XIX
WILLIAM TELL
I
Four apples mark the four great epochs of human history—the apple of Eve (the Biblical epoch); the apple of Paris (the Hellenic epoch); the apple of Tell (the mediæval epoch); the apple of Newton (the scientific epoch). The one of the four whose fate I most regret—for apples, unlike the women of Nicea, have souls—is the one the Swiss bowman with the cock’s feather transfixed on his son’s head.
The first of the four, as we all know, was eaten by our first parents, with consequences that have made us what we are. The second went as award to the fairest creature in all mythology, who bit into it, I hope, in honor of the charming herdsman. The last, though somewhat injured in its fall, gave us the law of universal gravitation, and a great improvement in celestial mechanics.
But the apple of Tell—alas!—gave us the Swiss nation. And what the Swiss nation has given us I refrain from saying.
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