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 To Date A Disaster

Southern Sanctuary – Book Six

Jane Cousins
Copyright©2015. All rights reserved by the author. Do not copy or
re-distribute.

This is a work of fiction.

Front cover design; Fiona Jayde

To you guys. Thanks for coming along on this journey with me.
Your support, emails and yes, even your criticisms, are all
appreciated.
 Prologue

Cara Devigne was of the firm belief that having a panic attack
whilst up a ladder was not for the faint of heart.
Oh no, no, no, no! This couldn’t be happening. Bad things… very
bad things happened when she got upset. People got hurt, property
was damaged and she all too invariably lost her job in the resulting
melee.
No, absolutely not, she had to put a stop to this. Cara gripped the
rung of the ladder more firmly, trying desperately to picture a sunny
peaceful meadow, where butterflies danced and little bunnies
frolicked. She counted backwards from one hundred, slowly and
deliberately, concentrating hard on controlling and steadying her
heartbeat.
Despite her best efforts to tamp down the attack her breathing had
shifted to rapid and shallow pants, her eyesight had begun to blur
slightly at the edges, whilst hot and cold shivers racked her frame.
She wasn’t afraid of heights. The ladder in question was
remarkably sturdy and in no danger of falling since it was attached
to a solid metal framework that allowed it to be rolled smoothly, and
without much effort, along the back row of bookcases in the brightly
lit modern library. No, the trigger for today’s panic attack was a
sneaky little pervert called Reginald Meggans. A five foot five
butterball of a man with delusions of lady-killer charms who had
wandering, clammy hands and a propensity of standing much too
close.
Cara had only been working at the Naples Library in Florida for just
over six weeks but she really, really needed this job. It was her
tenth in eighteen months and she was running out of false identities
and money. All she wanted was some peace and quiet and a chance
to catch her breath whilst she figured out what the hell was going on
with her life. Was that too much to ask for? Obviously. What she
got instead was smarmy Reginald Meggans, with his roving eye,
weirdly wet smacking lips and a disturbing hair piece that perched
on top of his head like a stuffed mongoose, poised and ready to go
for your eyes at any moment.
The rug… or the shag-pile rug, as she often thought of it, was
hypnotic. It was a dark solid unnatural brown colour, and Reginald
teased the mass skywards, Cara could only presume in an ill-
conceived attempt to convince everyone that he was taller than he
really was.
Cara sometimes wondered if he wore the rug to distract his prey,
namely young women, who were so frozen in disbelief, horror and
shocked amusement by the rug’s presence that they didn’t notice
until too late Reginald’s wandering hands or his sudden close
proximity, brushing up against them oh-so accidentally.
If he’d been anyone else, a library member, a researcher or a
passing stranger, Cara would have made a complaint to the head
librarian, but there was two problems with that option.
For one, Reginald Meggans was the head of the Naples library
board, effectively her boss’s boss. Worse still, he was married to her
boss, Patience Meggans, head librarian. Who, when it came to her
husband’s proclivities, was either the most oblivious woman who
walked the earth, or the most forgiving.
Somehow though, Cara sensed bone deep that if Patience were
ever confronted with the truth about her husband antics, then the
blame would fall with a thud on the shoulders of the young lady in
question, rather than where it squarely belonged, on the rounded
shoulders of the shag-rug wearing pervert.
Double damn her incredibly bad luck. Meggans was not supposed
to be here this afternoon. Cara had triple-checked the meeting
schedule. Reginald had been listed to present his ideas on fund
raising to the board right about now. What could have gone
wrong?
Hah, why she was asking that question she would never know. If
she had learnt nothing else since her life had descended into
madness and mayhem it was to never tempt the back-handed bitch
slap of fate.
 Darn her timing, she had been gently rebuffing for a while now her
boss’s hints that she tackle the re-shelving of the upper shelves. To
the point where she suspected Patience was beginning to think she
had a phobia regarding heights. No, she had a phobia of being
caught up a ladder with Patience’s husband staring up her skirt.
Eek, a horror that was about to become a reality any moment as
the mongoose weaved his way through the empty research desks
like a heat seeking missile locked on to its target. The horror.
Her peaceful meadow was in flames, butterflies and bunnies
exploding everywhere, absolute carnage. Her breathing, if possible,
quickened, whilst the hot and cold chills had disappeared to be
replaced by a sickening ball of molten heat simmering in the centre
of her chest. Oh, no, no, no.
Please no. If she had another incident… then everyone would
know that she was not the mild-mannered shy librarian that she
pretended to be… wait, hold on, she was a mild-mannered shy
librarian. Problem was, she just also happened to be a wanted
fugitive on the run from the police, insurance company investigators
and one, possibly more than one, shady mysterious group whose
agenda she had not yet worked out.
When had her life gotten so horribly out of control?
Actually, that was easily answered. It had all gone pear-shaped
eighteen months ago, just after her mother’s death in a car
accident. From that moment on, things had just started… well
happening. Horrible things. Unexplainable things.
People got hurt. Property was damaged. The one thing… the only
thing all those incidents had in common was the fact that she had
been nearby and every single time she’d experienced a panic attack
immediately prior to the mayhem.
Oh, no, no, no. Merda… damn, her sweet gentle Italian mother
wouldn’t approve of her swearing but if there was ever a moment
that called for it, this was it. Cara clutched the ladder rung tighter
still, her knuckles going white.
Maybe she could scurry down, avoid this whole nightmare
scenario… no, she gauged the mongoose’s progress, if she tried to
clamber down now she’d end up face to… bottom with pervy
Meggans, wouldn’t he just love that.
She squinted through the wavy double vision that was affecting
her, knowing from past experience that her glasses were working
perfectly fine. Heavens, what was it going to be this time?
Fireball? Falling plane debris? Exploding computer? Banana skin?
Oh heavens, she prayed fervently, please don’t let it be a sink-
hole. How the insurance company had deemed she was at fault for
the one appearing five months ago in Lawton, Oklahoma, was
beyond her. The fact the sinkhole had swallowed the garage, house
and every single car that was owned by Boyd Vellows, mechanic and
bully, who had been attempting to seriously over-charge her for the
repairs he’d performed on her usually reliable ten year old Volvo was
just pure happenstance… wasn’t it? An act of God, not an act of
Cara Devigne, as the insurance agent bloodhounds on her trail
claimed. Upping the reward money for notification of her
whereabouts had been uncalled for, resulting in a frantic two month
never ending drive criss-crossing the country until the attention had
died down and she could safely look for a new job.
Okay, so she knew when it had all started to go so very wrong, she
just didn’t know why. There was absolutely nothing special about
her. She was a twenty-nine year old librarian for pete’s sake. She
was the definition of the word average, in height, at five foot eight
and in looks.
She was not the great beauty her mother had been. Oh, she had
inherited her olive gold complexion, wide blue eyes and red-gold hair
from Sophia Devigne, but her hair was a frizzy nightmare, not the
gentle glossy waves her mother had possessed. Seriously, her locks
were so out of control if they weren’t severely braided back she
could have added another three inches, at very least, to her height.
And her eyes might have been a pretty pure blue but they were
hidden by the exceedingly unglamorous glasses she was forced to
wear to correct her vision. Sure, she could have gotten new glasses,
but she’d already had six new pairs in the last eighteen months,
every pair cheaper, sturdier and more unattractive than the last.
 Then there was her weight… she was not thin, or fat, for that
matter. She didn’t have her mother’s lean willowy shape, she was
much more rounded, bordering on plump, but men for some reason,
found her overly curvy body fascinating. Which was surprising,
considering she hid her shape behind dark, severe, practical modest
clothing befitting a lowly librarian who was shy, bespectacled,
poverty-stricken and doing her very best to be unassuming.
That was her, unassuming an exceedingly average. Dull even. The
only exciting thing about her background was that she didn’t have a
father. Okay yes, technically she had a father, but not like the other
kids growing up. Not even a part-time divorced dad kind of
scenario.
But she’d had her mother and her mother’s grandfather, Poppy.
They’d lived together in a cosy little caretaker’s cottage on the
grounds of the historic Bretton Hill Inn located in the small town of
Manchester, Vermont. Where her mother worked her way up over
the years to the assistant-manager position and Poppy was
employed as the head gardener.
They’d had fun there, laughed. Poppy told long rambling stories
every night in his broken English that sounded musical to her ears
and there had been books, lots and lots of books. What she
wouldn’t give to be back there now. To be a child again, safe…
loved, curled up in the big armchair by the fire reading about far off
places and exotic worlds whilst her mother baked in their tiny
kitchen, laughing and sharing the news of the day with Poppy.
Cara winced as the bones in her left hand creaked, ouch, she was
holding on to the ladder too tightly. But what else could she do?
Any moment now all hell was about to break loose and just her luck,
she happened to be eight feet off the ground.
“Miss Trengle… I say Miss Trengle. You shouldn’t be up there
young lady without someone holding that ladder for you, it’s very
dangerous.”
She took a moment to remember she was Miss Trengle. Damn,
Meggans was now only a few feet away. The ball of hot molten fire
roiling in the centre of her chest had begun expanding exponentially,
oh no, no, no.
 “I’m… I’m perfectly fine… Mr…M… Meggans. I’m a professional.”
She glanced back over her shoulder. Even with her wavering vision
she could see Meggans’ eyes fastened on her lower legs, and he was
smacking those wet lips of his, yuk. Thank God she was wearing her
long fitted skirt that ended mid-calf, not that she owned anything
that was much shorter. When you were on the run, dowdy,
respectable and forgettable was the aim.
Maybe, just maybe, if she concentrated hard, moved slowly and
ignored Meggans she could make her way down the ladder and
escape to the ladies room and dunk her head under the cold water
tap. She squeaked slightly as she felt Meggans grab the ladder,
rocking it slightly along the metal rails even though she had pushed
down the old fashion lever to lock it in place.
“Oh, my.” She gasped out, gripping the ladder tighter still.
“Sorry… sorry.” Meggans wheezed. “Clumsy of me, slipped a little.”
“Actually Mr Meggans…. I think… I’m done here… for the day. If
you’d just step back… I’ll come down.”
“No, no.” Meggans’ voice sounded a little breathy and strained.
“Safety first.”
Cara frowned, was that Meggans’ hot breath she could feel on the
back of her ankles? “Um…” The ladder vibrated under her touch.
“Mr Meggans! What are you doing?”
“Um… just steadying the ladder… for you Miss Trengle.”
Cara swallowed hard, it felt like a volcano was brewing in her chest,
like any moment she might explode into a million pieces. Breathing
hard she forced the feeling back, she was a grown up, she had self-
control. Spiralling into a panic attack, letting them consume her life
was eating away at her soul. She needed to be brave, she needed
to face this inner demon of hers and emerge triumphant.
She could deal with pervy Meggans. All she had to do was climb
down this ladder calmly, like a lady, give Meggans a haughty glare to
back off and high tail it to the ladies room. She could do it, she
knew she could. She just had to take that first step down.
With that in mind she shifted her weight, preparing to descend.
The clammy hand that encircled her right calf was such a surprise
she let out a small indignant scream. “Mr Meggans… what do you
think you are doing? Unhand me.”
Beneath her hold the ladder began to shudder, now she could feel
hot breath higher on her leg. What the hell? Was Meggans actually
attempting to climb the ladder, trapping her up here? The disgusting
creepy pervert!
The volcano inside of her exploded, metaphorical invisible molten
lava launching outwards from her in rage and disgust. Instinctively
she kicked out, catching Meggans in the head with the back of her
low heeled pump. Whipping her head down she watched as
Meggans pin wheeled backwards, his left hand knocking the lever
keeping the ladder locked in place. As he fell backwards, his shift in
momentum sent the ladder skidding down the rails to the left.
“Argh.” Cara held on for dear life as the ladder flew past the stacks
so fast the book titles were all just a blur.
Oh heavens, she desperately wanted to shut her eyes, block it all
out but she was determined to be braver than that. Her vision
cleared a little, which was a genuinely unnerving moment for it to do
so, as now she could clearly see the end of the bookcases
approaching fast.
The ladder hit hard, rebounding off the plastic stoppers that had
been placed on the floor and wall to prevent it from banging up
against the plaster and causing any damage. If the ladder had just
stopped there, all would have been fine, but considering the
momentum with which she hit, it should have come as no surprise to
anyone, least of all Cara, when the ladder rebounded and shot back
along the metal rail the way it had come.
Clinging for her life, Cara turned her head, spying Meggans
standing there dopily. Having used the bookcases to drag himself
upright he had somehow managed to get tangled up in the ropes
they used to open and close the blinds that covered the high
windows situated above the book cases.
“Get out of the way.” Cara unlatched a hand and waved it
frantically at Meggans.
Reginald’s shag rug hadn’t moved an inch in the fall, but it looked a
strange contrast indeed to the ghastly pale grey the man’s face had
turned. His narrow piggy eyes widening in shocked surprise as he
realised Cara and the ladder had rebounded and were now headed
back along the bookcases in his direction. Desperately he tried to
untangle the cords that had wrapped themselves tightly around his
forearm.
“Move!” Cara yelled. No longer waving her arm, too intent upon
maintaining her hold as the ladder seemed to inexplicably pick up
speed, damn it, whoever kept the rails greased had done too good a
job. Oh Lord.
Meggans must have worked out that he wasn’t going to get free of
the dangling cords in time so instead of wasting precious seconds
struggling, the man purely and simply bolted for safety. As he ran
he ripped the two heavy blinds directly overhead right off the wall,
sending them sailing like kites across the ceiling to entangle in the
tracts of lighting fixtures that kept the low hanging banks of pendant
lights in place.
Cara watched in horror, instead of freezing in place, Meggans kept
backing up, fast, pulling on the blind cords, that in turned pulled on
the lights.
The first pendant dragged from the ceiling hit the floor harmlessly,
but then the next several fell, shattering one after the other as they
hit, sounding like popcorn popping. One hit a desk where a patron
had left some newspapers, the papers instantly igniting. The next
hit the carpet, sparking and sending smoke spiralling upwards.
Cara lost track of the next several, her attention caught by the fact
that she was now fast approaching the last of the bookcases at the
opposite end of the room and facing the dreaded knowledge that
there was no wall or magic plastic stoppers in place this time to
prevent the ladder from crashing. There was only empty space and
the youth reading room beyond.
Merda, she contemplated making a jump for it right then and
there. But below were tables, knocked askew chairs, small spot fires
and… she blinked as she watched the final pendant in the bank of
lights drop from the ceiling. In what almost seemed like slow
motion, the pendant hit Meggans directly on top of the head,
shattering, the mongoose instantly catching on fire. Meggans
shrieked, patting at his head, jumping up and down on the spot.
With the cords tied to his arm he reminded Cara of a marionette
trapped in a very bad play.
If she hadn’t been so terrified, she would have laughed.
It was too late to jump now, she’d lost her window of opportunity,
there was only a few feet of the rail now left. She clutched at the
rung tighter still, no longer able to feel her hands. The ladder hit
the end with a loud metal on metal crack, accompanied by Cara’s
scream of panic.
Beneath her grip the ladder disintegrated, breaking apart into
several pieces, her body kept flying through the air, the momentum
carrying her forward into empty space. She thought she heard male
voices shouting but couldn’t be sure because she was too pre-
occupied screaming and listening to the wind rushing past her ears.
There may have been some tumbling through the air as well, at one
point she could have sworn she saw her own feet fly past her eyes,
her shoes bulleting off on their own trajectory.
She expected to hit the ground hard, there would be thuds and
crunches, potentially snapping of bones and there would be blood…
from a fall like this there would be no getting around the
consequences. Yet, when she did finally hit, there was only softness
and a loud hiss of air. It was like falling into a bowl of jelly, as
everything around her moulded to her body, shifting and wobbling.
No… she pushed back a lock of frizzy hair that had escaped her
braid, her hand trembling, she had landed on a beanbag… it was a
miracle. She had landed on a beanbag! Oh, thank God.
She waved a hand in front of her face, her nose wrinkling at the
smell of smoke and burnt carpet… or was that the smell of burnt
shag-pile hair piece rug carpeting? Huh, she had survived. It was
truly a miracle…. Again! Someone up there both really hated and
really loved her.
Through the thickening haze several hulking figures detached from
the smoke, approaching her slowly, cautiously. What the… she
fumbled on her face and found her glasses. Of course they had
snapped in two… they never survived, nor it seems had her skirt,
she could see an awful lot of thigh on display as she bought up one
lens to peer through it.
Heavens, who were these men? There were seven of them, all
dressed identically in khaki trousers, matching t-shirts and shit kicker
boots. They were all tall… incredibly tall, and they were all staring
down at her intently.
Oh God. What did they want? Who were they? Were they one of
the mystery groups her paranoia insisted were chasing her? Cara’s
breathing began to grow rapid and shallow, her eyesight blurring
slightly at the edges whilst hot and cold shivers racked her frame.
Oh, no, not again.
The closest man, the tallest of them all with fine white blonde over-
long hair and gold intent eyes bent over her. “Are you alright?”
Gulp, what she wouldn’t give for a paper bag to breathe into right
at this moment.
He was too tall, they were all too tall. Looming around her, over
her. Staring down at her. They wanted something from her, she just
knew it. Merda, she felt the hot molten ball at her core begin to
expand and she said the only thing she could think of to save them.
“Run.”
 Chapter One

