Who that has a heart within him can doubt the truth of her words, or think without longing of the darkness that so great a love illumined? Many a dreary, miserable hour must have crawled by as they crouched in their hiding-place; but are there any, even among those who care only for the pettiest pleasures of life, who would not rather love with such depth and fervour in what was almost a tomb, than flaunt a frigid affection in the heat and light of the sun? Eponina's magnificent cry is the cry of all those whose hearts have been touched by love; as it is also the cry of those whose soul has discovered an interest, duty, or even a hope, in life. The flame that inspired Eponina inspires the sage also, lost in monotonous hours as she in her gloomy retreat. Love is the unconscious sun of our soul; and it is when its beams are most ardent, and purest, that they bear most surprising resemblance to those that the soul, aglow with justice and truth, with beauty and majesty, has kindled within itself, and adds to, incessantly. Is not the happiness that accident brought to the heart of Eponina within reach of every heart, so the will to possess it be there? Is not all that was sweetest in this love of hers—the devotion of self, the transformation of regret into happiness, of pleasure renounced into joy that abides in the heart for ever; the interest awakened each day by the feeblest glimmer of light, so it fall on a thing one admires; the immersion in radiance, in happiness susceptible of infinite expansion, for one has only to worship the more—are not all these, and a thousand other forces no less helpful, no less consoling, to be found in the intensest life of our soul, of our heart, of our thoughts? And was Eponina's love other than a sudden lightning flash from this life of the soul, come to her, all unconscious and unprepared? Love does not always reflect; often indeed does it need no reflection, no search into self, to enjoy what is best in thought; but, none the less, all that is best in love is closely akin to all that is best in thought. Suffering seemed ever radiant in aspect to Eponina, because of her love; but cannot this thing that love brings about, all unknowing, by fortunate accident, be also achieved by thought, meditation, by the habit of looking beyond our immediate trouble, and being more joyous than fate would seem to demand? To Eponina there came not a sorrow but kindled yet one more torch in the gloom of her cavern; and does not the sadness that forces the soul back into itself, to the retreat it has made, kindle deep consolation there? And, as the noble Eponina has taken us back to the days of persecution, may we not liken such sorrow to the pagan executioner who, suddenly touched by grace, or perhaps admiration, in the very midst of the torture that he was inflicting, flung himself down headlong at the feet of his victim, speaking words of tenderest sympathy; who demanded to share her suffering, and finally besought, in a kiss, to be told the way to her heaven.

104. Go where we will, the plentiful river of life flows on, beneath the canopy of heaven. It flows between prison walls, where the sun never gleams on its waters; as it flows by the palace steps, where all is gladness and glory. Not our concern the depth of this river, or its width, or the strength of its current, as it streams on for ever, pertaining to all; but of deepest importance to us is the size and the purity of the cup that we plunge in its waters. For whatever of life we absorb must needs take the form of this cup, as this, too, has taken the form of our thoughts and our feelings; being modelled, indeed, on the breast of our intimate destiny as the breast of a goddess once served for the cup of the sculptor of old. Every man has the cup of his fashioning, and most often the cup he has learned to desire. When we murmur at fate, let our grievance be only that she grafted not in our heart the wish for, or thought of, a cup more ample and perfect. For indeed in the wish alone does inequality lie, but this inequality vanishes the moment it has been perceived. Does the thought that our wish might be nobler not at once bring nobility with it; does not the breast of our destiny throb to this new aspiration, thereby expanding the docile cup of the ideal—the cup whose metal is pliable, still to the cold stern hour of death? No cause for complaint has he who has learned that his feelings are lacking in generous ardour, or the other who nurses within him a hope for a little more happiness, a little more beauty, a little more justice. For here all things come to pass in the way that they tell us it happens with the felicity of the elect, of whom each one is robed in gladness, and wears the garment befitting his stature. Nor can he desire a happiness more perfect than the happiness which he possesses, without the desire wherewith he desired at once bringing fulfilment with it. If I envy with noble envy the happiness of those who are able to plunge a heavier cup, and more radiant than mine, there where the great river is brightest, I have, though I know it not, my excellent share of all that they draw from the river, and my lips repose by the side of their lips on the rim of the shining cup.

