in a
noonday splendour and warmth of light, that the human is unspeakably the
highest and most enthralling expression of life in all Nature. That
discovery happened to me when I was in Morocco with my father, who died
there--no matter how--among those whom he liked to believe were his own
people: my mother had died long before. I had considerable wealth at my
command, and I began to live at the height of all my faculties; I lived
in every nerve, and at every pore.

"And then I began to perceive a reverse to the bounteous beauty and the
overflowing life of Nature,--a threatening quality, a devouring faculty
in her by which she fed the joyous abundance of her life. I saw that all
activity, all the pleasant palpitation and titillation in the life of
Nature and of Man, merely means that one living thing is feeding upon or
is feeding another. I began to perceive that all the interest of life
centres in this alter-devouring principle. I discovered, moreover, this
strange point,--that the joy of life is in direct proportion to the
rapidity with which we lose or surrender life."

"Yes," said Lefevre, "the giving of pleasure is always more exquisite
and satisfactory than the getting it."

"I lost life," continued Julius, without noting Lefevre's remark,--"I
lost life,--vital force, nervous ether, electricity, whatever you choose
to call it,--at an enormous rate, but I as quickly replenished my loss.
I had revelled for some time in this deeper life of give and take before
I discovered that this faculty of recuperation also was curiously and
wonderfully active in me. Whenever I fell into a state of weakness,
well-nigh empty of life, I withdrew myself from company, and dwelt for a
little while with the simplest forms of Nature."

"But," asked Lefevre, "how did you get into such a low condition?"

"How? _I lived!_" said he with fervour. "_Yes; I lived:_ that was how! I
had always delighted in animals, but then I began to find that when I
caressed them they were not merely tamed, as they had been wont, but
completely subdued; and I felt rapid and full accessions of life from
contact with them. If I lay upon a bank of rich grass or wild flowers, I
had to a slight extent the same revivifying sensation. The fable of
Antaeus was fulfilled in me. The constant recurrence and vigour of this
recuperation not only filled me with pride, but also set me thinking. I
turned to medical science to find the secret of it. I entered myself as
a