Cara sank down on top of her suitcase, dropping her handbag to

the floor, the sound of it hitting the wood floor echoing up and down
the long empty hallway. Wrapping her arms around her upper body,
she rocked gently in place, slowly breathing in through her nose and
out through her mouth.
As an added precaution she decided to count backwards from a
hundred. Then considered the last thirty-six hours of her life and
everything she’d learnt and decided to raise that number to a much
more sensible one thousand, just to be on the safe side.
Had it only been thirty-six hours since the incident in the library? It
seemed like forever ago now. It was all so crazy… impossible.
A series of flashbacks clicked through her head.
The smoke haze dissipating but the library fire alarms continuing to
blare loudly, battering her eardrums. The massive blonde
intimidating man, dressed like a soldier, swooping her up high into
his arms, carrying her from the library. The large man’s large
associates clearing the library of any loitering patrons. The
paramedics carrying out a weeping Meggans strapped to a gurney,
his mongoose hair piece still smouldering. With those nasty burns
she doubted he’d ever be able to wear a hair piece again.
Out in the car park, the large faceless crowd milling about added to
her rising distress levels, already dangerously high thanks to the
feeling of being trapped and hemmed in by seven strange men,
dressed in fatigues, whose sheer size made her stomach churn.
The ball of hot anxiety pulsing and expanding in her chest as she
frantically tried to come up with a plan to escape their clutches.
They were too close, too big, she couldn’t breathe. Oh no, no… No!
The fire truck screeching to a halt in front of the library skidded on
an unexpected puddle of grease. Hitting the kerb it bumped the
gurney Meggans was strapped to, sending him cannoning down the
street, screaming and crying.
 The fire truck continued to skid across the kerb, a power pole
snapping, several parked cars squashed flat as a result. People
running and screaming in all directions… sheer chaos.
Still the seven large lurkers didn’t move a muscle from the
protective circle they had taken up around Cara. She watched as
the paramedics reclaimed Meggans, the man scared out of his wits
but perfectly fine, if one discounted the still smouldering hair piece
that the medical team on site appeared to be having great difficulty
in leveraging from his scalp. Even in obvious pain, Reginald
Meggans protested loudly that it was real hair on his head and kept
trying to bat away their hands.
There had followed a brief, too fast, car ride, a very weird moment
when they’d entered an official looking building but instead of
heading into an office they’d squeezed into a janitor’s closet. Her
broken glasses had been jostled at one point, next thing she knew
they were in someone’s apartment, then a hallway, an elevator and
finally a large executive conference room decorated a-la serial killer
chic. She’d never seen so many sharp weapons in one place outside
of a museum. Chilling.
Basically, she’d been kidnapped by seven experimental super-
soldiers… no, she had to stop thinking of them like that. They were
warriors, the Goddess Maat’s elite warriors. Oh heavens above…
Gods and Goddesses existed! Even more surreal she discovered she
was the descendant of one of them, the God of Chaos, Apep.
Damn, she’d come to the slow but sure conclusion over the last
eighteen months that she was a complete and utter disaster magnet
but still, it was a kick in the teeth to be told that was in fact a
reality. That chaos literally ran in her veins.
She’d tried her best to warn them, the seemingly nice but still scary
super soldiers to keep their distance. That no matter how many
times they assured her she was safe, she didn’t feel safe… they were
too big, too intimidating… too everything. Of course what came
next was all too familiar to her… she had tried to warn them, several
times.
More yelling, more smoke, blood… seriously, who in their right
mind decorates a conference room with a wall of wickedly sharp
blades and doesn’t double check that they are all securely attached
to the wall?
She’d panicked at the sight of blood, her heart racing, her breath
coming in uncontrollable pants. Oh no, no, no, no! More yelling,
more blood… chaos, absolute chaos.
Next, in an attempt to reassure and calm her, they’d sent in a
woman. Which would have been a smart idea, except the woman,
who introduced herself as Hadleigh, was all too clearly the female
version of the super-soldier project; too tall, too intimidating. The
nail in the coffin though was those cold clear grey eyes which
instantly made Cara hyperventilate… more blood, cursing and yelling
followed.
Then came Doctor Nell Montgomery, sweet, lovely, normal-sized
Nell. Who’d spoken soothingly and hadn’t laughed in Cara’s face
when she accused her of being an evil mad genius doctor who was
creating a race of super-soldiers.
In fact, if anything, Nell had acted a little chuffed at the idea that
anyone could mistake her for an evil mad genius doctor with plans to
take over the world. It had made Cara instantly trust and like her,
believing Nell when she told her she was just a simple healer, here
to help her, here to explain what was going on in her life. Informing
Cara that it really was the truth, she was a descendant of Apep, the
God of Chaos. That his sons, Sek and Mot, her Great-Great-throw in
a lot more Great – Uncles wanted her blood for a special ritual to
awaken their father from stasis. Most significantly, the two demi
gods didn’t just want a little bit of her blood, they wanted it all.
Nell had done her level best, trying to convince Cara she would be
safe if she stayed at Maat Towers which was apparently located in
Atlanta, but every time Cara saw one of those hulking, walking,
killing-machines… warriors, every time she saw one of the warriors,
she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, her vision began to blur and
grey at the edges and then… well, disaster city.
Nell hadn’t wanted to believe her but the evidence was pretty
damning – she only had to look at the eight bruised and bloodied
warriors. Cara had been in their company a short time but they
were quickly starting to look like extras in a war movie, the kind who
played anonymous wounded soldiers, bloodied, missing body parts,
in desperate need of medical attention.
Unsurprisingly, they didn’t really start to take her seriously until she
mentioned the possibility of sink-holes. Then suddenly she was being
told about a place called the Southern Sanctuary, located across the
other side of the world in Queensland, Australia. They talked up the
beaches, the friendly people, told her she would have a place to live,
a job at the local library. That she would be safe from Sek and Mot
there… and hopefully the insurance investigators hot on her trail.
It sounded too good to be true. But what else could she do? It
would be a sucker bet to assume she’d lost her job at the Naples
Library in Florida and she doubted very much that Patience Meggans
would be willing to provide her with a reference. And less she forget
the piece de resistance, one of the cars the power pole had
pulverised outside of the Naples library had of course been her
faithful ten year old Volvo. Because that, it seems, was the way her
luck was going to roll now that she was officially designated the
Queen of Chaos.
All hail her majesty.
Cara found herself chuckling softly under her breath. Thank God
she could still laugh at herself, it was about the only thing keeping
her sane right at this minute. Absently she looked at her watch and
shot straight to her feet, damn, she was going to be late for her
interview if she didn’t hurry. First impressions were very important;
being late would be ill advised. It was bad enough she had sticky
tape keeping her broken glasses together.
Cara had been the one to insist upon being interviewed. Librarians
were a notoriously territorial bunch; no way did she want to get on
anyone’s bad side, intrude where she was neither wanted nor
needed. Flipping up the handle of her battered suitcase, Cara
studied the crumpled bit of paper containing directions in her hand.
Squaring her shoulders she marched off down the hallway, past the
door with the gold lettering marked ‘Special Council Liaison Office’
that she had been told, at least ten times, if not more, that whatever
happened, she was not to enter.
 Though who could be scarier than eight mountain-sized warriors
with muscles on top of their muscles she hated to think. A question
which thankfully she didn’t have the time to dwell on, she had a job
interview to get to. One she was feeling quite hopeful about, no one
did dowdy, unassuming, yet eager and can-do like Cara Devigne…
and hey, added bonus for this interview, she could actually use her
own name.
Things were finally starting to look up.
 Chapter Two

