The Crown of Wild Olive

by John Ruskin

  LECTURE I.

  _THE VALLEY OF DIAMONDS._

  _A very idle talk, by the dining-room fire, after raisin-and-almond time._

  OLD LECTURER; FLORRIE, ISABEL, MAY, LILY, _and_ SIBYL.

  OLD LECTURER (L.). Come here, Isabel, and tell me what the make-believewas, this afternoon.

  ISABEL (_arranging herself very primly on the foot-stool_). Such adreadful one! Florrie and I were lost in the Valley of Diamonds.

  L. What! Sindbad's, which nobody could get out of?

  ISABEL. Yes; but Florrie and I got out of it.

  L. So I see. At least, I see you did; but are you sure Florrie did?

  ISABEL. Quite sure.

  FLORRIE (_putting her head round from behind_ L.'s _sofa-cushion_).Quite sure. (_Disappears again._)

  L. I think I could be made to feel surer about it.

  (FLORRIE _reappears, gives_ L. _a kiss, and again exit._)

  L. I suppose it's all right; but how did you manage it?

  ISABEL. Well, you know, the eagle that took up Sindbad was verylarge--very, very large--the largest of all the eagles.

  L. How large were the others?

  ISABEL. I don't quite know--they were so far off. But this one was, oh,so big! and it had great wings, as wide as--twice over the ceiling. So,when it was picking up Sindbad, Florrie and I thought it wouldn't knowif we got on its back too: so I got up first, and then I pulled upFlorrie, and we put our arms round its neck, and away it flew.

  L. But why did you want to get out of the valley? and why haven't youbrought me some diamonds?

  ISABEL. It was because of the serpents. I couldn't pick up even theleast little bit of a diamond, I was so frightened.

  L. You should not have minded the serpents.

  ISABEL. Oh, but suppose that they had minded me?

  L. We all of us mind you a little too much, Isabel, I'm afraid.

  ISABEL. No--no--no, indeed.

  L. I tell you what, Isabel--I don't believe either Sindbad, or Florrie,or you, ever were in the Valley of Diamonds.

  ISABEL. You naughty! when I tell you we were!

  L. Because you say you were frightened at the serpents.

  ISABEL. And wouldn't you have been?

  L. Not at those serpents. Nobody who really goes into the valley is everfrightened at them--they are so beautiful.

  ISABEL (_suddenly serious_). But there's no real Valley of Diamonds, isthere?

  L. Yes, Isabel; very real indeed.

  FLORRIE (_reappearing_). Oh, where? Tell me about it.

  L. I cannot tell you a great deal about it; only I know it is verydifferent from Sindbad's. In his valley, there was only a diamond lyinghere and there; but, in the real valley, there are diamonds covering thegrass in showers every morning, instead of dew: and there are clustersof trees, which look like lilac trees; but, in spring, all theirblossoms are of amethyst.

  FLORRIE. But there can't be any serpents there, then?

  L. Why not?

  FLORRIE. Because they don't come into such beautiful places.

  L. I never said it was a beautiful place.

  FLORRIE. What! not with diamonds strewed about it like dew?

  L. That's according te your fancy, Florrie. For myself, I like dewbetter.

  ISABEL. Oh, but the dew won't stay; it all dries!

  L. Yes; and it would be much nicer if the diamonds dried too, for thepeople in the valley have to sweep them off the grass, in heaps,whenever they want to walk on it; and then the heaps glitter so, theyhurt one's eyes.

  FLORRIE. Now you're just playing, you know.

  L. So are you, you know.

  FLORRIE. Yes, but you mustn't play.

  L. That's very hard, Florrie; why mustn't I, if you may?

  FLORRIE. Oh, I may, because I'm little, but you mustn't, becauseyou're--(_hesitates for a delicate expression of magnitude_).

  L. (_rudely taking the first that comes_). Because I'm big? No; that'snot the way of it at all, Florrie. Because you're little, you shouldhave very little play; and because I'm big I should have a great deal.

  ISABEL _and_ FLORRIE (_both_). No--no--no--no. That isn't it at all.(ISABEL _sola, quoting Miss Ingelow._) 'The lambs play always--they knowno better.' (_Putting her head very much on one side._) Ah,now--please--please--tell us true; we want to know.

