t is seldom I venture to do more for them than to
whisper a few words of comfort in passing. How many reproaches on
these occasions have been cast upon me for indifference and
infidelity! Nearly as many, and nearly in the same terms as upon
you.'

"'Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike!' said
Love contemptuously. 'Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance
to you; the dullest have observed it.' I fancied I turned my eyes
to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he
designated. Meanwhile the contention went on uninterruptedly.
Sleep was slow in asserting his power or his benefits. Love
recapitulated them; but only that he might assert his own above
them.

"Suddenly he called upon me to decide, and to choose my patron.
Under the influence, first of the one, then of the other, I sprang
from repose to rapture, I alighted from rapture on repose, and
knew not which was sweetest. Love was very angry with me, and
declared he would cross me through the whole of my existence.
Whatever I might on other occasions have thought of his veracity,
I now felt too surely that he would keep his word.

"At last, before the close of the altercation, the third Genius
had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell you how I knew him,
but I knew him to be the Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at
beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First
they seemed only calm; presently they grew contemplative; and
lastly beautiful; those of the Graces themselves are less regular,
less harmonious, less composed.

"Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a countenance in which there
was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain; and cried, 'Go away!
go away! nothing that thou touchest, lives!' 'Say rather, child!'
replied the advancing form, and advancing grew loftier and
statelier, 'say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glorious
lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it.'

"Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the
stiff short feathers on his arrow-head, but replied not. Although
he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and
less, and scarcely looked towards him. The milder and calmer
Genius, the third, in proportion as I took courage to contemplate
him, regarded me with more and more complacen