who
may despise the croaking of the raven; the swan, too, is proud and
takes no note of it. Nothing concerns him except to keep clean the
sheen of his white pinions. He thinks only of nestling against Leda's
bosom without hurting her, and of breathing forth into song everything
that is mortal within him.

[Illustration: #THE CREATION# _From the Painting by Moritz von
Schwind_]

CONFESSIONS OF AN AWKWARD MAN

JULIUS TO LUCINDA

Human beings and what they want and do, seemed to me, when I thought
of it, like gray, motionless figures; but in the holy solitude all
around me everything was light and color. A fresh, warm breath of life
and love fanned me, rustling and stirring in all the branches of the
verdant grove. I gazed and enjoyed it all, the rich green, the white
blossoms and the golden fruit. And in my mind's eye I saw, too, in
many forms, my one and only Beloved, now as a little girl, now as a
young lady in the full bloom and energy of love and womanhood, and now
as a dignified mother with her demure babe in her arms. I breathed the
spring and I saw clearly all about me everlasting youth. Smiling I
said to myself: "Even if this world is not the best and most useful of
places, it is certainly the most beautiful."

From this feeling or thought nothing could have turned me, neither
general despair nor personal fear. For I believed that the deep
secrets of nature were being revealed to me; I felt that everything
was immortal and that death was only a pleasant illusion. But I really
did not think very much about it, since I was not particularly in a
mood for mental synthesis and analysis. But I gladly lost myself in
all those blendings and intertwinings of joy and pain from which
spring the spice of life and the flower of feeling--spiritual pleasure
as well as sensual bliss. A subtle fire flowed through my veins. What
I dreamed was not of kissing you, not of holding you in my arms; it
was not only the wish to relieve the tormenting sting of my desire,
and to cool the sweet fire by gratification. It was not for your lips
that I longed, or for your eyes, or for your body; no, it was a
romantic confusion of all of these things, a marvelous mingling of
memories and desires. All the mysteries of caprice in man and woman
seemed to hover about me, when suddenly in my solitude your real
presence and the glowing rapture in your face completely set me afire.
Wit and ecstasy now began their alternating play, and were the com