lso achieved by thought, meditation, by the habit of looking beyond
our immediate trouble, and being more joyous than fate would seem to
demand? To Eponina there came not a sorrow but kindled yet one more
torch in the gloom of her cavern; and does not the sadness that forces
the soul back into itself, to the retreat it has made, kindle deep
consolation there? And, as the noble Eponina has taken us back to the
days of persecution, may we not liken such sorrow to the pagan
executioner who, suddenly touched by grace, or perhaps admiration, in
the very midst of the torture that he was inflicting, flung himself
down headlong at the feet of his victim, speaking words of tenderest
sympathy; who demanded to share her suffering, and finally besought, in
a kiss, to be told the way to her heaven.

104. Go where we will, the plentiful river of life flows on, beneath
the canopy of heaven. It flows between prison walls, where the sun
never gleams on its waters; as it flows by the palace steps, where all
is gladness and glory. Not our concern the depth of this river, or its
width, or the strength of its current, as it streams on for ever,
pertaining to all; but of deepest importance to us is the size and the
purity of the cup that we plunge in its waters. For whatever of life we
absorb must needs take the form of this cup, as this, too, has taken
the form of our thoughts and our feelings; being modelled, indeed, on
the breast of our intimate destiny as the breast of a goddess once
served for the cup of the sculptor of old. Every man has the cup of his
fashioning, and most often the cup he has learned to desire. When we
murmur at fate, let our grievance be only that she grafted not in our
heart the wish for, or thought of, a cup more ample and perfect. For
indeed in the wish alone does inequality lie, but this inequality
vanishes the moment it has been perceived. Does the thought that our
wish might be nobler not at once bring nobility with it; does not the
breast of our destiny throb to this new aspiration, thereby expanding
the docile cup of the ideal--the cup whose metal is pliable, still to
the cold stern hour of death? No cause for complaint has he who has
learned that his feelings are lacking in generous ardour, or the other
who nurses within him a hope for a little more happiness, a little more
beauty, a little more justice. For here all things come to pass in the
way that they tell us it happens with the felicity of the elect, o