Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Austerlitz (2001)

  one morning when scarcely anyone was out and about, they were marched under guard to nearby HoleSovice railway station, where it took almost another three hours to load them on the trucks. Later, said Vera, I often walked out to HoleSovice, to Stromovka Park and the Trade Fair precinct. On these occasions I usually visited the lapidarium installed there in the sixties and spent hours looking at the mineral samples in the glass cases—pyrite crystals, deep green Siberian malachites, specimens of Bohemian mica, granite, quartz, and limestone of an isabelline yellow hue—wondering at the nature of the foundations on which our world is built. On the very day when Agata had been forced to leave her flat, Vera told me, said Austerlitz, a man from the Trusteeship Center for Requisitioned Goods came to the Sporkova and put a paper seal on the doors. Then, between Christmas and the New Year, a troop of very shady characters arrived to clear away everything that had been left behind, the furniture, the lamps and candelabra, the carpets and curtains, the books and musical scores, the clothes from the wardrobes and drawers, the bed linen, pillows, eiderdowns, blankets, china and kitchen utensils, the pot plants and umbrellas, even the bottled pears and cherries which had been standing forgotten in the cellar for years, and the remaining potatoes. They took everything, down to the very last spoon, off to one of the over fifty depots, where these abandoned objects were itemized separately with that thoroughness peculiar to the Germans, were valued, then washed, cleaned or mended as necessary, and finally stored, row upon row, on specially made shelves. Last of all, said Vera, a pest control officer turned up in the Sporkova. He struck me as a particularly sinister figure, with an unpleasant look in his eye which went right through me. To this day he sometimes haunts my dreams, in which I see him surrounded by clouds of poisonous white smoke as he goes about fumigating the rooms.—When Vera had come to the end of her story, so Austerlitz continued that morning in Alderney Street, she handed me, after a long pause in which the silence in the Sporkova flat seemed to grow deeper with every breath we two small photographs measuring about three by four inches from the little occasional table beside her chair. She had found them by chance the previous evening inside one of the fifty-five carmine-red volumes of Balzac which she had happened to pick up, she did not know why. Vera said she could not remember unfastening the glass doors and taking the book off the shelf where it stood with its companions, she merely saw herself sitting here in this armchair and—for the first time since her late twenties, a point on which she laid special emphasis—turning the pages which tell the story of the great injustice suffered by Colonel Chabert. How the two pictures had slipped between the leaves was a mystery to her, said Vera. Perhaps Agata had borrowed the small volume while she was still living here in

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  David was posted to the British Army Hospital in Hong Kong, and he made plans for me to visit him there. He wrote in detail about the evening events he had arranged for us, the people he wanted me to meet, and the picnics we would take to the islands nearby. I could not wait to be with him again. But then one night, not too long before I was to join him, I was at home writing a chapter for a textbook when there was a knock at my door. It was an odd hour, I was expecting no one, and for some even odder reason I suddenly remembered what my mother had said about how pilots’ wives dreaded the chaplain’s knock on the door. I opened the door, and it was a diplomatic courier with a letter from David’s commanding officer saying that David, who had been on general medical duty in Kathmandu, had died very suddenly of a massive heart attack. He was forty-four, and I was thirty-two. Very little sank in. I remember sitting down, picking up my work again, writing for a while, and then telephoning my mother. I spoke also with David’s parents and his commanding officer. Even when we were discussing plans for the funeral, which was significantly delayed because the army required an autopsy before David’s body could be returned to England, his death in no way seemed real to me. I went through all of the motions in a state of complete shock—I booked a flight, taught my seminar the next morning, ran a clinic staff meeting, renewed my passport, packed my clothes, and carefully gathered up all of David’s letters to me. Once I was on the airplane, I methodically put the letters into order according to when they had been written; I decided to wait until I got to London, however, before reading them. The next day, in Hyde Park, when I sat down to read, I found I could get through only the first half of the first letter. I started sobbing uncontrollably. To this day I have neither reopened nor reread any of his letters.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  Shyuzen's father was one of the Lord's hereditary courtiers. He was so outraged by the crime committed against his son that he swore to die by Hara-kiri on the same spot where his son had fallen. His mother also was a favourite of the Princess, the Lord's wife. She used to take part in the Princess's poetical gatherings. All night, with bare feet, she wept and mourned her son's death. She besought the Princess to Comrade-Love of the Samurai punish the murderer, saying: 'If the Lord pardons the murderer, there is no law or justice in the world.' Accordingly the Lord grudgingly resolved to condemn Ukyo to die by Hara-kiri. Shyusaï, who had carried the message to Shyuzen, contrived his own death also. Uneme had at that time received leave of absence from his master to visit his mother at Kanagawa, and did not know that Ukyo had been condemned to death. But Samanosuke wrote to him to say that Ukyo was to kill himself next morning at the Keiyoji temple at Asakusa. Uneme sent Samanosuke his thanks, and hastened at daybreak to the temple without even taking time to bid his mother farewell. As he Stood in the chief entrance to the temple, which was in the form of a low tower, several people Started talking noisily about Hara-kiri. They said: 'Early this morning a young samurai is coming here to kill himself. They say that he is very beautiful. Even an ugly son is dear to his parents; the father and mother of this young samurai will be smitten with despair at realising that so accomplished a son must die. Surely it is a pity to kill such a splendid young man.' Uneme could hardly restrain his tears on hearing these people. The temple quickly filled, and he hid himself behind a door and waited for the arrival of his darling Ukyo. Shortly after, a fine new litter was seen to approach, borne by several men, surrounded by guards. It Sopped opposite the door, and Ukyo descended from it with the utmost calmness. He was wearing a white silk garment embroidered with autumn flowers, having pale blue facings* and a skirt. He Stopped for a moment and looked about him. On the tombs were some thousands of wooden tablets bearing the names of those who were buried there. Among them rose a wild cherry tree with white blossom on the upper branches only. Ukyo looked at the pale, fading flowers, and softly murmured an old Chinese poem: The flowers wait for next Spring, Trusting that the same hands shall caress them. But men's hearts will no longer he the same, And you will only know that everything changes, 0 poor lovers.