noble. For tears in themselves have no colour, that they may the better
reflect the past life of our soul; and this reflection becomes our
chastisement or our reward. There is but one thing that never can turn
into suffering, and that is the good we have done. When we lose one we
love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when
we loved not enough. If we always had smiled on the one who is gone,
there would be no despair in our grief; and some sweetness would cling
to our tears, reminiscent of virtues and happiness. For our
recollections of veritable love--which indeed is the act of virtue
containing all others--call from our eyes the same sweet, tender tears
as those most beautiful hours wherein memory was born. Sorrow is just,
above all; and even as the cast stands ready awaiting the molten
bronze, so is our whole life expectant of the hour of sorrow, for it is
then we receive our wage.

45. Here, standing close to the mightiest pillar of destiny's throne,
we may see once again how restricted her power becomes on such as
surpass her in wisdom. For she is barbarian still, and many men tower
above her. The commonplace life still supplies her with weapons, which
today are old-fashioned and crude. Her mode of attack, in exterior
life, is as it always has been, as it was in Oedipus' days. She shoots
like a blear-eyed bow-man, aiming straight ahead of her; but if the
target be raised somewhat higher than usual, her arrows fall harmless
to earth.

Suffering, sorrow, tears, regrets--these words, that vary so slightly
in meaning, are names that we give to emotions which in no two men are
alike. If we probe to the heart of these words, these emotions, we find
they are only the track that is left by our faults; and there where
these faults were noble (for there are noble faults as there are mean
or trivial virtues) our sorrow will be nearer akin to veritable
happiness than the happiness of those whose consciousness still is
confined within narrowest limits. Would Carlyle have desired to
exchange the magnificent sorrow that flooded his soul, and blossomed so
tenderly there, for the conjugal joys, superficial and sunless, of his
happiest neighbour in Chelsea? And was not Ernest Renan's grief, when
Henriette, his sister, died, more grateful to the soul than the absence
of grief in the thousands of others who have no love to give to a
sister? Shall our pity go forth to him who, at times, will weep on the
sho