Ugh, Cara rubbed her chest anxiously, trying to dispel the lava ball
of anxiety that was beginning to form there.
Haven Bay was giving her the creeps. Full of strange people who
kept smiling and waving at her. After eighteen months of doing her
best to be anonymous, this reaction to her presence was making her
rather anxious, which was not good as anxiety historically led down
the path to mayhem and catastrophe.
Oh, why couldn’t these people… these incredibly, disturbingly, good
looking people, ignore her? In her dark grey long skirt, sensible
pumps, buttoned-up blouse and five-year old light grey cardigan she
was hardly deserving of all this attention. She blended in, she knew
she did. She’d spent eighteen months perfecting the art form. But
as she walked down the main boulevard of shops, pulling her
suitcase along behind her, she rather felt like the princess on top of
the parade float.
And talk about news travelling fast. Cara had only finished her job
interview and officially accepted the role five minutes ago and
already strangers, friendly… but strangers nevertheless, were calling
out their congratulations. Talk about a speed of light grapevine.
Cara attempted to draw in another slow deep calming breath. Ugh,
nothing about this beachside town was making any sense. The
library for one thing, located on the fourth - upper most - floor of the
imposing gothic Council building, was in one word… magnificent.
With incredibly high ceilings, gleaming mahogany bookcases,
impressive high tech research facilities and the space… the space
was just mind-blowing. From the incredibly large reception desk
area that you first entered, to the central light filled domed area
situated behind it, with its gorgeous mosaic tiled floors, six intricate
stone columns, lush potted ferns, fantastical alfresco murals on the
walls, ornate domed ceiling and the six massive arched doorways
leading off to carefully divided sections of the library.
 The central domed area was a gorgeous space, perfect for quiet
contemplation or for reading a book or newspaper at one of the
small tables placed around the circular room. Free hot beverages
were available from a drinks station decorated to look like an old-
fashioned Italian street vendor’s cart. Sitting there, sipping a
cappuccino and having her interview with Patricia Bennett had been
both relaxing and a little bit awe-inspiring.
If the world class library with way too many books that looked as if
they belonged locked behind glass in a museum was a surprise, then
Patricia Bennett, head librarian, came as a complete shock. Cara,
from past experience, had been expecting someone prim, proper,
serious and potentially humourless. What she got was an elegant,
tall, though not super-soldier tall, lean woman who looked as if she’d
just recently retired as a Parisian model. She had rich sable
coloured hair that she swept back from her finely boned triangular
face, stunning wide hazel eyes, warm skin tones and a ready smile.
The woman barely looked a day over forty but as they talked Cara
had done the maths and realised Patricia had to be fifty plus. Wow,
maybe one day she’d get up the nerve to ask her what brand of face
cream she used.
Dressed in a cowl necked coffee coloured sweater, cream pleated
pants, elegant sandals and an eye-catching large art deco piece of
topaz jewellery around her throat, Patricia was the epitome of chic
sophistication. Such a marked contrast to her own spinster dowdy
outfit that it had her wishing she’d worn something different, though
who was she kidding, her entire suitcase was full of dowdy practical
skirts and blouses. Nothing she owned in her suitcase could come
close to competing with Patricia’s elegant visage.
Besides, what she wore would be unimportant, it was the job that
mattered and the dream job Patricia described was going to be
challenging and fun. When was the last time she’d had any fun? As
the new children’s librarian for the Southern Sanctuary District Main
library her role would be to decorate and stock the area designated
for young readers that was currently in the midst of a complete
renovation.
 Patricia warned her that whilst there were only a handful of
children currently living locally, the council city planner had recently
advised of an imminent baby boom that had necessitated the re-
vamping of the old-fashioned, woefully out of date, youth area of
the library.
What could Cara say but, challenge accepted.
But now she was starting to question whether she’d made the right
decision. The picturesque beachside ‘almost too good to be true’
community was giving her the willies. For pity-sake, the section of
shops she was now walking past reminded her all too vividly of New
Orleans, with quaint balconies overhead, wrought iron decorations
and hanging plants. Except the street was much wider and she
could hear the sound of breaking waves on the nearby beach. It
was just too perfect.
Then there were the overly friendly locals. A rather startling
percentage of whom were wearing swords or some sharp implement
strapped to their body. Wouldn’t she be better off high-tailing it out
of town before she accidentally hurt someone or set fire to
something? She had all of Australia to get lost in. A fresh start.
The insurance investigators would never think to look for her here,
nor was she considered a wanted felon by the local police… that just
left the mysterious Sek and Mot. Who, according to Maat’s warriors,
wanted to drain her lifeblood from her body… hmm, on second
thoughts, maybe she’d just grin and bear it.
She could do this, maybe take up yoga, find an isolated little house
to live in and become a hermit, only venturing out to work at the
library, a solid plan indeed. First things first, she glanced down at the
address on the paper in her hand, she just needed to locate her
temporary accommodation.
Darn, she’d gotten turned around. Gripping her suitcase tighter
she swivelled and then stopped with a gasp. Five older ladies were
bearing down on her, broad welcoming smiles on their faces as they
enveloped her in a cloud of clashing perfumes. Each one was
chatting a mile a minute, Cara was completely discombobulated for a
moment.
 “Darling girl, congratulations on the new job. “ An older lady
dressed all in white with dramatically swept back grey hair
announced loudly.
“Is it true what their saying about Maat’s warriors?” Her
companion, a lady swathed in layers of jewelled fabric and bright red
hair enquired, laughing. “That they sustained more damage after
spending a day with you than they have in a hundred years?”
“What about Hadleigh?” A larger, solidly built lady smelling of
cookies and chocolate pressed forward, eyes bright with curiosity.
“Did she really cut herself with one of her own swords? She hasn’t
done that since she was an infant.”
“Um… err.” Never mind having a panic attack, Cara found she was
simply unable to breathe. The heavy wave of perfume clogging her
throat and making her eyes water.
“Ladies.” A husky female voice admonished, a hand appearing out
of nowhere to clamp down on Cara’s upper arm. “I was wondering
where my client was.”
Cara stumbled to the side, letting her mystery saviour tug her and
her suitcase out from under the tidal wave of chattering older ladies
who were making noises of protest and looking like they might
follow. Only to pull up short as a glass door was resoundingly shut
in their faces.
“There. Just take a few deep breaths. They won’t come in here.”
The hushed, softly lit space instantly made Cara feel safe, she
nodded her gratitude, doing her best to breathe. “Tha…. Thanks.
Th… they had… me surrounded.”
“Oh, that lot have been swarming all day in search of fresh gossip.
I’m Gwen by the way. You’re Cara, right?” Petite, barely five foot
two, Gwen exuded energy and warmth as she bustled around Cara.
Her blue gaze eyeing her speculatively. “We’d better do something
with that hair of yours I think.”
“What?” Cara grabbed the very end of her braid protectively.
Gwen laughed. “Oh, I don’t mean anything drastic. We just need
to look busy until the swarm gets bored and finds fresh gossip
elsewhere.”
 “Um…” Cara looked out the window, noticing the ladies were still
hovering. “Err…” she glanced around the cream and gold expensive
looking salon and then at Gwen’s blunt cut light blonde hair with
candy coloured hot pink tips. “I’m not sure…”
“Please, you’ll be doing me a favour, just a wash and blow dry, I
promise.” Gwen was already herding Cara back towards the basins
as she spoke, determination on her heart-shaped beautiful face.
“Besides, everyone knows, it’s the law of hairdressing, as soon as
you have one customer you’ll get a rush, and the way that lot out
there have been scaring off my customers all morning, I need a rush
today.”
“Oof.” Cara found herself sitting. Gwen was a lot stronger than
she looked.
“Wow, will you look at your hair.” Gwen’s nimble fingers had
already succeeded in undoing half of Cara’s braid. “This is amazing,
the curls… you are so lucky.”
Lucky? Cara almost laughed, in what universe did having a headful
of frizzy uncontrollable curls equate as lucky? “Err…” She didn’t get
a chance to say anything else, suddenly finding herself pushed
backwards, the back of her neck resting on the basin.
“Don’t worry, we’ll just add some curl relaxant….” Gwen started
drenching Cara’s hair with water. “And maybe some frizz-ease… and
perhaps…”
Cara was no longer listening. The warm water felt like heaven as
Gwen began to massage her scalp. Oh, she felt completely relaxed,
almost boneless. For the first time in eighteen months, since her
mother had died and she’d gone on the run, she felt completely and
utterly safe and at peace. Wow, with hands like this and the
gorgeous salon, she was surprised Gwen didn’t have a line of people
around the block waiting for one of her head massages.
An hour later Cara was staring at a stranger in the mirror. One with
glossy red gold hair that cascaded down to her waist in beautiful soft
ringlets. “Wow.” Was that really her?
“Double wow.” Gwen fussed for a few seconds longer. “There…
now I’ve already tucked a shampoo and conditioner in your bag with
a little frizz-ease formula added…”
 “Oh… I couldn’t…”
“Na-ah, it’s my welcome to the town gift to you. Besides with this
glorious mane, you’ll be a walking advertisement for my skills, not
even that flock of gossip hungry biddies will be able to keep my
customers away.”
“Um…” Dazed, Cara stood up, letting Gwen lift away the plastic
protective wrap she’d been wearing and just like that, as her dull
dowdy clothes came into view, harsh reality returned with thud.
Who was she kidding, this hair wasn’t her, it just attracted
attention, way too much attention… an attention was bad. Quickly
she pulled a spare hair tie from the pocket of her suit jacket and
began to pull her hair back into its normal tight braid, except the
stuff was so glossy now, almost slippery, it was difficult trying to
make it behave. “There.” She huffed out a relieved sigh when she
was finished, the style much more suited to the nasty thick broken
glasses, dowdy outfit and don’t look at me aura she was trying to
present.
Gwen didn’t comment, though her smile dimmed slightly.
“I… really need to get going.” Cara edged towards her suitcase
and the door.
Gwen laughed softly. “Well, don’t be a stranger. Watch out for the
gossip biddies and if you want to get those glasses of yours fixed, I
recommend you head to the Spectacle Hut two doors up.”
Cara murmured her thanks and stumbled out into the bright
afternoon sunshine, hoping she hadn’t hurt Gwen’s feelings but
knowing that flying under the radar was her best, perhaps only,
hope of not doing anything stupid. Like sending this picturesque
town sliding into the sea, God, she hoped someone had double-
checked if it was on a fault line before sending her here. Or
tsunamis… merda, she’d forgotten it was a beachside town.
A myriad of natural disasters were running through her head when
she heard loud voices and the pounding of footsteps, oh no, not the
ladies. Not stopping to think she dashed up the street and ducked
into the second door on the right. A small tinkling bell sounding
overhead and a booming male voice making her jump.
 “Welcome to the Spectacle Hut, how can I help you today… oh, you
know, I think I have the perfect spectacles for you young lady, just
wait right here.”
Fifteen minutes later Cara was stomping down the street, trying to
get used to her new light weight cat-framed glasses… free glasses,
as someone had forgotten to pick them up and they just happened
to be her prescription and looked kind of fantastic on her. The clear
plastic colour, wrapped around a guaranteed indestructible titanium
frame, picked up the colours of what she was wearing and made her
blue eyes sparkle brightly.
Damn, she pushed at a strand of glossy hair that had slipped free
of her braid, if this kept up she wouldn’t recognise herself in the
mirror soon.
Racing down the street she was determined not to get waylaid in
any more shops or be set upon by the swarm of ladies looking for a
fresh victim to drain of all gossip. She would find a supermarket,
grab some meagre supplies, head to the cottage that had been
made available to her and hunker down until it was time to start
work tomorrow morning. No mixing, no mingling, no talking,
chatting, no getting attached and no having a panic attack.
It was a plan that had merit; Cara deemed it remarkably sensible
and was looking forward to implementing it. There was only one
looming problem… the ladder.
There was one directly in front of her, outside one of the
ridiculously quaint shops with their covered walkways, wrought iron
balconies and lush hanging ferns and flowers. She couldn’t cross the
road, there was too much traffic. Damn, well there was no cause to
be alarmed. It was just a ladder, an inanimate object. And it wasn’t
like she was being asked to climb it or even go near it for that
matter, as someone had sensibly set out two red cones to keep
pedestrians at a safe distance.
As she drew closer she realised the reason for the red cones was
because of all the tools scattered underneath the ladder, the very
sharp… very dangerous tools. Just breathe Cara, she reminded
herself, tightening her grip on her suitcase, preparing to barrel on
past. A few feet away she noticed there was actually someone on
the ladder already. Well, better them than her.
It would be fine, he was a stranger… nice butt though. Huh, don’t
think about his butt Cara, no matter how nice it was in the faded
denim jeans he wore. Seriously woman, get a grip.
She was almost parallel now and couldn’t help but glance upwards,
past the tightly fitted white t-shirt that clung to a broad solid
muscular chest. Her breathing began to speed up, but it was fine…
early days on the scale of one of her panic attacks. So it wouldn’t
hurt to slow down a fraction and sneak a little peek higher, would it?
Goodness, look at those bare tanned arms, she’d read of the term
‘rippling muscles’ in a romance book but never thought she’d have a
chance to see the reality. Oh my, his hair was dark chocolate brown,
messy, longish, reaching past his ears, falling across his face,
currently obscuring her view, damn it.
Honestly, what was the matter with her? The man was balancing
precariously on a ladder, adjusting a large wrought iron sign to the
outside of what looked like an old fashioned candy store. His life
was in her hands… and the poor man didn’t even know it. Move
Cara, run Cara… save the God in the tight jeans from your disaster-
magnet super powers.
She picked up her pace once more, a few feet past him now, not
quite a run but it was getting there. For some reason she looked
back and up, just as the man on the ladder flicked back his head,
revealing his gorgeous tanned face, high cheek bones, well defined
rugged jaw with the hint of a five o’clock shadow and those lips,
something about those lips. Cara had barely had the thought when
the molten ball of lava that had been simmering contentedly and
quietly in her chest for the last few hours dropped a lot lower in her
body and went supernova bright, bursting out of her with no
warning, no wavering vision, no slowly ramping up panic attack.
One second she was fine, the next… disaster.
She cried out a warning, even as she heard something metal shear
away, something wooden crack, swearing and a large body was
falling. Oh God, she’d killed him, turning she went to help but got
caught up by her suitcase, falling to the ground with a thud, her
head striking the ground with an audible crack.
Ouch, as her vision blurred, she could have sworn she saw the God
from the ladder hovering over her with eyes so blue they were like
shards of cobalt. The God hovering over her had to be a ghost
because that’s what she did after all, caused chaos and killed
perfectly innocent handymen.
“Goddess, Erik, are you alright?” A concerned breathless female
voice sounded close by. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know.” The ghost replied. “But whoever she is, I’m
seriously considering keeping her.”
Huh, what? What had the gorgeous ghost just said? That couldn’t
be right, she must have cracked her head harder than she thought,
the world started to spin and then she knew no more.
* * *
Cara awoke to heaven. The smell of mint tea tickled her nostrils,
soft French jazz soothed her soul and she felt as if she was lying on
a comfortable cloud. Still, after eighteen months on the run she’d
learnt to be wary, keeping her breathing slow and even, she opened
her eyes a tiny crack.
She was in a gorgeous light filled room with blonde wood
floorboards, pale coffee coloured walls and high ceilings with
sweeping decorative archways held aloft by carved cream columns.
Long transparent cream curtains filtered the light, covering two huge
floor to ceiling windows… front windows. She was in a shop? Her
eyes popped open as she scoped out the two mannequins in the
windows and the two long wooden racks of clothes pushed up
against the far wall, almost as an after-thought.
“Hi.”
She was lying on a cream coloured chaise lounge, her shoes off,
her cardigan gone. Cara blinked and sat up. “Who? Where?” She
noted the occupant of the large high-backed cream coloured chair
across the low coffee table. On the table a tea set fought for space
with piles of sparkly thread, rhinestone buttons and bobs, pearl
fasteners, rolls of coloured lace, feathers and handfuls of jewelled
stones.
 “Take it easy.”
Cara blinked again, studying her companion sitting curled up in the
large armchair, a pile of clothes on her lap, a needle in her hand and
a merry gleam of amusement in her light green hazel eyes. She was
perhaps one of the most beautiful women Cara had seen outside of
a magazine. She had shiny dead straight black hair that fell in a
silken waterfall to her shoulder blades and a longish fringe, the ends
of which tickled her over long black eyelashes. She was clearly of
mixed raced heritage, a smash up of english rose meets asian
princess, her skin was smooth and lightly tanned with a faint
smattering of freckles across her small nose. Her lips were red in
colour, bow shaped but wide, the sides tilted upwards readily into a
smile.
“It’s Cara, right? You took quite the hit to the head. Just take your
time. There’s mint tea when you’re ready.”
Cara took two deep breaths. “Who are you? Where am I?”
“I’m Riya, and you’re in my shop ‘Un Peu de Magie’.”
So she really was in a shop. Wow. It must be one of those really
exclusive boutiques that hardly displayed any clothes. She could
imagine Riya’s clients sitting on this lovely chaise, sipping
champagne, trying on glorious outfits in the large arched alcove off
to the side. “Un Peu de Magie?” She frowned, searching her
memory for the French translation. “A little bit of magic?”
“Yes.” Riya looked pleased, not bothering to look down as she
continued to work on the garment in her lap, she appeared to be
adding something sparkly to the garment… hey, that wasn’t just any
garment.
“That’s mine.” Cara looked over at the pile of garments next to
Riya, saw what looked like more of her clothes, folded neatly, piled
high. They looked different…. “What did you do?”
Riya shrugged, smiling unrepentant. “I was bored and you were
taking ages to wake up.”
“Um…” She should say something, but yelling at this lovely girl for
invading her privacy, going through her personal things seemed
harsh an ungrateful. If only she’d stuck with her plan of keeping her
head down… why hadn’t she? “Oh, no…. the handyman! I killed
him didn’t I?” She covered her mouth in shock. Looking out
through the narrow double glass doors to the covered walkway, no
sign of the police or the coroners van in sight. How long had she
been out? Her breathing started to come in ragged pants, a leaden
feeling of dread swamping her.
“Handyman?” Riya frowned for a moment, but even that
expression was lovely. Then she started to giggle, a husky melodic
sound. “Handyman!” It took her a few seconds to wind down, to
catch her breath, grabbing her tea she took a large gulp. “Sorry…
no, you didn’t kill the handyman. He’s fine, the only thing that didn’t
survive the encounter was Gigi’s new sign, bent all out of shape
now.”
“So the….” She stopped herself from saying the word God, she
couldn’t bandy that word around so casually now that she knew that
they were real, that she was a descendant of one. “The handyman
really wasn’t hurt?” She watched as Riya folded one of her plain
cream no nonsense blouses… did it have sparkly rhinestone diamond
buttons now? No, surely not.
“E… the handyman is fine, he just had to go home to clean up.
The sign landed right on his very hard head… damn, I wish I’d seen
it.” Riya picked up another garment, barely looking as she plucked
sparkly thread off the table and some pearl buttons.
“Oh, the poor man.”
“Oh, he’s fine… enough about him. You’re the one who lost
consciousness, just relax and have some tea.”
“Um…” Cara leant forward, poured herself some tea, frowning at
the garment on Riya’s lap. “What are you doing to that cardigan?”
Riya grinned at her, impishly. “I’m making it the best cardigan it
can possibly be. Don’t worry about it, you’ll hardly recognise it once
I’m finished.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.” Cara muttered, brushing her hair
back over her shoulder, wait when had her hair come undone?
Stupid glossy silky uncontrollable mess, perhaps it had been a
mistake to let Gwen tackle it.
“So… tell me about your visit to Maat Towers… is it really true that
Hadleigh cut herself with one of her own weapons?” Riya’s green
hazel eyes were wide with wonder.
“How did you hear about that? How do you know Hadleigh?”
“She’s my cousin and if you haven’t worked it out for yourself
already… the grapevine here is practically supersonic.”
“Cousins.” Cara almost choked on her tea. The gigantic red
headed warrior woman and this five foot nine bundle of impish
trouble wearing a bold ruby long-sleeved knit dress were related… in
what world? Well, she supposed in the magic one.
Riya must have read her look of disbelief. “Our mothers are sisters.
So it’s true about Hadleigh… aren’t you afraid she’s going to come
after you?”
Cara gulped hard. “Well I hadn’t been until you just mentioned the
possibility.”
Riya laughed huskily again, Cara couldn’t help but join in. She’d
fallen down a rabbit-hole; she might as well join in the madness.
Riya finally stopped laughing, raising her teacup high in a toast like
gesture. “Welcome to the Southern Sanctuary… where things are
never dull.”
“Damn.” Cara muttered. “Dull was exactly what I was counting
on.”
 Chapter Three

Ten Days Later…

Erik Valhalla was a marked man… hunted.