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  She used to say to me, Mona, in her fits of exaltation, “you’re a great human being,” and though she left me here to perish, though she put beneath my feet a great howling pit of emptiness, the words that lie at the bottom of my soul leap forth and they light the shadows below me. I am one who was lost in the crowd, whom the fizzing lights made dizzy, a zero who saw everything about him reduced to mockery. Passed me men and women ignited with sulfur, porters in calcium livery opening the jaws of hell, fame walking on crutches, dwindled by the skyscrapers, chewed to a frazzle by the spiked mouth of the machines. I walked between the tall buildings toward the cool of the river and I saw the lights shoot up between the ribs of the skeletons like rockets. If I was truly a great human being, as she said, then what was the meaning of this slavering idiocy about me? I was a man with body and soul, I had a heart that was not protected by a steel vault. I had moments of ecstasy and I sang with burning sparks. I sang of the Equator, her red-feathered legs and the islands dropping out of sight. But nobody heard. A gun fired across the Pacific falls into space because the earth is round and pigeons fly upside down. I saw her looking at me across the table with eyes turned to grief; sorrow spreading inward flattened its nose against her spine; the marrow churned to pity had turned liquid. She was light as a corpse that floats in the Dead Sea. Her fingers bled with anguish and the blood turned to drool. With the wet dawn came the tolling of bells and along the fibers of my nerves the bells played ceaselessly and their tongues pounded in my heart and clanged with iron malice. Strange that the bells should toll so, but stranger still the body bursting, this woman turned to night and her maggot words gnawing through the mattress. I moved along under the Equator, heard the hideous laughter of the green-jawed hyena, saw the jackal with silken tail and the dick-dick and the spotted leopard, all left behind in the Garden of Eden. And then her sorrow widened, like the bow of a dreadnought and the weight of her sinking flooded my ears. Slime wash and sapphires slipping, sluicing through the gay neurons, and the spectrum spliced and the gunwales dipping. Soft as lion-pad I heard the gun carriages turn, saw them vomit and drool: the firmament sagged and all the stars turned black. Black ocean bleeding and the brooding stars breeding chunks of fresh-swollen flesh while overhead the birds wheeled and out of the hallucinated sky fell the balance with mortar and pestle and the bandaged eyes of justice.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Later on she was to learn, when she knew him better, that these disconcerting lapses of interest, amounting as they did to a breach of good manners, were highly characteristic of the man, and must of necessity be accepted by all who accepted Jonathan Brockett. And now here he was back again in England, sitting next to Stephen at the Carringtons’ luncheon. And as though they had met but a few hours ago, he took her up calmly just where he had left her. ‘May I come in to-morrow?’ ‘Well—I’m awfully busy.’ ‘But I want to come, please; I can talk to Puddle.’ ‘I’m afraid she’ll be out.’ ‘Then I’ll just sit and wait until she comes in; I’ll be quiet as a mouse.’ ‘Oh, no, Brockett, please don’t; I should know you were there and that would disturb me.’ ‘I see. A new book?’ ‘Well, no—I’m trying to write some short stories; I’ve got a commission from The Good Housewife.’ ‘Sounds thrifty. I hope you’re getting well paid.’ Then after a rather long pause: ‘How’s Raftery?’ For a second she did not answer, and Brockett, with quick intuition, regretted his question. ‘Not . . . not. . . .’ he stammered. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, ‘Raftery’s dead—he went lame. I shot him.’ He was silent. Then he suddenly took her hand and, still without speaking, pressed it. Glancing up, she was surprised by the look in his eyes, so sorrowful it was, and so understanding. He had liked the old horse, for he liked all dumb creatures. But Raftery’s death could mean nothing to him; yet his sharp, grey eyes had now softened with pity because she had had to shoot Raftery. She thought: ‘What a curious fellow he is. At this moment I suppose he actually feels something almost like grief—it’s my grief he’s getting— and to-morrow, of course, he’ll forget all about it.’ Which was true enough. Brockett could compress quite a lot of emotion into an incredibly short space of time; could squeeze a kind of emotional beef-tea from all those with whom life brought him in contact—a strong brew, and one that served to sustain and revivify his inspiration. 2 For ten days Stephen heard nothing more of Brockett; then he rang up to announce that he was coming to dinner at her flat that very same evening. ‘You’ll get awfully little to eat,’ warned Stephen, who was tired to death and who did not want him. ‘Oh, all right, I’ll bring some dinner along,’ he said blithely, and with that he hung up the receiver. At a quarter-past eight he arrived, late for dinner and loaded like a pack-mule with brown paper parcels. He looked cross; he had spoilt his new reindeer gloves with mayonnaise that had oozed through a box containing the lobster salad.