The Tragic Comedians, Complete

id he, as they sat togethe

ook he

fact is not half so stubborn. But at present there are two more importan

isement of your hopes?-or do

meet. It is no true day so long as the goddess of the morning and the sun-god

ure of you

my belief

ling at the co

said he, 'as to

like the rest of the world

orld and I meet an

strangely inoffensive. His lording presence and the smile that was like a waving feather on it compelled h

first heed of

ri seven days aft

w my nam

ancers. Here is the date-March

d. That is a

te tyrant. We took the initiative against the patricians, at my suggestion, and the Annals were written by a plebeian demagogue, instead of by one of that party, whose account of my extinction by command of the emperor was pathetic. He apologized in turn for my imperial master and me, saying truly, that the misunderstanding between us was past cement: for each of us loved the man but hated his office; and as the man is always more in his office than he is in himself, clearly it was the lesser portion of our friend that

ied br

he extravagance with a

one believes in life there, thrills with it, when life is ebbing: ay, as warmly as when life is at the flow in our sick and shrivelled North-the climate for dried f

tial, brainless

at them, as politically France beats us. No life without brain! The brainless in Art and in Statecraft are nothing but a little more obstructive than the dead. It is less easy to cut a w

hudder,' sa

magogues: as we see the conservative crumbling, we grow conservatived. Try to think individually upon what you have to learn collectively-that is your task. You are of the few who will be equal to it. We are not men of blood, believe me. I am not. For example, I detest and I decline the duel. I have done it, and proved myself a man of metal notwithstanding. To say nothing of the inhumanity, the senselessness of duelling revolts me. 'Tis a folly, so your nobles practise it, and your royal w

I do

sten sw

ause I lik

ly little ear of a

eat sea soun

ew close

d calms one? It signifies to the eye possession and repose, the end gained-not the end to labour, just heaven! but peace to the heart's craving, which is the renewal of strength for work, the fresh dip in the waters of life. Conjure up your vision of Italy. Remember the meaning of Italian light and colour: the clearness, the luminous fulness, the thoughtful shadows. Mountain and wooded headland are solid, deep to the eye, spirit-speaking to the mind. They throb. You carve shapes of Gods out of that sky, the sea, those peaks. They live with you. How they satiate the vacant soul by influx, and draw forth the troubled from its prickly n

ke it good?'

stream, perpetually reverting to her, and provoking spirited replies, leading her to fly with him in expectation of a crowning compliment t

lose by and at a signal would stop the terrible circling. The world was close by and had begun to stare. She half apprehended that fact, but she was in the presence of the irresistible. In the presence of the irresistible the conventional is a crazy structure swept away with very little creaking of its timbers on the flood. When we feel its power we are immediately primitive creatures, flying anywhere in space, indifferent to nakedness. And after trimming ourselves for it, the sage asks your permission to add, it will be the thing we are most certain some day to feel. Had not she trimmed herself?-so much that she had won fame for an ori

ersonal charm; she set fire to her brain to shine intellectually, treating the tale of her fair face as a childish tale that might have a grain of truth in it, some truth, a very little, and that little nearly worthless, merely womanly, a poor charm of her sex. The intellectual endowment was rarer: still rarer the moral audacity. O, to match this man's embracing discursiveness! his ardour, his complacent energy, the full strong sound he brought out of all subjects! He struck, and they rang. There was a bell in everything for him; Nature gave out her cry, and significance was on all sides of the universe; no dead stuff, no longer any afflicting lumpishness. His brain was vivifying light. And how humane he was! how supremely tolerant! Where she had really thought instead of flippantly tapping at the doors of thought, or crying vagrantly for an echo, his firm footing in the region thrilled her; and where she had felt deeper than fancifully, his wise tenderness overwhelmed. Strange to consider: with all his precious gifts, which must make the gift of life thrice dear to him, he was fearless. Less by what he said than by divination she discerned that he knew not fear

alize ideas, impassioned for her hero, but ever putting him to proof, graceful beyond all rhyme, colloquial as never the Muse; light in light hands, ye

it the living lady's shape. Did he thi

ollapsed, nor will be, though the foot on it is iron, his youth had flown under the tutelage of an extraordinary Mentor, whom to call Athene robs the goddess of her personal repute for wisdom in conduct, but whose head was wise, wise as it was now grey. Verily she was original; and a grey original

devoted, was an immense joy to Alvan. He took it luxuriously because he believed in his fortune, a kind of natal star, the common heritage of th

ot doubt his power of winning her. Barriers are for those who cannot fly. The barriers were palpable about a girl of noble Christian birth: so was the courage in her which would give her wings, he thought, coming to that judgement through the mixture o

is accurate recital of the lines of a contested verse of the incomparable Heinrich, and they fell to capping verses of the poet-lucid metheglin, with here and there no dubious flavour of acid, and a lively sting in the tail of the honey. Sentiment, cynicism, and satin impropriety and scabrous, are among those vers