Normally he would be sharing the pain of that reality with his
younger brother, Fen, but the bastard was in Sydney for a two week
fire and safety conference. Selfish… selfish, thoughtless little prick.
And it didn’t pay to dwell on the current status of his older brother,
Locke. The man was no better than a pod person ever since he’d
met and fallen in love five months ago with his perfect mate, Serena,
an Earth witch. Locke was happy now. He went about smiling for no
earthly reason and said things like ‘we’ll get back to you’ and ‘I’ll
have to double-check that with Serena’.
Goddess, beat him with a two by four, his older brother made him
queasy just thinking about how the mighty had fallen.
Damn, without Fen around to divert attention or Locke to use as a
human shield, it only left Erik to face the beast… otherwise known as
his mother, Lucy. A woman hell bent on seeing her sons melded and
popping out grandbabies for her to spoil and dote upon.
Grandbabies be damned, Erik wanted his life back. He wanted to
work in his art studio without looking over his shoulder every two
minutes. He wanted not to have to change the locks on his house
every three days because his mother kept getting in… somehow…
invariably with some eager young woman in tow who claimed to
know how to bake and practically had the words - stay at home
mother - stamped on her forehead.
He wanted to sleep in. He wanted to be able to go home after a
long day rather than put his home under surveillance for an hour to
work out if it was safe to enter.
Goddess damn it, he wanted his carefree - love em and leave em -
single life back. Why couldn’t they return to the good old days when
Lucy’s full and undivided attention was focused squarely upon his six
foot six baby sister… affectionately nicknamed Gigantore?
Seriously, with those wide child bearing hips, Hadleigh was the
perfect vessel to pop out a legion of squawking brats between
fighting off evil and beheading bad guys as part of her role as family
enforcer. And she was melded for Heaven’s sake to a man their
father… well, not exactly liked, but tolerated and that was saying a
lot. It was no easy task getting into Gunther Valhalla’s good graces
but somehow Vaughn, a warrior of Maat, had succeeded.
It seemed fairly simple to him, Hadleigh melded to Vaughn should
equate to potential grandbaby nirvana for his mother. Yet instead of
hovering over the happy couple providing fertility tips, his mother
had backed off completely. Letting them enjoy the honeymoon
period of their marriage. Whatever the hell that was supposed to
mean. All he knew was that Hadleigh had been officially melded for
over seven months now and the selfish cow wasn’t even hinting that
the thud of over-sized baby booties were on the horizon.
Erik’s work boots struck the marble stairs loudly as he headed for
the library, on the uppermost floor of the council building. A bad
feeling beginning to churn in his gut. Crap, he’d done his best to
keep his schedule erratic of lately. Laying false leads, lying his ass
off. Telling people he was headed left, whilst he snuck off right. So
far it had all been going to plan, except for today as he was
committed to teaching the art appreciation course at the library
every Thursday night over the next five weeks.
He couldn’t back out of his commitment, Aunt Patricia had
organised the workshop series and she scared him even more than
his mother. Especially at this moment in time, given the knowing
smirk she was currently directing his way as he entered the library
reception area. Crap, he sensed major trouble brewing.
“Hey gorgeous.” He leaned across the large oak desk, lips
puckered.
Patricia shook her head, laughing, placing her hand on his forehead
and pushing him backwards. “Not a chance, I know where those
lips have been. I was wondering if you were going to turn up.”
 “And let down a dozen art devotees… never.” Erik paused and then
gave his Aunt a hopeful look. “Unless no one signed up?”
Patricia laughed merrily. “Oh, they signed up alright. I had to turn
people… and when I say people… I mean women, away in their
droves.” She picked up a clipboard, handing it over.
Erik glanced down the list… each and every name listed was
female, an unfamiliar. Fuck, this wasn’t just a set-up, it was an
ambush. “What did my mother do, stand in the street and harass
single women into signing up?”
Patricia smoothed down her fitted bronze coloured scoop necked
sweater. “Harass is a strong word. Besides, I don’t think there was
much arm twisting required after she showed them your picture.”
“Goddess, give me strength. I swear Aunt Patricia; she’s gone off
the deep end.”
“She loves you. She wants you to be happy.”
Erik chuffed a derisive laugh. “She could care less if I married a
harpy, she just wants to get her mitts on some grandbabies. Why
isn’t she harassing Hadleigh or Locke? Both are melded now,
shouldn’t she being circling where her chickens are sure to hatch?”
Patricia laughed again. “They’ll get there in their own time. I think
your mother is just worried you and Fen are so stubborn that you’ll
dig your heels in to spite yourselves. It really isn’t just all about the
grandbabies; she just wants all her children to be happy. To have
what she and Gunther have.”
“I am happy… or I was until my mother went loco on my blissfully
contented single ass.”
Patricia waved him off. “I don’t wish to have a discussion about
your ass. Go… set up, the modelling clay is in the storage
cupboard… oh, I almost forgot, Great-Great-Aunt Adelaide rang to
say she can’t make it. Something about a scheduling conflict, her
publisher wants her to rewrite the last chapter of Savage Sinful Love
and tone down the bondage scene.”
“Damn, what am I going to do without a model?” Erik eyed his
Aunt thoughtfully.
“Don’t even ask. I’m leaving early to have drinks with Maureen…
why don’t you be the model. All those women are going to be
staring your way longingly anyway.”
Erik shook his head in frustration. “Nah, I’ll think of something…
later.” He swooped across the desk before Patricia could stop him,
planting an affectionate playful kiss on her cheek.
* * *
Cara was a convert. She loved Haven Bay. In fact, she loved the
whole of the Southern Sanctuary and everyone in it.
She loved her little one bedroom cottage located directly across the
road from the park that butted up against the beach. She loved the
winter weather, the clear blue sky days, mild temperatures and
abundance of sunshine. She’d grown up in Vermont and the idea
that this was winter time here in Queensland made her want to
laugh out loud.
She loved her job, the library, overseeing the renovation and fit out
of the new children’s wing and working with Patricia Bennett and the
rest of the library staff.
Yes, she loved everything and everyone… because she was cured.
It was miracle.
It had been ten days since she’d arrived and ten days since her last
attack. It was as if that last weird experience, when the molten lava
ball of anxiety had dropped low in her body and she’d gone from
normal to disaster central in less than a second had blown a fuse
somewhere inside her.
No more simmering hot ball of dread, now there was only the
faintest, barely even there, buzz of heat located north of her gut…
okay, okay, so it was centred between her legs. Which was a little
distracting and embarrassing, but if she kept busy she discovered
she could easily ignore it. In a word, it was – wonderful. Life was
wonderful.
She was so happy that she didn’t care that her uncontrollable hair
was now a slippery glossy mass of ringlets that had seemingly
developed a mind of its own. Forcing her to re-braid it every two
hours. Nor did she dwell on the rather disconcerting outcome of
Riya’s revamp of her wardrobe. Take for instance the outfit she had
on today. In the past it had just been a dowdy, plain, unspectacular
white shirt and black skirt. Thanks to Riya, the skirt now ended
several daring inches above her knee, there was a black velvet belt,
that cinched her waist in and the shirt now sported twinkling jet
black diamante buttons, the top two of which seemed to be faulty,
no matter how many times Cara attempted to do them up, they
would not stay fastened.
Two weeks ago that would have driven her to distraction. Now she
was too busy and happy to care about such inconsequential things,
so what if she showed a tiny bit of cleavage, she was a librarian, not
a nun. In fact, those last words had come from Patricia just this
afternoon when she’d caught Cara fiddling self-consciously with the
buttons of her blouse for the umpteenth time. It was time she
accepted she was safe. She didn’t have to meld into the background
any longer.
Closing down the computer, Cara looked around in surprise at the
empty research area. Whoops, how had it gotten so late? She must
have been concentrating too hard on the decorating site, copying
down tips and ideas that might be suitable to incorporate in the
children’s wing of the library.
Standing she winced, rubbing her back absently, glancing at her
watch she shook her head. Where had the day gone? Damn, she
had promised Patricia she’d check in on the art appreciation group
and make sure they had everything they needed. Grabbing her files
she made her way towards the arched entry way that would lead her
to the central domed room where tonight’s clay modelling workshop
was slated to be held.
Juggling her files as she stepped onto the colourful mosaic tiles,
she was pleased to note someone had taken the initiative and
moved all the chairs and tables back out of the way. There was now
a raised dais in the very centre of the room, encircled by twelve
individual work tables and stools. Excellent, looked like whoever was
leading this workshop had everything under control. Footsteps
sounded off to her left, a man carrying a large wooden box was
striding towards the dais.
Cara frowned, frozen, she could only see him from the side… the
back, but there was something awfully familiar about those tight
faded jeans clinging to what was admittedly a tempting male butt.
Um, why did he look familiar? Whoever he was he was wearing a
flowing white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to each elbow, his arms
tanned and muscular… something about those arms. His dark
chocolate brown hair was clubbed back into a short ponytail at the
base of his skull but a large hank had come free, obscuring his
profile.
She watched, fixated, as he all too easily positioned the large
wooden box onto the dais, the muscles of his broad chest and back
flexing under the thin material of his shirt, for a moment she forgot
how to breath. Hurriedly she sucked in a large lungful of air, the
sound drawing the man’s attention. His head flicking to the side, his
hair sweeping back off his face, straight nose, high cheekbones,
rugged jawline in need of a shave and sensual lips, quirking up at
the edges. Cobalt blue eyes fixed on her position.
In a split second Cara’s mind went into overdrive… pirate, lothario,
sinful… handyman! Without warning the insignificant buzz between
her legs went supernova volcano, no warning, no build-up… just
kapow… eruption. She felt the invisible explosion rocket out from
her in all directions.
Immediately, from behind the thick opaque plastic covering the
archway to the under-renovation children’s wing there came a
warning shout, a curse, the sound of metal hitting concrete with a
loud ear-splitting clatter, another shout, glass breaking and then ‘pfft’
the plastic covering billowed, as something metallic and blue pierced
the plastic and shot across the room to hit the handyman with what
sounded weirdly like metal striking metal.
Cara clasped her hand over her mouth, eyeing the handyman.
Merda, what had just happened?
The plastic sheeting tore back and Dave, head of the work crew,
stormed out looking flushed and shocked. “Is everyone okay?”
“I think the question should be is everyone okay in there?” The
handyman bent to pick something up.
“We’re fine.” Dave ran a hand over his face. “Damn scaffolding
folded like a deck of cards… never seen anything like it. Then two
ladders fell and then a light fixture, strangest damn thing you ever
saw. Something hit my toolbox, next second, my screwdriver is
shooting out of the room like it was fired out of a f… bleeding
canon.” Dave looked back at the perfectly round golf ball-sized hole
in the dead centre of the plastic sheeting.
“Here.” The handyman held up the screwdriver, the tip of it bent
back almost in an l-shape. “I believe this is yours.”
Dave took the screwdriver, staring down at it in wonder. “What the
hell.” He looked around the room. “Must have hit one of the stone
columns.”
“Must of.” The handyman agreed amiably, watching as Dave, still
scratching his head in confusion, shuffled back behind the plastic
sheeting and the keep out signs.
Cara blinked, that wasn’t right, was it? The screwdriver hadn’t hit a
column. In fact, she was pretty sure it had hit the handyman.
But that wasn’t possible, if it had he’d be on his way to hospital
with a screwdriver buried four inches into the back of his thigh
instead of just a puckered hole in the denim material just below his
left butt cheek. Cara frowned, she’d been staring at his jean clad
butt moments ago, there hadn’t been a hole in his jeans then… so
did that mean? No, what she was thinking was impossible, there
was no way the screwdriver could have hit the handyman and he
could still be standing.
“You okay?”
She blinked again and swallowed hard. “You’re the handyman.”
“Well, I am a man and if I do say myself… I am pretty handy, but
that’s neither my name nor my job description. I’m Erik… Erik
Valhalla.” He moved to stand directly in front of her, cobalt blue eyes
scoping her out from head to toe, smiling as he did so.
“Cara Devigne.” She clutched her folders close to her stomach, for
some reason afraid to reach out and touch him. “I… I think we met
the other day, the ladder and there was a sign…”
“Yes we did.” He continued to grin at her, studying her with intent
cobalt blue eyes.
Cara shifted on the spot, gorgeous men never stared at her like
this, she wanted to fidget, she wanted to disappear, she settled on
blushing furiously.
 Erik couldn’t believe what a clumsy oaf he was around this
woman. He thought he’d imagined his reaction to her at their first
meeting, when he’d fumbled positioning the new iron scrolled sign
he’d made for Gigi, bringing it down on his head, tearing his
favourite t-shirt in the process. Then this angel had fallen at his feet
as if torn from a Botticelli painting, looking all kinds of gorgeous
even though she had obviously been dazed and hurt. A completely
foreign wave of possessiveness had assailed him, frankly scaring the
crap out of him. In an act of self-preservation he’d dumped the
fallen angel on his cousin Riya’s couch and made a hasty retreat.
Now with her standing only a few inches away he drank in the red-
gold curls that his fingers actually itched to reach out and touch, her
gorgeous heart-shaped face and captivating cupid bow lips, the top
lip slightly fuller than her bottom lip. Cara’s golden skin tones
reminded him fondly of the setting sun caressing the bricks of cream
buildings dotting the many Italian piazzas. Wide blue eyes stared
out at him behind the barrier of her glasses; they were pure crystal
in colour, like sapphires, mysterious and knowing.
And her body, those full breasts and hips, tiny waist and long legs,
double damn, it begged to be explored, to be painted, sculpted…
worshipped. He guessed in bare feet she would have stood at about
five foot eight, a perfect fit for his own six foot frame… hold on…
perfect? What the hell was he thinking? The woman had obviously
not only turned him into a clumsy oaf who stood in the way of
shooting screwdrivers without moving but she’d destroyed all his
Goddess given common-sense.
Danger… this woman was dangerous.
Shit, do not flinch, do not panic, and whatever you do, don’t stop
smiling. If nothing else the past few months of his mother’s
torturous endeavours to see him hooked and mated had taught him
that running only seemed to make women chase you.
No, he needed to be sneaky, smart and cunning…. he needed to
scare Cara off, make her think it was her idea. As plans went, it
sounded perfect… only one problem… how? Then he noticed the
blush gracing her cheeks at his attention… damn, she was a little bit
shy as well, his cock went from sit up and pay attention to me mode
to the equivalent of howling at the moon. Hell, trying to make it
look casual he scratched his stomach, dragging his shirt out of his
jeans as he did so to help hide his body’s unmistakeable attraction to
the gorgeous woman standing in front of him.
Shy, mentally he clicked his fingers, he could use that. He amped
up his smile to predatory, feeling a little bit of dickhead, but his
single status was at stake here, no gutter was too deep. “So, I’m
guessing Aunt Patricia asked you to help out with the art class set
up?” He deliberately kept his voice low, husky, his eyes now fixed
deliberately down the front of her blouse.
“Um… yes.” Cara fought not to blush deeper. The hot molten ball
was back once more, buzzing so loudly between her legs she was
surprised no one else could hear it. Oh, what was wrong with her?
The buzz was ridiculously distracting and confusing. She should be
feeling disappointed… not turned on. Erik Valhalla had just gone
from simmering hot guy to leering lout in a flat second.
Admittedly she didn’t have a whole lot of experience with men but
she knew enough to realise that she should be feeling offended by
the fact his eyes were now super-glued to her cleavage. The last
thing… the very last thing she thought she’d find herself doing was
straightening her shoulders and thrusting her chest out further. But
she wasn’t half Italian for nothing, there was fire in her veins. It
was why she’d kicked Meggans in the head when he’d attempted to
climb the ladder, it was why she’d faced down a bully who tried to
over-charge her for fixing her car.
She was a librarian… but she wasn’t a mouse, even if she did
sometimes dress like one. She wouldn’t let this cad intimidate her.
“Do you need help then?” She forced herself to enquire, giving him
a determinedly professional look.
Goddess damn it, Erik should send her scurrying off, all he had to
say was no. But there was something about the way she’d met his
challenge, it had surprised, and hard as it was to believe, turned him
on even more. There was no other explanation for why he opened
his mouth and the words. “We could really use a model tonight…
are you up for it?” Spilled out.
 He leaned in further still, invading her personal space, knowing it
would make her feel uncomfortable, come on Angel… run… run or
he’d be doing something both of them would live to regret as he was
caught in the backlash of his actions, being only inches from Cara
with his eyes locked downwards he could now see the lacy edges of
her cream coloured bra and that scent of hers, it wrapped around his
senses like silken ties, shackling him in place. She smelled of Italian
bergamot, geranium, purple rose and honey.
Cara could hear the sound of approaching female voices, the class
participants must be arriving. She should make her excuses, duck
out while the going was good. At the very least she should step
back, away from this man who exuded so much heat she felt scalded
with him standing so close.
Seriously, what was wrong with her? She should be feeling
indignant at the liberties he was taking, crowding her, staring so
conspicuously at her breasts but all she could feel was that hot lava
ball between her legs pulsing in time with her heart beat.
“Scared?”
She snapped to attention. “What did you say?”
“I asked if you were scared, it is a life clay modelling class after all.”
“Nude?” Cara felt herself blush all over.
“Well, there’s a sheet involved… but essentially, yes.” Erik scooped
up a white silk sheet from over a nearby chair, running his hands
absently over the soft material.
Cara couldn’t believe she was still standing there. The idea of
being all but nude in front of a room full of strangers… in front of
Erik? She should be running for the hills… or at the very least
hyper-ventilating. Hey, why wasn’t she having a panic attack? Sure
the molten ball was still making its presence known… low,
embarrassingly placed between her legs. It was confusing and
distracting, thumping away madly as her heart raced, but it didn’t
seem like she was going to devolve into panic city. Weird… different.
Before Erik could push Cara for a response several women walked
into the room, exclaiming over the floor, the paintings and the
domed roof before as a group they fell abruptly silent, their gazes
coming to rest upon Erik.
 For some reason Cara felt herself bristle as the women’s eyes
latched onto Erik’s frame with avarice intent. The hushed silence
hanging over the room signalling all too clearly that collectively, they
liked what they saw.
“Problem?” A skinny woman with jutting cheek bones and pillowy
pouty lips wearing way too much makeup and dressed in a skin-tight
white pantsuit stepped forward. Her hair was cut in a spikey black
expensive do, the red lipstick she’d slathered on matching the bright
red belt she had wrapped around her narrow waist. Her dark eyes
fixed on Erik as her lips curved upwards in obvious approval.
Cara fought not to roll her eyes, honestly, the woman might as well
lick her lips she was that far from subtle in her approval of Erik’s
physical attributes.
“Welcome ladies.” Erik forced a bland smile, not letting his eyes
linger on any of the ladies for too long in case they got the wrong
idea. “I was just discussing with my… colleague here, that we are
lacking a model for this evening.”
“I’ll do it.” The skinny woman in the pantsuit volunteered readily.
Erik tamped down the urge to laugh. Teaching his students how to
shape clay into a stick figure would hardly prove challenging.
“Thank you for the offer but…”
Cara reached over, snatching the silk sheet from Erik’s hands as she
shot the woman in the white pantsuit a serene superior smile. “…
I’ve already said I’ll do it.”
 Chapter Four