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  I found my way to Harrods to pick out a black hat for the funeral and then had lunch with David’s commanding officer at his club. He was, by virtue of his job, chief psychiatrist for the British army; by temperament, he was kind, direct, and tremendously understanding. He was used to dealing with women whose husbands had died unexpectedly, knew desperate denial when he saw it, and clearly grasped that I had not even begun to comprehend the reality of David’s death. He talked to me for a long time about David, about the many years he had known and worked with him, and what a wonderful doctor and person he had been. He also said he thought it might be “terribly difficult, but a good idea” if he read me portions of the autopsy report. Ostensibly, this was to reassure me that the massiveness of David’s heart attack was such that no treatment or medical intervention would have helped. In actuality, it was clear he knew that the cold-blooded medical language would shock me into beginning to deal with the finality of it all. It certainly helped, although it was not so much the gruesome medical details that lurched me toward reality; it was, instead, the brigadier’s statement that “a young officer had accompanied the body of Colonel Laurie on the Royal Air Force plane from Hong Kong to Brize Norton airfield.” David no longer was Colonel Laurie; he no longer was Dr. Laurie; he was a body. The British army was unbelievably kind to me. By definition the army is used to death, especially sudden death, and much that is healing comes from their traditions. The rituals of military funerals are in themselves predictable, reassuring, dignified, religious, and dreadfully final. David’s friends and fellow officers were blunt, witty, matter-of-fact, and deeply compassionate. They made clear the expectation that I would handle things well, but they also did every conceivable thing possible to make a terrible situation more bearable. They never left me alone, but they never hovered; they kept me plied with sherry and scotch; they offered me legal counsel. They frequently, openly, and humorously discussed David; they left little room for denial. During the funeral itself, the brigadier insisted I sing along with the hymns, kept his arm around me during particularly difficult times, and laughed out loud when I whispered to him, during a somewhat overdone eulogy about officers and gentlemen, that I wished I could just get up and say that David had been great in bed. Despite my revulsion at the grotesque reduction of a man who had been six feet three inches tall into a small box of ashes, and an overwhelming desire to stay back from the grave site, he again pushed me forward to watch, to take it in, to believe it to be so.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  I had come at last to some sort of terms with David’s death. Visiting his grave in Dorset one cold, sunny day, I was taken aback by the loveliness of the churchyard in which he was buried. I had not remembered very much of it from the funeral, and certainly not its tranquillity and beauty. The deathly quietness was a certain kind of consolation, I suppose, but not necessarily the kind one would seek. I put a bouquet of long-stemmed violets on his grave and sat, tracing the letters of his name in the granite, remembering our times together in England and Washington and Los Angeles. It seemed a very long time ago, but I could see him still, tall and handsome, standing, arms crossed and laughing, at the top of a hill, during one of our walks in the English countryside; I still could feel his presence next to mine, kneeling together in a strange intimacy, at the communion rail in St. Paul’s; and I still could feel, with absolute clarity, his arms tight around me, holding the world at bay, giving me comfort and safety in the midst of total desolation. I wished more than anything that he could see that I was well, and that I somehow could repay him for his kindness and his belief in me. But mostly, as I was sitting there in the graveyard, I thought of all of the things that David had missed by dying young. And then, after an hour or more of being lost in my thoughts, I was caught up short by the realization that I had been thinking, for the first time, about how much David had missed, rather than what we together would miss. David had loved and accepted me in an extraordinary way; his steadiness and kindness had sustained and saved me, but he was gone. Life—because of him, and despite his death—went on. And now, four years after his death, I found a very different kind of love and a renewed belief in life. These came by way of an elegant, moody, and totally charming Englishman whom I had met early in the year. We both knew that, due to personal and professional circumstances, our affair would have to end once the year did, but it was—despite or because of this—a relationship that succeeded, finally, in restoring love and laughter and desire to a walled-in life and a thoroughly iced heart.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  I spent the rest of my time in England with friends and, bit by bit, began to understand that the future I had assumed, and the love and support I had come to depend upon, were gone. There were a thousand things I remembered once David had died. And there were many, many regrets: for lost opportunities, unnecessary and damaging arguments, and a deepening realization that there was absolutely nothing that could be done to change that which was true. There were so many dreams lost: all of our plans for a house full of children were lost; all of seemingly everything was lost. But grief, fortunately, is very different from depression: it is sad, it is awful, but it is not without hope. David’s death did not plunge me into unendurable darkness; suicide never crossed my mind. And there was very real solace in the offsetting and enormous kindness of friends, family, and even strangers. The day I left England to return to America, for instance, an agent at the British Airways ticket counter asked me if my trip had been for business or holiday. My composure, which had been airtight for almost two weeks, suddenly snapped. I explained, through a flood of tears, the circumstances of my visit; the agent immediately upgraded my seat and put me where I could have as much privacy as possible. He must have sent the word ahead to the stewardesses, because they too were unusually kind, solicitous, and left me to my thoughts. Since that day, whenever possible, I fly British Airways. And, each time, I am reminded of the importance of small kindnesses. I returned home to a tremendous amount of work, which was genuinely helpful, and, unnervingly, to several letters from David, which had arrived in my absence. In the days to follow I received two other letters, long delayed in the mail, and then, inevitably and terribly, they stopped. The shock of David’s death gradually disappeared over time. Missing him never has. Several years after his death I was asked to speak about it. I ended with a poem written by Edna St. Vincent Millay: Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him. Time finally did bring relief. But it took its own, and not terribly sweet, time in doing so.