his dismal passage?"

"I passed through it this morning and missed my way."

"In pursuit of the idea, of course. That was to be expected. Prague is
constructed on the same principle as the human brain, full of winding
ways, dark lanes, and gloomy arches, all of which may lead somewhere,
or may not. Its topography continually misleads its inhabitants as
the convolutions of the brain mislead the thoughts that dwell there,
sometimes bringing them out at last, after a patient search for
daylight, upon a fine broad street where the newest fashions in thought
are exposed for sale in brightly illuminated shop windows and showcases;
conducting them sometimes to the dark, unsavoury court where the
miserable self drags out its unhealthy existence in the single room of
its hired earthly lodging."

"The self which you propose to preserve from corruption," observed the
tall man, who was carefully examining every foot of the walls between
which he was passing with his companion, "since you think so poorly
of the lodger and the lodging, I wonder that you should be anxious to
prolong the sufferings of the one and his lease of the other."

"It is all I have," answered Keyork Arabian. "Did you think of that?"

"That circumstance may serve as an excuse, but it does not constitute a
reason."

"Not a reason! Is the most abject poverty a reason for throwing away the
daily crust? My self is all I have. Shall I let it perish when an effort
may preserve it from destruction? On the one side of the line stands
Keyork Arabian, on the other floats the shadow of an annihilation, which
threatens to swallow up Keyork's self, while leaving all that he has
borrowed of life to be enjoyed, or wasted by others. Could Keyork be
expected to hesitate, so long as he may hope to remain in possession
of that inestimable treasure, his own individuality, which is his only
means for enjoying all that is not his, but borrowed?"

"So soon as you speak of enjoyment, argument ceases," answered the
Wanderer.

"You are wrong, as usual," returned the other. "It is the other way.
Enjoyment is the universal solvent of all arguments. No reason can
resist its mordant action. It will dissolve any philosophy not founded
upon it and modelled out of its substance, as Aqua Regia will dissolve
all metals, even to gold itself. Enjoyment? Enjoyment is the protest of
reality against the tyranny of fiction."

The little man stopped short in his walk, striking his heavy stick