rnucopia to
lose, I can but be deprived of the dregs in its pointed end. For in what
can there be further punishment? On others, men of happy pasts, dismay
may fall as the ways are darkened before them. But surely I shall be of
good cheer as I come into the land of the fierce old robber Age; for,
stripped long since by a more subtle and insatiate despoiler, I shall
possess nothing of worth to draw his covetousness upon me. So many joys
did my very youth renounce; so many pleasures the Harpies swept from my
place at the spread board of life; such gags and fetters held me while
others danced and sang, that I was the sad familiar of evil fortune
before my companions were acquainted with her name. That leaden weight
which brings others low, by a nice adjustment of the scales shall raise
me for the first time to their equality. And then, as one experienced in
bereavements, of themselves they may seek my company; and I, so long the
useless and estranged, may become at the close their helpful counsellor.

If only that might be; if only upon the verge of night I might redeem by
usefulness my lost unserviceable day. Then this grey life, so long sole
and intrinsical to itself, should glow at last with some reflection of
the sunset; once more I should know young ardours imagined lost and
devotions miraculously born again.

You will still encounter me now and then, moving absently through the
crowd, or wandering in some green place, as in the garden of the
Luxembourg Vauvenargues used to meet the wounded of the great battle,
keeping apart in the narrower walks, and leaving the broad central ways
for lighter feet than theirs. He often longed to have speech with them;
but always they turned away, with the proud self-sufficiency of the
disillusioned. Perhaps if he had succeeded he would have found that to
some of them life had its consolations not unlike mine, and that they
could still regard it as something more than a friendly process of
detachment. But it is not our habit to expand; we are ever held back by
the occult pride which the same soldier-philosopher has assigned to one
of his imaginary characters, "cette fierte tendre d'une ame timide, qui
ne veut avouer ni sa defaite, ni ses esperances, ni la vanite de ses
voeux."

End of Project Gutenberg's Apologia Diffidentis, by W. Compton Leith

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APOLOGIA DIFFIDENTIS ***

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