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  They Tell Me It Rained [image file=image_rsrcW1.jpg] The accumulated pain and uncertainty from David’s death, as well as from my own illness, for several years very much lowered and narrowed my expectations of life. I drew into myself and, for all intents and purposes, shuttered my heart from any unnecessary exposure to the world. I worked hard. Running a clinic, teaching, doing research, and writing books were no substitute for love, but they were interesting and gave some meaning to my badly interrupted life. Having finally cottoned onto the disastrous consequences of starting and stopping lithium, I took it faithfully and found that life was a much stabler and more predictable place than I had ever reckoned. My moods were still intense and my temperament rather quick to the boil, but I could make plans with far more certainty and the periods of absolute blackness were fewer and less extreme. Still, I was unquestionably raw and unhealed inside. At no point in the eight years since I had joined the faculty—despite the repeated, long months of manias and depressions, my suicide attempt, and David’s death—had I taken off any extended time from work, or away from Los Angeles, in order to heal and bind up the massive and long-standing wounds. So dipping into that most fabulous of all professorial perks, I decided to take a year’s sabbatical leave in England. Like St. Andrews many years before, it turned out to be a gentle and wonderful interlude. Love, long periods of time to myself, and a marvelous life in London and Oxford gave both my mind and heart the chance to slowly put back together most of that which had been ripped apart.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  David was posted to the British Army Hospital in Hong Kong, and he made plans for me to visit him there. He wrote in detail about the evening events he had arranged for us, the people he wanted me to meet, and the picnics we would take to the islands nearby. I could not wait to be with him again. But then one night, not too long before I was to join him, I was at home writing a chapter for a textbook when there was a knock at my door. It was an odd hour, I was expecting no one, and for some even odder reason I suddenly remembered what my mother had said about how pilots’ wives dreaded the chaplain’s knock on the door. I opened the door, and it was a diplomatic courier with a letter from David’s commanding officer saying that David, who had been on general medical duty in Kathmandu, had died very suddenly of a massive heart attack. He was forty-four, and I was thirty-two. Very little sank in. I remember sitting down, picking up my work again, writing for a while, and then telephoning my mother. I spoke also with David’s parents and his commanding officer. Even when we were discussing plans for the funeral, which was significantly delayed because the army required an autopsy before David’s body could be returned to England, his death in no way seemed real to me. I went through all of the motions in a state of complete shock—I booked a flight, taught my seminar the next morning, ran a clinic staff meeting, renewed my passport, packed my clothes, and carefully gathered up all of David’s letters to me. Once I was on the airplane, I methodically put the letters into order according to when they had been written; I decided to wait until I got to London, however, before reading them. The next day, in Hyde Park, when I sat down to read, I found I could get through only the first half of the first letter. I started sobbing uncontrollably. To this day I have neither reopened nor reread any of his letters.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  name of Christianity and the cause of the gospel."1231 Afterwards when a war in self-defence was inevitable, he reluctantly gave his consent, but protested against all excesses.1232 Calvin did not live to weep over the terrible massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day, nor to rejoice over the Edict of Nantes; but his spirit accompanied "the Church of the Desert," whose motto was the burning bush (Ex. 3:2); and every Huguenot who left France for the sake of his faith, carried to his new home in Switzerland, or Brandenburg, or Holland, or England, or America, a profound reverence for the name of John Calvin. Calvin and the Waldenses. The Waldenses are the only mediaeval sect which survives to this day, because they progressed with the Reformation and adhered to the Bible as their rule of faith.1233 They sent a deputation of two of their pastors, in 1530, to Oecolampadius at Basel, Bucer and Capito at Strassburg, and Berthold Haller at Bern, for information concerning the principles of the Reformation, and made common cause with the Protestants.1234 They were distinguished for industry, virtue, and simple, practical piety, but their heresy attracted the attention of the authorities. They were cited before the Parliament at Aix, and the heads of their families were condemned to death in November, 1540. The execution of the atrocious sentence was delayed till the king’s wishes should be ascertained. In February, 1541, Francis granted them pardon for the past, but required them to recant within three months. They adhered to their faith. On the 28th of April, 1545, a fiendish scheme of butchery—under the direction of Baron d’Oppède, military governor of Provence, and Cardinal Tournon, the bigoted and bloodthirsty archbishop of Lyons—was carried out against these innocent people. Their chief towns of Merindol and Cabrières, together with twenty-eight villages, were destroyed, the women outraged, and about four thousand persons slaughtered. Great numbers of the Waldenses sought refuge in flight. The noble and humane Bishop Sadolet of Carpentras, received them kindly, and interceded for them with the King. Four thousand went to Geneva. Calvin started a subscription for them, provided them with lodging and employment at the fortifications, and made every effort to get the Swiss Cantons to intercede with King Francis in behalf of those Waldenses who remained in France. He travelled to Bern, Zürich, and Aarau for this purpose. He even intended to go to Paris, but was prevented by sickness. The Cantons actually wrote to the king in the strongest terms, but he rebuked them for meddling with his affairs. Viret visited the French court with letters of recommendation from the Swiss Cantons and the Smalkaldian League, but likewise without result.1235 Since that time there has been a fraternal intercourse between the Waldenses and the French Swiss, and many of their most useful pastors were educated at Geneva and Lausanne.