Men were scum and Erik Valhalla was the scummiest scum of them
all. Talking to her breasts like that! Asshole.
Cara should have sent him a death glare and stormed off, never to
speak to him again. But then those women had walked in, positively
eating Erik up with their eyes. Something inside of her had just…
snapped.
Which was not a good thing historically. When she snapped lately,
bad things happened; sinkholes, toupees caught fire, computers
exploded, gravity too often made its harsh presence known and she
ended up dressed in nothing but a sheet with half her ass hanging
out in the breeze.
Thank heavens she’d performed Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in
college. With the help of a few hair pins she’d managed to create a
pretty decent toga that covered all her important bits. For extra
camouflage she’d undone her hair and let the glossy mass of ringlets
spill down to her waist.
Stepping out into the domed room with all eyes on her, judging,
critiquing, had been one of the hardest things she’d had to do in
ages. But she had a plan, which she implemented by focusing solely
upon the raised dais, looking neither left nor right as she moved
forward. Shoulders back, head held high, she tried her best to look
confident and serene but was willing to settle for wooden yet
determined.
Once on the dais, she sank down on the box Erik had placed there
earlier and snatched off her glasses, tucking them discreetly out of
the way as she leant back on one elbow. Much better. The room
was now just a blur full of shapes and moving blobs. All she had to
do was sit there and think about… muscular tanned arms, no, no,
she should be thinking about what colour to paint the children’s
wing, carpets, lighting fixtures and decorations. She should
definitely not be wondering if the five o’clock shadow clinging to
Erik’s chiselled jawline would be soft or delightfully rough under her
touch.
Honestly woman, get your mind off the lothario in too tight jeans
and think about wood finishes.
The problem with just sitting there, effectively blind, was that Cara
found her other senses kicking into high gear. The cloying smell of a
dozen different perfumes assaulted her nose and her hearing
suddenly seemed to have clicked into the acute range, set
specifically to pick up Erik Valhalla’s husky masculine tones.
The man moved around the room fast, never lingering too long in
one place or paying too much attention to any of his adoring female
students. Which wasn’t right, was it? If the man was such a player,
one who stood too close for comfort and stared down a woman’s
cleavage intently as if he expected her breasts to talk… well, then
shouldn’t he be chatting, flirting and making the moves on this bevy
of all too willing beauties?
Cara could clearly hear the escalating desperation in the ladies
voices as they competed, attempting to attract Erik’s attention their
way with too breathy queries, forced coy laughter and throaty
whispered faux pleas for help.
She was surprised a tornado hadn’t formed in the room from all the
batting of eyelashes and heavy sighs of disappointment as Erik
blocked every come hither invitation with a friendly, but impersonal
comment on how they might try refining their clay modelling
technique.
It just made no sense. If the man was such a lech… then why
wasn’t he leching on to any of these blatantly eager women?
Grrr, the man was all the colours of confusing.
Half an hour into the workshop Cara was mentally patting herself
on the back. She’d risen to a challenge, kept her dignity and only
had to survive another hour before she could scurry off, get dressed
and close the library up for the evening, never to deal with Erik
Valhalla and his smarmy, confusing ways ever again.
Hmm, with the classical music playing softly, this was almost
relaxing, like a meditation class. She totally had this under control…
piece of cake. She’d be able to look back on this evening with
pride… well, except for the whole mysterious explosion of her
powers earlier, resulting in the screwdriver turning into a guided
missile targeted directly at Erik Valhalla. But still, that was ten whole
days between incidents. A personal best since all this craziness
began eighteen months ago at her mother’s funeral… no, she wasn’t
going there.
Perhaps her time would be better spent trying to come up with an
explanation as to why her jinx powers had changed since she’d
arrived at the Southern Sanctuary. The lava ball settling lower in her
body obviously signified something new was going on. And tonight
marked the second time the hot chaotic ball had exploded with
absolutely no warning… no change in her breathing or vision, no
panic what so ever, just hot roiling to explosive release in less than a
second.
She’d dismissed the initial incident, the time she’d clapped eyes on
Erik and he’d taken a fall off a ladder as an anomaly. New town,
new job, her nerves were already on edge. But now with this
second incident… it had to be a coincidence. And Erik being present
at both events was just pure happenstance. No way could he have
anything to do with the change in how her chaos whammy was
being triggered… could he?
So something had changed, it was nothing to be concerned about,
she’d learnt to manage her accidents over the last eighteen months,
she could certainly learn to handle these new changes. Deliberately
she chose to ignore the glaring factor that even with all her
breathing techniques, picturing a bunny infested meadow and
counting, she had never successfully avoided an incident in the past.
That was then… the past… this was now.
She was in a safe secure environment. She had a job she loved. A
cosy house to live in and she’d made some lovely friends. Plus, she
was the descendent of a God. She totally had this under control.
This was a new era of controlled chaos. No more surprises. No
more embarrassing weird events. No more smouldering hair pieces
shaped like a mongoose.
That feeling of smugness lasted for about ten seconds before a
sudden flurry of whispered spiteful catty comments penetrated her
relaxed state and set the fuse on the bomb settled low in her body.
* * *
Erik had sinned… badly, deeply and long.
There was no other explanation for why the Goddess above was
punishing him like this. Bad enough to have twelve high
maintenance novice clay modellers, each frantically batting their
eyelashes his way and vying for his individual attention, but the
cherry on top of the moment was smack dab in the centre of the
room, barely wearing a carefully draped sheet.
He’d been praying that Cara would lose her nerve but no, five
minutes after she had disappeared to disrobe she’d marched back
out, plonking herself down on the dais like she walked about
wearing nothing but a sheet every damn day of her life.
And bloody hell if she didn’t look edible. He had to give her credit,
somehow she’d managed to drape the material around her like it
was a toga, leaving exposed one golden smooth shoulder and a hell
of a lot of thigh. Erik admired her for rising to the challenge and still
retaining her dignity.
The only slightly amusing part of the whole debacle was the look
on several of the ladies faces when he had made it clear that they
were expected to work this evening. Many grumbling as they put on
the large blue protective aprons over their carefully selected man-
bait outfits, worn, he could only surmise, for his benefit.
There was more grumbling as he explained the techniques involved
in clay modelling and the realisation finally sunk in for many that
they were about to ruin their expensive manicures and be forced to
get their hands actually dirty this evening.
After several minutes though, at least half the participants had
actually begun to show some enthusiasm, focusing upon shaping
and modelling their blocks. The rest of the group reluctantly
capitulated when it became clear that working with their clay
provided a good excuse to call him over, stand way too close to him
and ask pseudo-arty questions.
Still, Erik kept his cool. Forty minutes into the session he’d worked
up a pretty good rhythm of circling the room, giving each student a
brief compliment or suggestion before moving on to the next
Another random document with
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Christophero Sly when he railed at the woman of the house and
threatened her with presentation at the leet,

“Because she brought stone jugs and no sealed quarts.”

