A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos

of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun

fails to get it; both the photographer and the carver give

you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right,

the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that

indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne

the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world,

is wanting.

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low

cliff–for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff.

His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. How head

is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder,

his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France.

Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear

stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base,

and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored,

among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass. The place is

a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise

and stir and confusion–and all this is fitting, for lions

do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals

in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings.

The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere,

but nowhere so impressive as where he is.

Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people.

Louis XVI did not die in his bed, consequently history is

very gentle with him; she is charitable toward his failings,

and she finds in him high virtues which are not usually

considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings.

She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest

spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head.

None of these qualities are kingly but the last.

Taken together they make a character which would have fared

harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill

luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do

the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one.

Moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him.

He knew, well enough, that in national emergencies he must

not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how he

ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink

the man and be the king–but it was a failure, he only

succeeded in being the female saint. He was not instant

in season, but out of season. He could not be persuaded

to do a thing while it could do any good–he was iron,

he was adamant in his stubbornness then–but as soon as

the thing had reached a point where it would be positively

harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could

stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful,

but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve

by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier.

His comprehension was always a train or two behindhand.

If a national toe required amputating, he could not see

that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others

saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first

perceived that the toe needed cutting off–so he cut it off;

and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the

disease had reached the thigh. He was good, and honest,

and well meaning, in the matter of chasing national diseases,

but he never could overtake one. As a private man,

he would have been lovable; but viewed as a king, he was

strictly contemptible.

His was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable

spectacle in it was his sentimental treachery to his

Swiss guard on that memorable 10th of August, when he

allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause,

and forbade them to shed the “sacred French blood”

purporting to be flowing in the veins of the red-capped

mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace.

He meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint

once more. Some of his biographers think that upon this