en know what she
begs for. She rambles, in the streets, and in her hovel, and on the
pallet where she is crucified by drunkards. She is surrounded by
general loathing. "That a woman?" says a virtuous man who is going by,
"that dirty old strumpet? A woman? A sewer, yes." She is harmless.
In a feeble, peaceful voice, which seems to live in some supernatural
region, very far from us, she says to me:

"I am the queen."

Immediately and strangely she adds, as though troubled by some
foreboding:

"Don't take my illusion away from me."

I was on the point of answering her, but I check myself, and just say,
"Yes," as one throws a copper, and she goes away happy.

* * * * * *

My respect for life is so strong that I feel pity for a fly which I
have killed. Observing the tiny corpse at the gigantic height of my
eyes, I cannot help thinking how well made that organized speck of dust
is, whose wings are little more than two drops of space, whose eye has
four thousand facets; and that fly occupies my thought for a moment,
which is a long time for it.

* * * * * *

CHAPTER XXII

LIGHT

I am leaning this evening out of the open window. As in bygone nights,
I am watching the dark pictures, invisible at first, taking shape--the
steeple towering out of the hollow, and broadly lighted against the
hill; the castle, that rich crown of masonry; and then the massive
sloping black of the chimney-peopled roofs, which are sharply outlined
against the paler black of space, and some milky, watching windows.
The eye is lost in all directions among the desolation where the
multitude of men and women are hiding, as always and as everywhere.

That is what is. Who will say, "That is what must be!"

I have searched, I have indistinctly seen, I have doubted. Now, I
hope.

I do not regret my youth and its beliefs. Up to now, I have wasted my
time to live. Youth is the true force, but it is too rarely lucid.
Sometimes it has a triumphant liking for what is now, and the
pugnacious broadside of paradox may please it. But there is a degree
in innovation which they who have not lived very much cannot attain.
And yet who knows if the stern greatness of present events will not
have educated and aged the generation which to-day forms humanity's
effective frontier? Whatever our hope may be, if we did not place it
in youth, where should we place it?

Who