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Beza was deeply grieved at this apostasy. But when he learned that the king favored his old co-religionists in many ways, and especially, when in 1598, he published the Edict of Nantes, which put the Protestants on a nearly common footing with the Roman Catholics in France, Beza took a more hopeful view of the king’s condition. In 1599 the king, in the course of a war with Charles Emmanuel, approached near Geneva. The city saw in this a chance to obtain from the king the promise of his protection, especially against the Duke of Savoy, who had built a fort called St. Catherine, quite near Geneva. To effect this the city sent a delegation headed by Beza, and the interview between the monarch and the reformer was honorable to both. The king gladly gave his promise, and the next year the fort was destroyed. He also came to Geneva and received its hospitality. § 175. Beza’s Last Days. Beza’s life was now drawing to its close. The weight of years had become a grievous burden. His bodily powers gradually deserted him. He partially lost his hearing. His memory became so enfeebled that the past only remained to him, while recent events made no lasting impression. It was the breaking up of an extraordinarily vigorous constitution, which had so supported him for sixty-five years that he had scarcely known what it was to be sick. Then he took the prudent course of giving up one by one the duties which he had so long discharged. In 1586 he was excused from preaching daily, and henceforth till 1600 preached only on Sunday. In 1598 he retired from active duty in the Academy, and sold his library, giving part of the proceeds, which were considerable, to his wife, and part to the poor. In 1600 he rendered his last public services in the Academy, and preached his last sermon—the only one preached in the seventeenth, by a reformer of the sixteenth, century.1306 Occasionally something of the old wit flashed forth. As when he made his reply to the silly rumor that he had yielded to the argumentation of François de Sales and had gone over to Rome. The facts are these: François came to Geneva in 1597 with the express purpose of converting Beza. He was then thirty years old, very zealous, very skilful, and in many other cases had been successful. But he met his match in the old Reformer, who however listened to him courteously. What argument failed to accomplish, the priest thought money might do, and so he offered Beza in the name of the pope a yearly pension of four thousand gold crowns and a sum equal to twice as much as the value of all his personal effects!

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The younger, again, I admonish to conduct themselves with modesty, keeping far aloof from all haughtiness of mind. Let no one give disturbance to his neighbor, but let every one shun deceit and all that bitterness of feeling which, in the administration of the Republic, has led many away from the right path. These things you will avoid if each keeps within his own sphere, and all conduct themselves with good faith in the department which has been intrusted to them. In the decision of civil causes let there be no place for partiality, or hatred; let no one pervert justice by oblique artifices; let no one, by his recommendations, prevent the laws from having full effect; let no one depart from what is just and good. Should any one feel tempted by some sinister affection, let him firmly resist it, having respect to Him from whom he received his station, and supplicating the assistance of His Holy Spirit. " ’Finally, I again entreat you to pardon my infirmities, which I acknowledge and confess before God and His angels, and also before you, my much respected lords.’ "Having thus spoken, and prayed to Almighty God that He would crown them more and more with His gifts, and guide them by His Holy Spirit, for the safety of the whole Republic, giving his right hand to each, he left them in sorrow and tears, all feeling as if they were taking a last farewell of their common parent." Calvin’s Farewell to the Ministers of Geneva, April 28, 1564. From Beza’s Vita Calvini. The Latin text in Opera, XXI. 166 sq. Translation by Henry Beveridge for "The Calvin Translation Society," Edinburgh, 1844 (I. xciii), from the Latin text. There is another report, in French, by minister Jean Pinaut, dated May 1, which is fuller as regards Calvin’s persecutions, and the confession of his infirmities, which always displeased him and for which he asks forgiveness. It also makes grateful mention of Farel, Viret, and Beza, and an unpleasant allusion to Bern, which always more feared than loved Calvin. It is printed in Opera, vol. IX. 891, 892, and in the Letters of John Calvin by Jules Bonnet, transl. by Gilchrist, vol. IV. 372–377. "On the 28th of April, when all of us in the ministry of Geneva had gone to him at his request, he said:— " ’Brethren, after I am dead, persist in this work, and be not dispirited; for the Lord will save this Republic and Church from the threats of the enemy. Let dissension be far away from you, and embrace each other with mutual love. Think again and again what you owe to this Church in which the Lord hath placed you, and let nothing induce you to quit it. It will, indeed, be easy for some who are weary of it to slink away, but they will find, to their experience, that the Lord cannot be deceived.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He fell peacefully asleep with the setting sun towards eight o’clock, and entered into the rest of his Lord. "I had just left him," says Beza, "a little before, and on receiving intimation from the servants, immediately hastened to him with one of the brethren. We found that he had already died, and so very calmly, without any convulsion of his feet or hands, that he did not even fetch a deeper sigh. He had remained perfectly sensible, and was not entirely deprived of utterance to his very last breath. Indeed, he looked much more like one sleeping than dead."1258 He had lived fifty-four years, ten months, and seventeen days. "Thus," continues Beza, his pupil and friend, "withdrew into heaven, at the same time with the setting sun, that most brilliant luminary, which was the lamp of the Church. On the following night and day there was immense grief and lamentation in the whole city; for the Republic had lost its wisest citizen, the Church its faithful shepherd, the Academy an incomparable teacher—all