105. It may be remembered perhaps that, before these digressions, we spoke of a woman whose friend asked her, wonderingly, "Can any man be worthy of your love?" The same question might have been asked of Emily Bronte, as indeed of many others; and in this world there are thousands of souls, of loftiest intention, that do yet forfeit the best years of love in constant self-interrogation as to the future of their affections. Nay, more—in the empire of destiny it is to the image of love that the great mass of complaints and regrets come flocking; the image of love around which hover sluggish desire, extravagant hope, and fears engendered of vanity. At root of all this is much pride, and counterfeit poetry, and falsehood. The soul that is misunderstood is most often the one that has made the least effort to gain some knowledge of self. The feeblest ideal, the one that is narrowest, straitest, most often will thrive on deception and fear, on exaction and petty contempt. We dread above all lest any should slight, or pass by unnoticed, the virtues and thoughts, the spiritual beauty, that exist only in our imagination. It is with merits of this nature as it is with our material welfare—hope clings most persistently to that which we probably never shall have the strength to acquire. The cheat through whose mind some momentary thought of amendment has passed, is amazed that we offer not instant, surpassing homage to the feeling of honour that has, for brief space, found shelter within him. But if we are truly pure, and sincere, and unselfish; if our thoughts soar aloft of themselves, in all simpleness, high above vanity or instinctive selfishness, then are we far less concerned than those who are near us should understand, should approve, or admire. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius are not known to have ever complained that men could not understand them. They hugged no belief to themselves that something extraordinary, incomprehensible, lay buried within them; they held, on the contrary, that whatever was best in their virtue was that which it needed no effort for all men to grasp and admit. But there are some morbid virtues that are passed by unnoticed, and not without reason—for there will almost always be some superior reason for the powerlessness of a feeling—morbid virtues to which we often ascribe far too great an importance; and that virtue will surely be morbid that we rate over highly and hold to deserve the respectful attention of others. In a morbid virtue there is often more harm than there is in a healthy vice; in any event it is farther removed from truth; and there is but little to hope for when we are divided from truth. As our ideal becomes loftier so does it become more real; and the nobler our soul, the less does it dread that it meet not a soul of its stature; for it must have drawn near unto truth, in whose neighbourhood all things must take of its greatness. When Dante had gained the third sphere, and stood in the midst of the heavenly lights, all shining with uniform splendour, he saw that around him naught moved, and wondered was he standing motionless there, or indeed drawing nearer unto the seat of God? So he cast his eyes upon Beatrice; and she seemed more beautiful to him; wherefore he knew that he was approaching his goal. And so can we too count the steps that we take on the highway of truth, by the increase of love that comes for all that goes with us in life; the increase of love and of glad curiosity, of respect and of deep admiration.

106. Men, as a rule, sally forth from their homes seeking beauty and joy, truth and love; and are glad to be able to say to their children, on their return, that they have met nothing. To be for ever complaining argues much pride; and those who accuse love and life are the ones who imagine that these should bestow something more than they can acquire for themselves. Love, it is true, like all else, claims the highest possible ideal; but every ideal that conforms not with some strenuous inward, reality is nothing but falsehood—sterile and futile, obsequious falsehood. Two or three ideals, that lie out of our reach, will suffice to paralyse life. It is wrong to believe that loftiness of soul is governed by the loftiness of desire or dream. The dreams of the weak will be often more numerous, lovelier, than are those of the strong; for these dreams absorb all their energy, all their activity. The perpetual craving for loftiness does not count in our moral advancement if it be not the shadow thrown by the life we have lived, by the firm and experienced will that has come in close kinship with man. Then, indeed, as one places a rod at the foot of the steeple to tell of its height by the shadow, so may we lead forth this craving of ours to the midst of the plain that is lit by the sun of external reality, that thus we may tell what relation exists between the shadow thrown by the hour and the dome of eternity.

107. It is well that a noble heart should await a great love; better still that this heart, all expectant, should cease not from loving; and that, as it loves, it should scarcely be conscious of its desire for more exquisite love. In love as in life, expectation avails us but little; through loving we learn to love; and it is the so-called disillusions of pettier love that will, the most simply and faithfully, feed the immovable flame of the mightier love that shall come, it may be, to illumine the rest of our life.

We treat disillusions often with scantiest justice. We conceive them of sorrowful countenance, pale and discouraged; whereas they are really the very first smiles of truth. Why should disillusion distress you, if you are a man of honest intention, if you strive to be just, and of service; if you seek to be happy and wise? Would you rather live on in the world of your dreams and your errors than in the world that is real? Only too often does many a promising nature waste its most precious hours in the struggle of beautiful dream against inevitable law, whose beauty is only perceived when every vestige of strength has been sapped by the exquisite dream. If love has deceived you, do you think that it would have been better for you all your life to regard love as something it is not, and never can be? Would such an illusion not warp your most significant actions; would it not for many days hide from you some part of the truth that you seek? Or if you imagine that greatness lay in your grasp, and disillusion has taken you back to your place in the second rank; have you the right, for the rest of your life, to curse the envoy of truth? For, after all, was it not truth your illusion was seeking, assuming it to have been sincere? We should try to regard disillusions as mysterious, faithful friends, as councillors none can corrupt, And should there be one more cruel than the rest, that for an instant prostrates you, do not murmur to yourself through your tears that life is less beautiful than you had dreamed it to be, but rather that in your dream there must have been something lacking, since real life has failed to approve. And indeed the much-vaunted strength of the strenuous soul is built up of disillusions only, that this soul has cheerfully welcomed. Every deception and love disappointed, every hope that has crumbled to dust, is possessed of a strength of its own that it adds to the strength of your truth; and the more disillusions there are that fall to the earth at your feet, the more surely and nobly will great reality shine on you—even as the rays of the sun are beheld the more clearly in winter, as they pierce through the leafless branches of the trees of the forest.