Without the “sealed quart” of the Unity—of the Rule generally—these

critics will not slake, nor let others slake, their thirst. But the affirmation of
the Unity of Interest, in La Motte’s way, does inevitably bring with it
licence to use the stone jug or anything else, so only that the good wine
of poetry be made to do its good office.
The Quarrel left its traces for a long time on criticism, and seems to
have partly determined the composition, as late as 1730, of two books of
some note, the Traité des Études of the excellent Rollin, and the
Rollin. elaborate Théâtre des Grecs of the Père Brumoy. Of
neither need we say very much. The first-named[661] had
considerable influence at home and abroad, especially in Germany; but
Rollin’s successor, Batteux, was justified in the good-humoured malice of
his observation,[662] “Je trouve à l’article de la Poésie un discours fort
sensé sur son origine et sa destination, qui doit être toute au profit de la
vertu. On y cite les beaux endroits d’Homère; on y donne la plus juste
idée de la sublime Poésie des Livres Saints; mais c'était une définition
que je demandais.” Alas! we have experienced the same disappointment
many times; nor is it Batteux himself who will cure us of it.
Brumoy’s imposing quartos[663] have at least the advantage (how great
a one the same experience has shown us) of tackling a definite subject in
Brumoy. a business-like way. His book consists of actual
translations of a certain number of Greek pieces, of
analyses of all the rest that we have, and of divers discourses. He leads
off with a forcible and well-founded complaint of the extreme ignorance of
Greek tragedy and drama generally which the Quarrel had shown; his
observations on individual writers and pieces are often very sensible; and
his “Discourse on the Parallel between the Theatres” has a bearing which
he probably did not suspect, and might not have relished. He dwells with
vigour and knowledge on the differences between them in order to show
that not merely preference, as in the Quarrel, but even strict comparison,
is impossible between things so different. It could not be but that sooner
or later it would dawn, on some readers at least, that it was even more
ridiculous to try to make the two obey the same laws.
As has been already shown in the last book, literary criticism had, even
by the middle of the seventeenth century, established so firm a hold on
French taste that the representative system becomes more and more
imperative upon the historian thereof. To represent the later days of
Fontenelle and those when Voltaire, though attaining, had not entirely
attained his almost European dictatorship of letters, three names will
serve very well; one perhaps new to many (if there be many) readers of
these pages, another one of the conscript names of literary history,
respected if not read, and the third a classic of the world—in plainer
words, Rémond de Saint-Mard, the Abbé Du Bos, and Montesquieu.
Saint-Mard has been rather badly treated by the books,—for instance,
Vapereau’s Dictionnaire des Littératures, often no despicable compilation,
not only dismisses him as médiocre, but misspells his name Saint-Marc.
Rémond de He had, however, some influence in his own day,
Saint-Mard. especially on the Germans;[664] and there is an extremely
pretty little edition[665] of his works, most of which had been issued
separately earlier. To some extent he is a follower of Fontenelle, writes
Dialogues of Gods, &c., Lettres Galantes et Philosophiques, and the like,
to please the town and the ladies, but with a constant turning to criticism.
In the “Discourse,” which precedes his Dialogues in the collected edition,
there is a very odd and, as it seems to me, a very noteworthy passage, in
which, though there may be some would-be fine-gentleman nonchalance,
there is also a dawning of that sense of the unnaturalness and
inconvenience of “the rules” which is constantly showing itself in the early
eighteenth century. He admits[666] that he has not followed his own rules;
for the orthodox dialogue ought to have one subject, led up to for some
time, announced at last. But somehow or other most of his dialogues
have more. So few ideas are fertile enough for a whole Dialogue!—a
sentence which obviously cuts away the theory of the rule, and not
merely its practice.
Nor are his other works by any means destitute of original ideas
worthily put. In one of his definition-descriptions of poetry,[667] if there is
something of eighteenth-century sensualism, there is much also of the
L. acute and practical psychology of the period. The words do
Racine. account—whether in “low” or “high” fashion—for the poetic
delight, as “Philosophy teaching by example” and other arid abstractions
do not. His theory elsewhere, that Custom communicates the charm of
versification (he does not quote usus concinnat, but inevitably suggests
it), has probably a great deal of truth in it, if it is not the whole truth; and
though we know that his explanation of the origin of Poetry—that it came
because Prose was too common—is historically inaccurate, it is evidently
only a false deduction, uncorrected by actual historic knowledge, from the
real fact that the “discommoning of the common” is a main source of the
poetic pleasure. In points such as these Rémond de Saint-Mard rises
commendably above the estimable dulness of his contemporary Louis
Racine,[668] with his admiration oddly distributed between Milton and his
own papa, and in the former case more oddly conditioned by respect for
Addison and Voltaire; his laborious rearrangement of most of the old
commonplaces about poetry and poets; and his obliging explanation that
“Ces images de magiciennes et de sorcières de Laponie ne paraissaient
pas extravagantes aux Anglais dans le temps que Milton écrivit.”
By this time “Æsthetics” were breaking the shell everywhere; but in
many cases, as we have seen, they did not consciously affect the critical
Du Bos. principles of writers. Du Bos, a solid inquirer, and a man
of considerable ability in that striking out of wide
generalisations which delighted his time, could hardly have avoided them.
His Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture[669] have
sometimes been credited with considerable precursorship on the literary
side. It is certain that he lays some stress (Part II., § 14 sq.) on the effect
of Climate upon Art, and if this “seem such dear delight, Beyond all
other,” he must have the credit due therefor from those to whom it so
seems. To those who reflect on the climatic authorship, say of Romeo
and Juliet and the sonnets of La Casa, doubts may occur. Du Bos is
certainly an interesting and stimulating writer; but his very excursions into
generality seem to have precluded him from studying any particular
author carefully; and the crotchet and paradox which appear in his more
famous and later Histoire de la Monarchie Française are not absent from
the Réflexions. These take, moreover, a distinctly “classic” bent. Dr
Johnson would have loved, and very possibly did love, him for arguing in
a masterly manner that French poetry simply cannot equal Latin, either in
style or in cadence and harmony of verse; nor perhaps would Mr Matthew
Arnold on this occasion have disdained to say ditto to Dr Johnson. Latin
words are more beautiful than French. Harmony is easier to attain in Latin
than in French. The rules are less troublesome in Latin than in French,
and their observance results in more beauties in the mother than in the
daughter. This is “Thorough” with a vengeance.[670]
On the great question of katharsis Du Bos holds the view that art
operates by imitating the things which would have excited strong
passions in us if real, but which, as not being real, only excite weak ones;
Stimulating and makes fair fight for it (Part I., § 3). He thinks that
but desultory while execution is everything in painting it is not
character of everything in poetry, but still much. He quotes English
his critics, especially Addison, pretty freely, and is not far
Réflexions. from holding with them that French drama deals too
much with love. He has some really acute remarks on what he calls
poetry of style, distinguishing this style from mere diction and
versification, and connecting this directly with his Latin-French paradox.
He even ventures close to the sin unpardonable, in the eyes of
Classicism, by arguing that the beauty of the parts of a poem contributes
more to its effect than the justness and regularity of the plan, and that a
poem may be “regular” to the nth and yet quite a bad poem. He has
respect for the popular judgment—a respect suggesting a not impossible
acquaintance with Gravina (v. infra, p. 538), who had written a good many
years before him: and he distinctly postulates, after the manner of the
century, an Æsthetic Sense existing in almost all, and capable of deciding
on points of taste (Part II., § 22). He has some direct and more indirect
observations in reference to the Quarrel, speaking with trenchant, but not
too trenchant, disapproval (Part II., § 36) of those who endeavour to
judge works of art by translations and criticisms. On the main question he
is pretty sound. He is good on genius, and on what he calls the artisan,
the craftsman without genius. Taking him altogether, Du Bos may be
allowed the praise of a really fertile and original writer,[671] who says many
things which are well worth attention and which seldom received it before
him, in regard to what may be called the previous questions of criticism.
His connection of poetry with painting sometimes helps him, and seldom
leads him absolutely wrong; but it to some extent distracts him, and
constantly gives an air of desultoriness and haphazard to his observation.
It is, moreover, quite remarkable how persistently he abides in
generalibus, scarcely ever descending below the mediate examination of
Kinds. When he touches on individual works of art he confines himself in
the most gingerly fashion to illustration merely; there is never an
appreciation in whole or in considerable part.
When Voltaire denounced Montesquieu for lèse-poésie, the accused, if
he had chosen, might have brought formidable counter accusations; but
Montesquieu. there was certainly some ground for the actual charge.
When a man says[672] that “the four great poets are Plato,
Malebranche, Shaftesbury, and Montaigne,” he is evidently either a
heretic or a paradoxer; and the hundred and thirty-seventh of the Lettres
Persanes gives a sad colour to the worse supposition. There is perhaps
less actual high treason to poetry here than in the remarks of Signor
Pococurante, that noble Venetian, but there is more intended; the whole
treatment is ostentatiously contemptuous. Dramatists are allowed some
merit, but poets in general “put good sense in irons, and smother reason
in ornament.” As for epic poems, connoisseurs themselves say that there
never have been but two good ones, and never will be a third.[673] Lyric
poets are contemptible creatures who deal in nothing but harmonious
extravagance and so forth. As for romances in prose, they have the faults
of poems and others to boot. Elsewhere, in Letter xlviii., a “poet is the
grotesque of the human race.” It is scarcely surprising that, when we turn
to the Essai sur le Goût, there is hardly any definite reference to literature
at all, and that Montesquieu is entirely occupied in tracing or imagining
abstract reasons for the attractiveness of abstract things like “surprise,”
“symmetry,” “variety,” and even of the je ne sais quoi. The je ne sais quoi
in an attractive, but not technically beautiful, girl is, it seems, due to
surprise at finding her so attractive, which, with all respect to the
President, seems to be somewhat “circular.” In fact, Montesquieu is
chiefly interesting to us, first, because he made no literary use of his own
theories as to climate and the rest—which later writers have used and
abused in this way; and secondly, because he shows, in excelsis, that
radically unliterary as well as unpoetical vein which, for all its remarkable
literary performance, is characteristic of his time.
It will surprise no one who has any acquaintance with the subject that
but a few lines should have been given to Montesquieu; it may shock
Voltaire: some to find but a very few pages given to Voltaire.[674]
Disappointme But while I have never been able to rank the Patriarch’s
nts of his criticism high, a reperusal of it in sequence, for the
criticism.
purpose of this book, has even reduced the level of my
estimate. The fact is that, consummate literary craftsman as he was, and
wanting only the je ne sais quoi itself (or rather something that we know
too well) to rank with the very greatest men of letters, Voltaire was not a
man with whom literary interest by any means predominated. It is not
merely that his anti-crusade against l’infâme constantly colours his
literary, as it does all his other, judgments; and that once at least it made
him certainly indorse, and possibly enounce, the astounding statement
that the Parables in the Gospels are “coarse and low.”[675] But when this
perpetually disturbing influence is at its least active point, we can see
perfectly that neither Voltaire’s treasure nor his heart is anywhere, with
the doubtful exception of the drama division, in literature. In mathematics
and in physical science there is no doubt that he was genuinely
interested; and he was perhaps still more interested (as indeed men of
his century generally were) in what may be vaguely called anthropology,
the moral, social, and (to some, though only to some, extent) political
history of mankind. But for literature he had very little genuine love;
though the vanity in which he certainly was not lacking could not fail to be
conscious of his own excellence as a practitioner in it; and though he
could not but recognise its power—its almost omnipotence—as a
weapon. It was probably the more human character of the drama that
attracted him there.
However this may be, it is impossible, for me at least, to rank him high
as a critic: and this refusal is hardly in the least due to his famous
Examples of blasphemies against Shakespeare and Milton. As we
it. have seen—as we shall see—it is possible to disagree
profoundly with some, nay, with many, of a critic’s estimates, and yet to
think highly of his critical gifts. But Voltaire scarcely anywhere shows the
true ethos of the critic: and that “smattering erudition” of his is nowhere so
much of a smattering, and so little of an erudition, as here. His two
famous surveys of English and French literature, in the Lettres sur les
Anglais and the Siècle de Louis Quatorze, show, on the French side at
least, a more complete ignorance of literary history than Boileau’s own:
and the individual judgments, though admirably expressed, are banal and
without freshness of grasp. The extensive Commentary on Corneille
contains, of course, interesting things, but is of no high critical value. The
Essai sur la Poésie Épique opens with some excellent ridicule of “the
rules”—a subject which indeed might seem to invite the Voltairian method
irresistibly; but after this and some serious good sense of the same kind,
he practically deserts to the rules themselves. He admits fautes
grossières in Homer, finds “monstrosity and absurdity up to the limits of
imagination” in Shakespeare, thinks that Virgil is “Homer’s best work,”
discovers in the supernatural of Tasso and Camoens only “insipid stories
fit to amuse children,” dismisses, as everybody knows, the great Miltonic
episode of Satan, Death, and Sin as “disgusting and abominable,” and
keeps up throughout his survey that wearisome castanet-clatter of “fault
and beauty—beauty and fault” which, whensoever and wheresoever we
find it, simply means that the critic is not able to see his subject as a
whole, and tell us whether it is foul or fair.
Perhaps no better instance of the feebleness of Voltaire’s criticism can
be found than in his dealings with Rabelais.[676] Here there are practically
no disturbing elements. Yet no one is more responsible than Voltaire is for
the common notion, equally facile and false, of Rabelais as a freethinker
with a sharp eye to the main chance, who disguised his freethinking in a
cloak of popular obscenity, who is often amusing, sometimes admirable,
but as a whole coarse, tedious, and illegible, or at best appealing to the
most vulgar taste. Take the famous sentence that Swift is a “Rabelais de
bonne compagnie,”[677] work it out either side, and it will be difficult to find
anywhere words more radically uncritical. Or turn to the Dictionnaire
Philosophique. Not only are the literary articles very few, and in some of
these few cases mere rechauffés of the Lettres sur Les Anglais, &c., but
the head “Literature” itself contains the singular statement that criticism is
not literature—because nobody speaks of “une belle critique.” The
articles “Esprit” and “Goût” are attractive—especially the latter, because it
is on the critical watchword of the century: but we are sent away, worse
than empty, with some abuse of Shakespeare, and with the statement,
“No man of letters can possibly fail to recognise the perfected taste of
Boileau in the Art Poétique.” Only, perhaps, the article on Art Dramatique
is worthy of its title, and the reason of this has been indicated.
The numerous Mélanges Littéraires are again interesting reading—
indeed, when is Voltaire not interesting, save when he is scientific, or
when he shows that “the zeal of the devil’s house” can inspire a man of
genius with forty-curate-power dulness? They include almost every kind
of writing, from actual reviews (Lettres aux Auteurs de La Gazette
Littéraire) on books French and foreign, upwards or downwards. But all
those that are probably genuine exhibit just the same characteristics as
the more elaborate works. The reviews of Sterne and of Churchill will
show how really superficial Voltaire’s literary grip was; though both of
them (as being Voltaire’s they could not well help doing) contain acute
remarks. The too famous argument-abstract of Hamlet[678] is perhaps the
most remarkable example of irony exploding through the touch-hole that
literature affords. The “Parallel of Horace, Boileau, and Pope” from such a
hand might seem as if it could not be without value: but it has very little.
And perhaps nowhere does Voltaire appear to much less critical
advantage than in the Lettre de M. de La Visclède on La Fontaine, where,
as in the case of Rabelais, it might be thought that no prejudice could
possibly affect him. The superfine condemnation of the bonhomme’s
style, as filled with expressions plus faites pour le peuple que pour les
honnêtes gens (not, let it be observed, in the Fables, but in the Contes),
could hardly tell a more disastrous tale. Philistia by its Goliath in Paris
echoes Philistia by its common folk in London, at this special time. La
Fontaine and Goldsmith are “low.”
The fact would appear to be that, independently of that lack of purely
literary interest which has been noted above, other causes kept Voltaire
Causes of his back from really original and valuable criticism. The
failure. sense of the necessity of clinging to and conserving
something, which has often been shown by iconoclasts, seems to have
directed itself in him towards literary orthodoxy: while, on the other hand,
as we have already seen, his natural acuteness refused to blink entirely
some of the absurdities of the “Rule” system. His craftsmanship made it
possible for him to succeed in certain kinds of artificial poetry—the
regular tragedy, the formal heroic poem, the light piece, epigram, or
epistle, or what not—which were specially favoured by Classical criticism.
He was not well equipped by nature for success in any Romantic kind—
not to mention that Romance was almost indissolubly connected with
those Ages of Faith which he scorned. Moreover, though no man has
committed more faults of taste, in the wider and nobler sense, than did
Voltaire, yet within a narrower and more arbitrary circle of “taste” of the
conventional kind, no one could walk with more unerring precision. Yet
again, the Great Assumption by which the neo-classics made a
changeling of their Taste with Good Sense, and mothered it on Nature,
appealed strongly to such philosophical theories as he had. Accordingly,
both in public and private,[679] the great heretic, with very few exceptions,
plays the part of a very Doctor of the Literary Sorbonne, and leaves the
attempt at a new criticism to the more audacious innovation, and the
more thorough-going naturalism, of Diderot.[680]
Of the other Di majores of the philosophe school, Rousseau would
always have been prevented by his temperament from expressing
critically the appreciations which the same temperament might have
suggested: and, if he had been a critic at all, he would have been on the
Others: revolting and Romantic side. Diderot actually was so.
Buffon. The critical utterances of D’Alembert,[681] chiefly if not
wholly given in his Éloges, express the clear understanding and by no
means trivial good sense of their writer. But, like Voltaire’s, D’Alembert’s
heart was elsewhere. Buffon remains; and by a curious accident he,
though totus in the things of mere science, has left us one of the most
noteworthy phrases of literary criticism in the history of literature.
Moreover, this phrase is contained in a discourse[682] which is all literary
and almost all critical, which is very admirable within its own range and on
its own side, and which practically provides us with one of the first, and to
this day one of the best, discussions of Style as such. That we have in
these latter days “heard too much of Style” is often said, and may be true:
“where” we have seen too much of it “you shall tell me” as Seithenin said
to the Prince. But we, in the restricted sense of students of criticism, have
not “seen too much” of discussions of style hitherto. On the contrary, we
have seen that the ancients were constantly shy of it in its quiddity; that
even Longinus seems to prefer to abstract and embody one of its
qualities and discuss that; and that after the revival of criticism the old
avoidances, or the old apologies for the phortikon ti, were too often
renewed. Buffon has none of this prudery: though he lays the greatest
possible stress on the necessity of there being something behind style, of
style being “the burin that graves the thought.”
Perhaps he does not quite keep at the height of his famous and often
misquoted[683] dictum—“Le style est l’homme même”—in itself the best
thing ever said on the subject, and, as is the case with most good things,
“Style and the made better by the context. He has been showing why
man.” only well-written books go down to posterity. Information
can be transferred; fact becomes public property; novelty ceases to be
novel. Ces choses sont hors de l’homme; le style est [de?] l’homme
même. In other words, the style—the form—is that which the author adds
to the matter; it is that inseparable, but separably intelligible, element
which cannot be transferred, taken away, or lost. It is clear that Buffon
would not have lent himself to that discountenancing of the distinction of
Matter and Form which some have attempted. Perhaps his other remarks
are less uniformly, though they are often, admirable. He should not, as a
man of natural science, have congratulated the Academicians on
contemning “le vain son des mots,” which, he should have known, always
has something, and may have much, to do with style; and it is certainly
inadequate to say that style is “the order and movement given to our
thoughts.” There is much that is true, but also something of mere neo-
classic orthodoxy, in his painful repetitions of the necessity of unity and
greatness of subject; and to say that “l’esprit humain ne peut rien créer” is
sheer lèse-littérature. Rather is it true that, except God, the human mind
is the only thing that can create, and that it shows its divine origin thereby.
But Buffon was only a man of science, and we must excuse him. The
special curse of the time[684] is curiously visible in his enumeration, among
the causes of nobility in style, of “L’attention à ne nommer les choses que
par les termes les plus généraux.” The “streak of the tulip” barred again!
But he is certainly right when he says that “jamais l’imitation n’a rien
créé”: though here it may be retorted, “Yes; but imitation teaches how to
discard itself, and to begin to create,” while, as he has just extended the
disability to the human faculties generally, his point seems a blunt one.
Still, his directions for ordonnance as a preliminary to style, his cautions
against pointes, traits saillants, pomposity [he might have recked this
rede a little more himself], and other things, are excellent. The piece is
extraordinary in its combination of originality, brilliancy, and sense, and in
it Science has certainly lent Literature one of the best critical essays of
the eighteenth century.
Not an unimportant document of the time for the history of criticism is
the critical attitude of that remarkable Marcellus of philosophism,
Vauvenargues.[685] The few Réflexions Critiques which he has left are
very curious. Vauvenargues was a man of an absolute independence of
spirit so far as he knew; but conditioned by the limits of his knowledge.
He had neither time nor opportunity for much reading; he probably knew
little of any literature but his own. It must be remembered also that his
main bent was ethical, not literary. Such a man should give us the form
and pressure of the time in an unusual and interesting way.
Vauvenargues does so. We find him, after a glowing and almost
adequate eulogy of La Fontaine, gibbeting him for showing plus de style
que d’invention, et plus de négligence que d’exactitude—not the happiest
Vauvenargues pair of antitheses. The subjects of his Tales are “low”—
. unfortunate word which “speaks” almost every one who
uses it—and they are not interesting, which is more surprising. Boileau,
on the contrary, is extolled to the skies. He has really too much genius
(like the 'Badian who was really too brave), and this excess, with a
smaller excess of fire, truth, solidity, agrément, may have perhaps injured
