the same appeal to me; for one only notices
in them their tyranny and intolerance and the abject
servitude that they claim from thought; but when a dynasty
has been dethroned in heaven and goes forgotten and outcast
even among men, one's eyes no longer dazzled by its power
find something very wistful in the faces of fallen gods
suppliant to be remembered, something almost tearfully
beautiful, like a long warm summer twilight fading gently
away after some day memorable in the story of earthly wars.
Between what Zeus, for instance, has been once and the
half-remembered tale he is to-day there lies a space so
great that there is no change of fortune known to man
whereby we may measure the height down which he has fallen.
And it is the same with many another god at whom once the
ages trembled and the twentieth century treats as an old
wives' tale. The fortitude that such a fall demands is
surely more than human.
Some such things as these I was saying, and being upon a
subject that much attracts me I possibly spoke too loudly,
certainly I was not aware that standing close behind me was
no less a person than the ex-King of Eritivaria, the thirty
islands of the East, or I would have moderated my voice and
moved away a little to give him more room. I was not aware
of his presence until his satellite, one who had fallen with
him into exile but still revolved about him, told me that
his master desired to know me; and so to my surprise I was
presented though neither of them even knew my name. And
that was how I came to be invited by the ex-King to dine at
his club.
At the time I could only account for his wishing to know
me by supposing that he found in his own exiled condition
some likeness to the fallen fortunes of the gods of whom I
talked unwitting of his presence; but now I know that it was
not of himself he was thinking when he asked me to dine at
that club.
The club would have been the most imposing building in
any street in London, but in that obscure mean quarter of