lamented the departure of their common father and best comforter, next to God. A multitude of citizens streamed to the death-chamber and could scarcely be separated from the corpse. Among them were several foreigners, as the distinguished Ambassador of the Queen of England to France, who had come to Geneva to make the acquaintance of the celebrated man, and now wished to see his remains. At first all were admitted; but as the curiosity became excessive and might have given occasion to calumnies of the enemies,1259 his friends deemed it best on the following morning, which was the Lord’s Day, to wrap his body in linen and to enclose it in a wooden coffin, according to custom. At two o’clock in the afternoon the remains were carried to the common cemetery on Plain Palais (Planum Palatium), followed by all the patricians, pastors, professors, and teachers, and nearly the whole city in sincere mourning."1260 Calvin had expressly forbidden all pomp at his funeral and the erection of any monument over his grave. He wished to be buried, like Moses, out of the reach of idolatry. This was consistent with his theology, which humbles man and exalts God. Beza, however, wrote a suitable epitaph in Latin and French, which he calls "Parentalia" (i.e. offering at the funeral of a father):— "Shall honored Calvin to the dust return, From whom e’en Virtue’s self might learn; Shall he—of falling Rome the greatest dread,

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Zwingli (1529), refused to take Beza’s hand at parting (March 29).1304 Undeterred by this churlish exhibition, Beza left Montbéliard for another round of visits at German courts to induce them once more to plead with France to restore to the Huguenots their rights of worship; for the Peace of Fleix had not lasted long, and the country was again plunged in the horrors of civil war. The Montbéliard conference had an echo in the Bern Colloquy of April 15th to 18th, 1588, in which Samuel Huber, pastor at Burgdorf, near Bern, a notorious polemic, and Beza represented the Lutheran and Calvinist parties, respectively. It was Beza’s last appearance as a public disputant, and the hero of so many wordy battles once more carried off the palm. In fact, his victory was much more decided than such contests were usually, as the Bernese Council condemned Huber for misrepresenting Beza and Calvinism generally. Beza had left Geneva with a heavy heart because his faithful and beloved wife had just died, and when he returned, found public matters in a critical condition. The magistrates had felt themselves compelled by the condition of the city treasury to economize as much as possible, and had dismissed two of the professors in the Academy, and contemplated other retrenchments. Beza knew that these extreme measures would probably greatly cripple the institution, and so, old as he was, and failing, he undertook to give a full course of instruction in theology, and persisted with it for more than two years,— until the crisis was passed,—and for these extra duties he would not take any compensation. § 174. Beza and Henry IV. In the course of his long life Beza had few joys, aside from the abiding one of his religion, and many sorrows. His heart was bound up with the fortunes of the Reformed Church in France, and they were usually bad. Still he took courage every time a little improvement was noticeable. Much hope had he cherished in consequence of the accession of Henry of Navarre (1589), because he was a Protestant. But early in the summer of 1593, the news reached Geneva that the king, upon whom religion and morality sat very lightly, in the interests of peace and national prosperity, was determined to abjure the Protestant faith. Alas for all their hopes! Beza was greatly moved, and addressed the monarch a letter in which he set forth the eternal consequences of the change the king was about to make.1305 He felt assured, however, that Henry would be delivered from the machinations of his and their enemies, and not take the fatal step. But ere Beza’s letter reached him the deed was done. In the ancient abbey church at St. Denis on the morning of Sunday, July 25, 1593, King Henry of Navarre, the son of Jeanne d’Albret, the only Huguenot who ever sat upon the throne of France, abjured his faith, and took a solemn oath to protect the Roman Catholic, and Apostolic religion.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  If I was truly a great human being, as she said, then what was the meaning of this slavering idiocy about me? I was a man with body and soul, I had a heart that was not protected by a steel vault. I had moments of ecstasy and I sang with burning sparks. I sang of the Equator, her red-feathered legs and the islands dropping out of sight. But nobody heard. A gun fired across the Pacific falls into space because the earth is round and pigeons fly upside down. I saw her looking at me across the table with eyes turned to grief; sorrow spreading inward flattened its nose against her spine; the marrow churned to pity had turned liquid. She was light as a corpse that floats in the Dead Sea. Her fingers bled with anguish and the blood turned to drool. With the wet dawn came the tolling of bells and along the fibers of my nerves the bells played ceaselessly and their tongues pounded in my heart and clanged with iron malice. Strange that the bells should toll so, but stranger still the body bursting, this woman turned to night and her maggot words gnawing through the mattress. I moved along under the Equator, heard the hideous laughter of the green-jawed hyena, saw the jackal with silken tail and the dick-dick and the spotted leopard, all left behind in the Garden of Eden. And then her sorrow widened, like the bow of a dreadnought and the weight of her sinking flooded my ears. Slime wash and sapphires slipping, sluicing through the gay neurons, and the spectrum spliced and the gunwales dipping. Soft as lion- pad I heard the gun carriages turn, saw them vomit and drool: the firmament sagged and all the stars turned black. Black ocean bleeding and the brooding stars breeding chunks of fresh-swollen flesh while overhead the birds wheeled and out of the hallucinated sky fell the balance with mortar and pestle and the bandaged eyes of justice. All that is here related moves with imaginary feet along the parallels of dead orbs; all that is seen with the empty sockets bursts like flowering grass. Out of nothingness arises the sign of infinity; beneath the ever-rising spirals slowly sinks the gaping hole. The land and the water make numbers joined, a poem written with flesh and stronger than steel or granite. Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown. ...