  L. But why do you want me to tell you true, any more than the man whowrote the 'Arabian Nights?'

  ISABEL. Because--because we like to know about real things; and you cantell us, and we can't ask the man who wrote the stories.

  L. What do you call real things?

  ISABEL. Now, you know! Things that really are.

  L. Whether you can see them or not?

  ISABEL. Yes, if somebody else saw them.

  L. But if nobody has ever seen them?

  ISABEL (_evading the point_.) Well, but, you know, if there were a realValley of Diamonds, somebody _must_ have seen it.

  L. You cannot be so sure of that, Isabel. Many people go to real places,and never see them; and many people pass through this valley, and neversee it.

  FLORRIE. What stupid people they must be!

  L. No, Florrie. They are much wiser than the people who do see it.

  MAY. I think I know where it is.

  ISABEL. Tell us more about it, and then we'll guess.

  L. Well. There's a great broad road, by a river-side, leading up intoit.

  MAY (_gravely cunning, with emphasis on the last word_). Does the roadreally go _up_?

  L. You think it should go down into a valley? No, it goes up; this is avalley among the hills, and it is as high as the clouds, and is oftenfull of them; so that even the people who most want to see it, cannot,always.

  ISABEL. And what is the river beside the road like?

  L. It ought to be very beautiful, because it flows over diamondsand--only the water is thick and red.

  ISABEL. Red water?

  L. It isn't all water.

  MAY. Oh, please never mind that, Isabel, just now; I want to hear aboutthe valley.

  L. So the entrance to it is very wide, under a steep rock; only suchnumbers of people are always trying to get in, that they keep jostlingeach other, and manage it but slowly. Some weak ones are pushed back,and never get in at all; and make great moaning as they go away: butperhaps they are none the worse in the end.

  MAY. And when one gets in, what is it like?

  L. It is up and down, broken kind of ground: the road stops directly;and there are great dark rocks, covered all over with wild gourds andwild vines; the gourds, if you cut them, are red, with black seeds, likewater-melons, and look ever so nice; and the people of the place make ared pottage of them: but you must take care not to eat any if you everwant to leave the valley (though I believe putting plenty of meal in itmakes it wholesome). Then the wild vines have clusters of the colour ofamber; and the people of the country say they are the grape of Eshcol;and sweeter than honey; but, indeed, if anybody else tastes them, theyare like gall. Then there are thickets of bramble, so thorny that theywould be cut away directly, anywhere else; but here they are coveredwith little cinque-foiled blossoms of pure silver; and, for berries,they have clusters of rubies. Dark rubies, which you only see are redafter gathering them. But you may fancy what blackberry parties thechildren have! Only they get their frocks and hands sadly torn.

  LILY. But rubies can't spot one's frocks as blackberries do?

  L. No; but I'll tell you what spots them--the mulberries. There aregreat forests of them, all up the hills, covered with silkworms, somemunching the leaves so loud that it is like mills at work; and somespinning. But the berries are the blackest you ever saw; and, whereverthey fall, they stain a deep red; and nothing ever washes it out again.And it is their juice, soaking through the grass, which makes the riverso red, because all its springs are in this wood. And the boughs of thetrees are twisted, as if in pain, like old olive branches; and theirleaves are dark. And it is in these forests that the serpents are; butnobody is afraid
of them. They have fine crimson crests, and they arewreathed about the wild branches, one in every tree, nearly; and theyare singing serpents, for the serpents are, in this forest, what birdsare in ours.

  FLORRIE. Oh, I don't want to go there at all, now.

  L. You would like it very much indeed, Florrie, if you were there. Theserpents would not bite you; the only fear would be of your turning intoone!

  FLORRIE. Oh, dear, but that's worse.

  L. You wouldn't think so if you really were turned into one, Florrie;you would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself(not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrieyou are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss alittle through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time,and sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, withthroats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can singchords--it is very fine indeed. And the fire-flies fly round the edge ofthe forests all the night long; you wade in fire-flies, they make thefields look like a lake trembling with reflection of stars; but you musttake care not to touch them, for they are not like Italian fireflies,but burn, like real sparks.

  FLORRIE. I don't like it at all; I'll never go there.