108. And if it be a great love that you seek, how can you believe that a soul shall be met with of beauty as great as you dream it to be, if you seek it with nothing but dreams? Have you the right to expect that definite words and positive actions shall offer themselves in exchange for mere formless desire, and yearning, and vision? Yet thus it is most of us act. And if some fortunate chance at last accords our desire, and places us in presence of the being who is all we had dreamed her to be—are we entitled to hope that our idle and wandering cravings shall long be in unison with her vigorous, established reality? Our ideal will never be met with in life unless we have first achieved it within us to the fullest extent in our power. Do you hope to discover and win for yourself a loyal, profound, inexhaustible soul, loving and quick with life, faithful and powerful, unconstrained, free: generous, brave, and benevolent—if you know less well than this soul what all these qualities mean? And how should you know, if you have not loved them and lived in their midst, as this soul has loved and lived? Most exacting of all things, unskilful, thick-sighted, is the moral beauty, perfection, or goodness that is still in the shape of desire. If it be your one hope to meet with an ideal soul, would it not be well that you yourself should endeavour to draw nigh to your own ideal? Be sure that by no other means will you ever obtain your desire. And as you approach this ideal it will dawn on you more and more clearly how fortunate and wisely ordained it has been that the ideal should ever be different from what our vague hopes were expecting. So too when the ideal takes shape, as it comes into contact with life, will it soften, expand, and lose its rigidity, incessantly growing more noble. And then will you readily perceive, in the creature you love, all that which is eternally true in yourself, and solidly righteous, and essentially beautiful; for only the good in our heart can advise us of the goodness that hides by our side. Then, at last, will the imperfections of others no longer seem of importance to you, for they will no longer be able to wound your vanity, selfishness, and ignorance; imperfections, that is, which have ceased to resemble your own; for it is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.

109. Let us have the same confidence in love that we have in life; for confidence is of our essence; and the thought that works the most harm in all things is the one that inclines us to look with mistrust on reality. I have known more than one life that love broke asunder; but if it had not been love, these lives would no doubt have been broken no less by friendship or apathy, by doubt, hesitation, indifference, inaction. For that only which in itself is fragile can be rent in the heart by love; and where all is broken that the heart contains, then must all have been far too frail. There exists not a creature but must more than once have believed that his life was crushed; but they whose life has indeed been shattered, and has fallen to ruin, owe their misfortune often to some strange vanity of the very ruin. Fortunate and unfortunate hazards there must of necessity be in love as in all the rest of our destiny. It may so come about that one whose spirit and heart are abounding with tenderness, energy, and the noblest of human desires, shall meet, on his first setting forth, all unsought, the soul that shall satisfy each single craving of love in the ecstasy of permanent joy; the soul that shall content the loftiest yearning no less than the lowliest: the vastest, the mightiest no less than the daintiest, sweetest: the most eternal no less than the most evanescent. He, it may be, shall instantly find the heart whereto he can give—the heart which will ever receive—all that is best in himself. It may happen that he shall at once have attained the soul that perchance is unique; the soul that is satisfied always, and always filled with desire; the soul that can ever receive many thousand times more than is given, and that never fails to return many thousand times more than it receives. For the love that the years cannot alter is built up of exchanges like these, of sweet inequality; and naught do we ever truly possess but that which we give in our love; and whatever our love bestows, we are no longer alone to enjoy.

