best work. He had thrown his whole soul
into it. To give the sum of all one's talents in the production is the
greatest triumph that any one can achieve. The toad which produces a
toad achieves a grand success. You doubt it? Try, then, to do as much.

Ursus had carefully polished this interlude. This bear's cub was
entitled "Chaos Vanquished." Here it was:--A night scene. When the
curtain drew up, the crowd, massed around the Green Box, saw nothing but
blackness. In this blackness three confused forms moved in the reptile
state--wolf, a bear, and a man. The wolf acted the wolf; Ursus, the
bear; Gwynplaine, the man. The wolf and the bear represented the
ferocious forces of Nature--unreasoning hunger and savage ignorance.
Both rushed on Gwynplaine. It was chaos combating man. No face could be
distinguished. Gwynplaine fought infolded, in a winding-sheet, and his
face was covered by his thickly-falling locks. All else was shadow. The
bear growled, the wolf gnashed his teeth, the man cried out. The man was
down; the beasts overwhelmed him. He cried for aid and succour; he
hurled to the unknown an agonized appeal. He gave a death-rattle. To
witness this agony of the prostrate man, now scarcely distinguishable
from the brutes, was appalling. The crowd looked on breathless; in one
minute more the wild beasts would triumph, and chaos reabsorb man. A
struggle--cries--howlings; then, all at once, silence.

A song in the shadows. A breath had passed, and they heard a voice.
Mysterious music floated, accompanying this chant of the invisible; and
suddenly, none knowing whence or how, a white apparition arose. This
apparition was a light; this light was a woman; this woman was a spirit.
Dea--calm, fair, beautiful, formidable in her serenity and
sweetness--appeared in the centre of a luminous mist. A profile of
brightness in a dawn! She was a voice--a voice light, deep,
indescribable. She sang in the new-born light--she, invisible, made
visible. They thought that they heard the hymn of an angel or the song
of a bird. At this apparition the man, starting up in his ecstasy,
struck the beasts with his fists, and overthrew them.

Then the vision, gliding along in a manner difficult to understand, and
therefore the more admired, sang these words in Spanish sufficiently
pure for the English sailors who were present:--

"Ora! llora!
De palabra
Nace razon.
De luz el son."[13]

Then looking down, as if she saw a gulf beneath, s