  L. I hope not, Florrie; or at least that you will get out again if youdo. And it is very difficult to get out, for beyond these serpentforests there are great cliffs of dead gold, which form a labyrinth,winding always higher and higher, till the gold is all split asunder bywedges of ice; and glaciers, welded, half of ice seven times frozen, andhalf of gold seven times frozen, hang down from them, and fall inthunder, cleaving into deadly splinters, like the Cretan arrowheads; andinto a mixed dust of snow and gold, ponderous, yet which the mountainwhirlwinds are able to lift and drive in wreaths and pillars, hiding thepaths with a burial cloud, fatal at once with wintry chill, and weightof golden ashes. So the wanderers in the labyrinth fall, one by one, andare buried there:--yet, over the drifted graves, those who are sparedclimb to the last, through coil on coil of the path;--for at the end ofit they see the king of the valley, sitting on his throne: and besidehim (but it is only a false vision), spectra of creatures likethemselves, set on thrones, from which they seem to look down on all thekingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. And on the canopy of histhrone there is an inscription in fiery letters, which they strive toread, but cannot; for it is written in words which are like the words ofall languages, and yet are of none. Men say it is more like their owntongue to the English than it is to any other nation; but the onlyrecord of it is by an Italian, who heard the King himself cry it as awar cry, 'Pape Satan, Pape Satan Aleppe.'[145]

  SIBYL. But do they all perish there? You said there was a way throughthe valley, and out of it.

  L. Yes; but few find it. If any of them keep to the grass paths, wherethe diamonds are swept aside; and hold their hands over their eyes so asnot to be dazzled, the grass paths lead forward gradually to a placewhere one sees a little opening in the golden rocks. You were atChamouni last year, Sibyl; did your guide chance to show you the piercedrock of the Aiguille du Midi?

  SIBYL. No, indeed, we only got up from Geneva on Monday night; and itrained all Tuesday; and we had to be back at Geneva again, early onWednesday morning.

  L. Of course. That is the way to see a country in a Sibylline manner, byinner consciousness: but you might have seen the pierced rock in yourdrive up, or down, if the clouds broke: not that there is much to see init; one of the crags of the aiguille-edge, on the southern slope of it,is struck sharply through, as by an awl, into a little eyelet hole;which you may see, seven thousand feet above the valley (as the cloudsflit past behind it, or leave the sky), first white, and then dark blue.Well, there's just such an eyelet hole in one of the upper crags of theDiamond Valley; and, from a distance, you think that it is no biggerthan the eye of a needle. But if you get up to it, they say you maydrive a loaded camel through it, and that there are fine things on theother side, but I have never spoken with anybody who had been through.

  SIBYL. I think we understand it now. We will try to write it down, andthink of it.

  L. Meantime, Florrie, though all that I have been telling you is verytrue, yet you must not think the sort of diamonds that people wear inrings and necklaces are found lying about on the grass. Would you liketo see how they really are found?

  FLORRIE. Oh, yes--yes.

  L. Isabel--or Lily--run up to my room and fetch me the little box with aglass lid, out of the top drawer of the chest of drawers. (_Racebetween_ LILY _and_ ISABEL.)

  (_Re-enter_ ISABEL _with the box, very much out of breath._ LILY _behind._)

  L. Why, you never can beat Lily in a race on the stairs, can you,Isabel?

  ISABEL (_panting_). Lily--beat me--ever so far--but she gave me--thebox--to carry in.

  L. Take off the lid, then; gently.

  FLORRIE (_after peeping in, disappointed_). There's only a great uglybrown stone!

  L. Not much more than that, certainly, Florrie, if people were wise. Butlook, it is not a single stone; but a knot of pebbles fastened togetherby gravel; and in the gravel, or compressed sand, if you look close, youwill see grains of gold glittering everywhere, all through; and then, doyou see these two white beads, which shine, as if they had been coveredwith grease?

  FLORRIE. May I touch them?

  L. Yes; you will find they are not greasy, only very smooth. Well, thoseare the fatal jewels; native here in their dust with gold, so that youmay see, cradled here together, the two great enemies of mankind,--thestrongest of all malignant physical powers that have tormented our race.

  SIBYL. Is that really so? I know they do great harm; but do they notalso do great good?