110. Destinies sometimes are met with that thus are perfectly happy; and each man, it may be, is entitled to hope that such may one day be his; yet must his hope be never permitted to fasten chains on his life. All he can do is to make preparation one day to deserve such a love; and he will be most patient and tranquil who incessantly strives to this end. It might so have happened that he whom we spoke of just now should, day after day, from youth to old age, have passed by the side of the wall behind which his happiness lay waiting, enwrapped in too secret a silence. But if happiness lie yonder side of the wall, must despair and disaster of necessity dwell on the other? Is not something of happiness to be found in our thus being able to pass by the side of our happiness? Is it not better to feel that a mere slender chance—transparent, one almost might call it—is all that extends between us and the exquisite love that we dream of, than to be divided for ever therefrom by all that is worthless within us, undeserving, inhuman, abnormal? Happy is he who can gather the flower, and bear it away in his bosom; yet have we no cause to pity the other who walks until nightfall, steeped in the glorious perfume of the flower no eyes can behold. Must the life be a failure, useless and valueless, that is not as completely happy as it possibly might have been? It is you yourself would have brought what was best in the love you regret; and if, as we said, the soul at the end possess only what it has given, does not something already belong to us when we are incessantly seeking for chances of giving? Ah yes—I declare that the joy of a perfect, abiding love is the greatest this world contains; and yet, if you find not this love, naught will be lost of all you have done to deserve it, for this will go to deepen the peace of your heart, and render still braver and purer the calm of the rest of your days.

111. And, besides, we always can love. If our own love be admirable, most of the joys of admirable love will be ours. In the most perfect love, the lovers' happiness will not be exactly the same, be their union never so close; for the better of the two needs must love with a love that is deeper; and the one that loves with a deeper love must be surely the happier. Let your task be to render yourself worthy of love—and this even more for your own happiness than for that of another. For be sure that when love is unequal, and the hours come clouded with sorrow, it is not the wiser of the two who will suffer the most—not the one that shows more generosity, justice, more high-minded passion. The one who is better will rarely become the victim deserving our pity. For, indeed, to be truly a victim it must be our own faults, our injustice, wrongdoing, beneath which we suffer. However imperfect you be, you still may suffice for the love of a marvellous being; but for your love, if you are not perfect, that being will never suffice. If fortune one day should lead to your dwelling the woman adorned with each gift of heart and of intellect—such a woman as history tells of, a heroine of glory, happiness, love—you will still be all unaware if you have not learned, yourself, to detect and to love these gifts in actual life; and what is actual life to each man but the life that he lives himself? All that is loyal within you will flower in the loyalty of the woman you love; whatever of truth there abides in your soul will be soothed by the truth that is hers; and her strength of character can be only enjoyed by that which is strong in you. And when a virtue of the being we love finds not, on the threshold of our heart, a virtue that resembles it somewhat, then is it all unaware to whom it shall give the gladness it brings.

112. And whatever the fate your affections may meet with, do you never lose courage; above all, do not think that, love's happiness having passed by you, you will never, right up to the end, know the great joy of human life. For though happiness appear in the form of a torrent, or a river that flows underground, of a whirlpool or tranquil lake, its source still is ever the same that lies deep down in our heart; and the unhappiest man of all men can conceive an idea of great joy. It is true that in love there is ecstasy that he doubtless never will know; but this ecstasy would leave deep melancholy only in the earnest and faithful heart, if there were not in veritable love something more stable than ecstasy, more profound and more steadfast; and all that in love is profoundest, most stable and steadfast, is profoundest in noble lives too—is most stable and steadfast in them. Not to all men is it given to be hero or genius, victorious, admirable always, or even to be simply happy in exterior things; but it lies in the power of the least favoured among us to be loyal, and gentle, and just, to be generous and brotherly; he that has least gifts of all can learn to look on his fellows without envy or hatred, without malice or futile regret; the outcast can take his strange, silent part (which is not always that of least service) in the gladness of those who are near him; he that has barely a talent can still learn to forgive an offence with an ever nobler forgiveness, can find more excuses for error, more admiration for human word and deed; and the man there are none to love can love, and reverence, love. And, acting thus, he too will have drawn near the source whither happy ones flock—oftener far than one thinks, and in the most ardent hours of happiness even—the source over which they bend, to make sure that they truly are happy. Far down, at the root of love's joys—as at the root of the humble life of the upright man from whom fate has withheld her smile—it is confidence, sincerity, generosity, tenderness, that alone are truly fixed and unchangeable. Love throws more lustre still on these points of light, and therefore must love be sought. For the greatest advantage of love is that it reveals to us many a peaceful and gentle truth. The greatest advantage of love is that it gives us occasion to love and admire in one person, sole and unique, what we should have had neither knowledge nor strength to love and admire in the many; and that thus it expands our heart for the time to come, And at the root of the most marvellous love there never is more than the simplest felicity, an adoration, a tenderness within the understanding of all, a security, faith, and fidelity all can acquire an intensely human admiration, devotion—and all these the eager, unfortunate heart could know too, in its sorrowful life, had it only a little less impatience and bitterness, a little more initiative and energy.



THE END