d of this same notion
of their being one thing each--as I choose to fancy in my foolish
habit of imputing to them the same disease of thought which I find in
myself--crucify the word!--The folly of my ancestors--if I ever had
any--prevents my having any better expression.... Why should I not be
all I feel--that sky, those clouds--the whole universe? Hercules! what
a creative genius my sensorium must be!--I'll take to writing' poetry--a
mock-epic, in seventy-two books, entitled "The Universe: or, Raphael
Aben-Ezra," and take Homer's Margites for my model. Homer's? Mine! Why
must not the Margites, like everything else, have been a sensation of my
own? Hypatia used to say Homer's poetry was a part of her.... only she
could not prove it.... but I have proved that the Margites is a part of
me.... not that I believe my own proof--scepticism forbid! Oh, would to
heaven that the said whole disagreeable universe were annihilated, if
it were only just to settle by fair experiment whether any of master "I"
remained when they were gone! Buzzard and dogmatist! And how do you know
that that would settle it? And if it did--why need it be settled?....

'I daresay there is an answer pat for all this. I could write a pretty
one myself in half an hour. But then I should not believe it .... nor
the rejoinder to that.... nor the demurrer to that again .... So.... I
am both sleepy and hungry.... or rather, sleepiness and hunger are me.
Which is it! Heigh-ho....' and Raphael finished his meditation by a
mighty yawn.

This hopeful oration was delivered in a fitting lecture-room. Between
the bare walls of a doleful fire-scarred tower in the Campagna of Rome,
standing upon a knoll of dry brown grass, ringed with a few grim pines,
blasted and black with smoke; there sat Raphael Aben-Ezra, working out
the last formula of the great world problem--'Given Self; to find God.'
Through the doorless stone archway he could see a long vista of the
plain below, covered with broken trees, trampled crops, smoking villas,
and all the ugly scars of recent war, far onward to the quiet purple
mountains and the silver sea, towards which struggled, far in the
distance, long dark lines of moving specks, flowing together, breaking
up, stopping short, recoiling back to surge forward by some fresh
channel, while now and then a glitter of keen white sparks ran through
the dense black masses.... The Count of Africa had thrown for the empire
of the world--and lost.

'B