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  But days before McPherson died, it was noted that she was “not strong enough” to stand.879 Almost three years after Lisa McPherson‘s death, after a police investigation and lengthy review by a state prosecutor, Scientology was charged with two felonies: “practicing medicine without a license and abuse of a disabled adult.”880 In its defense Scientology commissioned studies concerning the cause of McPherson’s death, challenging the coroner’s conclusions. Dr. Joan Wood, the coroner, received thousands of pages of documents and numerous subpoenas. “It became very difficult,” said Jacqueline Martino, a former chief investigator who worked with Wood for sixteen years. “I think she almost tried to stand alone against this behemoth, Scientology.”881 Ultimately under considerable pressure, Wood amended the death certificate from cause of death “undetermined” to “accident.” The coroner had first said the death was due to a blood clot brought on by “severe dehydration.”882 Because of the change Wood made concerning the cause of death, criminal charges against Scientology were dropped.883 Lisa McPherson’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in February 1997 against Scientology, and it was settled out of court in May 2004. The terms of that settlement remain confidential.884 In September 2003 certain Scientology release forms were made public through the Internet. These releases and/or agreements contain the statement that the signer opposes psychiatric treatment and that if the signer should become mentally ill, Scientology is authorized to “extricate” him or her from treatment or care by mental health professionals. Rather than receiving such care or treatment, he or she agrees to submit to the so-called Introspection Rundown, a Scientology practice L. Ron Hubbard had devised. It appears that Lisa McPherson was subjected to this Scientology procedure. The release form reads, “I understand that the Introspection Rundown… includes being isolated from all sources of potential spiritual upset, including, but not limited to family members, friends or others with whom I might normally interact. As part of the Introspection Rundown, I specifically consent to Church members being with me 24 hours a day at the direction of my Case Supervisor.” Moreover, “the Case Supervisor will determine the time period in which I will remain isolated” and that “such duration will be completely at the discretion of the Case Supervisor.” The release form or legal contract concludes, “I further understand that by signing below, I am forever giving up my right to sue the Church…for any injury or damage suffered in any way connected with Scientology religious services or spiritual assistance.”885 Dr. Joan Wood, who served as a medical examiner for eighteen years and performed more than fifty-six hundred autopsies, never recovered from the one she did on Lisa McPherson. That event in Wood’s life reportedly so “scarred” the coroner that she went into a “reclusive retirement.”886 “Sadly, the Scientology episode took its toll on Joan Wood, [and] that was her demise,” lawyer Denis de Vlaming said.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  others served the Lithuanians and then the Russians once more as prisons. In 1941 they fell into German hands, including the notorious Fort IX where Wehrmacht command posts were set up and where more than thirty thousand people were killed over the next three years. Their remains, says Jacobson, lie under a field of oats a hundred meters outside the walls. Transports from the west kept coming to Kaunas until May 1944, when the war had long since been lost, as the last messages from those locked in the dungeons of the fortress bear witness. One of them, writes Jacobson, scratched the words Nous sommes neuf cents Francais on the cold limestone wall of the bunker. Others left only a date and place of origin with their names: Lob, Marcel, de St. Nazaire; Wechsler, Abram, de Limoges; Max Stern, Paris, 18.5.44. Sitting by the moat of the fortress of Breendonk, I read to the end of the fifteenth chapter of Heshel’s Kingdom, and then set out on my way back to Mechelen, reaching the town as evening began to fall. ~ On looking through these notes I remember that in February 1971, during a short visit to Switzerland, one of the places I visited was Lucerne. After seeing the Glacier Museum I spent some time standing on the bridge over the lake on my way back to the station, because the view of its dome and the snow-white heights of the Pilatus massif rising in the clear winter sky behind it had reminded me of my conversation with Austerlitz in Antwerp four and a half years earlier. A few hours later, on the night of 4 February, long after I was fast asleep in my hotel room in Zurich, a fire broke out in Lucerne Station, spread very rapidly and entirely destroyed the domed building. I could not get the pictures I saw next day in the newspapers and on television out of my head for several weeks, and they gave me an uneasy, anxious feeling which crystallized into the idea that I had been to blame, or at least one of those to blame, for the Lucerne fire. In my dreams, even years later, I sometimes saw the flames leaping from the dome and lighting up the entire panorama of the snow-covered Alps. ABOUT THE AUTHOR W. G. SEBALD was born in Wertach im Allgau, Germany, in 1944. He studied German language and literature in Freiburg, Switzerland, and Manchester. He taught at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, for thirty years, becoming professor of European literature in 1987, and from 1989 to 1994 was the first director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. His books have won a number of international awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Berlin Literature Prize, and the Literatur Nord Prize. He died in December 2001. 2011 Modern Library Trade Paperback Edition

