Passages from The Emperor of Portugallia

The night before a child leaves, a father rehearses the loss.

Jan moved quietly away from the door, where he had been standing a moment, listening, and sat down on the step. He never thought for an instant that Glory Goldie would remain at home. Indeed he knew better than did anyone else that she must go away. All the same it was to him as if the soft little bundle had again been laid in his arms. His heart had been set going once more. Now it was beating away in his breast as if trying to make up for lost time. With that he felt that his armour of defence was gone.

The moment a man learns what a crowd's applause is worth.

This was followed by loud laughs from the crowd, Jan was so dumbfounded that all he could do was to stand still and look at the people. He glanced from one to another, unable to get over his amazement. Dear, dear! Was there no one among all those who had honoured and applauded him who would help him now, in his hour of need? The people stood there, unmoved. He saw then that he meant nothing to them and that they would not lift a finger for him. He became so frightened that all his imperial greatness fell from him, and he was like a little child that is ready to cry because its playthings have been taken away.

A father who has something to ask and no way to ask it.

During these visits the father and son immediately they had finished their coffee always went fishing. The old man usually kept very still on these occasions, so as not to scare the fish away, but this year was the exception. He spoke to the son time and again. His words came with difficulty, as always, still there seemed to be more life in him now than ordinarily. Evidently there was something special he wanted to say, or rather something he wished to draw from his son. He was like one who stands outside an empty house shouting and calling, in the hope that somebody will come and open the door to him.

The disaster you can't outrun, out-argue, or put a roof against.

He put down his pipe, though it was only half-smoked, but remained quietly seated in the one spot. For what else could he do? This was not something which he could ward off—something he could run away from. One could not take up arms and defend one’s self against it, nor find safety by creeping into cellars or caves. Even if one had the power to empty all the oceans and lakes, their waters would not suffice to quench the fires of the firmament. If one could uproot the mountains and prop them, beam-like, against the sky, they could not hold up this heavy dome if it was meant that it should sink.

Every window lit, in case a stranger is walking past.

The torches that had lighted the Ashdales folk through the woods were burned out when they came to the highroad; but here they went on, guided by the lights from peasant huts. When one house was out of sight, they glimpsed another in the distance, and every house along the road had candles burning at all the windows, to guide the poor wanderers on their way to church.

What a young tree would say if no one were going to cut it down.

The air was quite still, therefore it could hardly have been the wind that had set all these little musical instruments into motion. It was almost as if the spruces played for very joy at being so young and fresh; at being let stand in peace by the abandoned roadside, with the promise of many years of life ahead of them before any human being would come and cut them down.

The first time a child sees how big the world is.

At first she sang. But presently she hushed her singing and thought only of gazing out over the wide, open world before her. Suddenly she flung out her arms as if wanting to take it all into her embrace—all this wealth and power and bigness from which she had been shut out until that day.

The old fear that the trees are watching you walk past.

The spruce trees up there were old and gnarled, and their branches were dotted with clumps of snow. As seen in the glow of the torch light, one could not but think that some of the trees were really trolls, with gleaming eyes beneath snow hats, and long sharp claws protruding from thick snow mittens.

Every village has a repairman whose repairs you learn to dread.

The worst of it was that if Agrippa once got his hands on a clock it would never run as well as before, and afterward one had to let him tinker it at least once a year, or it would stop going altogether. The old man tried to do honest and conscientious work, but just the same he ruined all the clocks he touched.