ere in the co

s a needles

vinced him of her capacity for reserve besides intrepidity, and flattered him too with her blush. She could dare to say to Kollin what her scarlet sensibility forbade her touching on with him: not tha

eam of the wife he would choose, were she to be had. The position of interpreter of heaven's benevolence to mankind through his own enjoyment of the gifts, was one that he sagaciously demanded for himself, sharing it with the Philistine unknowingly; and to have a wife no less wise than he on this throne of existence was a rosy exaltation. Clotilde kindled to the hint of his festival mood of Solomon at the banquet. She was not devoid of a discernment of flavours; she had heard grave

the Rhine grape with the elf in it, and

ori

ong-on-the-stem clusters! We are for the blood of the grape in her youth, her heaven-kissing ardour. I have a cellar charged with the bravest of the Rhine. We-will we not assail it, bleed it in the gallant days to come? we two!' The picture of his bride and him d

tedly fabulous trick-the dream of poets, rarely witnessed anywhere, and almost too wonderful for credence in a haunt of our later civilization. Yet there it was: the sudden revelation of the intense divinity to a couple fused in oneness by his apparition, could be perceived of all having man and woman in them; love at first sight, was visible. 'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' And if nature, character, circumstance, and a maid clever at dressing her mistress's golden hair, did prepare them for Love's lightning-match, not the less were they proclaimingly alight and in full blaze. Likewise, Time, imperious old gentleman though we know him to be, with his fussy reiterations concerning the

Clotilde. Her relatives were at hand; they hung by while he led her to the stairs and down into a

the Spring!' sa

ery paraded, Alvan's behaviour was passing heteroclite. He needed to be the kingly fellow he was, crowned by another kingly fellow-the lord of hearts-to impose it uninterruptedly. 'She is mine; I have won her this night!' his bearing said; and Clotilde's acquiesced; and the worthy couple following them had to exhibit a copy of the same, much wondering. Partly by habit, and of his natural astuteness, Alvan peremptorily usurped a lead that once taken could not easily be challenged, and would roll him on a good tideway strong in his own passion and his lady's up against the last defences-her parents. A difficulty with them was foreseen. What is a difficulty!-a gate in the hunting-field: an opponent on a platform: a knot beneath a sword: the dam to waters that draw from the heavens. Not desiring it in this case-it would h

r present feelings: 'I feel that I am carried away by a cent

to the morning, leaving night to grope for us, parents and friends to run about for the wits they lose in running. But no! No more scandals. That silver moon invites us by its very spell of bright serenity, to be mad: just as, when you drink of a reverie, the more prolonged it is the greater the readi

nd: it grows one bitter herb: if ever you see my mouth distorted you will know I am revolving a taste of it; and as I need the antidote you give, I will not be the centaur to win you, for that i

e, catching her breath to be conscientious,

the metaphysician's treatise on Nature: a tor

ink I understand, but you

nsation nev

will

d: 'A night cast for our first meeti

se yonder in t

t lays a whit

y window s

al's cresset. Sha

And it is a cele

nt will be ever on that house for me, Clotilde. I wou

ter to a good

her, on a su

ther and mo

morr

-morrow, then! The wo

d he mean it?-he of so evil a

easure in the game of

ll be most convenient to the

walking in s

imaging within her the varied h

is pleaded the better for us both. If I could step in and see them this instant, it would be foresta

and in deadly alarm of him she exclaimed: 'Oh! not yet; not immediately.' She trembled, she made her petition dismal by her anguish of

n. 'You feel it as I do. Ther

it, senseless of their imbecility: 'Do not insist: yes, in time: they will-they-they may. My father is not very we

circle would look on this pretender to her hand, with his lordly air, his Jew blood, and his hissing reputation-for it was a reputation that stirred the snakes and the geese of the world.

weakness. 'And supposing

from his grasp, as trained women of the world, or very sprightly young wits know how to do at the crit

we have only to take the step. Have you not seen tonight that we are fated for one another? It is your destiny, and trifling with destiny is a dark business. Lo

ied; 'yes, th

say

repeat her cr

ed that he would be the one to bid; and he had this of the character of destiny about him, that she felt in him a maker of facts. He was her dream in human sh

ken through the hedge into the broad highroad! It is but to determine to do it-to take the bold short path instead of the wearisome circuit. Just a little lightning in the brain and tightening of the heart. Battles are won in that way: not by tender girls! and she is a girl, and the task is too much for her. So, then, we are in your hands, child! Adieu, and let th

said Clotilde, reco

ears the silent beginning of a cry. Before the ghost walked he was an elementary hero; one puff of action would have whiffed away his melancholy. After it, he was a dizzy moralizer, waiting for the winds to blow him to his deed-ox out. The apparition of his father to him poisoned a sluggish run of blood

ess excuses his c

a pretty good apology fo

N

phelia of fift

use door, farewells were spoken, Alvan had gone. And then she thought of the person that Ophelia of fifty might be, who would

ff to some chance bit of likeness to hims

ur when he had returned to the state of phantom and the