No More Learning

Dreams! --always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul,
the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him
his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from
birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with
positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in
and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that
resembles you?

These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous
flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The
enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with
the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon
your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity,
reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your
lovely soul;--and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the
products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they
are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from
Infinity.




WHAT IS TRUTH?


I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the
ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of
glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality.

But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died
soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon
a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I
myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as
uncorruptible as the coffers of India.

And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I
became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the
dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and
hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true
Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab!
As the punishment of your folly
and blindness you shall love me as I truly am. "

But I, furious, replied: "No! " The better to emphasise my refusal I
struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to
the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught
perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal.




ALREADY!


A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from
the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred
times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of
twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the
firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And
each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the
approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they
said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by
a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an
unmoving table? "

There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their
sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the
image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass
with as much enthusiasm as the beasts.

At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent
and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed
therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of
growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and
fruits.

Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were
forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted
out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke.