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- moss he writhed; still, though armless, resisting with his whole
striving trunk, the Pelion and the Ossa hurled back at him;--turbaned
with upborn moss he writhed; still turning his unconquerable front
toward that majestic mount eternally in vain assailed by him, and which,
when it had stormed him off, had heaved his undoffable incubus upon him,
and deridingly left him there to bay out his ineffectual howl.
To Pierre this wondrous shape had always been a thing of interest,
though hitherto all its latent significance had never fully and
intelligibly smitten him. In his earlier boyhood a strolling company of
young collegian pedestrians had chanced to light upon the rock; and,
struck with its remarkableness, had brought a score of picks and spades,
and dug round it to unearth it, and find whether indeed it were a
demoniac freak of nature, or some stern thing of antediluvian art.
Accompanying this eager party, Pierre first beheld that deathless son of
Terra. At that time, in its untouched natural state, the statue
presented nothing but the turbaned head of igneous rock rising from out
the soil, with its unabasable face turned upward toward the mountain,
and the bull-like neck clearly defined. With distorted features, scarred
and broken, and a black brow mocked by the upborn moss, Enceladus there
subterraneously stood, fast frozen into the earth at the junction of the
neck. Spades and picks soon heaved part of his Ossa from him, till at
last a circular well was opened round him to the depth of some thirteen
feet. At that point the wearied young collegians gave over their
enterprise in despair. With all their toil, they had not yet come to the
girdle of Enceladus. But they had bared good part of his mighty chest,
and exposed his mutilated shoulders, and the stumps of his once
audacious arms. Thus far uncovering his shame, in that cruel plight they
had abandoned him, leaving stark naked his in vain indignant chest to
the defilements of the birds, which for untold ages had cast their
foulness on his vanquished crest.
Not unworthy to be compared with that leaden Titan, wherewith the art of
Marsy and the broad-flung pride of Bourbon enriched the enchanted
gardens of Versailles;--and from whose still twisted mouth for sixty
feet the waters yet upgush, in elemental rivalry with those Etna flames,
of old asserted to be the malicious breath of the borne-down giant;--not
unworthy to be compared with that leaden demi-god--piled with costly
rocks, and with one bent wrenching knee protruding from the broken
bronze;--not unworthy to be compared with that bold trophy of high art,
this American Enceladus, wrought by the vigorous hand of Nature's self,
it did go further than compare;--it did far surpass that fine figure
molded by the inferior skill of man. Marsy gave arms to the eternally
defenseless; but Nature, more truthful, performed an amputation, and
left the impotent Titan without one serviceable ball-and-socket above
the thigh.
Such was the wild scenery--the Mount of Titans, and the repulsed group
of heaven-assaulters, with Enceladus in their midst shamefully recumbent
at its base;--such was the wild scenery, which now to Pierre, in his
strange vision, displaced the four blank walls, the desk, and camp-bed,
and domineered upon his trance. But no longer petrified in all their
ignominious attitudes, the herded Titans now sprung to their feet; flung
themselves up the slope; and anew battered at the precipice's
unresounding wall. Foremost among them all, he saw a moss-turbaned,
armless giant, who despairing of any other mode of wreaking his
immitigable hate, turned his vast trunk into a battering-ram, and hurled
his own arched-out ribs again and yet again against the invulnerable
steep.
"Enceladus! it is Enceladus!"--Pierre cried out in his sleep. That
moment the phantom faced him; and Pierre saw Enceladus no more; but on
the Titan's armless trunk, his own duplicate face and features
magnifiedly gleamed upon him with prophetic discomfiture and woe. With
trembling frame he started from his chair, and woke from that ideal
horror to all his actual grief.
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