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Steady on, keep more to the right—now then, gently, gently, man—lift!’ Sir Philip lay very still on the snow, and the blood oozed slowly from between his lips. He looked monstrously tall as he lay on that whiteness, very straight, with his long legs stretched out to their fullest, so that Thomas said foolishly: ‘Don’t ’e be big—I don’t know as I ever noticed before—’ And now some one came scuttling over the snow, panting, stumbling, hopping grotesquely—old Williams, hatless and in his shirt sleeves—and as he came on he kept calling out something: ‘Master, oh, Master!’ And he hopped grotesquely as he came on over the slippery snow. ‘Master, Master—oh, Master!’ They found a hurdle, and with dreadful care they placed the master of Morton upon it, and with dreadful slowness they carried the hurdle over the lawn, and in through the door that Sir Philip himself had left standing ajar. Slowly they carried him into the hall, and even more slowly his tired eyes opened, and he whispered: ‘Where’s Stephen? I want—the child.’ And old Williams muttered thickly: ‘She’s comin’, Master—she be comin’ down the stairs; she’s here, Sir Philip.’ Then Sir Philip tried to move, and he spoke quite loudly: ‘Stephen! Where are you? I want you, child—’ She went to him, saying never a word, but she thought: ‘He’s dying—my Father.’ And she took his large hand in hers and stroked it, but still without speaking, because when one loves there is nothing left in the world to say, when the best belovèd lies dying. He looked at her with the pleading eyes of a dog who is dumb, but who yet asks forgiveness. And she knew that his eyes were asking forgiveness for something beyond her poor comprehension; so she nodded, and just went on stroking his hand. Mr. Hopkins asked quietly: ‘Where shall we take him?’ And as quietly Stephen answered: ‘To the study.’ Then she herself led the way to the study, walking steadily, just as though nothing had happened, just as though when she got there she would find her father lolling back in his arm-chair, reading. But she thought all the while: ‘ He’s dying—my Father—’ Only the thought seemed unreal, preposterous. It seemed like the thinking of somebody else, a thing so unreal as to be preposterous. Yet when they had set him down in the study, her own voice it was that she heard giving orders. ‘Tell Miss Puddleton to go at once to my Mother and break the news gently—I’ll stay with Sir Philip. One of you please send a housemaid to me with a sponge and some towels and a basin of cold water. Burton’s gone for Doctor Evans, you say? That’s quite right.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  Our response to God must be based on obedience, not on outcome.”413 Robidoux incorporated Balizet’s views into his own teachings. Roland Robidoux’s children then began to have their own “revelations.” His son, Jacques, who became an elder in the group, heard orders from God telling him to give up a business, so he shut it down. His daughter Michelle said God had forbidden eyeglasses. Later God supposedly forbade shorts, cosmetics, and photo albums. In November 1998, Jacques said God had commanded them to throw away their books. Members of the group eventually told relatives there would be no further communication. Roland Robidoux even ended contact with his eighty-four-year-old mother, who lived next door, after she dropped out of his group. Finally in March 1999, after her marriage to Dennis Mingo had fallen apart, Michelle Mingo received the ominous revelation concerning her nephew, Samuel. Karen Robidoux was told God was testing her. In 2004 a jury cleared Karen Robidoux of murder charges, but she was convicted of assault and battery for starving her son. The young woman was then sentenced to a prison term of two and a half years but was set free at the time of the verdict due to the time she had already spent in custody, primarily in a psychiatric hospital. After her release Karen Robidoux said, “I don’t think I could ever have true peace, because there is a hole in my heart that’s very big.”414 Karen Robidoux’s husband, Jacques, was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the death of their son, Samuel. He later appealed that conviction on the grounds that he too had been “brainwashed” and therefore “was not competent a at the time of his trial.”415 However, his appeal was denied.416 In 2004 Michelle Mingo pled guilty to being an accessory after the fact of assault and battery on a child. She was released after spending four years in jail.417 After a lengthy illness Roland Robidoux died in 2006. He was never charged with any crime. Paul Walsh Jr., Bristol County district attorney, said state law in Massachusetts limited the responsibility of care concerning a child only to parents.418 2009—Jaycee Lee Dugard Kidnapping What might Elizabeth Smart’s life had been like if she had never been found? That question may be answered in part by the story of Jaycee Lee Dugard, which emerged during 2009. In June of 1991 eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped while walking home from school on a neighborhood street in South Lake Tahoe, California. Her kidnapper was Phillip Garrido, a man already on parole for a rape and kidnapping conviction.419 His previous victim, whom Garrido abducted in Las Vegas in 1976, described him as “a monster.”420 But unlike either Garrido’s last victim, who was soon rescued, or Elizabeth Smart, who was found after nine months, Jaycee Dugard was under her kidnapper’s control for eighteen years.