Dramatists, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616; Stratford-upon-Avon (England) -- Biography
The oldest, the father, had in that place all his own except his eldest
daughter, who could not follow him. His son-in-law was with her. Often
were they leaning round a table or seated on a bench, silent, grave,
thinking, all of them, and without saying it, of those two absent ones.
Why was this group installed in this lodging, so little suitable? For
reasons of haste, and from a desire to be as soon as possible anywhere
but at the inn. Doubtless, also, because it was the first house to let
that they had met with, and because proscribed people are not lucky.
This house,--which it is time to rehabilitate a little and console, for
who knows if in its loneliness it is not sad at what we have just said
about it; a home has a soul,--this house was called Marine Terrace. The
arrival was mournful; but after all, we declare, the stay in it was
agreeable, and Marine Terrace has not left to those who then inhabited
it anything but affectionate and dear remembrances. And what we say
of that house, Marine Terrace, we say also of that island of Jersey.
Places of suffering and trial end by having a kind of bitter sweetness
which, later on, causes them to be regretted. They have a stern
hospitality which pleases the conscience.
There had been, before them, other exiles in that island. This is not
the time to speak of them. We mention only that the most ancient of
whom tradition, a legend, perhaps, has kept the remembrance, was a
Roman, Vipsanius Minator, who employed his exile in augmenting, for
the benefit of his country's dominion, the Roman wall of which you
may still see some parts, like bits of hillock, near a bay named, I
think, St. Catherine's Bay. This Vipsanius Minator was a consular
personage,--an old Roman so infatuated with Rome that he stood in the
way of the Empire. Tiberius exiled him into this Cimmerian island,
Cæsarea; according to others, to one of the Orkneys. Tiberius did more;
not content with exile, he ordained oblivion. It was forbidden to the
orators of the senate and the forum to pronounce the name of Vipsanius
Minator. The orators of the forum and the senate, and history, have
obeyed; about which Tiberius, of course, did not have a doubt. That
arrogance in commanding, which proceeded so far as to give orders to
men's thoughts, characterized certain ancient governments newly arrived
at one of those firm situations where the greatest amount of crime
produces the greatest amount of security.
Let us return to Marine Terrace.
One morning at the end of November, two of the inhabitants of the
place, the father and the youngest of the sons, were seated in the
lower parlour. They were silent, like shipwrecked ones who meditate.
Without, it rained; the wind blew. The house was as if deafened by
the outer roaring. Both went on thinking, absorbed perhaps by this
coincidence between a beginning of winter and a beginning of exile.
All at once the son raised his voice and asked the father,--
"What thinkest thou of this exile?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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