  L. My dear child, what good? Was any woman, do you suppose, ever thebetter for possessing diamonds? but how many have been made base,frivolous, and miserable by desiring them? Was ever man the better forhaving coffers full of gold? But who shall measure the guilt that isincurred to fill them? Look into the history of any civilised nations;analyse, with reference to this one cause of crime and misery, the livesand thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and men of luxuriouslife. Every other temptation is at last concentrated into this; pride,and lust, and envy, and anger all give up their strength to avarice. Thesin of the whole world is essentially the sin of Judas. Men do notdisbelieve their Christ; but they sell Him.

  SIBYL. But surely that is the fault of human nature? it is not caused bythe accident, as it were, of there being a pretty metal, like gold, tobe found by digging. If people could not find that, would they not findsomething else, and quarrel for it instead?

  L. No. Wherever legislators have succeeded in excluding, for a time,jewels and precious metals from among national possessions, the nationalspirit has remained healthy. Covetousness is not natural toman--generosity is; but covetousness must be excited by a special cause,as a given disease by a given miasma; and the essential nature of amaterial for the excitement of covetousness is, that it shall be abeautiful thing which can be retained _without a use_. The moment wecan use our possessions to any good purpose ourselves, the instinct ofcommunicating that use to others rises side by side with our power. Ifyou can read a book rightly, you will want others to hear it; if you canenjoy a picture rightly, you will want others to see it: learn how tomanage a horse, a plough, or a ship, and you will desire to make yoursubordinates good horsemen, ploughmen, or sailors; you will never beable to see the fine instrument you are master of, abused; but, once fixyour desire on anything useless, and all the purest pride and folly inyour heart will mix with the desire, and make you at last whollyinhuman, a mere ugly lump of stomach and suckers, like a cuttle-fish.

  SIBYL. But surely, these two beautiful things, gold and diamonds, musthave been appointed to some good purpose?

  L. Quite conceivably so, my dear: as also earthquakes and pestilences;but of such ultimate purposes we can have no sight. The practical,immediate office of the earthquake and pestilence is to slay us, likemoths; and, as moths, w
e shall be wise to live out of their way. So, thepractical, immediate office of gold and diamonds is the multiplieddestruction of souls (in whatever sense you have been taught tounderstand that phrase); and the paralysis of wholesome human effort andthought on the face of God's earth: and a wise nation will live out ofthe way of them. The money which the English habitually spend in cuttingdiamonds would, in ten years, if it were applied to cutting rocksinstead, leave no dangerous reef nor difficult harbour round the wholeisland coast. Great Britain would be a diamond worth cutting, indeed, atrue piece of regalia. (_Leaves this to their thoughts for a littlewhile._) Then, also, we poor mineralogists might sometimes have thechance of seeing a fine crystal of diamond unhacked by the jeweller.

  SIBYL. Would it be more beautiful uncut?

  L. No; but of infinite interest. We might even come to know somethingabout the making of diamonds.

  SIBYL. I thought the chemists could make them already?

  L. In very small black crystals, yes; but no one knows how they areformed where they are found; or if indeed they are formed there at all.These, in my hand, look as if they had been swept down with the graveland gold; only we can trace the gravel and gold to their native rocks,but not the diamonds. Read the account given of the diamond in any goodwork on mineralogy;--you will find nothing but lists of localities ofgravel, or conglomerate rock (which is only an old indurated gravel).Some say it was once a vegetable gum; but it may have been charred wood;but what one would like to know is, mainly, why charcoal should makeitself into diamonds in India, and only into black lead in Borrowdale.

  SIBYL. Are they wholly the same, then?

  L. There is a little iron mixed with our black lead but nothing tohinder its crystallisation. Your pencils in fact are all pointed withformless diamond, though they would be HHH pencils to purpose, if itcrystallised.

  SUBYL. But what _is_ crystallisation?

  L. A pleasant question, when one's half asleep, and it has been tea timethese two hours. What thoughtless things girls are!

  SIBYL. Yes, we are; but we want to know, for all that.

  L. My dear, it would take a week to tell you.

  SIBYL. Well, take it, and tell us.

  L. But nobody knows anything about it.

  SIBYL. Then tell us something that nobody knows.

  L. Get along with you, and tell Dora to make tea.

  (_The house rises; but of course the_ LECTURER _wanted to be forced to lecture again, and was._)

  FOOTNOTES:

  [145] Dante, Inf. 7. 1.