his range, depth, height, finesse, and grace. Molière again is trop bas (at
least his subjects are), while La Bruyère escapes this defect—you might
as well set together Addison and Shakespeare, and no doubt
Vauvenargues would have done so. How different is Racine, who is
always “great”—“gallantly great,” let us add, like Mr Pepys in his new suit.
Voltaire, who had certainly prompted some of these sins, made a little
atonement by inducing Vauvenargues to admire Corneille to some extent.
But Corneille, he says, from his date, could not have le goût juste, and
the parallel with Racine is one of the most interesting of its numerous
kind. J. B. Rousseau might have been nearly as good a poet as Boileau,
if Boileau had not taught him all he knew in poetry, but his vieux langage
is most regrettable. Such were the opinions of a young man of unusual
ability, but with little taste in literature except that which he found
prevalent in the middle of the eighteenth century.
This middle, and the later part of it, saw in the Abbé Batteux the last of
that really remarkable, though not wholly estimable, line of législateurs du
Parnasse which had begun with Boileau, and whose edicts had been
accepted, for the best part of a century, with almost universal deference.
Batteux. Still later, and surviving into the confines of the
nineteenth century, La Harpe gives us almost the last
distinguished defender, and certainly a defender as uncompromising as
he was able, of neo-classic orthodoxy. Some attention must be given to
each of these, and to Marmontel between them, but we need not say very
much of others—except in the representative way.
Batteux began as an extoller of the Henriade, after many years spent in
schoolmastering and the occasional publication of Latin verses, but
before the century had reached the middle of its road. He essayed, a little
later, divers treatises[686] on Poetic and Rhetoric, all of which were
adjusted and collected in his Principes de la Littérature,[687] while he also
executed various minor works, the most useful of which was Les Quatre
Poétiques,[688] a translation, with critical notes, of Aristotle, Horace, and
Vida, with Boileau added. In so far as I am able to judge, Batteux is about
the best of the seventeenth-eighteenth century “Preceptists.”[689] The
Introduction to his introductory tractate, Les Beaux Arts réduits à un
même Principe, indulges in some mild but by no means unbecoming
irony on his predecessors,[690] and expresses the candid opinion that few
of them had really consulted Aristotle at all. He admits the multiplicity and
the galling character of “rules”; but he thinks that these can be reduced to
a tolerable and innoxious, nay, in the highest degree useful, minimum, by
keeping the eye fixed on the Imitation of Nature, and of the best nature.
But how is this to guide us? Here Batteux shows real ingenuity by seizing
on the other great fetich of the eighteenth-century creed—Taste—as a
regulator to be in its turn regulated.
Indeed a careful perusal of Batteux cannot but force on us the
consideration that the mechanical age, the age of Arkwright and Watt,
His was approaching, or had approached. His Rules and his
adjustment of Taste “clutch” each other by turns, like the elaborate
Rules and plant of the modern machinist. If the Rules are too
Taste.
narrow and precise, Taste holds them open; if Taste
shows any sign of getting lawless, the Rules bring it to its bearings. It is
extremely ingenious; but the questions remain—Whether it is natural?
and Whether any good came from the exercise of the principles which it
attempts to reconcile and defend? The manner of Batteux, it must be
allowed, is as much less freezing and unsatisfactory than Le Bossu’s, as
it is less arbitrary and less aggressive than Boileau’s. These two would, in
the face of fact and history, have identified Taste and a certain
construction of Rule. Batteux rather regards the two as reciprocal
escapements, easing and regulating each other. It is part of his merit that
he recognises, to some extent, the importance of observation. In fact,
great part of this introductory treatise is a naïf and interesting complaint of
the difficulty which the results of this observation are introducing into
Rule-criticism. “Rules are getting so many,” he admits in his opening
sentence; and, no doubt, so long as you find it necessary to make a new
rule whenever you find a new poet, the state of things must be more and
more parlous. But, like all his century-fellows without exception on the
Classical, and like too many on the other side, he does not think of simply
marching through the open door, and leaving the prison of Rule and Kind
behind him.
From these idols Batteux will not yet be separated: he hardens his
heart in a different manner from Pharaoh, and will not let himself go. The
utile is never to be parted from the dulce; “the poems of Homer and Virgil
are not vain Romances, where the mind wanders at the will of a mad
imagination; they are great bodies of doctrine,” &c. Anacreon [Heaven
help us!] was himself determined to be a moral teacher.[691] Again, there
must be Action, and it must be single, united, simple, yet of variety; the
style must not be too low, or too high, &c., &c.
When Batteux has got into the old rut, he remains in it. We slip into the
well-known treatises by Kinds—Dialogue, Eclogue, Heroic Poem, and the
rest—with the equally well-known examination afterwards of celebrated
examples in a shamefaced kind of way—to the extent of two whole
volumes for poetry, and a third (actually the fourth) for prose. Finally, we
have what is really a separate tractate, De la Construction Oratoire. The
details in these later volumes are often excellent; but obviously, and per
se, they fall into quite a lower rank as compared with the first. If we were
to look at nothing but the fact, frankly acknowledged by Batteux, that he is
now considering French classical literature only, we should be able to
detect the error. In his first volume he had at least referred to Milton.
In other words Batteux, like the rest of them, is not so much a halter
between two opinions as a man who has deliberately made up his mind
to abide by one, but who will let in as much of the other as he thinks it
His safe to do, or cannot help doing. Let him once extend his
incompletenes principle of observation in time, country, and kind, and,
s. being a reasonably ingenious and ingenuous person, he
must discover, first, that his elaborate double-check system of Rule and
Taste will not work, and, secondly, that there is not the least need of it.
You must charge epicycle on cycle before you can get, even with the
freest play of Taste, the Iliad and the Æneid and the Orlando to work
together under any Rule. Epicycle must be added to epicycle before you
can get in the Chanson de Roland and the Morte d’Arthur as well. Drop
your “rule,” ask simply, “Are the things put before me said poeticamente?”
“Do they give me the poetic pleasure?” and there is no further difficulty.
Batteux, though, as we have seen, by no means a bigot, would probably
have stopped his ears and rent his clothes if such a suggestion had been
made to him.
Batteux is a remarkable, and probably the latest, example of neo-
classicism sitting at ease in Zion and promulgating laws for submissive
nations; in La Harpe, with an even stronger dogmatism, we shall find, if
not the full consciousness that the enemy is at the gates of the capital, at
any rate distinct evidence of knowledge that there is sedition in the
Marmontel. provinces.[692] Between the two, Marmontel[693] is a
distinguished, and a not disagreeable, example of that
middle state which we find everywhere in the late eighteenth century but
which in France is distinguished at once by greater professed orthodoxy,
and by concessions and compromises of a specially tell-tale kind. The
critical work of the author of Bélisaire and Les Incas is very considerable
in bulk. He has written an Essay on Romance in connection with the two
very “anodyne” examples of the kind just referred to; an Essay (indeed
two essays) on Taste; many book reviews for the Observateur Littéraire,
&c.; prefaces and comments for some specimens of French early
seventeenth-century drama—Mairet’s Sophonisbe, Du Ryer’s Scévole,
&c.; and, besides other things, a mass of articles on literary and critical
subjects for the Encyclopédie, which are generally known in their
collected form as Éléments de Littérature. He has been rather variously
judged as a critic. There is no doubt that he is a special sinner in that
perpetual gabble about la vertu, la morale, and the rest, which is so
sickening in the whole group; and which more than justified Mr Carlyle’s
vigorous apostrophe, “Be virtuous, in the Devil’s name and his
grandmother’s, and have done with it!” He has also that apparent
inconsistency, something of which (as we have seen once for all in
Dryden’s case) often shows itself in men of alert literary interests who do
not very early work out for themselves a personal literary creed, and who
are averse to swallowing a ready-made one. But at the same time he
never openly quarrels with neo-classicism, and is sometimes one of its
most egregious spokesmen; while he is “philosophastrous,” in the special
eighteenth-century kind, to a point which closely approaches caricature. I
Oddities and have quoted elsewhere, but must necessarily quote
qualities of his again here, his three egregious and pyramidal
criticism. reasons[694] for the puzzling excellence of English poetry.
Either, it seems, the Englishman, being a glory-loving animal, sees that
poetry adds to the lustre of nations, and so he goes and does it; or being
naturally given to meditation and sadness, he needs to be moved and
distracted by the illusions of this beautiful art; or [Shade of Molière!] it is
because his genius in certain respects is proper for Poesy.
To comment on this would only spoil it; but let it be observed that
Marmontel does admit the excellence of English poetry. So also, though
he never swerves, in consciousness or conscience, from neo-classic
orthodoxy, he insinuates certain doubts about Boileau, and quotes,[695] at
full length, two pieces of the despised Ronsard as showing lyrical
qualities in which the legislator of Parnassus is wanting. His article
Poétique is, considering his standpoint, a quite extraordinarily just
summary and criticism of the most celebrated authorities on the subject—
Aristotle, Horace, Vida, Scaliger, Castelvetro, Vauquelin, Boileau, Le
Bossu, Gravina, &c.—and the attitude to Boileau,[696] visible, as has been
said, elsewhere, is extremely noteworthy. Marmontel speaks of
Despréaux with compliments: but some, even of his praises, are not a
little equivocal, and he contrives to put his subject’s faults with perfect
politeness indeed, but without a vestige of compromise. Boileau, he says,
gives a precise and luminous notion of all the kinds, but he is not deep on
a single one: his Art may contribute to form the taste if it be well
understood, but to understand it well one must have the taste already
formed.
It would be possible, of course,—indeed, very easy,—to select from
Marmontel’s abundant critical writings, which covered great part of a long
lifetime in their composition, a bundle of “classical” absurdities which
would leave nothing to desire. But the critic is almost always better than
his form of creed. He takes an obviously genuine, if of necessity not at
first a thoroughly well instructed, interest in the Histoire du Théâtre of the
Frères Parfait, the first systematic[697] dealing with old French literature
since Fauchet and Pasquier: his Essai sur les Romans, though of course
considered du côté moral, is, for his date, a noteworthy attempt in that
comparative and historical study of literature which was to lead to the new
birth of criticism. It is most remarkable to find him, in the early reviews of
his Observateur,[698] dating from the midst of the fifth decade of the
eighteenth century, observing, as to Hamlet in La Place’s translation, that
the ghost-scene and the duel with Laertes inspire terror and pathetic
interest at the very reading, asking why “our poets” should deny
themselves the use of these great springs of the two tragic passions,
admiring the taste and justice of the observations to the players, and
actually finding Titus Andronicus, though “frightful and sanguinary,” a
thing worth serious study. That it is possible to extract from these very
places, as from others, the usual stuff about Shakespeare’s “want of
order and decency,” &c., is of no moment. This is matter of course: it is
not matter of course that, in the dead waist and middle of the eighteenth
century, a French critic should write of the description of Cleopatra on the
Cydnus: “Ce morceau présente Shakespeare sous un nouveau point de
vue. On n’a connu jusqu'à présent que la force du génie de cet auteur: on
ne s’attendait pas à tant de délicatesse et de légèreté.”[699]
I should like to dwell longer on Marmontel if it were only for two or three
phrases which appear in one short article,[700] “Depuis que Pascal et
Corneille, Racine et Boileau ont épuré et appauvri la langue de Marot et
de Montaigne.... Boileau n’avait pas reçu de la nature l’organe avec
lequel on sent les beautés simples et touchantes de notre divin fabuliste
[La Fontaine of course].... Il est à souhaiter qu’on n’abandonne pas ce
langage du bon vieux temps ... on ferait un joli dictionnaire des mots
qu’on a tort d’abandonner et de laisser vieillir.” It must be clear to any one
who reads these phrases that there is the germ of mil-huit-cent-trente in
them—the first and hardly certain sound of the knell of narrow, colourless
vocabulary and literature in France. But enough has probably been said.
It would be difficult to make out a case for Marmontel as in any way a
great critic. He has not cleared his mind of cant enough for that. But he is
an instance, and an important instance, of the way in which the clearing
agents were being gradually thrown into the minds of men of letters at
this time, and of the reaction which they were—at first partially and
accidentally—producing. Even his Essai sur le Goût, fantastically arbitrary
as it is, wears at times almost an air of irony, as if the writer were really
exposing the arbitrariness and the convention of the thing he is ostensibly
praising. He is comparing and tasting, not simply deducing: and however
much he may still be inclined to think with his master that the Satan, Sin,
and Death piece is an unimaginable horror, and the citizen scenes in
Shakespeare’s Roman plays a vulgar excrescence, he is far from the
obstinate sublimity-in-absurdity of La Harpe. He at least does not hold
that a beauty, not according to rule, has no business to be a beauty; that
the tree is not to be judged by the fruit, but the fruit by the ticket on the
tree.
In the mare magnum of critical writing at this period, constantly fed by
books, literary periodicals, academic competitions, and what not, it would
be idle to attempt to chronicle drops—individuals who are not in some
Others. special way interesting or representative. It would be
especially idle because—for reasons indicated more than
once in passing already—the bulk of the criticism of this time in France is
really of little value, being as doctrine make-believe, and destitute of
thoroughness, and as appreciation injured by narrowness of reading and
want of true literary interest. It cannot have been quite accidental,
although the great collaborative Histoire de la Littérature Française of the
late M. Petit de Julleville is not a model of methodic adequacy, that there
is no strictly critical chapter in the volume on the eighteenth century. Take,
Thomas, for instance, two such representative men as Suard and
Suard, &c. Thomas, both of them born near the beginning of the
second generation of the century, and therefore characteristic of its very
central class and crû. Both enjoyed almost the highest reputation in the
second rank. Marmontel somewhere speaks of Thomas’s Essai sur les
Éloges as the best piece of critical inquiry which had appeared since
Cicero on the Orator; but it is fair to remember that Thomas had refused
to stand against Marmontel for the Academy. Suard, for many years
Secretary of the Academy itself, seriously endeavoured, and was by his
contemporaries thought not to have endeavoured in vain, to make that
office a sort of Criticship Laureate or King’s Remembrancership of
Literature. He has left volumes on volumes of critical work; and even now
prefaces, introductions, &c., from his pen may be found in the older class
of standard editions of French classics. Yet the work of neither of these
would justify us in doing more than refer to them in this fashion. It is
excellently written in the current style, inclining to declamation and
solemnity in Thomas,[701] to persiflage and smartness in Suard. It says
what an academic critic of the time was supposed to say, and knows what
he was supposed to know. But it really is, in Miss Mills’ excellent figure,
“the desert of Sahara,” and a desert without many, if any, oases.
La Harpe is a different person. He is not very kind to Batteux. He
La Harpe. patronises his principles, and allows his scholarship to be
sound; but finds fault with his style, calls his criticism
commune—“lacking in distinction” is perhaps the best equivalent—his
ideas narrow, and his prejudices pedantic. It would not be quite just to say
De te fabula, but this is almost as much as we could say if we were
judging La Harpe, after his own fashion of judgment, from a different
standpoint. But the historian cannot judge thus. La Harpe is really an
important person in the History of Criticism. He “makes an end,” as Mr
Carlyle used to say; in other words, whether he is or is not the last
eminent neo-classical critic of France, he puts this particular phase of
criticism as sharply and as effectively as it can be put. Nay, he does even
more than this for us; he shows us neo-classicism at bay. Already, by the
time of his later lectures, when by the oddest coincidence he was
defending Voltaire and abusing Diderot, making head at once against the
Jacobins and against that party of revived mediævalism which was the
surest antidote to Jacobinism, there were persons—Népomucène
Lemercier, and others—who held that Boileau and Racine had killed
French poetry. Against these La Harpe takes up his testimony; and the
necessity of opposition makes it all the more decided.
His Cours de Littérature is a formidable—I had almost called it an
impossible—book to tackle, composed of, or redacted from, the lectures
of many years, and unfortunately, though not unnaturally, dwelling most
fully on the parts of the subject that are of least real importance. Its first
His Cours de edition[702] was a shelf-full in itself. It now fills, with some
Littérature. fragments, nearly the whole of three great volumes of the
Panthéon Littéraire, and nearly two-thirds, certainly three-fifths, of this are
devoted to the French literature of the eighteenth century, a subject for
which, to speak frankly, it may be doubted whether any posterity will have
time corresponding to spare. Even in the earlier and more general parts
there are defects, quite unconnected with the soundness or unsoundness
of La Harpe’s general critical position. There is nothing which one should
be slower to impute, save on the very clearest evidence, than ignorance
of a subject of which a writer professes knowledge; and one should be
slow, not merely on general principles of good manners, but because
there is nothing which the baser kind of critic is so ready to impute. But I
own that, after careful reading and reluctantly, I have come to the
conclusion that La Harpe’s knowledge of the classics left a very great
deal to desire. That, in his survey of Epic, he omits Apollonius Rhodius in
his proper place altogether and puts him in a postscript, might be a mere
oversight, negligible by all but the illiberal: unfortunately the postscript
itself shows no signs of critical appreciation. It is more unfortunate still
that he should say that all the writers of ancient Rome loaded Catullus
with eulogy, when we know that Horace only spares him a passing sneer,
that Quintilian has no notice for anything but his “bitterness,” and that
hardly anybody but Martial does him real justice. However, we need not
dwell on this. If La Harpe was not very widely or deeply read in old-world
or in old-French literature, he certainly knew the French literature of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries very well indeed.
On the other hand, it is significant, and awkward, that, in dealing with
English, German, and other modern literatures, he always seems to refer
to translations, and hardly ever ventures a criticism except on the mere
His critical matter of the poem. Moreover, which is of even more
position as importance for us, he was not in the slightest doubt about
ultimus his point of view either of these or of any other literature.
suorum. His censures and his praises are adjusted with almost
unerring accuracy to the neo-classic creed, as we have defined and
illustrated it in this volume. His Introduction pours all the scorn he could
muster on those who contemn the art of writing. Even Shakespeare,
coarse as he is, was not without learning. That poet, Dante, and Milton
executed “monstrous” works; but in these monsters there were some
beautiful parts done according to “the principles.” And, to do him justice,
he never swerves or flinches from this. English has “an inconceivable
pronunciation.”[703] The Odyssey is an Arabian Nights’ tale, puerile,
languid, seriously extravagant, even ignoble in parts. The sojourns with
Calypso and Circe offer nothing interesting to La Harpe. The wonderful
descent to Hades is as bad as that of Æneas is admirable. La Harpe tells
us that these and other similar judgments are proofs of his severe
frankness. They certainly are; he has told us what he is.
That after this he should pronounce the Georgics “the most perfect
poem transmitted to us by the Ancients”; fix on the Prometheus his
favourite epithet of “monstrous,” and say that it “cannot even be called a
tragedy”; think Plutarch thoroughly justified in his censure of
Aristophanes; read Thucydides with less pleasure than Xenophon; and
decide that Apuleius wrote vers le moyen age, which was un désert,—
these things do not surprise us, nor that he should tolerate Ossian after
not tolerating Milton. It is in his fragment on the last-named poet that he
gives us his whole secret, with one of those intentional, yet really
unconscious, bursts of frankness which have been already noticed. “La
poésie,” he says, “ne doit me peindre que ce que je peux comprendre,
admettre, ou supposer.” That “suspension of disbelief” in which, at no
distant date, Coleridge was to discover the real poetic effect would, it is
clear, have been vehemently resisted and refused by La Harpe, or rather
it could never have entered his head as possible.
He remains therefore hopelessly self-shut out of the gates of Poetry—
only admitting and comprehending those beauties which stray into the
precinct of Rhetoric; discerning with horror “monsters” within the gates
themselves; and in his milder moments conjecturing charitably that, if
Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton had only always observed the rules,
which they sometimes slipped into, they might have been nearly as good
poets—he will not say quite—as Racine and Voltaire. Never have we met,
nor shall we ever meet again, a critical Ephraim so utterly joined to idols.
It is unnecessary—it would even be useless—to argue about him; he
must be observed, registered, and passed. Yet I do not pretend to regret
the time which I have myself spent over him. He writes well; he sees
clearly through his “monstrous” spectacles and subject to their laws;
above all, he has, what is, for some readers at any rate, the intense and
unfailing charm of “Thorough.” He is no cowardly Braggadochio or
inconstant Paridell: he is Sansfoy and Sansloy in one—defending his
Duessa, and perfectly ready to draw sword and spend blood for her at
any moment. Nor does he wield the said sword by any means
uncraftsmanly. Give him his premisses and his postulates, his Rules, his
false Reason and sham Nature, his criterion of the admissible and
comprehensible, and he very seldom makes a false conclusion. Would
that all Gloriana’s own knights were as uncompromising, as hardy, and as
deft!
Of the immense mass of Academic Éloges, and prize Essays generally,
composed during the eighteenth century, no extended or minute account
The Academic will be expected here. I have myself, speaking without
Essay. the slightest exaggeration, read hundreds of them:
indeed it is difficult to find a French man of letters, of any name during the
whole time, in whose works some specimens of the kind do not figure.
But—and it is at once a reason for dealing with them generally and a
reason for not dealing with them as individuals—there is hardly any kind
of publication which more fatally indicates the defects of the Academic
system, and of that phase of criticism and literary taste of which it was the
exponent. They were written in some cases—it is but repeating in other
words what has been just said—by men of the greatest talent; they
constituted with a play of one kind or another, the almost invariable début
of every Frenchman who had literary talent, great or small. They exhibit a
relatively high level of a certain kind of literary, or at least rhetorical,
attainment. But the last adjective has let slip the dogs on them, for they
are almost always rhetorical in the worst senses of the word. Extensive
reading in literature was not wanted by the forty guards of the Capitol;
original thinking was quite certain to alarm them. The elegant nullity of the
Greek Declamation, and the ampullæ of the Roman, were the best things
that were likely to be found. Yet sometimes in literature, as in philosophy,
the Academic Essay produced remarkable things. And we may give some
space to perhaps its most remarkable writer towards the close of the
time, a writer symptomatic in the very highest degree, as showing the
hold which neo-classic ideas still had in France—that is to say, Rivarol.
[704]

That “the St George of the epigram” might have been really great as a
critic there can be little doubt; besides lesser exercises in this vocation,
which are always acute if not always quite just, he has left us two fairly
solid Essays, and a brilliant literary “skit,” to enable us to judge. The last
Rivarol. of the three, the Almanach des Grands Hommes de nos
jours, does, with more wit, better temper, and better
manners, what Gifford was to do a little later in England; it is a sort of
sprinkling of an anodyne but potent Keating’s powder on the small poets
and men of letters of the time just before the Revolution. But the treatise
De l’Universalité de la Langue Française, laid before the Academy of
Berlin in 1783, and the Preface to the writer’s Translation of the Inferno,
are really solid documents. Both are prodigies of ingenuity, acuteness,
and command of phrase, conditioned by want of knowledge and by parti
pris. How praise Dante better than by saying that Italian took in his hands
“une fierté qu’elle n’eut plus après lui”?[705] how better describe what we
miss even in Ariosto, even in Petrarch? Yet how go further astray than in
finding fault with the Inferno because “on ne rencontre pas assez
d’épisodes”?[706] What a critical piercing to the joints and marrow of the
fault of eighteenth-century poetry is the remark that Dante’s verses “se
tiennent debout par la seule force du substantif et du verbe sans le
concours d’une seule épithète!” And what a falling off is there when one
passes from this to the old beauty-and-fault jangles and jars!
The Universality of French[707] has many points of curiosity; but we must
abide by those which are strictly literary. The temptation of the style to
rhetoric, and, at the same time, “the solace of this sin,” could hardly be
better shown than in Rivarol’s phrasing of the radical and inseparable
clearness of French, as “une probité attachée à son génie.”[708] How
happy is the admission that poets of other countries “give their metaphors
at a higher strength,” “embrace the figurative style closer,” and are deeper
and fuller in colour! Yet the history, both of French and English literature,
given in each case at some length, is inadequate and incorrect, the
comparisons are childish, and the vaticinations absurd. In fact, Rivarol
was writing up to certain fixed ideas, the chief of which was that the
French literature of 1660-1780 was the greatest that had ever existed—
perhaps that ever could exist—in the world.
This notion—to which it is but just to admit that other nations had given
only too much countenance and support, though England and Germany
at least were fast emancipating themselves—and the numbing effect of
the general neo-classic creed from which it was no very extravagant
deduction, mar a very large proportion[709] of French criticism during the
century, and, almost without exception, the whole of what we here call its
orthodox criticism. So long as it, or anything like it, prevails in any country,